Basics | Bankroll Management
A good bankroll management is essential to be successfull at sports betting. When you have the discipline to follow certain rules about your bankroll it can maximize your profit. But more importantly it can make sure that you won’t go bankrupt at bad times.
In this post I’ll explain some ground rules I have been using in the past years. And how I’m going to manage my bankroll during my journey here on Steemit. Just to be clear this isn’t any kind of math or the only correct way to manage your bankroll. It’s the way I like it and the way I feel most comfortable betting.
Flat stake 1%, never risk more than 2%
Mostly I bet flat stake which means 1% of my complete bankroll, not what’s on the bookmaker. When I follow a game live, my bets are often smaller because I place multiple bets on 1 game. In case of strong info or more confidence it can occur that I bet 1,5% or 2% but never more. This reduces the risk you take on a bet. In my experience a bet with higher confidence is often not that profitable as people like to overestimated info about teams news or other facts.
Adjust the stake on time
This rule goes in both ways, when you are in a winning streak you have to adjust the stakes to gain a maximum profit, this is an easy decision. But when you are in a losing streak you also have to adjust in time so your loss is kept as little as possible. This is a much harder decision to make and a lot of bettors wait too long to decrease their stake.
My own rules on this matter are simple when my bankroll is up 25% I upper my stakes, when I’m down 25% I decrease my stake. Again this is rather defensive but it’s much harder to come back from a losing streak when you didn’t adjust on time. And these rules bring me a lot of peace in my mind.
Volume/Turnover
The amount of bets that I take have a direct reflection on my stake. My aim is to have a monthly turnover of 2.5 times my bankroll. So in order to do so I have to look at the quantity of bets I’ll approximately will have each month. With the portfolio I’m setting up, I estimate that I’ll have around 250 bets each month, this number can vary depending on the activity of the leagues I follow. According to my stake and my projected turnover this would be ideal. Of course this is all theoretic.
It could be that after 2-3 months I have to adjust my flat stake because of the quantity of bets. But my flat stake will never be higher than 1.25% or lower than 0.75%. If it would be the case that I have too much volume, I will become more selective on which tipters I will follow.
The journey
On this blog I’ll be showing my results in units. The start of my bankroll will be 100units so my flat stake will be 1u. If my bankroll hits 125u, my stake will go up to 1.25u/bet but when it hits 75u, I’ll have to decrease my stake to 0.75u/bet. When this would happen there will be a post on these cases.
Very professional!
I have to admit that my bankroll management is rather sloppy and ad-hoc compared to yours. I'd readjust the unit when the bankroll goes up or down anywhere between 25-50%.
Since your planed start is this March, I'll start at the same time to apply your bankroll management to my betting and bookkeeping. Cheers mate!
Thanks, it took me a while to get a good bankroll. And it's all about feeling comfortable placing the amount of money.
In the beginning I also didn't had a decent bankroll management and I tried different approaches. The more approaches you try the more you will learn which is suits your style the most.
I saw that you play a lot of high odds, if that's the case I would suggest you to lower your flat stake to 0,75% as you will have a lot more swings and bad streaks. Just my two cent of course ;-)
I'll have to run the numbers and readjust.
Since starting to post my bets publicly I've started to play a lot more games. At least four each and every day. It's not my usual style of hunting for the great value opportunities and sitting out the days with no interesting games.
I'll go this way till the end of February. Starting March, I'll incorporate the needed changes.
Rock solid Bankroll Management !
Once you got this down you never go back, I've used something very similar for the last decade.
I like the fact you point out to think in units.
This was one of the biggest switches I had to make in my mindset and it helped me a lot.