Common Methods for Staking Bets Part 1

If you are betting on sports, one thing you need is a money management system. There are numerous different systems out there you can use to stake your bets. I'd like to share some of the most common techniques with you now. Please note before reading ahead that most of these are actually pretty bad. The reason that I want to get into them is to save you the trouble and money and using them when you should avoid them.

Bet It All

The idea with this "system" is as simple as it gets, and also as stupid as it gets. This is exactly what it sounds like; every time you place a wager, you wager everything in your bankroll. What makes people but this way? With some, it is the desire to win big all at once. With others, it is pure laziness. Basically, this is the same thing as not having any sort of system at all.

It is important to delineate between your bankroll and your bet sizes. I sometimes think that punters simply think of their bankroll as their current bet size, and if they lose, they will someday put more money into their online bookie accounts. The problem with this is that it essentially means that you are using your normal bank account as your bankroll. So you are not delineating between money that you've set aside for wagering and money that you are using to pay your bills. This makes it all too easy to be tempted into gambling more than you can afford to lose.

Put as much money into your sports betting account as you can afford to lose, but then pick a real money management technique to set smaller bet sizes that do not comprise the entirety of your bankroll.

There will be two more parts in this series. In Common Methods for Staking Bets, Part 2, I will talk about progressive systems like Martingale and Fibonacci. In Common Methods for Staking Bets, Part 3, I will talk about fixed and proportional systems.