By now you will have set up your initial Betting Bank and are now making your selections or following the ones I provide on my website. In this article I will look at how much you should be staking and how to work out your correct staking level.
Are you making LSP?
Before I look at staking, it is important that you are using the correct selection process. The important point when developing your own selection system is that it must make a Level Stakes Profit, that is to say over a period of time if you bet a set level stake of £10 on each of your selections you would show a clear profit.
This is the most common reason most people lose money in their betting,simply their selection process is not making a Level Stakes Profit and to compensate for this they are adjusting their staking levels to make it profitable, in this scenario, it is only a matter of time until they lose their banks and go bust.
The next important step is for you to set your stakes at the correct level. In a strategy where we are both” backing” horses to win or each way and also “laying” horses to lose it requires two very different approaches to staking.
Setting your staking levels to “back” horses
When backing horses to win a race or each way, to place, you need to decide a staking level which will give you both a good return but also protect your bank in the event of a long losing run.
The balance between the two is clearly important and a basic mistake that many “punters” make is to get greedy and set their stakes too high, leaving themselves open to losing runs devastating their betting banks. Other conservative “punters” set their staking levels too low, so they fail to take advantage of wins and their betting bank grows far too slowly.
I recommend that you look at your bank and set your betting level as a percentage (%) of your bank.
Increasing your staking level as your bank increases
As you are building your bank up, you can increase your stakes in proportion to the new bank level, however I would recommend to keep things under control, you increase your stakes in increments of 10% increase in your bank.
As an example, you have a bank of £1000 and are staking, maintain your stakes at £5 per point until your bank hits £1100, then increase your stakes to £5.50 per point, which is 0.5% of the new bank of £1100.
What if my betting bank decreases?
If you find yourself on a losing run, which will happen regularly in your career, then you have two options. You can either reduce your staking levels to the level of your new bank or maintain them at a set figure to help your bank grow again.
The way I have always approached this is by maintaining a set staking amount, unless my bank reduces by 10%, I would then reduce my stake in proportion to the new bank level, until I pass the 10% mark again and then increase my stakes back up.
As an example. Your bank has risen to £1100 so you are now staking at £5.50 per point, but you have a losing run of 4 or 5 bets, so now your bank is back around the £1000 level, now you reduce back to the £5 per point staking level until you build your bank back up over the £1100 and can return to £5.50. Don’t panic and reduce your level back down to £5.00 per point as soon as you drop below the £1100 point.
Just keep in mind that it is very natural for your bank levels to rise and fall throughout your betting career, it is the smart bettor who adjusts their staking levels to match this.
Summary
So in summary when backing horses you should be using no more than 1% of your bank per point, preferably 0.5% per point -when your bank gets to this level.
As with everything we do as a Betting Professional, you must stay disciplined with your staking levels – never get greedy. Your mantra should always be to build your bank slowly but surely and increase your staking levels accordingly.
In my next article I will look at the importance of setting the correct staking levels when “laying” horses to lose and the difference between using Level Stakes vs Limited Liabiliity Staking.
