BETTING UNITS

Betting Units and Bankroll Management

Creating and utilizing betting units properly is key to successful bankroll management, and successful bankroll management is essential in lowering risk and turning a profit in any business including sports betting. You may be betting on sports for fun, to make some extra cash, or to create cash flow. Whatever the reason may be, treating it like a business will go a long way towards preserving and increasing your stake. 

If you’re new to sports betting or have been doing it for some time, the best thing you can do is to treat this enterprise as you would any business, and that means developing a budget and a plan and sticking to both. Here are some important money management tips and techniques that you should adopt.

Know Your Bankroll and Unit Bets

It all starts with your bankroll, which is the total amount of money you’re devoting to an entire season or year of sports betting. The money you bet with should be cash you’re comfortable with risking and losing. It should not be money you need for essentials, such as food, rent, and clothing, or set aside for other endeavors, such as vacations, education, or Christmas presents. If your bankroll is $5,000 and you’re focusing on the NFL, then, with a five-month season, your monthly allotment would be $1,000 per month. If, on the other hand, your betting cash totals $1,000, that would break down to $200 per month.

Creating Betting Units

After determining your total bankroll, it’s time to divide it into equal units. One way to do this is to determine the value of one unit as a specified percentage of your total monthly allotment.  As an example, if you decide each unit is comprised of five percent of your monthly stake, then with $1,000 each unit is worth $50, and you’d have 20 units. With a $200 bankroll, each unit is worth $10, and you’d still have 20 units. A unit is equal to your minimum bet. If you’d like to have more betting units, which gives you more flexibility while lowering your level of risk, you can use a smaller percentage. Making each unit worth 2.5 percent of your bankroll results in each unit being 50 percent smaller while the number of units doubles. Thus, your $1000 bankroll becomes $25 units and your $200 turns into $5.00 units. In either case, you now have 40 units with which to wager.

We recommend starting with smaller units, one-to-two percent of your bankroll. At one percent, $1000 yields $10 units and $200 results in $2.00 units with each offering 100 units.  With 100 units, you have a comfortable cushion for bad bets. Revise your unit structure, increasing the worth of a unit, when your monthly bankroll has grown a minimum of 25 percent. If you start to bleed money at some point, reconfigure your units, making them smaller.

How Often and Much Should You Bet?

At the beginning of any season, it’s a good idea to start with fewer wagers and smaller bets. After two to four weeks, once you have a sense of each team, you can increase the number of wagers and size of bets you make. In the first few weeks, it’s a good idea to handicap more games than you’ll actually bet on.  The practice will help you improve your analytical technique, and you can record what you would have bet on those practice games to get a sense of the effect those games would have had on your bankroll.

Start with three-to-five games and one and two-unit bets and by around the fourth week increase your bets to six-to-nine with a unit range of one-to-four per line. Record all your wagers, wins, and losses. Keep a running tally.  A general rule of thumb is never risk more than 20 percent of your bankroll in week and never bet more than 6% of that 20 percent on one game. With $1000 and $10 units, you’d have $200 for the week and 20 units. If you divide your $200 stake into $2.00 units, you’d have a total of $40 and 20 units. You can do a lot with 20 units in a week.  Put more units on those teams you feel the most sure of and fewer units on those you feel are riskier bets. 

Betting Units – Keep Risk Low

The best advice we can give any sports bettor looking to get the most out of their bankroll is to keep the risk low. You can do this through careful money management and by focusing on moneyline, spread, and total bets. Of course, solid research and analysis will go a long way towards your success. Have fun betting on sports while you stay within your budget and bet on games that offer value.