Global Sports: The best way to manage your bankroll

Saturday, August 18, 2012

The best way to manage your bankroll

By Jack Hobson


Do you find yourself draining your sportsbook bankroll again and again, even if the percentage of bets you win is very high? If so, odds are that your biggest problem isn't with the bets your making, but rather with cash management. Anyhow, many sports gamblers fail to realize this, and neglect cash management. However, in reality, managing your money is not only important, it's absolutely critical if you want to show a profit in the long run. Failing at to exercise proper money management often results in excessive money loosing, or even the instant loss of your entire gambling bankroll.

The first key to bankroll management is to bet money that's specifically meant for sports gambling. If you're not interested in making a long term profit or being a serious sports bettor, that's fine; in this situation, you can all the time just spend a few dollars into an internet sportsbook account and make bets until you lose it. But for big gamblers, having a dedicated bankroll is a must.

Having that bankroll is important for many reasons. First of all, you do not want to end up dipping into cash that is needed to pay for bills or other expenses just to make a bet. As a matter of fact, you must absolutely make sure that you are not betting with money you need to cover expenses or that is being saved for any other purpose. But the benefits of having a dedicated bankroll go beyond your own protection. It in fact gives you a baseline from which to gauge how big your bets should be on average, and makes sure you all the time know exactly how much cash you have to bet with. Both of these are critical if you want to maintain a bankroll that never has to be replenished, whether you are in the middle of a winning streak or you've fallen into a losing streak.

The most common way to manage a bankroll is to choose a percentage of your bankroll you'd like to bet on each bet. The optimal method of doing this is named the Kelly Criterion. The idea behind the Kelly Criterion is to increase the speed at which your bankroll will grows while maintaining your risk of ruin as low as possible. Calculating your Kelly Criterion is relatively easy. In the first place, when making a bet, take your odds of winning that bet and multiply it by the odds you're receiving. Then, take that number and subtract your chance of losing the bet.

The final step is to, take the result of that step and multiply it by the odds again. However, it's probably best to bet less than what the Kelly Criterion says you must bet. This is mainly because we tend to overestimate our odds of winning any given bet. For instance, while you might think that you have a 50 percent chance of winning the bet in the above example, the odds are that your actual edge is not nearly that big. It's best to bet safe and bet less than what the Kelly Criterion suggests. While gambling too much can be disastrous and even lead to losing your whole bankroll, the worst that can happen from playing it safe is that your bankroll grows slowly - and in bad times, it can be the difference between saving your bankroll and going broke. If you are a fan of some sporting event, and believe that you can make successful predictions, then, this cash management is most important for you to earn some worthwhile bucks.




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