In one of the articles, I already mentioned the importance of keeping your betting bankroll separate from daily expenses. It will help you to keep track and control of your balances.
Having bankroll is only beginning of your business plan. Next step is staking plans. I will go through a couple of them and it is your choice to chose the best option for yourself. Obviously, you do not need to stick to one plan forever, you can mix them and change them until you find the best option for you.
Let’s say we are starting with €1000 bank.
Fixed stakes – easy and straightforward method. I would never recommend anyone to place more than 5% of your bankroll on a single bet. In this case, I would suggest fixing stake according to your bank. We can say there are 3 main selections in betting: small, medium and large bet. If we have €1000 bank we can place €50 on a large bet, €20-25 on a medium and €10 on a small bet.
Stake depends on your confidence and value. If you see more value you should place a bigger bet. One of the mistakes I was doing in the past – I was scared of big odds. You shouldn’t be. Bookmakers are making mistakes too (not too often though), bookmakers are creating odds for favorites lower than they should be. That’s why you can find value on higher odds. Pushing price down on favorites, bookmakers needs to push the price up for so-called outsiders. If price is too low for favorites, maybe you should look for plus handicaps on outsiders? Just a food for thought.
Coming back to our fixed stakes – you can increase your large stake from €50 to €60 euros once your bank is growing, or reduce to €40 if you had a bad period.
The risk of this staking plan is that you might blow your bankroll quicker. If you lose 5 big bets in a row, you will blow a quarter of your bank. Having said that I should remind you that large bet must be the most confident and valuable bet and you shouldn’t find such value every day. Personally, I would say I would place a large bet once-twice per month, sometimes even less often. Most of the bets are small and medium stakes. This will keep your bankroll safe.
Percentage of bank stakes – probably the most popular option with facebook/twitter betting experts. I am not saying it is a bad option, but I am 100% sure none of them are actually using it correctly. Most likely they don’t even have a bankroll.
So, this staking plan is based on the percentage of your betting bank. Let’s say if you want to place 4% of your bank on your selection your bet will be €40 (keeping in mind that our betting bank is still €1000). Let’s say your next bet is 3% bet – are you going to calculate your stake from €1000 or from €960? If you have 4-5 bets per day are you going to play with stakes like €24.29 or €32.95? Every time you place your next bet ideally you should know how much money are left in your bank. For me personally, it is too much hassle.
Good point of this staking plan is – you will not lose money quick if you don’t place more than 2-3% per bet. If you hit a bad run, your bank can shrink to €500-600, same as your stakes – max bet will be much lower than it was at the beginning.
If you hit good run and your bank increases, you can start placing bigger stakes. Again, no more than 5%.
The biggest mistake – once you hit the winning run, most people lose control over themselves and they think – I found the gold mine, my winning run will never end. It will end. And faster than you think.
Be focused all the time and percentage of bank method could be the one for you.
Kelly criterion – one of the riskiest and most aggressive staking plans I know and I would not recommend to anyone to use it even it is widely mentioned method in betting circles.
The idea of this method is to use bigger stakes when you calculate bigger advantage against bookmakers odds – the bigger advantage (in your opinion and according to your calculations), the bigger stake is suggested. The biggest risk here that calculations might suggest to place 35% and bigger share of your bank, which I would never ever suggest to anyone.
Formula for Kelly criterion is below:
((odds-1) x (percentage estimate)) – (1-percent estimate)/(odds-1) x 100
Let’s say according to our calculations Team A have 65% chance of winning the game, but bookmakers are offering odds of 2.0 for the same team.
((2.0-1) x (0.65)) – (1-0.65)/(2.0-1) x 100 = (0.65 – 0.35) x 100 = 30%
According to our calculations, we should place 30% of the bank on one single bet! It is insane!
I would say, only positive we can take from this method – we need to place bigger bets if we see the bigger value, but we shouldn’t go overboard. Use common sense and don’t overstake.
Finally, if you made money after 6 months or a year – you have to options:
– withdraw your winnings and start all over again. Spend your winnings on something nice.
– recalculate your stakes and start with a bigger bank. This option is good for the punters with small starting bank. I did the same ages ago. I was withdrawing some winnings, but building up my bank, so I never had to top up my betting bank from my salary.
Remember, keep your stakes to the level acceptable to you. Don’t pay attention if someone is boasting and adding screenshots to facebook/twitter/blogabet with €300-500 stakes. They do not have the betting bankroll, they have no idea what they are doing – they just hit lucky run, even monkey can do it on a lucky day. The ones who can afford €300-500 per bet – they do not need to post it online.
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