When it comes to betting on sports, there are sharks and there are fish. As is the case in the ocean, if surviving and even thriving are the goal of your endgame, it’s always better to be the shark than the fish.
Sharks – also known as sharps and smart money players – know what they are doing. They’re prepared to go in for the kill. They’ve done their homework and they know where to go and when to strike at their prey.
They move confidently through the mass sea of wagering proposals that can be found by going to a web page such as sportsbettingsites.com. They recognize value and they’re also well aware of which areas that it’s best to avoid.
The fish is completely the opposite. They are swimming in the same sea as the sharks, but completely unable to decipher or recognize a sound wager from a sucker’s bet.
Where Did The Term Originate?
While no one really knows for certain, the commonly-held belief is that foolhardy bettors became known as fish due to their similarities to a clueless fish that swims along in the sea, blissfully unaware of its surroundings.
The first piece of food it sees it strikes out at, not recognizing that it is nothing more than bait attached to a fishing line. The next thing they know, they’re being pulled in, hook, line and sinker and all is lost.
Put into simple terms, a fish is generally a novice bettor that wagers unwisely and almost always loses their money.
Fish usually talk a good game. They’re often brash, boastful and seem outwardly self-assured. But it’s all an act, a clever disguise designed to hide the reality that they in fact don’t have any idea about what they are doing. They are in over their heads.
In point of fact, the fish in sports betting is in actuality a fish out of water – flopping, flailing and ultimately failing. A fish is someone who bets big without putting in the time and effort to assess the situation before diving in and making an ill-advised wager.
Those in the industry also often refer to this type of bettor as a sucker. They offer a stark reminder of that age-old adage about a fool and his money soon parting ways.
The Fish Doesn’t Know They’re A Fish
A fish will bet big on an event that doesn’t warrant a large wager. They’ll make a point spread play on a double-digit point longshot, seeing the vast amount of points they’ll be getting without doing the research that would’ve shown them that the team they just bet has lost its last five games by much wider margins than the point spread they’re currently being afforded.
The fish is always looking for the big score. They play multi-leg parlays and envision the massive pile of money they could win without recognizing that the odds of that parlay coming in are slimmer than Taylor Swift’s waist measurements.
The thing about fishes is that they don’t realize that they’re fishes. They keep betting big and losing and chasing their losses by throwing bad money after good. It’s why sports betting sites are always willing to swim with the fishes, because it’s their bad beats that keep the entire ecosystem of sports betting as a thriving, growing industry which is generating ridiculous amounts of revenue for the top betting entities.
Fishes aren’t limited to sports betting. You’ll find them going all-in on absurd hands at the poker table, or on the casino floor, continuing to pull that lever on the same slot machine, certain that the law of averages will ultimately deliver a jackpot to them. The sharks always love having the fishes as part of their game, because they are such easy prey.
Fish always love to brag and drone on about the rare occasion when they stumble on to a big win while remaining completely oblivious to the many ones that got away. The betting fish is much like the hacker golfer who can never break 100 but will forever tell the tale of that one birdie they recorded.
There’s another old saying in betting and it goes something like this: If you’ve been betting for awhile and still haven’t figured out who the fish is, well, you just might want to take a look in the mirror.