Staking Plans for Sports Betting
Staking plans are important. You must always ensure you are betting with a strategy and with a purpose. Nothing should be randomised as it is this random nature will see you make a bad bet with either the wrong selection or bet amount that will hurt you. It is almost guaranteed through Murphy’s Law that if you deviate from your plan of attack the gods punish you for it. Here are a few staking plans that you can use in order to structure and enhance your betting.
The Martindale method is probably the must famous of staking plans. This is where you double your stake each time you lose until you find a winning bet. The best illustration of this is people betting red or black in roulette. They win a point of their betting bank every time they hit a winner and increase their bet until they find it. The risk to casino betting and sports betting is that the sports books or casino will have a limit to what you can stake so even with an unlimited bankroll there are no guarantees. For sports bettors you would need a steady stream of winners to use this system with winners priced at around 2.00. Losing runs do happen and with this method you are risking much to win very little. I am not a big fan of Martindale for this reason. It is relatively risk free if you have a steady stream of winners, but when the bad run does occur it will really hurt you.
Level stakes betting is a popular staking plan. It is extremely simple to use, you simply put the same amount of money on every selection and hope to show a profit. Bookmakers price their odds very carefully to make profiting from level stakes betting very difficult. It is low risk as you are in control of your staking but in order to show a profit you need a high strike rate of winners. In football betting for example most favourites are around 1.30 so you need to be winning more than 75% of your bets to show a profit, which is difficult to maintain.
These staking plans are a little juicier. The “re-invest wins” staking plan is designed to maximise betting on favourites and has been known generate big wins. Best used with a large betting bank you can see great returns betting on sports with odds of 1.5 or less. For example, if you have a £1000 betting bank you can bet £10 at 1.5 and whatever you win, put the £10 plus the current winnings on the next heavily favoured selection. After six winning bets in a row (which is not uncommon when backing heavy favourites) you would see your £10 increase to £113.91. If you were to lose at any point in the six step betting sequence you only lose your £10 initial stake and the winnings accrued. Using a large bank allows you to endure the inevitable losses of the initial stake whilst you search for your big win. As long as you win more than 1 out of 11 attempts you will show a profit. This can be high risk for some people but as long as you follow the staking and bankroll guidelines this can be a fun way to bet.
The Percent of Bank method is like the above method but slightly more conservative. You work out 1% of your bank and then increase the bet level after your bankroll increases. This means that you have 100 points to use and should you lose half of this you can decide whether or not this is something you wish to continue. Should you increase due to winnings your stakes increase slowly also to earn more profits. This has the potential to really increase your bank in a conservative and measured way.
What staking plan you choose depends on your betting preferences. Ensure that you never gamble with money you cannot afford to lose and keep in control of your gambling. Always analyse your results carefully as a losing system is a losing system whatever staking plan you use so remember to work hard on picking out your selections. Your staking plan will keep your betting planned and will help you make the most out of your winning bets.
By Malcolm Clarke
