subject: Guide to Professional Betting: Part 1 - Your Betting Bank [print this page] Guide to Professional Betting: Part 1 - Your Betting Bank
If you truly want to bet professionally you MUST, I repeat MUST, have a dedicated betting bank which iskept entirely separate from your own everyday funds.
It should be an amount that you can afford to lose. If you follow the steps I willoutline in this course, you it is unlikely you will lose your bank but you should alwaysbe prepared for the absolute worst possible outcome. The size of your betting bank will be dictated by the amount of money you are willingand able to dedicate to your betting. It will also be dictated by how much you areprepared to lose if the unthinkable happens.
Guard your betting bank jealously it is the most important tool you have.
You must place your betting bank into an entirely separate bank account set up forthis purpose alone (ensure that the account has a debit card facility). Do not repeatone of my early mistakes. When I first started getting serious about my betting, I kepta dedicated betting bank but stupidly kept the funds in my personal bank account.It got very messy and had an adverse effect on my betting psychology.
When youencounter a long losing run it really is best not to see this impacting upon the funds inyour everyday account. It becomes very much more stressful than it would be if youwere losing the money from an account solely dedicated to your betting activities.Furthermore, when you have had a good win, there is a temptation to up yourgeneral spending as you are feeling flush.
Please don't underestimate the importance of this.Once I realised the importance oftotally separating my betting finances and my personal finances, my betting becamesignificantly more profitable. It eased the psychological pressure and made me moreaggressive in my selection and staking.
The number of betting points you require in your bank will be dictated by the bettingsystems and methods you are using.
If you are using a method which has a long term win strike rate of 40% you will needto break your bank down into far fewer points than if you were using a method witha 15% win strike rate. Always be cautious when deciding this and split your bankinto considerably more points than you ever feel you will need.The example belowshould help you when making this crucial decision:
You are following a selection process which has shown itself to have a long term win strike rate of 30%. Your bank should be broken down into a sufficient number of points to weather your longest statistically likely losing run. There is a formula for calculating the longest losing run you are likely to encounter but for ease, please see the list below:
10% - 66
20% - 31
30% - 19
40% - 14
50% - 10
60% - 8
70% - 6
80% - 4
From these figures you should be able to get a good idea of the size of bankrequired. With a 30% win strike rate statistically you are likely at some point toencounter a losing run of 19 bets. Now say you were to allocate a 20 point bank foruse with this particular selection method - you can see that you could rapidly get intohuge trouble with such a small bank if you were to have your 19 bet losing run. Thisis where caution must be exercised. I would suggest a betting bank of at least 100points for a method showing a strike rate of 30%. A safe rule of thumb to apply yourbetting bank points should be 5 x your maximum expected losing run.
To Summarise:
Keep your betting bank entirely separate from your own money. Do not dip into yourbetting bank for anything other than betting purposes. When it has grown sufficientlyconsider drawing down some profits or increasing the size of your points. Ensure that your betting bank is of sufficient size (in number of points) to weatheryour worst possible losing run.
