In order to succeed at sports betting, you must be able to pick winners and manage your money. In fact, without both you are destined to fail. The single biggest reason why sports bettors fail is because of the lack of proper money management. Just like a good business plan, you must have a plan for betting on sporting events.
The Plan
All plans must start with a Bankroll, defined as the amount of money that you have set aside to risk on sports wagering. Your bankroll does not have to be the amount of money that you have on hand, just the amount that you can comfortably lose without affecting your lifestyle. In this example, we are going to use $5000 as our starting bankroll. Next we will select a Unit Wager. Use 2% of the bankroll as a unit wager. $5000 X .02 = $100. $100 would be your unit wager. Wagering on sports is very similar to a stock on Wall Street. Your bankroll is going to go up and down, so we must be able to weather the storms and a 2% wager allows us to do this. The final step is find a safe way to safely increase you wagers as your bankroll increases.
Increasing Wagers
As your bankroll increases, there is a need to increase the amounts of each unit wager. Use 20% increments or 10 units. 10 X .02 = 20%. Simply put using the $5000 starting figure, one would increase his unit play to $120 after he won 10 units. His bankroll would be $6000. Therefore $6000 X .02 = $120. Your wagers would then stay at $120 until you hit the next level or dipped back down to the $5000 mark. A dip down would result in a $100 bet, and an increase to the next level, ($120 X 10 units = $1200 + 6000 = $7200) would result in a $150 bet,($7200 X .02 = $144 or $150). It is important to note that you always round up to the nearest $10. Your bet size is increasing but your overall risk remains the same. Let’s look at the different level of results using this system.
Level of Results Based on +10 Unit Increments
By increasing your bet size at predetermined levels without increasing your risk you can safely build a nice bankroll. Let’s take a look at the results of a person who started with $5000, and used this system.
| Units | Unit Bet | Bankroll |
| 0 | $100 | $5000 |
| +10 | $120 | $6000 |
| +20 | $150 | $7200 |
| +30 | $180 | $8700 |
| +40 | $210 | $10500 |
| +50 | $260 | $12600 |
| +60 | $310 | $15100 |
| +70 | $370 | $18200 |
| +80 | $440 | $21900 |
| +90 | $530 | $26300 |
| +100 | $640 | $31600 |
| +110 | $720 | $38000 |
| +120 | $900 | $45000 |
| +130 | $1080 | $54000 |
Money Management Conclusion
Do they display their customer service information including email, and phone support on the site? All online sportsbook should be able to provide 24/7 toll free customer support. Be wary of sportsbooks that does not display their physical address. There are plenty of sportsbooks who operate illegally from the U.S. that doesn’t have any intentions of paying. Give them a call and ask about mail in deposit options along with email support response time. Those are a few of the things you should consider when looking for a reputable sportsbook.