Guide to Bankroll Management in Sports Betting

Bankroll management is a term that gets tossed around in online sports betting circles, but what does this term mean, and why is it important? It’s an especially crucial practice in online sports betting to ensure you’re making money and not getting over your head financially. Simply put, bankroll management is setting up a gambling budget and sticking with it. This means that you’re not using your personal money to fund your gambling endeavors—you allot an amount to use, and you keep these funds completely separate from your bank.

The flip side of good bankroll management is poor bankroll management, and it can have some serious consequences if you’re not careful:

• You risk overspending on gambling without discipline and sticking to a budget.
• Playing beyond your means can lead to losing a lot of money.
• You can go broke or run into legal issues if you don’t set up a budget and use your everyday money to fuel your gambling compulsion.
• By not tracking your progress, your lack of awareness could lead to the continuous loss of money.

Our guide to responsible bankroll management is here to help you enjoy online sports betting and avoid these awful pitfalls that so many inexperienced gamblers and bettors fall prey to. Keep reading to learn the best practices for managing your bankroll as you bet on sports online!

Defining Your Bankroll

Setting up your bankroll is as easy as creating an account with a sportsbook you trust and making your first deposit. Once you’ve registered as a member, log into your sportsbook account and find the “Deposit” or “Banking Options” menu to choose your deposit method and place some money into your account. A good rule of thumb for new bettors is to check out any welcome bonuses the sportsbook offers newbies and to make your first deposit the amount of the bet you must place to qualify for the welcome bonus.

Don’t Bet More Than You Can Afford to Lose

The money you deposit into your new account is the funds you’ll use to bet on sports online, so you must be sure this is money you can’t afford to lose. It’s important to set money aside from the money you live on to fund your online gambling endeavors. One of the most significant steps of successful bankroll management is setting up and sticking to a budget. You could mismanage your personal funds if you don’t discipline yourself and use responsible practices to manage your bankroll.

Separating Betting Money from Personal Finances

Online sports betting apps offer banking options like prepaid credit cards or e-wallets that help bettors separate their gambling funds from their personal money. The idea behind prepaid credit cards and e-wallets is that you’re transferring money from your bank to an online account explicitly used for funding your online sports bets.

Although you can always transfer more money into these online spaces, they aren’t linked to your bank account. That’s where many bettors get into trouble—they link their sportsbook to a major credit card or their checking account. Using prepaid credit cards or e-wallets helps to keep your allotted amount of gambling money away from your bank, where your personal cash is stationed.

Understanding Betting Units

Betting units are a percentage of your total bankroll. Some of the best sports bettors use the percentage betting strategy to ensure they never blow through their bankroll completely while weathering the ups and downs of sports betting. If your betting unit makes up a large percentage of your bankroll, you will likely run out of money quickly. It’s responsible bankroll management to keep your unit size a small percentage of your overall bankroll.

Two Examples

Let’s look at an example to see what we’re talking about with betting units and keeping it proportionate to your bankroll balance:

Bettor #1 uses $10 as his betting unit with a bankroll balance of $100 to start. Let’s say he’s betting on the NFL, and at the end of the season, he has grown his bankroll to $300, a total profit of $200. This means that Bettor #1 is up 20 units from when he started ($10 bets on every game x 20 wins = $200 in profit).

Now, let’s look at Bettor #2. He starts with a bankroll balance of $1,000 and uses betting units of $500 on every NFL bet. By season’s end, he had grown his bankroll to $2,000, which means he had grown by $1,000 (profit). However, he only increased his bankroll by 2 units ($500 bet on every game x 2 wins = $1,000).

In our examples above, Bettor #1 had a more conservative approach to his betting units, as he only used 10% of his bankroll for each bet. Compare that to Bettor #2, who used 50% of his bankroll for each bet. Bettor #2 was far more aggressive, and it’s an impressive feat that he came out ahead, even if it was only by 2 units. You’ll want to take a more conservative approach like Bettor #1 to avoid chewing through your bankroll quickly.

Determining the size of a unit comes down to your betting style and risk tolerance. Gamblers with larger bankrolls can afford to up the size of their betting units, while bettors with fewer resources should keep their unit size lower until they’ve built up their account a bit more.

Types of Bankroll Management Strategies

Let’s look at some basic bankroll strategies used by online sports bettors. These are techniques that newbies can learn and employ to significant effect, even on a limited budget. However, these are also reliable stand-by strategies for professional gamblers who have been at it for years and know all the ins and outs of the industry. Many sports betting greats have used these techniques to build their fortunes and still use them as they maintain their wealth.

Record Keeping

Keeping track of your betting records isn’t too important if you’re only a casual bettor. Still, we highly recommend that any serious or committed bettors keep detailed records of their bets to inform future betting strategy. While keeping records can help you better understand when to increase or decrease your bets or how often you bet, there’s a massive time commitment to keeping track of this information for later usage.

What Should I Keep Track Of?

What kind of information should you track when recording your sports bets? At a minimum, you should keep records of the following things:

• Date of the bet
• The matchup
• The type of bet placed
• Odds
• Spreads or totals
• The amount of your bet
• Your profit
• Final result

Record keeping can reveal if you’re winning or losing more often. They also allow you to see the flow of money and the journey your bankroll has been on. You can spot areas where you could improve your betting strategy or overall bankroll management.

Adjusting Your Bankroll Management Strategy

When and how to adjust your strategy is based on the performance and growth of your bankroll. The time to act will vary from one sports bettor to another. For some, adjusting your strategy depends on your current balance, while some bettors can afford to take extra risk if they know the market, teams, or individual players well enough.

Signs of Adjusting Your Strategy

Signs that your current strategy might need adjustment become apparent if you track all your bets. For example, if you’re winning more than losing, your bankroll will increase, and you can feel free to increase the size of your betting units. If you’re losing more, you might consider lowering your unit size, doing better research on the teams and players before placing your bet, or shopping the odds extensively for value.

Dealing with Winning and Losing Streaks

It’s always best to use logic and reasoning when betting on sports. When you begin making big decisions based on good or bad emotions, you can start making dumb mistakes, and your bankroll can suffer as a result. Emotions can come into play with online sports betting when you get on a hot winning streak or experience a chain of losses, so you must always be alert and use logic in every situation.

Check out some of our best strategies for handling both winning and losing streaks without deviating from your bankroll management plan.

Advanced Bankroll Management Techniques

Now that you know the basics of bankroll management, let’s dive into more advanced concepts like loss recovery systems. The critical thing to remember here is that these techniques require the bettor to have some deep pockets and plenty of resources to pull off some of these maneuvers.

Martingale Technique

Before we explain this strategy, it’s essential to know that you must have a lot of betting money at your disposal to make this one work—it requires putting a lot of money out there in hopes of recouping lost funds and making a profit, too. The martingale strategy requires the bettor to double down on a losing bet. If that bet loses, the bettor wants to keep doubling down. At a certain point, the bettor is guaranteed to win statistically, and they walk away with their lost money and a profit to boot.

Fibonacci Technique

This strategy is much more involved and works best on sports bets with -110 or -105 odds. Bear with us because this system is difficult to explain. We’ll do our best to relay how it works in the simplest terms.

It’s a negative progression betting system. The Fibonacci Strategy guides how many betting units you risk on each sports bet. The sequence of the system looks like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, and so on.

• 0 + 1 = 1
• 1 + 1 = 2
• 1 + 2 = 3
• 2 + 3 = 5
• 3 + 5 = 8
• 5 + 8 = 13
• 8 + 13 = 21
• 13 + 21 = 34

Example #1 – You begin on sequence 0, 1 to start. 0+1=1 betting unit. Let’s say your minimum bet is $5. You bet your single unit of $5, and your bet wins. If you keep winning, you made $5 in profit and stick with the sequence of 0, 1.

Example #2 – You begin on sequence 0, 1 to start. 0+1=1 betting unit. Let’s say your minimum bet is $5. You bet your single unit of $5, and your bet loses. You must up the sequence to 0, 1, 1, which means your betting units are now 2 (0+1+1=2), and you’re betting $10 now instead of $5. If you lose again, you up the sequence to 0, 1, 1, 2, so you’re betting 4 units.

Advantages of Loss Recovery Systems

Using these techniques is a textbook case of the “high risk, high reward” concept. These advanced strategies require bettors to make some bold moves, but if they can execute them correctly, they stand to gain some substantial payouts and can recover from a string of losses. As a good bettor, you don’t want to use these techniques daily and certainly don’t want to do things that get you into a situation where you’d have to use these maneuvers.

Tools and Software for Bankroll Management

One of the best tools for helping you manage your betting bankroll is the Bet Analytix app, which you can find at Google Play and the App Store. It can track and analyze your bets and betting habits to help you hone your strategy.

Perks of Using Bet Analytix

You can enjoy a wide range of benefits using Bet Analytics to track and analyze your online sports bets. They include the following:

• Track your bets (single, combined, systems, back, lay)
• View more than 50 statistics
• Share your bankrolls
• Share your bets
• Follow tipsters
• Receive notifications
• Use tools dedicated to betting
• Manage risings
• Manage your tipsters and bookmakers
• Manage your betting categories, competitions, and betting types
• View current activity

The app has made some recent updates, too, to enhance your overall bet-tracking experience:

• Optimizer
• Distribution of capital by bookmaker
• Default fields
• Balance sheet sharing
• Commission in %

Tips for Sustainable Bankroll Management

Successful bankroll management takes time and experience to learn. It’s a dense topic, and we could spend a few hours describing the details of the right things to do and the best practices for the best success. However, we want to share the top practical tips for good bankroll management and to avoid common sports betting mistakes.

Practical Tips

• Keep your gambling funds separated from your personal funds (using e-wallets or the Play+ card can help tremendously).
• Set up money and time limits for each gambling session and stay committed to those boundaries.
• Use a betting strategy like flat betting or percentage betting.
• If you’re highly knowledgeable of the team, player, or market you’re betting on, use confidence level or Kelly Criterion betting to gauge the size of your wager.
• Track your bets to see where your strengths or weaknesses lie. Using an app like Bet Analytics can show where you might adjust your betting unit size or take on bets with markets or teams where you have better knowledge of familiarity.

Avoid These Common Pitfalls

• Don’t chase your losses. Keep your bet size conservative and proportionate to your bankroll’s balance.
• Don’t up the size of your bet significantly if you’re on a hot winning streak. Keep the percentage the same.
• Focus on long-term gains based on value—don’t get hung up on short-term gains by always betting on the favorite.
• Don’t fall into the trap of not taking a break. It’s good to step away for a while and enjoy life. Don’t let sports betting become an all-consuming obsession.
• Don’t bet on sports when you’re frustrated or angry. You start making decisions based on emotion, which can lead to careless betting mistakes.

FAQs

Check out the most common questions about bankroll management from customers and readers. We’ve done our best to answer them as clearly and concisely as possible so you can get the key highlights of good bankroll management in sports betting.

Glossary of Terms

Suppose you are unfamiliar with some of the terminology discussing bankroll management. In that case, we’ve got you covered—check out the definitions of crucial bankroll management and betting terms used in this guide!

• Bankroll Management: The practice of setting up a gambling budget and staying committed to those boundaries as you bet on sports online. It involves tracking wins and losses to see where to improve your strategy. Bankroll management is only successful if you don’t spend more than you can afford to lose and stay within the confines of your allotted budget.
• Betting Units: This is an amount that bettors designate for their sports bets. The amount will differ from one bettor to the next and, if done wisely, will only be a small percentage of that bettor’s bankroll.
• Chasing Losses: This is a mistake bettors make when they try to up the size of their bets to recover from betting losses. There are a few advanced betting techniques (Martingale and Fibonacci methods) where you can pull this off successfully, but they require a lot of money to work with.
• Confidence Level Betting: This is a betting technique that bettors can use if they know the market they’re betting on really well. Bettors can confidently increase the size of their betting units if they sense value in the bet and understand the nuances of the team, player, or market they’re betting on.
• Flat Betting: A sports betting strategy that involves betting the same amount on any game, match, or event. It’s a favorite technique of professional bettors as it helps to minimize risk. Flat bets are small compared to the bettor’s overall bankroll balance, but the unit size is subject to change.
• Hold Your Own: This occurs when sports bettors maintain their bankroll without significant gains or losses. “Holding your own” happens quite a bit with sports bettors who always bet on the favorite—low risk and reward.
• Loss Recovery: Advanced betting technique that helps bettors recover losses by doubling down on losing bets to regain what they staked and make a small profit. The two most common loss recovery methods are the Martingale and Fibonacci techniques, but they only work if you have a lot of money to dedicate to your bankroll.
• Percentage Betting: A sports betting strategy that involves choosing a percentage of your bankroll you’d like to stake on each bet. It’s another technique that keeps the amount of your bet conservative so you can weather the highs and lows you might experience as you go on winning or losing streaks.