Finding profitable betting opportunities is only one part to becoming a successful long term bettor. Another very important skill is being able to calculate bet sizing appropriately to limit your downside risk. By employing a consistent bankroll management system we can increase our odds of being profitable while limiting our risk to large downswings.
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There are many different bankroll management systems, but all have one feature in common. As your bankroll increases or decreases, so must the sizes of your bets. If you are going through a losing streak, you have to decrease your bet sizes, or else your risk of going broke will grow and grow.
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Many systems accomplish this through the use of betting units. One unit will be some percentage of your bankroll - something like 1-2% of your bankroll is reasonable. Then, based on your confidence in the betting opportunity, you can bet a number of units. Something like betting 1 unit for standard bets, and 2 units for bets your are confident in, could be a reasonable starting point.
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If you want to be a more aggressive bettor, then you can make one unit a larger percentage of your bankroll. Similarly, if you want to be more conservative, you can decrease the size of your betting unit. Most professional bettors will have smaller unit sizes - often 1% of their bankroll or less. Note that by increasing your betting unit size you are able to make larger profits, but you also open yourself up to larger risks when luck doesn't go your way.
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By using betting units we are automatically going to increase our bet sizes as our bankroll grows. Similarly, we will appropriately reduce our bet sizing if we end up going through a losing streak.
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Note that you don't need to update your unit sizes for every single bet - it is fine to update your unit size at the start of each day, or even each week. If you are placing many bets per day, then it is important to update your unit size more frequently.
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We recommend consistent use of bankroll management strategy to give yourself a strong opportunity to be profitable while limiting your downside risk.
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