Sports Betting and Money Management.

Many people who begin sports betting go bust despite being profitable or potentially profitable. It's a cruel fact. The sportsbook line is hard enough to beat without making errors in the management of your bank roll.

Remember this, if you lose half of your money, you need to double your fund to restore it to its original level. For example if your fund stands at $1000 and you lose half of the fund, it would then stand at $500. You now need to double that $500 to get it back the original $1000 mark. This may not be a problem for the disciplined bettor because he will simply keep his stakes the same and work at restoring the level of the fund. However, psychological issues often win out - the bettor may fear that the fund is not big enough to account for losses, so they 'logically' cut their stakes to 50% of their starting stakes.

A problem now arises. The bettor started with e.g. $10 stakes and found himself 'fifty bets down' - reducing his fund from the $1000 to $500. Fearing the worst he cuts his stake from $10 to $5. Probability being what it is, the bettor now hits a hot streak and soon finds that he has recovered his 50 bet deficit. The problem is that he has been betting only $5. Assuming even money / +100 bets, his fund recovers to $750 ($5 x 50 bets = $250 + $500 fund = $750) $250 shy of the starting $1000, even though he has done no worse in his betting.

Make sure that your bank roll is big enough. If you are going to struggle psycologically with a 50 point bank, then make it 100 or 200 points.

Taking a more realistic scenario, what would the effect be of smaller percentage gains and losses to your fund. Assume that over a short period of betting your $1000 fund gains 5% and then loses 5%. After the 5% gain, the fund stands at $1050. Following on, after a 5% loss, the fund stands at $997.50, and you are down $2.50.

This should tell you something...ever seen those tips on the web - "...get my five star unmissable lock!" or "...my 100 star blow-out play...!" sucking you in to what is in all likelihood a bad bet but also tempting you to use too much of your fund in one hit. Avoid it.

Flat-stake your bets e.g. $10, a $100 or whatever you feel comfortable with and increase or decrease at certain milestones e.g. after each season, or on tripling your fund, or reassess after 2000 bets. Don't start increasing your stake, for example, after every bet when you are on a hot streak, this only means that your stakes could be a their largest when the correction comes and it will take far fewer losing bets to take you below where your fund stood at the beginning of the winning streak.

An extreme example of staking too much can be illustrated as follows. In a coin flip scenario, you are told that you will double up when you win, but have to play your whole bank roll on every flip of the coin. Obviously, however many times you may win to begin with adding substantially to your fund, you will lose your whole bankroll on the first losing 'flip'. The same principle applies over a longer period of time, you will survive initially, but you will in all likelihood lose your fund if it is too small / your stake size is too large .

The advice is to remain conservative, flat stake your wagers and bet within yourself - especially if you are starting out. As you develop your sports betting skills, you may want to look at alternative staking plans or Kelly Criterion.....but be very careful.

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