One of the most important aspects of safe and responsible sports betting is setting aside the right amount of money that fits your financial means, and vitally, sticking to the amount you’ve decided on. This practice of effectively allocating and managing your betting funds is known as proper bankroll management, and it’s not always easy, but it’s absolutely key to becoming a successful sports bettor.
In this article, we’ll teach you how you can improve your bankroll management, including some tried and true bankroll management strategies, as well as why having a bankroll management system is so important, and how to make sure you’re staying on track. By the end, you should have all the tools you need to be not just a successful sports bettor, but a safe one.
More on Bankroll Management in Sports Betting
The Importance of Sports Betting Bankroll Management
Of course, before you start thinking about your bankroll size, or how and when to alter that amount, you’ll want to know that all of this effort is worthwhile. Let’s talk about why it’s so important to practice bankroll management, something that even professional sports bettors keep in mind at all times.
What is a unit in sports betting bankroll management?
A unit is the standard bet amount for a given bettor.
This number will be different for every bettor, and depends on the size of your total bankroll.
Many sports bettors and betting advisors will express their picks in units rather than dollars for the key reason that the same bet size doesn’t fit every bettor.
For instance, let’s say a longtime and very successful bettor with a large bankroll posts that he’s betting $1,000 on a certain wager. If you’re following his picks, you might want to bet $1,000 – which could be your entire bankroll. Meanwhile, that $1,000, which was your entire budget, is a drop in the bucket to him, as he could be betting tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
Instead, it’s more likely that the expert who posted that pick would indicate that he bet one unit on the pick, rather than the actual dollar amount. This helps bettors discuss picks with other bettors while scaling the bets to their own means, and it’s key in avoiding poor bankroll management.
Why should I have a bankroll in sports betting?
It’s been said time and time again that you should never bet more than you can afford to lose. That doesn’t just mean that no one bet should be placed for more money than you can viably lose – it refers to making sure that your entire sports betting career is within your means.
If you’re not setting aside an amount that you know you can safely lose and tracking your bets to make sure you’re within that range, it’s almost impossible to know whether or not you’re betting safely and responsibly. That, in essence, is why establishing and maintaining a certain bankroll is so important, and why you should surely have one if you’re hoping to get started with betting.
Keeping Emotions in Check
If you’re entrenched in a losing streak, it’s tempting to keep on betting to “dig yourself out of the hole.” Of course, there’s no guarantee that you’ll do that – you could of course go on a winning streak, but not all losing streaks are followed by winning streaks. You could just dig a deeper hole, and in drastic cases, put yourself into a dire financial situation.
This is more or less how a gambling addiction looks, and establishing a bankroll can be a great way to separate your betting from your emotions in order to keep your betting responsible.
Strategies of Bankroll Management
Approaching bankroll management can feel intimidating, but luckily, you’re not starting from scratch; there are plenty of very experienced and smart professional bettors and betting minds who have devised several well-respected strategies to manage a bankroll.
No ultimate bankroll survival guide would be complete without a discussion of some of the most popular bankroll management strategies, so let’s dive right in so you can find the betting system that works best for you.
Flat Betting Model
This system is simple, making it great to try out if you’re just getting started with betting or managing your bankroll. This model, also known as the fixed-unit model, is exactly what it sounds like; you decide the wager size you want to use as your unit, and then that’s the amount you bet on every single wager.
If you’re just getting started with making sports bets and placing betting limits, this can be a great way to practice proper bankroll management habits, and you can tweak the system as you learn more and more.
Percentage Model
This one is very similar to the flat model, except instead of a fixed dollar amount, it’s a fixed percentage of your bankroll. For instance, if you start with a $1,000 bankroll, and make your unit $50, that’s 5% of your bankroll. If you lose your first bet, your bankroll is now $950, and 5% is $47.5, so that’s your next bet size.
Conversely, if you won your initial bet, your bankroll would be $1,050, so your next bet would be $52.5 based on the percentage of the total bankroll. This is also a relatively simple system, but it’s a bit more sensitive to how well you’re doing, and unlike the flat model, you’ll never quite run out of money as long as you’re only betting a percentage.
Confidence Betting Model
This model is another variant off of the flat betting model; your unit size stays the same, but in this case, the number of units you wager can vary. Your standard play is a unit, but for a tentative play, you could play a half unit, and for a highly confident play, you can play two units.
If you’ve gotten a bit of experience with bankroll management, you might feel comfortable changing things up, and this model allows you to start cashing in on bets where you have an exceptional amount of confidence.
Kelly Criterion Model
This model is a bit more complicated, as it goes a step beyond the confidence model in making your betting sensitive to each situation. Rather than a general level of confidence, this wager requires you to estimate the odds each wager has of winning. The formula is as follows:
(Decimal odds of the wager * win probability) – loss probability)/Decimal odds of the wager = suggested wager %
In this case, the suggested wager percentage would be a percentage of your bankroll. For American bettors, this will usually require you to convert odds back and forth from American and decimal, but it can be worth it in order to maximize your potential earnings while safely managing your bankroll.
Tracking Your Sports Betting Model
As you may have gathered from discussing some of the methods above, tracking your bets is very important. For instance, the percentage model is impossible to execute without a strong understanding of how much money is in your bankroll at any given time.
It’s great to establish a bankroll management strategy, but if you don’t track it, you’ll never know whether or not you’re sticking to it and betting effectively. For this reason, every experienced or professional bettor is very active in tracking their bets and bankroll.
ROI in Bankroll Management
Let’s start out by defining ROI, a common acronym for Return On Investment, a key concept in the area of bankroll management. The formula for ROI is as follows:
(Profit/Amount wagered)*100
For example, if you’ve profited $100 across $1,000 worth of bets, your ROI is 10%. If you have a negative net profit, also known as net losses, you can have a negative ROI. This is why ROI is such an important concept to understand relative to bankroll management.
For instance, let’s say you’re following the confidence model and you’re winning a good percentage of bets but your ROI is poor; you might want to switch to a flat model. Conversely, if you’re not winning all that many bets, you might be able to improve your ROI by employing the confidence model, so that when you do win, you can really cash in.
These examples may have also highlighted why it can be helpful to know your exact winning percentage, so you can see whether things are going well or poorly with your bankroll management strategy as opposed to your bet picking process.
Taking Advantage of Sportsbook Promos
One way to bet more money without altering your bankroll is taking advantage of sportsbook promo codes from operators such as FanDuel, Caesars, BetMGM, bet365, Fanatics Sportsbook, ESPN BET and DraftKings. Yes, this includes welcome bonuses, which can be extremely high in value, but are only accessible once at each sportsbook.
That being said, plenty of the best sports betting apps offer promos such as profit boosts and bonus bet packages for existing users. By accessing bonus bets, you can play without adding money to your bankroll, and with something like an odds boost, your ROI will be elevated more by a win than it would have been without the bonus.
Responsible Sports Betting
Bankroll management is a fantastic tool when it comes to practicing responsible gambling, but this type of self-imposed structure is not the only way to keep yourself safe.
Most online sportsbooks will offer tools like account time outs and limits on wagering, deposits, and session time. Furthermore, if you or someone you know is struggling with a gambling problem, you can call 1-800-GAMBLER to reach the National Problem Gambling Helpline for support at any time.
Gamblers Anonymous is another great organization, which provides support groups for those struggling with gambling addiction. Lastly, GamTalk is a helpful online resource for users who need support but are too anxious to go in person or simply struggle logistically to fit those meetings into their schedule.
Final Thoughts on Bankroll Management
Online gambling can be a lot of fun, and even a way to make some money, but without bankroll management, this habit can become an unhealthy one very quickly. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to manage your bankroll and make sure that you’re never playing more than you should, even when your bankroll dips.
Let’s wrap things up with just a few key thoughts and takeaways regarding bankroll management.
- Establish Your Units: Establishing a unit size, the standard bet you’ll make, is absolutely key to staying consistent and betting in a recordable, responsible way.
- Protect Your Bankroll: You never want your bankroll to fully disappear, or to grow in unsustainable ways; always track your bankroll, and make sure you’re properly protecting it, only playing within the management system you’ve decided upon.
- Gamble Responsibly: Never bet more than you can afford to lose. Having a bankroll establishes just what this amount is, not only for one bet, but for across your whole betting career.
- Use Sportsbook Tools: If you need help beyond a bankroll management framework, take advantage of tools offered by sportsbooks, such as time outs and limits.
- Stay Entertained: Unless you’re a professional, betting should just be for entertainment and fun; when it stops being fun, step away, and do not try and dig yourself out of the hole.
Bankroll Management in Sports Betting FAQs
While we hope that this article has taught you plenty about bankroll management and why it’s so important, we understand that you might have a few questions left.
Below, we’ve compiled some of the most frequently asked questions about this vital topic, and answered them for your convenience:
What is bankroll management?
Bankroll management is the practice of establishing a budget for sports betting, and most importantly, tracking your bets. This often also entails devising a sports betting strategy, and honing it so that your bankroll can continue to grow in a sustainable way.
How do you manage units in sports betting?
Your unit size, which can change, should be determined by the size of your bankroll. Essentially, it’s the amount you can responsibly bet in a routine, repeated fashion.
How much of your bankroll should you bet?
This answer is different for everybody; it depends on the size of your bankroll, and how often you’d like to bet. Refer to some of the strategies we discussed earlier in this article for a bit more detail on how to decide how much of your bankroll each bet should command.
How do you practice bankroll management?
There are plenty of strategies available for managing your bankroll, but general keys are to establish a unit size, track your bets, and never deposit more than you can afford to lose.
What is a good ROI in sports betting?
Any positive ROI is a good one; it means you’re having financially sustainable fun. A slightly negative one is acceptable as long as you remember that betting is just a hobby and a form of entertainment, and do not continue to fund your accounts with more than you can afford to lose.
Why is bankroll management important?
If you don’t track your bankroll, it’s hard to know when you’ve wagered and lost too much. With a proper bankroll management strategy, you should be able to keep track of your progress, and whether or not it’s financially sustainable.
