Sports Betting Money Management Systems – How to Control Your Bankroll

There are a lot of rules you should follow if you want to be a successful sports bettor. One of the most important is money management.

Managing your money properly will help you overcome bad streaks as well as keep you grounded when you start thinking the sky is the limit.

To help you cope with the volatility of sports betting, we have prepared everything you need to know about sports betting money management systems.

What Is Bankroll Management?

When you are starting with sports betting, you should separate a certain amount of money from your everyday budget for this activity.

Remember to separate only the money you can afford to lose without it having an impact on your life.

The money that you separated for betting is called the bankroll. When you are placing bets you will use only the money from your bankroll.

When it comes to sports betting, bankroll management means applying certain money management strategies when placing bets.

These strategies help bettors stay on the right path when it comes to the amounts they wager and not get distracted with temporary success or failure.

One of the basic rules of bankroll management is to never bet more than 5% of your bankroll on a single bet. In most cases, if you are a beginner, you don't want to bet more than 1%.

For example, if your sports betting bankroll is $100, you shouldn't bet more than $5 on an individual bet.

Why Is Bankroll Management Important?

The previous example might seem boring to you and that is exactly one of the goals of bankroll management, to keep you from getting emotionally involved.

Emotions are the enemy of rational thinking and you want to keep your head as clear as possible when placing bets.

Also, if you don’t have a separate bankroll for betting, you can find yourself in a situation where you are betting with money you can't afford to lose.

This will result in you getting emotionally involved and can lead to catastrophic consequences.

Additionally, by establishing a betting bankroll you will have an easier time determining the size of your bets and applying the strategy of betting units. We will talk about betting units more in the next section.

Finally, a sports betting bankroll management system will help you understand that sports betting is a long-term game. It will prevent you from chasing losses or betting bigger amounts when you feel “lucky.”

Look at it this way, bankroll management is like one of your friends who always looks at things from a rational perspective.

He will stop you from having too much fun with his rational approach, but he will also lift you when you are feeling down.

What Are Betting Units?

Betting units represent amounts that are used to measure the size of bets and the size of bankroll.

In betting world, units replace traditional currencies and serve as a way for bettors to keep track of their bets.

One of the main purposes of using units instead of traditional currencies like dollars and euros is to detach bettors from money.

By doing this, punters are less likely to get emotionally involved and make judgments based on feelings.

The second reason why bettors use units is to help them compare their results with other bettors.

This task would be almost impossible if they used dollar amounts because each of them has a different sized bankroll.

And finally, the last reason units are commonly used in the betting world is the fact that there are a lot of bettors who sell their services.

They use units as a way to communicate to their customers how much of their bankroll they should invest in a certain bet.

Betting Money Management Strategy

When it comes to sports betting there are a few strategies that players employ for calculating and distributing their bets.

Each one of them is slightly different but in the end, whichever you choose you won't make a mistake since having any money management strategy is better than not having one.

Flat Staking

Flat staking is the simplest and the easiest method to implement in your sports betting strategy.

This staking strategy requires that you decide how much of your bankroll is one unit and then decide what will be your flat stake in terms of units.

After you determine how much your stake will be you continue to bet the same amount on every bet you make, without increasing or decreasing the size of your bets.

Our advice is to set regular reviews of your flat stake based on the size of your bankroll.

For example, you start with a bankroll of $1,000 and decide that one $1 = 1unit and that your flat stake will be 3 units = $3.

After some time, your bankroll reaches $1,500. Now the optimal thing to do would be to calculate your stake again.

When you started 1 unit represented 1% of your bankroll, so if we use the same calculation again, 1% of your bankroll is not 1 unit anymore instead it is 1.5 units. If we calculate our flat stake again we get 4.5 units instead of 3 units.

The same strategy should be applied if your bankroll is lower than where it was when you started.

Percentage Staking

Percentage staking is a much more dynamic strategy than flat staking in terms of calculating units. Bettors who use this strategy need to calculate their stake before each bet.

To start with this strategy you need to determine how big your stake will be in terms of the bankroll percentage.

For example, you start with a bankroll of $1,000 and decide that you will stake 3% of your bankroll on each of your bets, your first bet will be $3.

Let’s say your first bet is a winning one and you won $10 in total. Now your bankroll is $,010 and you need to calculate your bet again. So 3% of $1010 is $3.03 and your next stake should be $3.03 instead of $3.

Uneven Staking

Uneven staking is a sports betting strategy in which players decide the size of the bet based on their assessment of each match or sporting event.

This strategy allows players to adjust the size of their bet based on how much confidence they have in the bet.

Just like with the flat staking strategy, players will first decide how much of their bankroll is one unit.

Instead of betting the same number of units on each bet, they will increase or decrease the number of units wagered.

They will place fewer units on games that they are not confident of as much and more units on games that they are more certain of.

This strategy is not ideal for beginners because it requires players to make judgments based on their experience.

Keeping Score

Tracking your results is one of the key elements of successful betting and if you are not doing it, you really can’t call yourself a serious bettor.

Staking strategies we mentioned above will help you with the task of keeping score, but the thing that you need to do is analyze your results regularly.

By doing so you will be able to notice which type of bets you are successful with and which ones you should probably avoid, the same goes for sports and bet types.

Just remember not to switch strategies too early. It takes quite some time for betting results to be representative since betting is a game of streaks, both positive and negative.

Dividing Your Bankroll Across Multiple Sites

Apart from following a money management system when it comes to your betting bankroll, there is one more thing you should do. Try to spread your bankroll on to various betting online bookmakers.

This will help you to have more options and to get into more opportunities to place good bets.

More often than not bookmakers will have at least slight differences in betting odds, and you will not be able to take advantage of this if you have your whole bankroll locked on one site.

Taking Advantage of Bonus Offers

Taking advantage of great bonus offers is one of the most underrated skills in the betting industry.

In many instances, betting bonuses can mean the difference between winning and losing players, and the last thing you want to do is become the latter.

To avoid this, do thorough research of online betting sites that have great bonuses with reasonable wagering requirements.

Also, don’t stop after you claim one bonus. Go and find another site with a good bonus and keep doing this as long as you don't have to sacrifice things like security or odds.