What I have learned through trial and error is that whenever you vary the size of your bet by even the smallest amount, you increase the breakeven percentage of 52.38 (figuring all bets you make have -110 juice). If you refigure your percentage after each bet, your breakeven jumps to over 55%. If you have 1 unit and 5 units bets or bet twice as much on some plays, you should understand that only the large bets are meaningful to whether you will be a winner. You might as well not bet the smaller ones. In the end, they won't matter. Some handicappers say you should increase your bet when you are on a winning streak and decrease it when you are on a losing streak; but to do that you'd need to know when you are at the start of a winning streak or at the start of a losing streak. If you won yesterday, you were on a winning streak. But that was yesterday. If you know you will win today, why not bet it all? Right? If you know you will lose today, then why would you even bet at all? I have learned the problem with bet size is not the streaks, but the breakeven point. If you expect to win 56 of your bets, over 200 games you will win less than 50% about 17% of the time while you will win more than 60% about 17% of the time. Winning 100 bets and losing 100 bets with a 5% unit, you will lose 50% of your bankroll to the vigorish (figuring all bets are -110 juice). 100 wins times $50 minus100 losses times $55 equals negative $500 on a $1,000 bankroll. So you're now on a losing streak, will lower your bet size and never get back to even!?
Anyways, a year and a half ago I decided to finally change my ways by sticking to a simple and strict money management plan and I have doubled my bank in the past 18 months. I had 5,000 as a starting bank in January of 2011 and I now have 10,000 so I figured why not join a couple on-line communities and start sharing my opinion like all of you have been. I average about 1,100 wagers per year (approx. three wagers per day), I NEVER risk more than -125 juice on a wager and I flat bet all of my wagers at 2% (as I believe nobody should ever risk more than 2% of their bankroll, even recreational bettors, though I do have a slight variance to this rule - which I'll explain momentarily).
Here are the guidelines that I now live by:
- Starting bank = $10,000 = 100 units ... therefore ... 1 unit = 1% of starting bank = $100
- I flat-bet 2 units/2% of SB/$200 on EVERY wager I make
- I never risk more than 25 cents of juice on a bet, therefore -125 bets are the biggest juice wagers I make.
- I never allow more than 10% of my bankroll to be at risk on any given day (therefore I can only have a max of 5 bets [all sports] on any given day)