The importance of money management

The importance of money management and bet sizing has been stressed increasingly in recent years and rightly so. For even if player has discovered a favorable betting situation, how he wagers determines his success or failure.

You probably have seen hundreds of different systems discussed in the internet and you might be a bit confused. We will give you some advices, which may improve your betting performance.

Kelly criteria (or fixed fraction of your bankrool betting)

This strategy of betting 3-5 percent of your bankrool is known in investment circles as "optimal geometric growth portfolio" or OGGP, it`s called after one of the mathematicians who studied it - John L. Kelly.  

You will win using Kelly system only if you will be able to pick up value bets - i. e. if an outcome has got odds = 2, you will only bet on this outcome if you think that probability of winning is 50 percent or more. Shortly, you have to be able to predict with a high degree of accuracy.  

In the Kelly Criteria, progresion increases when you are winning, and decreases when you are losing.

Why is the Kelly system good? First, the chance of ruin is "small". In fact, if money were infinitely divisible, then any system where you never bet everything will have zero chance of ruin because even if you always lose, you still have something left after each bet. The Kelly system has this feature. Secondly, you will lose less money when your balance is low.

To summarize, the Kelly system is relatively safe. If you are able to predict better than bookmaker, then this system is for you.

Martingale (or double-up) system

The doubling-up system is often called martingale. The origin of the term is given in the American Heritage Dictionary. The word evolved from a similarly named village of Martigues in the Provence of southern France, whose residents were viewed as peculiar and were roundly ridiculed with Gallic expertise. Their bizarre behavior included such things as gambling with the doubling-up system and lacing up their pants from behind. To use the doubling-up system became known as gambling "a la martingalo", "in the Martigues manner," i.e., "in a ridiculous manner."

There are many other popular mathematical systems. Tripling up, where player bets 1, 3, 9 27, etc. until he wins, then repeats, is like doubling up, but it wins faster and runs into trouble faster.

The system is probably the best known one and is very simple - just double up your bets after each loss.

We do not recommend using it, unless you have unlimited funds available and your attitude to sports betting is more similar to playing in the casino than approaching smartly. It has been the ruin of many players.

To see how ridiculous the system can be, note that first 10 bets of the cycle have lost, on the eleventh turn player bets 1,024 times his initial bet. If his initial bet was $1,000, he bets $1,024,000. Of course a chance is small that this will happen, but if doubling-up system is used long enough, it will happen.