Betting is an activity that is being engaged in by more people than ever before, especially since it can be done online. This is why it is very important to address different issues that can affect bettors. Money used in placing bets is referred to as the bankroll, and players need to learn how to make every single cent count!
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What is Bankroll Management?
Bankroll management is basically what you do with your money when making bets. It is simply how you protect your betting funds. Betting is not something you should do randomly or without thinking. Doing that will cause you to lose your money and we definitely don’t want that to happen when you play at our casinos.
Why Do People Bet?
Betting requires strategies, patience, and mental strength, and having a good understanding of bankroll management will make these amazing betting skills successful. Some people bet for the fun of it while others are working towards becoming professional bettors.
Both camps have their unique perspectives, but at the end of it all, the goal is to win as many bets as possible. To become a professional bettor, proper bankroll management will keep you in the game for a longer period of time.
Good bankroll management will help ensure that you do not lose all your betting funds before it is time to make that big win. You can check out our most highly recommended USA casinos to know where to place your bets for the best value.
Why You Need Proper Bankroll Management
The need for good bankroll management cannot be overemphasized. The main reason you need proper bankroll management is to protect your bankroll. As earlier said, proper bankroll management ensures that you have enough funds to place different kinds of bets.
Even if you have a lot of money to use while betting, you don’t want to keep losing your money. You need to make sure that one single bet doesn’t empty your bankroll. After all, you should be winning bets, not going broke! You need to be sure that your bankroll can take the inevitable losses that come with betting.
Here are the major reasons you need bankroll management:
How To Handle a Losing Streak
Losing bets is a part of betting, so you need to properly manage your bankroll. You can’t afford to lose all the money you have to a losing streak. It also protects you from revenge betting which is a dangerous temptation that many bettors tend to fall for during a losing streak. With proper bankroll management, no matter how much has been lost in other bets, you still have enough money left in your bankroll to take you to that winning bet you have been preparing for.
How To Wisely Handle a Winning Streak
One thing most players struggle to handle, quite surprisingly, is a winning streak. Bankroll management ensures that the money in your bankroll increases steadily with a winning streak. It can also help players keep their greed and overconfidence in check so they are not tempted to place more money on a bet and end up losing all their money if the bet goes wrong.
While increasing your bet during a winning streak isn’t necessarily a bad thing to do, with proper bankroll management, you increase the bet proportionately, reducing the chances of losing your entire bankroll if the bet ends up as a loss.
Decision Making While Betting
With a proper bankroll management plan in place, you know your goal for placing bets at US online casinos or sportsbooks. Your goal for placing bets should be to win, and with the money management aspect of betting out of the way, you can concentrate on making better betting decisions. Bankroll management helps you to bet responsibly, and grow your bankroll in the long term. Having a set decision framework helps you remove your emotions from betting.
How To Manage Your Bankroll
Now that we have clearly stated what a bankroll is and its importance in betting, we can now discuss how best to go about it. Bankroll management involves the following steps;
- Creating a separate bank account for betting.
- Choose a betting plan.
- Bankroll reset.
Create a Separate Bank Account
It’s important to separate your betting account from your personal account. It’s really not advisable to use the same money you use for your everyday activities to bet, as you might end up losing it all in the twinkle of an eye. Also, when your betting account is one and the same as your personal account, your emotions will always mess with your betting decisions.
Money used in your bankroll should be money you can afford to spare, such that losing it will not affect your day to day living. Decide how much will be used for betting and deposit it in a dedicated betting account. The amount you choose to use in betting will determine what each bet will be.
Choose a Betting Plan
Now that you have your bankroll ready, it’s time to decide how you go about placing your bets. You can’t stake all the money in your bankroll at once. There are two major betting plans we’ll consider:
- Fixed betting plan
- Variable betting plan
The different Bankroll management styles
Roughly speaking, there are two styles of bankroll management: aggressive and conservative. With an aggressive style, you’re more focused on making as much profit as possible, but with that, you’re more likely to lose everything quickly.
The conservative style is cautious when it comes to betting money because without money you can no longer make a profit. In the tips below we always mention an example with an aggressive and conservative style.
In the end, it is up to you to choose which style suits you best, this is a matter of feeling. However, do not see the choice as black and white, you can easily change per month or per week to see which style suits you best.
Percentage vs. Fixed Bet
Using a total percentage has the advantage that losses feel less painful and you also make more profit if you are successful. The disadvantage, however, is that it can be quite a bit of calculation when you’re in the game
Fixed Betting Plan
The fixed betting plan requires you to have a bet size. It requires you to choose the amount of your bankroll that will be used in betting.
For the fixed bets, you choose a percentage in advance and stick to that amount for a day, week or month. The longer the period between recalculations, the more conservative the style. For fixed bets 1-2% of your bankroll is conservative and 5-10% aggressive, higher than that we do not recommend because your session can be over very quickly.
- Example percentages
You have a €500 bankroll, below is a table of how a series of bets can lose. You play aggressively and bet 5%. With every bet you calculate the bet again (bankroll x 0.05)
| Outcome | Loss | Win | Win | Win | Loss | Win | Win | Win | – |
| Deployment | 25 | 23,75 | 24,94 | 26,18 | 27,49 | 26,12 | 27,42 | 28,80 | – |
| Total | 500 | 475 | 498,75 | 523,68 | 549,86 | 522,36 | 548,48 | 575,90 | 604,69 |
As you can see, the stakes adjust with each round, making you grow faster and limiting your losses, despite an aggressive style of play.
- Bankroll Advice
We recommend working with fixed percentages, if that’s too much calculation you can choose the fixed bet. Please note that if you want to play more conservatively you will have to wait longer with the recalculation (1-3 months). Here are some extra tips to help you in the right direction in bankroll management
Percentage Stake
Choosing your bet size is basically about dividing your overall bankroll into units. Each unit is simply the percentage of your bankroll that will be used for each bet. This is also referred to as percentage staking.
Your unit size should be between 1% to 5% of your bankroll. For beginners, we recommend 1% to 2%. Most professional bettors allocate 1% of their bankroll per game. Bettors who are very confident bet about 3% to 5% of their bankroll. Having a specific unit size means no matter how sure you are of your bet, you stick to your chosen unit size strictly.
That means that even if you are on a continuous winning streak, you keep staking the same unit size and compound your wins. Using a specific unit size keeps you disciplined and rational.
Bets on games
You can also take a middle course for the strategy with percentage. Simply play with a fixed amount but calculate this every 5 or 10 bets. Please note that most video slots offer an autospin function. Use this function to set the number of spins to 5 or 10, so you’ll be reminded to recalculate every time.
Profit Payout & Session Stopping
We recommend you ‘skim off’ your profit as soon as possible so you get your profit back immediately and eventually lose less, if things go wrong. We recommend that you stop your session at a fixed percentage of your winnings and take your winnings. You can apply the same strategy to the total loss of the session. 5-10% profit or loss here or conservatively 20-50% are aggressive guidelines.
Additional Supplements in case of loss
Watch out, this is often a trap! We recommend working with a monthly budget. If you don’t want to go through your monthly budget too soon, opt for a weekly supplement where necessary. Divide your budget by four per month and use this as a starting amount for each new week.
We wish you good luck and fun in your upcoming online casino session and don’t forget to check out our review overview for the best online casino bonuses!
Level Staking
Another form of the fixed betting plan is level staking. In level staking, you bet the same amount of money for every bet placed. With this, the expectations for every bet placed is the same. There are no calculations required – simply use the same amount to bet each time you place one.
Variance is an important factor in sports betting. The degree of variance can also determine what unit size you use per game. For bets with high variance, you are at a higher risk of losing more money if the bet goes wrong, so you’ll need to stake a smaller unit. For bets with low variance, you won’t be risking as much (and you won’t be winning as much either) so your bankroll is safe.
Variable Betting Plan
This is a lot more complicated than the fixed betting plan. Here, in addition to the available bankroll, other factors are considered. Some of the factors considered include:
- the potential returns;
- the confidence level;
- the Kelly criterion;
- and the Fibonacci Sequence model.
Potential Returns
The potential returns factors in the odds that can be encountered for the bet placed. Here, instead of risking a specific amount or unit of your bankroll, your goal is to earn a specific amount. The level of risk is taken into account here and you can place bets on your favourite teams or games as long as you are reasonably sure of the expected returns.
Confidence Level
You literally place your bets based on your confidence in the outcome of a game. For your confidence level to be trusted, you must have tried it multiple times without fail. Your level of confidence is what determines the amount you risk per bet.
If you are very confident in your prediction, you can risk about 5% of your bankroll. If you are not so confident, you risk a smaller percentage, say 1%. No matter how high your confidence level is, it’s advisable to choose a specific number of bet sizes and stick to it. Don’t get cocky with this method, we don’t want you losing your entire bankroll!
Kelly Criterion
The Kelly criterion method is quite mathematical and mostly used by professionals. With this method, you need to figure out the probability of winning and losing. These will be used in an equation to determine what percentage of your bankroll to use as a bet.
(Odds of potential return × win probability – loss probability) / odds of potential return = percentage of your bankroll to place as a bet
The results gotten from this method can be really high sometimes, so there are some modifications to the Kelly criterion. These modifications are the half Kelly criterion method and quarter Kelly criterion.
These modifications should be applied as required because using the standard Kelly equation can give results that can lead to a complete loss of your bankroll with a single loss.
Fibonacci Sequence Model
The Fibonacci method uses the Fibonacci sequence. It requires you to place bets according to the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence, which is a sequence where the next number is the result of adding the previous two numbers in the sequence.
Your bet size increases based on the number in the Fibonacci sequence. The numbers in the Fibonacci sequence begin with 1,1,2,3,5,8. The Fibonacci sequence model is generally not a profitable one in the long term, especially if you rack up consecutive losses.
Could It Be Time For A Bankroll Reset?
A bankroll reset is when you take time out to assess your bankroll. This may involve withdrawing your profits, clearing your account completely, and changing your bet sizing strategies. Resetting your bankroll gives you room to breathe and go over what your previous betting period was like.
You could go over your betting strategy, check how well it worked for you, and decide whether to continue with it or try something new. You could even choose to play at another one of our top-rated casinos.
Like most things involved when betting, your reset timeline is completely up to you. You can choose to reset at the end of a gaming season, week, or month – whenever you feel the need to.
Bankroll Management Starts Outside Online Casinos
Managing your bankroll begins before you even go to the US online casino or sportsbook. We always recommend that you only play with money that you won’t actually miss, and don’t see it as an investment but as an expense. Anything you have left per month is a bonus. We recommend a maximum of between 10% and 20% of your budget for the online casino. Of course, this percentage applies after all fixed charges and expenses such as rent, bills, and groceries have been settled.
To compare the company again: you want to have your own starting capital. Here at CompareCasino, we are very disciplined in not lending money for playing at a USA online casino. Borrowing money isn’t a sensible option. If you don’t have enough leftover from your paycheck, the first thing to do is to find a source of extra income or increase your current income. As a new company, you always want to have a stable base so that you are not dependent on income from the company at the start.
Conclusion
Now you know why it is very important to manage your bankroll, whether you are betting for fun or professionally. We recommend the fixed betting plans as they are safer and easy to understand. You can then begin to use the variable plans as you get better and more confident.
Bankroll Management FAQ
How can I create a bankroll?
Your bankroll is simply the money used for betting. To create your bankroll, all you have to do is to set aside a sum of money you can afford to lose and place it in a separate account.
How do I manage my bankroll as a beginner?
Managing your bankroll starts with having a separate account, choosing one of the betting strategies described, and sticking with it.
What is the best bet sizing strategy?
Betting is not a one size fits all thing, so you have to choose which betting strategy you can work with. You can start with the fixed betting plan.
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