In the world of sports betting, bettors stake their money in order to get the satisfaction and pleasure for making accurate and smart predictions and of course to get some profits from choosing the winning side of a bet. It is extremely rare to find a bettor who is not interested in making money from sports wagering and if you do so, they’ll probably be some die-hard fans who just want to support their teams or players in a long-anticipated game and expect to share the pride with them, should they win, that is!

For every other punter the goal is to get profits out of sports betting. It does not matter whether they are betting with an old, traditional bookmaker or a highly modern, contemporary online sportsbook, whether they are using cryptocurrencies or they choose a betting site using gcash, all punters, regardless the place, type or betting mode, want to experience gains.

Besides the basic knowledge over sports and the possible edge that make bettors improve the chances of getting profits, another thing that makes all the difference in the world is to have a money management plan and a bankroll strategy.

If bettors don’t practice any money management approach, then it is safe to say that they are running the risk of either losing their money in a very short period of time or even emptying their bankroll one-off – in a single, big bet let’s say.

Money management is vital. In sports betting it has to do with bankroll management, or simply with managing the money that is in the tank for wagering. Although bettors can develop their own betting strategies and bankroll management approaches -ones that suit their type, style, game and confidence, there are three basic, widespread models that constitute pretty much the basis for all other strategies to emerge.

These are the flat betting model, the percentage model and the variable betting, with the most popular variable betting strategy being the Kelly Criterion.

Flat betting model

When using the flat betting model, punters simply decide on a unit size and then choose to stake only one (or more) unit per bet. The amount bet, that is, remains the same regardless of the bankroll size, the previous results, the level of confidence or the betting odds.

Nothing else matters, other than the predetermined number of units (or the unit size) that the bettors have decided to bet each time. It is a simple and somehow safe model that enables punters to mitigate potentially high risks of losing a lot of money, while paving the way for long-term profits.

Of course, as you can understand, this strategy is like generally playing it safe and it needs to be treated as such. You won’t experience any sudden, big winnings but you won’t have any sudden big losses either.

Percentage betting

While the previous strategy requires betting a fixed amount every time, in every wager, this strategy is more dynamic in nature in that it requires punters to stake a percentage of their entire bankroll. Simply put, bettors decide on a share of their bankroll that will be bet constantly. Note that the final amount bet is not fixed, but variable, always depending on the bankroll size.

This strategy is a bit more aggressive than the flat betting model. It builds upon winning streaks and gives punters the opportunity to win bigger when they are doing well. But on the other hand, it has more risks if punters experience a losing streak.

Variable staking

In variable staking, there is a variance in the amounts punters are betting. This variance can depend on the value of the bet, the confidence level or any other criterion that bettors decide to incorporate into their strategy.

Essentially, variance staking is nothing else than assigning different bet units to different wagers according to some certain standards – which should be better set in advance.

Within this broad category of variable staking, the most popular bankroll management strategy is the Kelly Criterion. This strategy is actually a mathematical formula that produces the optimum amount of bet a punter should stake based the odds of the bet and the probability of winning.

New bettors are intimidated by the use of a mathematical formula and most of all by the fact that the Kelly Criterion strategy may produce a relatively high percentage of their bankroll to be staked – implicating an aggressive betting – but the truth is that it is largely used by regular punters across the world and it has proven to be a good approach, if managed properly.