If you want to be a successful bettor, money management is an absolute paramount of your success. This is something, that could take you from the level of a bettor, to the next level- the level of the “sports investor”. This is by the way frequently over-looked and under-mined aspect of sports-betting, especially from the novices. Most of them think like this: the only thing of a great importance to their over-all betting success is the strike rate, which their systems are producing, in other words how often they will be right in their predictions. This is of course something of a great importance, but a solid money management could make a losing systems to break-even, and a system, which usually break-evens- a profitable system.
Money management is often being equalized with “risk management”, which we think is very appropriate. Money, or risk management is something “borrowed” from the financial markets. This is something on which they pay a very specific and emphasized attention, which by the way should be the same with Sports- betting and Sports- investing. This is probably, due to the fact, that the financial markets have been around and scrutinized for much more years, than the Sports-betting markets. So here our presumption is, that the more mature the Sports markets become- the greater the importance, which will be given to the money management Because money management in it’s nutshell is a management of the risk a sports investor takes with each of his bets, in order not to lose his capital, it should be somehow correlated with the profit earning, cause the bigger the betting capital/preserved by money managing rules/- the bigger the potential for profits.
There are a lot of factors, which should be taken into consideration, when shaping up good money management rules. Here we can include: the average odds of the selections, produced by your systems. The shorter the odds, obviously the greater the expectation for frequent wins, and thus- the bigger the tolerance to staking large sums of money on a single bet. On the contrary if your systems give you predominantly long-shots- the more careful you should be, and the less money you should be staking on your selections, as a long losing sequence is far more likely. Another thing you should clarify with yourself is what kind of a sports investor you are- more conservative, or more aggressive. More aggressive sports investors are running bigger risks, but the profit potential with them is much larger than with the conservative oneS. Thus the aggressive investors could afford to stake much larger amounts of money on a single bet, compared to their conservative counterparts. Another thing you should consider is your general concept for betting, and what’s the way you are looking at it, as a part of your life. If you are a “penny-wise” investor, who tries to save money from the tiniest minor thing, then you should be very careful with your staking while betting, Since a large loss of money could bring you a lot of disappointment not only regarding your betting, but it could mess around with your whole life, making you a fussy disappointed wanna-be sports investor. On the other hand if you approach betting as something serious, but funny as well, which on the top of this can make you rich, you are much more on your way of becoming a successful sports-investor. Here your tolerance to risk should be greater than the one of the mister ”betting is the most important thing in my life”, but nevertheless your attitude to betting as a whole and risk in particular MUST be smart, responsible and ever improving.
So let’s have a look at some of the basic and most popular concepts in money management in sports- betting.
LEVEL STAKE BETTING- a lot of people will be trying to convince you that “This is the way to go” in Sports-betting, and they well might not be further from the truth. The advantage of this type of money management are that you know exactly how much you risk with every single bet and can easily estimate how long of a losing streak your betting bank will withstand. The trick here is to have an edge over the house, betting flat, which only means one thing- you just have to be a very good sports-handicapper, with an extensive knowledge about certain sports, thus making very good selections/or at the least your tipster should be such/. Making a profit at level stakes is the true test of your handicapping abilities and for your knowledge and ability to predict very well the outcome of the majority of your selections. As far as we are concerned, various tipping services are officially not allowed anymore to advocate for any types of staking plans, thus making their results at level stake betting a true proper test of their real abilities, knowledge, and overall profitability, which we believe is by all means beneficial to the users of their services.
PERCENTAGE OF THE BANK BETTING- With this type of money management you bet a pre-determined percentage of your bank, no matter how small or big it is. This type of money management have definite advantages over many others, because it makes it to be at a good level always. Even if your bank halves after a long losing streak , by betting the same percentage of it could make it withstand almost an infinite number of wagers. The disadvantage is that if at some point you find yourself with a halved bank, it will take a very long time to recover. Anyway for those, who decide to go for this type of money management absolutely naturally raises the question: ”What is the best percentage of my bank, which I should use in my betting?”. Here again there is no best percentage, there is just more appropriate and reasonable for you. Some people will tell you that you are going to be the safest, betting 1% of your bank and you are going to be safe there, but making serious money out of betting will take ages. Others will advocate for 2%-3% of the bank, which could be considered as a kind of compromising, while others would go directly to 5%-10% of the bank, especially the more aggressive Sports investors. Again here a good knowledge of your systems is required, as well as a sufficient amount of self-knowledge, in order to determine your mentality and your general approach towards sports betting. As a general rule of thumb just accept as an axiom the following: the more conservative sports investor you are, the smaller the percentage of each single bet should be. This way your bank will be able to withstand very long losing streaks at the expense of your profit potential. On the contrary- the more aggressive sports investor you are, the bigger the percentage of each of your bets should be. This way your bank won’t be able to withstand very long losing streaks, but if you have a good solid system, with high strike rate, this is your way from rags to riches in no time. So everyone should feel free to categorize himself and act accordingly. From our point of view 5% of the bank on each single bet is something reasonable.
PROFIT- TARGETED BETTING- Amongst the staking plans, used in the Casino games, there is one, called “Maria staking plan”. With this staking plan the amount of your bet depends completely on the odds you are betting at, aiming at a same amount of profit, should the bet turns out to be successful. In Sports- investing the profit-targeted betting is based on the same premise. This way the larger the odds of a selection, the smaller the size of your bet, and on the contrary the shorter the odds you are betting at, the larger the amount of money you put on the selection. The important thing here is that you always go to the same amount of profit, should the bet turns out to be successful. This will probably be best illustrated with an example:
Let’s say you have set your profit target to 10 pounds from a selection, then if you have one with the odds of 2.0, you should bet 10 pounds, in order to gain 10 pounds at odds of 2.0. If you though have a selection at the odds of 3.0, considering your profit target of 10 pounds, you should bet 5 pounds on the selection , in order to gain 10 pounds. And so on, and so forth- the amounts of your bets simply depend on the odds you are betting at, or in other words- the likelihood of a probable scenario happening. In our opinion this type of money management is based on good fundamentals, and is worth trying by all means.
In this article we tried to familiarize you not so much with many kinds of money management plans, but rather to pinpoint it’s great importance. So if you really want to be a successful Sports investor, coming up with a sound money management plan is an absolute must.