Disclaimer: I do not endorse gambling. This was a fun academic exercise and no actual money was ever exchanged. I do not reccomend using this technique to attempt to profit by gambling. References to odds, dollars and betting in this articles are purely for comparison purposes only and do not represent actual monetary gains. Having said that, Mods please take this down if this is a violation of the site rules.
TL/DR: I made a machine learning algorithm to predict AFL matches before they started. When I simulated my results on 2017 matches and used it for betting, I managed to get a net positive return on my investments.

Introduction

A few months ago I posted an article introducing the concept of machine learning in AFL.You can find that article here. I presented some use cases about where it could be practically applied, including injury prevention and management, drafting, in-game strategy and strategic trading. These use-cases were all geared toward benefiting the club. There is, however, one area that machine learning excels at that would benefit punters and tippers - game prediction: predicting the outcome of a match before it has started. In this article, I will focus on how I built a machine learning model to do exactly that.
This article is structured as follows: first I will briefly describe supervised machine learning. Next I’ll move into how I created the model to predict AFL matches- I’ll discuss the data, features and methodology that I used. I’ll then discuss the final results including accuracy, potential improvements and, most importantly, how to use it to make money.

Supervised machine learning

Supervised machine learning is probably best understood in an AFL context with a simple example. Suppose we wanted to predict the outcome of a particular match. We don’t know anything about AFL, but we have a friend that has presented us with some historical matches and we have found a pattern that the home team tends to win more often than the away team. So we pick the home team.
What we have just done is created a very simple “model” (a mental model in this case) to predict the outcome of a match based on previous experience. In our data we have only used one data “feature” – the home/away status of the team. In fact, using this one feature, we would have an expected accuracy of 58% because the home team wins 58% of the time.
At this point it is useful to define a few terms:

• Prediction: The best guess for the outcome of a match e.g., win/lose
• Feature: the information that we use the make a prediction, e.g.,. home/away status
• Model: The relationship between the feature and the prediction e.g., if home then win otherwise lose

Now, we want to improve our prediction accuracy by introducing more features. This means we start to ask other questions about the teams and the conditions. For example, what is the weather like? Who are the key players that are included in each squad? What are the respective ladder rankings? What are the historical outcomes between the two teams?
Now these combination questions are getting more and more difficult to answer using basic intuition. For example, we might notice that teams with higher contested possession win more often. But what happens then when the team with a higher historical contested possession count is the away team? How much contested possession differential outweigh home ground advantage? What is the trade-off?
This is where machine learning will help us. Machine Learning is a branch of Aritificial Intelligence that can automatically map the relationship between features and predictions using historical observations. It will “learn” the statistical trade-offs between contested possession, homeground advantage and any other relevant features to help use make a prediction about the game outcome.
Other than sports, it’s applied in many industries including real estate (to predict a house price), banks (to predict whether someone will default on a loan), internet advertisements (to predict whether someone will click on an ad if presented), Google (to predict if your picture has a cat in it) and many more.

Creating a machine learning model to predict AFL matches

What was the goal?

I tried to predict the outcomes of the 198 matches played in the 2017 AFL Home/Away season using data only available on AFLTables.com.
A little bit about the AFL 2017 season – this season is notorious for being one of the most even in history. In fact several posts were written about this on Reddit [https://www.reddit.com/AFL/comments/6ls48y/this_is_the_most_even_season_since_1998/] and some articles even were written in the paper [https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/afl/afl-2017-most-even-comp-since-expansion/news-story/b3a15b2ad17fe9727244c19aecbc01d2]. This means its one of the most difficult to predict.

What data was used?

The data used for the study was web-scraped from AFLTables.com and contained all in game player information from 2003-2017. This constitutes approximately 2700 individual matches and contains data on key player statistics and venue of game played.

What features were used?

The features (information) that I used to try to predict matches can be classified into 6 broad categories. For each game (combination of home and away team), we can calculate difference in team ranking, form line, venue experience, key game statistics, player ranking and line up and fatigue.
1.Team ranking:
This was simple the different in ladder position, difference in number of ladder points, and difference in rolling 5 game percentages.
2.Form-line
This was simply the difference in the win-loss record over the last 5 rounds.
3.Venue experience( Home ground advantage or HGA):
This was the difference in wins at a particular venue between the home and away team over the last two years
4.In-game Statistics differential
These are the differences in in-game statistics between the home and away team, averaged over the last 5 rounds. These include: win loss form, score, percentage, kicks, handballs, contested possession, tackles, hit outs, rebound 50’s, inside 50s; free-kicks, clangers, marks inside 50’s, goal assists, bounces, time-on-ground.
Along with differences in the mean, the difference in the variance variance was also taken into account.
5.Player information
Along with team statistics, player performance was also taken into account. I used u/JgreaterthanK’s player rating formula and took the average player rating over the last 5 rounds. I then looked at the line up and based on the average player rating over the last 5 rounds for each player, calculated the expected total player rating for the upcoming match.
6.Team information
I also looked into team line-up before the match. For each match, I calculated the top performer for goals, clearances, goal assists, tackles, contested marks, and rebound 50s for the last 5 matches for both the home and away and determined whether or not that player was playing in the current match.
7. Fatigue
I modeled a fatigue factor as which third of the season we are in (1-8 = Beginning, 9-16 = Middle, 17-23 = end). I also had a feature in there indicating whether it was Round 1 or not so that the machine could learn any differences between round 1 predictions and the rest of the season.

How did I assess the model?

I used “accuracy” as our simple measure of performance. This is defined as the total number of correct guesses divided by total number of matches. E.g., If I had 120 correct guesses my accuracy would be 120/198 = 60.6%

What was the model?

This is a little technical so feel free to skip to the next section
The data was partitioned into a validate/train set (Season 2016 and below) and a hold-out set (being 2017 season).
I used an Extreme Gradient Boosted Model and optimized it’s hyper parameter using grid search with 5-fold cross validating (using randomly selected validation set). After the hyper parameters were chosen and finalised, the 2017 matches were predicated.
To generate confidence intervals in the predictions I trained 99 more models on bootstrapped versions of the data.

Results

Final accuracy

The final accuracy of the model was 66.7%.
66.7% sounds low, but is it really that low? To benchmark these results, I downloaded some published tipping results from “experts” (after the H/A season had finished) from the herald sun. I also calculated the accuracy of what you would have achieved had you followed other stats related methods including the betting odds (http://www.aussportsbetting.com/data/historical-afl-results-and-odds-data/), the Swinburne Computer (https://www.swinburne.edu.au/footy-tips/2017-footy-tips/) and simply tipping the home-team. You can see the final table here.
The model comes equal third, only behind Chris Cavanagh and Trent Cotchin. It out performs, most experts, the Swinburne computer and outperforms betting odds. Special shoutout to Scott Pendlebury, Marcus Bontempelli, James Hird and Mick Malthouse who notibly did worse than simply tipping the home-team…(this is potentially due to team bias for the players...).

What is important to predict match outcomes?

We can use a technique called variable importance to understand which features the model thinks is important to consider when making predictions, and which features aren’t important. This is presented as a rating between 0 and 100, where 100 means very important and 0 means not important at all.
Here are the relative ranking of the top 10 features. Surprisingly, the largest driver of a win is actually the difference in the 5-game rolling percentage. The other features that are important are ones you would expect: player performance, ranking and home-ground advantage. Of the actual in-game statistics that make a difference, inside50’s and marks inside 50s appear to be the most predictive.

Using the model for betting

And now for the most important question - could I have used this model to make money on the betting markets?
The short answer is ... I would have, but this may just be luck.
Here is a graph the ranks each of the 198 matches of the home and away season based on the probability of a home win. The grey bars are the 90% confidence on that probability. For example, for the first point, we estimate the probability of the home team winning is about 88-93%. The triangles are the corresponding probability of the home team winning as given by the betting odds (if you didn’t know 1/Price of the odds gives you the probability, so if the home team are paying at $1.37 they are valued at 73% likelihood of winning).
To put it short, red triangles are games where the predicted probability is similar to what our model estimates because they fall within the confidence bands. Blue triangles are those that we think have been sufficiently miss-predicted and therefore we spot an opportunity to place a bet.
So, for every game with a blue triangle I placed a (virtual) bet of 100 dollars. If the 5th percentile home probability was higher than that given by the odds, I bet on the home team (because the home team was overvalued). If the 95th percentile was lower than that given by the odds, I bet on the away team (because the away team was overvalued).
Here is the round-by-round cumulative winnings. In total I won a net $275 from a total investment of 6900 dollars – an absolutely massive ROI of 3.9 %.

Can we do any better?

We can also visualise the winnings on the same graph as before – here I’ve placed an ‘X’ for games I lost money and a green square for games I won money. The size of the green square is proportional to the amount I won.
This visualise shows something interesting...there appears to be a 4 separate clusters of points, one in each corner of the graph. Here is the graph again with those clusters shown:
Group 1 (red) are games where the home team is expected to win but by too much, group 2 is where the home team is expected to win but by not enough, group 3 (green) is where the home team is expected to lose but by too much, and group 4 (yellow) is where the results appears 50/50.
If we analyse each of these groups for their expected winning probabilities (as per the odds), the actual winning percentages and total net earnings we see something very interesting.

Group	Net Earnings ($)	Expected Winning (%)	Actual Winning (%)	No. of Games
1	-52	91	85	21
2	-873	61	23	13
3	1149	34	55	18
4	51	58	53	17

Group 1 and 4 tend to have very low net earnings. For these groups we are winning as much as we are losing, so our model and the Odds are at a stalemate. According to our model, the Odds have over valued the home team, but our model doesn't consistently identify this opportunity correctly to create a positive net yield.
Conversely, (and rather strangely) there is Group 2, where both the model and the Odds do a terrible job at predicting the home win. In fact, the expected winning percentage (according to the Odds) for Group 2 is 60% compared with the actual winning percentage of 23%!. The reason why we lose money in this case is that while both models do a terrible job, the odds are slightly less terrible.
Finally, let's look at group 3. Group 3 has a gigantic net earnings - over 1000 dollars won on 1800 dollars staked (100 dollars per game)- that's around a 60% return. I think that what we have identified is a potential inefficiency in the market. Put simply, for these games, the TAB consistently tells us that the home team will lose, whereas the model tells us that its more even than that. And the model is right more often than not. Basically for these games, the Odds is undervaluing the effect of home-ground-advantage.
Also, for those of you that want a full list of the games that I bet on (or if you want to do some of your own analysis), I've made a table of the matches here

Conclusion and improvements

So did I unlock some magic secret to guarantee a profit off of AFL? The answer no nothing is guaranteed, but it would be interesting to eat some more. However, this was all just a fun academic exercise and I absolutely do not encourage gambling Besides, it's just as likely that I’ve simply identified matches which look predictable (but are actually highly unpredictable, for a variety of reasons) and got lucky. I also may have spotted a pattern for 2017 that may not exist going forward. However, I don't think that the key takeaway here is that you can use machine learning to guarantee money. I think that it’s that you can make a model that’s almost as good as an industry standard using random pieces of information from the internet, which I think is pretty cool.
Now for improvements - the model is a good start but there are a lot of improvements that can be made -

1. More data

If we add more matches, then we have more historical outcomes to learn from and generalise, so this should theoretically help us. Unfortunately I only had access to full in-game statistics from about 2003 because this is where AFLTables starts to record all statistics.

2. Better data

I highly suspect that the AFL records information other than that presented on AFLTables.com and even presented to the public. These might other bits of information that are highly predictive of winning or losing.
Another avenue that I didn’t explore was to add more publicly available sources and better player data. This might include things like weather (raining or not, temperature etc.), and fatigue / travel factors (like how many km you have to travel to a venue), injury rates, dream team scores, official player ratings etc.

3. Better model

I used a boost and tried some others (logistic regression, NN, random forest) but there might be other machine learning techniques that might do better.
Also, the cross validation method might not be the best. There is an argument to treat the matches as a times series so in your validation you only use matches from before hand to predict upcoming matches. I'm not so certain this is the case, and the results on the hold-out set prove that I'm barely over-fitting.
Another improvement would be to optimize for Log Loss rather than accuracy. At the moment, the model's log Loss was approximately 0.65, where as the log Loss of the Odds were 0.61.
Lastly, while I am predicting a binary outcome, it might to predict the margin. The theory is that margin prediction would actually provide feedback about the strength of how wrong, or how right you were. I’m not 100% on this because if the margin is 5, and you predict -5 (a loss), this is the same error as if you predict 15 (a win). But predicting 15 is objectively better than predicting -5.

4. Better opinions

While I know a little bit about football, I’m far from an expert. A true expert opinion about which features drive match outcomes would be invaluable to help improve the prediction accuracy of the model.

Hi, I'm new to Reddit and forums in general and I'm absolutely so sick and tired of the draining curse that is... masturbation! I have been evaluating this disease for 3 years now. And have been wanting to stop ever since I started. So my last straw is to come to Nofap. Write down everything I need to so I can better understand it and reflect on it regularly so I can finally put an end to this burden as well as keeping up to date with my progress daily. And hopefully will be able to help other people too! I will split this into 3 groups.
(If you want help and can't be bothered to read this lengthy post skip to chapters 2 for insight, chapter 3 for help and chapter 4 for a brief summary)

1. My experience with fapping. So... I am almost 21 years old and started fapping when I was 8 years old. It was by complete accident and I thought I was going to become this extremely rich and famous guy for discovering what an orgasm is. I even sold the idea to a couple of year 4 friends for 50p. But it wasn't until the older kids called me a dumb ass and told me it was called 'wanking' then I thought it was normal and I was like everyone else. But in the depths of my heart I knew it was wrong. I always hid it away from my family as I knew it wasn't right. I always felt disgusted with myself afterwards and always felt dirty inside. But I could never stop doing it because of the exhilarating feeling that always took over me. Heck! between the ages of 9 and 12 I was tugging on the ol' trombone anywhere from 8 to 13 times a day. Until the orgasm felt like I was being stabbed in my wiener multiple times whilst an angel tickled the tip with her fluffy wand. (When it reached this point I toned it down to 3-6 times a day) / (8 if I was feeling frisky) as that experience will always live with me as one of the most painful and strangest feelings I have ever had... So fast forward to when I was 13. I wanted to have sex with someone that bad I ended up screwing a Lucozade bottle instead. But because I had to put it in floppy as it didn't fit. It ended up getting stuck after I got erect and after pulling out I ripped all my banjo line and there was blood everywhere. I was young and dumb at the time and was distraught with fear thinking I was going to get aids. So this actually scared me away from masturbation for a whole year. And man was that a memorable, beautiful year. I felt so alive. full of energy, confident, made lots of friends, I even had a couple of girlfriends I remember it so well! but... When all well... It ends well. As when I was 14, I got introduced to porn from a friend... What a brain washing exciting moment in my life! There was just so much to choose from!!! It beat using my imagination! But in my soul.. I couldn't stand it. That's why as soon as I had done 'The Deed' I turned it off as fast as I turned it on! Because just like a drug addiction, it was just a fix. And just how smoking weed is a gate way drug. So is porn. You start off with the simple basic kinds. But after years of it corrupting your mind you need something new, something fresh! So instead of enriching our brains with activities, hobbies, skills and important information. We taint our mind with... "Shemale bangs chubby midget and gets crapped on by 2 teens" or "bbbbw granny gets choked by 13" wang whilst princess peach rubs her goomba shaped clito" And in reality... it's absolutely disgusting! all it does is use up our valuable time, corrupt our minds, makes us over sexualize women, become sexual deviants and lowers our standards (as well as our penises) in the bedroom. And after I started watching porn I became an unmotivated, no self esteem, beta sorry excuse of a human as I was just an empty husk walking around, sleeping in class, sexualising every female that crossed my path tainted zombie. I use to be in all of the top sets in class, predicted high grades/good things, was liked by many and had so many talents, dreams and aspirations. All that slowly started to fade down the drain. As in the end I failed most of my exams, was always asleep even in school, lost all my friends and lost track of all my aspirations. And There is so much more I haven't touched up on.. Like how I use to use my creativity to make a variety of pocket pussies. Or how every detention I had I thought to myself 'You waste my time? I'll USE IT EFFECTIVELY!' So I'd rub one out under the table and shoot all over my homework, fold it up afterwards and put it into my pocket until detention had finished. Or perhaps how I have Tried everything when it comes to fapping there possibly is for me. from watching every type of feasible porn to even sucking myself off. There is nothing I haven't done and to put it straight... I'M Fecking Bored! So when I was 17 and thrown out of college for being lazy and unreliable I had lots of time on my hands. This is where I had too much time to myself and had too much time to think. At that point in my life I believe I started a spiritual journey. I started reevaluating my life, decisions, experiences, actions and myself to finally understand what it is I was doing wrong and to find out what I should do next. I naturally started meditation (without knowing what it even was) deep critical thinking, energy manipulation involved with my chakras, understanding big life questions to the very best of my own view and learning how to be me again. It is a magical time of my life and is shaping me into the purest form of my natural self. I use to be a compulsive liar, a thief, black out from anger, really fat and greedy, eat absolute garbage, selfish and manipulative. Now I am none of those things. I have reversed all of them and am such a better person because of it. But there is just one thing I can't stop, one thing that links in with the rest and last of my problems that I haven't fixed and that is fapping. I have all my dreams and aspirations back. And I fully believe fapping is stopping me from persuing them!
   
2. Why fapping is bad! I am not a 'fapocologist' But I have been researching this with my own initiative for 3 years or more now. I have done tests on myself from my addiction, to my behaviors and to what fapping and the things related with it do. I've also learnt new things from every rebound I have had, I have 2 good friends who also strongly relate, I have analysed other peoples behavior and analysed others to find out they too have a problem with fapping, So overall I have learnt all these things from my own experience and have had friends and other people clarify on what I have already learnt. So here we come to the question. Why is it bad? Well... There are so many reasons so let me explain. I believe fapping literally drains you of your energy, of your essence if you will. I like to think of the energy like a tree of life! But if you keep wasting/ 'tossing' away your energy. You will never be able to grow the tree. Instead you keep butchering it by chopping it down. or never letting the seed grow in the first place. But the longer we let the seed grow, the bigger and more beautiful the tree will be which also reflects our own energy. And there are so many benefits from it too! Such as being a charismatic, confident lovable guy who no one will be able to resist. It also takes away your self esteem and confidence too making you feel worthless and forgettable which in the end makes you seem that way towards other people just because of the way you feel yourself. It makes you unmotivated to do anything. when some people have free time it is literally hard for them to leave their bed and in return end up fapping the day away. Some people will even want to do constructive things like art, music, writing etc. But find it hard to do so just because they feel that lazy and tied to laying down, usually ending up with depression and the feel of worthlessness. Well guess what. That is also tied with fapping. Why bother getting dopamine releases from doing hard working rewarding activities like improving your art when you can cheat your brain by fapping to get an even bigger dopamine release what only last a fragment of the time doing something constructive and rewarding will get you? "Because it's easy?" what a pathetic way to live... Fapping also drains you, makes you feel so lazy and like a zombie. Becoming monotone in your voice and overall draining to other people. And to other people you literally seem like a shell of a human being. Like there's nothing even in there. You ever wonder why you seem like the odd one out or why you seem so forgettable? It's because your life energy is pretty much non-existent! Ever since learning about the consequences of fapping I can tell just by someones voice if they masturbate too much. I have even asked a lot of them too. And they have all told me the same thing... They all admitted they had a masturbation problem. Finally how much of your life have you wasted masturbating/watching porn?!?! It takes me over an hour to find a good porn video and lets say I have masturbated twice a day for 13 years. (I know it would be a lot more than that!) Now... (minutes) 60x2=120 There is 365 days in a year so... 365daysx13years= 4745 120x4745= 569400 .... 569400 divided by 60= 9490 Now guys... THAT IS 9490 HOURS OF MY LIFE WASTED ON MASTURBATION!!! and I know it will be more than that! This is news to me... I have spent over a year of my life masturbating. I feel like I actually want to cry. what the actual... I could have learnt 20 languages in that time... Or to put it better yet. I could play guitar better or on par with the worlds greatest guitarist... I feel like throwing up. This is insane. I could go on explaining but I will list the rest of the problems. How it makes your muscles scrawny and weak, takes the color out of your eyes, creates depression, creates fatigue, brain fog, harder to remember things, honestly drains your emotions. (You watch a comedy after a fap and I bet you won't find it as funny as you would if you hadn't done for a while) creates abdominal pains and cramps, can create a curved or damaged penis, can damage the testicles and strain/break vessel within your testes too. And overall it just makes you completely 'Soulless!'
   
3. So... How do we fix the issue? How do we stop Fapping Once and for all?... generally speaking it's best if everyone finds their own way of beating masturbation. But here are mine: First off, You cannot stop fapping with will power alone! I used my willpower to stop smoking, doing drugs, lying, start eating healthfully, drinking coffee etc. But masturbation seems to be different altogether. Maybe it's the heat of the moment kind of deal when you see or find something that turns you on and suddenly the emotions and energy overtake you all at once, until you can't stop doing what you're doing until it's too late and the damage is already done. Because that's what happens to me. So I have approached and successful already found a few things to calm 'The urge' down. First you should stop sexualising women. Porn has tainted your brain so every time you see a nice pair of boobs or a juicy ass you stare or fantasize about the what ifs. YOU SHOULDN'T! How would you like it if some creep was doing that to you? And I bet for a some of you, you don't even see women as people anymore, forgetting to look at their face and to connect with them like a friend (like you would when you were an innocent child) But now all you see women as are sexual objects. It's damn ride creepy. So start looking at women like a friend again and stop looking at their private areas. No matter how appealing. Even if they don't have the respect for themselves by wearing sensible clothes. Always remember to have respect for yourself and don't stoop down to their standards. Stay away from harmful sites, dirty videos and if you see something that makes you horny. State to yourself why it's wrong and why it's beneficial to not fap to whatever it is that turned you on, then get away from it as fast as possible. Within time you will perceive things naturally (Like when you were a child) but also seeing things for how they actually are. Also get a porn blocker, safe search or stay away from electronics completely. If you get a porn blocker. Copy and paste a random password from notepad so you can never remember the password Also spiritual practices like meditation, yoga, prayer, creative outlets really do help. But If I don't meditate within 3-5 days I don't have the mental strength to discard or face my urges. As the urges always take over within seconds. Right! If you are doing nothing except sitting around all day in a dark lonely room, laying in bed, playing videogames, watching movies,tv and anime whilst the only thing in the day you get excited for is food. That is going to be your problem! As human beings we need goals/ dreams and aspirations to fulfil, a social life, friends, a romantic partner, income, a job, hobbies besides consumer based ones like watching tv and a little something called vitamin D (The sun) Get ya self outide and get some fresh air! if you get none of those things more than likely you are going to have a masturbation problem as well as other problems too. So what I'm saying is you need to spend your time more efficiently and wisely! Go meet up with some friends! Go outside, clear your mind and be with nature, meditate, Do some productive hobbies. plan a day out with loved ones, get a job and start saving up for things you want most out of life. Just start by doing something! So I did this... Have any of you wanted to do something with your life? Become an animator, A musician, videogame designer, a gourmet chef, a footballer, director, philosopher, scientist... ANYTHING! instead most of us have been brainwashed consumers who play games, watch tv, browse the internet, fap, eat and sleep. We are the ideal consumer! And I for one am sick of it! I want to be a creator instead! I want to do something for this world and will never be able to do it if I am watching, listening and playing things I have already experienced. So start following your dreams! stop letting your urges rule you as a person! start building up your skills and start living life the way you want to! Because we only have one shot... we never know when we will die and we may never have another chance! so don't let your dreams be memories and start building up your aspirations into a reality! So ever coming to that realization. I stopped fapping for almost 2 months and at that point I put in anywhere between 2-6 hours a day with improving my art by drawing, painting and learning how to improve my skills. I was also playing guitar 2 hours a day and was also writing a lot in journals. And I never use to do any of this. Within 2 months of doing this I had learnt several guitar cords and songs, could draw anything I looked at really well, had created many concept ideas and felt like I was pursuing my souls work. I felt like a kid again! I felt so alive, I started attracting old friends back into my life, I felt like I had so much control and love back in my life as well as feeling the most accomplished I had felt in years! But... I had a few days break from it all, started to become a consumer again and... YOU GUESSED IT! I got really horny ... and started fapping. Now I hardly draw, rarely play guitar and only write when I'm too fed up. And it's all linked in with masturbation (aswell as becoming a consumer). My insides are screaming for me to carry on this creative path but my body literally stops me and my urges take over too easily. And I can't persue my dreams if I don't have the energy to persue them. It has been 3 months of this hell now and I feel myself sinking even lower than I was before. But not this time... I am starting a freaking war! And I will beat this disease! IT IS NOW OR NEVER! I am so sick of my hands automatically wandering down to my crotch area, I am sick of Getting easily persuaded by the sexual energy that consumes me! And I am so sick of being that empty shell of a guy who can't do anything with his life and seems to be the most forgettable guy in the world. Well this time it's going to change! This time I will fight! and this time I will WIN!
   
4. THE URGE!
   

• Stop heavily sexualising the things that turn you on, especially the weird kind. You should explore sexual desires with a partner, the internet is not an intimate being/ no real connection and being intimate with yourself is just... selfish.
• If you sexualise women/strangers ask yourself "What would she think if she found out I was doing this" Because bets are she would be disgusted with your behavior. Unless she was a whore. But I would never sink so low anyway.
• If you are the kinda guy that is always staring at a women's body instead of her face, STOP! See her as a normal human being. Like you did with your female friends when you were a child. Look into her eyes not her cleavage!
• Every time you see something that turns you on dismiss it and ask yourself 'how does it benefit you?' 'Is this wrong' 'Is this really what I want?' 'Am I better than this?' etc. and if you face the problem head on you are already beating the urge before it strikes!
• If the urge strikes! (Firstly tho) whatever created the urge, get away from it! close the tab! exit the room! Do whatever has to be done but don't, whatever you do! go along with it!... Afterwards stop what you're doing completely and you can do one of several things. . Face it head on and reason with yourself (Risky move if you are stuck in the energy) Meditate on the urge and give all the cons to why its bad to go along with it (Best method) As well as switching your attention to something else completely. Like something constructive, tidying up, washing up, go outside. (This works but I feel like the urge manifests itself and comes back) so the best approach would be to...
• Deal with the urge head on, THEN focus your attention onto something else, making it the best startergie to overcome it and beat it to the ground creating mental clarity aswell as focus.
• Start filling your time with more constructive, creative, social and life bettering tasks meaning there will be no time for that urge to hit. (The only thing is it could hit you even stronger in your free time)
• Start building up that energy and put it into things you want to accomplish and do in life! It will only build up and get stronger! But if you surcumb to the urge, you will lose it all and start from square one!
• stay away from electronics. Social media, youtube, mindless web browsing and so on. Let's be honest! It gets you no where! a lot of Fake friends! Time consuming random videos and zombiefied web browsing on worthless info. To top it all off. what connection can you get from your devices except an internet one? It's just another life draining hurdle we need to move away from. You probably spend more of your life on social media alone than you do fapping. It's time to get some real connections with real people, learn valuable info and skills instead of mindless videos and web surfing.
• Limit youtube, tv, videogames etc to a weekend/ sunday thing. It means you'll look forward to it more, get more stuff done during the week and because you aren't being a bored consumer. It means you will less likely be fapping the night away.
• Stop being bored! Speaks for itself. Go find something to do. we all know what happens when we become too bored...
• Never ignore the urge as it manifests into a will of it's own.
• Never think you can beat the urge with willpower alone (actually. make it to 3 months and you may have a chance!)

personal experience and opinion.
Finally! the first 3 months are really hard! especially since our sperm cells recycle and regenerate every 3 months. The 7-8 day point is one of the hardest days also day 14 and 19 are hard days too! They are all difficult days within the first 3 months. but after the 3rd month things seem to mellow down. The urge muscle has become stronger so it's easier to fight it. and like any addiction it will become easier once you have (metaphorically speaking) sweated it all out of your system. battling it head on and being Persistent is key!

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