SPORTS BETTING BANKROLL MANAGEMENT by Nick Hub
When it comes to being a successful long-term sports bettor, bankroll management can be just as important as picking winners. One of the major differences between successful, professional sports bettors and amateurs is how they manage their money. With that in mind, we want to educate you with some critical points about bankroll management.
First, you will need to set up a budget for your bankroll and to only use discretionary money in your savings or investments, meaning if it all goes bye-bye, then it will not affect your family, credit, happiness and lifestyle.
Flat betting would be the recommendation for beginners or conservative bettors. Flat betting means betting the same amount on every game and only risking 1% to 5% of your bankroll per play, regardless of your confidence level. A good medium is 3% per play. So, if you’re starting off with $1,000, then your flat 3% play would be $30.
As you become more experienced and trust your research, you can then use a unit scale to place more units on events that your more confident in. Most handicappers have a unit scale of either 1-5 or 1-10. This is called your betting unit size. The higher the unit size, the higher your confidence in a game. Like I mentioned earlier, you never want to place more than 5% of your budget on one event. So, for example, if your initial deposit is $1000 then $50 would be your maximum bet. Meaning if your scale is up to 10 units and your top play is $50, you would then divide $50 by 10 to come up with your other unit sizes. If your unit scale is up to 5 then you would divide the $50 by 5. Being consistent and disciplined with your unit size will help you ride out the inevitable ups and downs that come with sports betting. When you encounter a losing streak, it will save you from going broke. But when you’re winning, it will provide a positive Return on Investment (ROI). You know that there are times where luck won’t go your way or something unforeseen happens. The best you can do is handicap the games and put yourself in position to succeed as much as possible so that you can gain an edge when you feel you have one.
The last important aspect of bankroll management is to keep track of your bets. You want to have a running history of your action that’s easy to dissect. Sure, it sounds like a lot of work, but this is what the professionals do. Whether it’s signing up with a third-party site or updating your own spreadsheet you can see all of your bets across all of your sports, that becomes very useful. You might discover that you’re winning money betting on football but are losing money betting on basketball, that you’re winning your big bets but wasting a lot of money on small bets that you throw around, your better at against the spreads plays vs over/under plays, or full game compared to half game plays. You get the idea. All of this data is useful for not only protecting your bankroll, but building success and a solid sports betting strategy over the long run.
