Paulie’s Gambling Education Series, pt. 7: Bankroll Management

One of the biggest keys to being a successful bettor is bankroll management. There are three ways that you can define a “bankroll”:

• Casual Bettor: A monthly or weekly bankroll

  • This person sets aside a certain amount that they are willing to lose in a given timeframe.

  • Example: $100 per week set aside for betting.

• Intermediate Bettor: One total bankroll

  • This person has either a physical or theoretical amount they are willing to commit to betting.

  • Example: $10,000 bankroll to cover all sports

• Serious/Professional Bettor: Bankroll by sport

  • Many professional and serious bettors choose to use separate bankrolls by sport.

This helps you overall in a few ways:

• Allows you to isolate and determine your best sports

• Allows you to allocate different bankroll amounts to different sports based on which ones you have most success with. Ex. my largest bankroll is for golf.

• Allows bankroll growth to occur in the sports that you are most successful

• Here is an example of what a $100,000 bankroll may look like:

  • $25,000 NFL

  • $20,000 Golf

  • $15,000 MMA

  • $15,000 NBA

  • $10,000 MLB

  • $5,000 NCAABB

  • $5,000 NHL

  • $5,000 NCAAFB

How does a separate bankroll by sport allow for maximum growth?

With varying bankroll sizes, we have varying unit sizes per sport. The sports with our highest ROIs are where we should have the largest bankrolls and thus the highest unit sizes. For the example above, here is the corresponding unit sizes (based on 1 unit equaling 1 % of bankroll):

• $250 NFL

• $200 Golf

• $150 MMA

• $150 NBA

• $100 MLB

• $50 NCAABB

• $50 NHL

• $50 NCAAFB

What type of advice can you give regarding bankroll management?

• Slow and steady wins the race. You should start small and build your bankroll up from there. A large volume of small dollar amount bets can create a pretty nice profit by the end of the year.

• Let’s take a look at an example with Ivan the Intermediate Bettor.

  • Ivan has a $1,000 bankroll and a $10 unit size for his first year of betting.

  • We will assume that Ivan has a 5.5% ROI which is the same a 55% win rate on a -110 line.

  • Ivan likes to bet all kinds of different sports and here are his total number of bets for the year:

    • NFL/NCAAFB: 400 bets total (about 10 per week for each)

    • NBA/MLB/NHL/NCAABB: 2000 bets total (about 3 per day per sport during each season)

    • Golf: 750 bets total (about 15 per week)

    • MMA:  350 bets total (about 10 per event)

    • Soccer: 250 bets total (about 5 bets per week)

  • Ivan’s total number of bets for the year is 3,750

  • Ivan’s profit at the end of the first year is over $2,000 (assuming $10 unit size stays the same throughout the year).

  • Ivan now has a $3,000 bankroll to use for his second year. His unit size is now $30. He repeats the same process as year 1 and his profit is now over $6,000 for year 2.

  • For year 3, Ivan has a $9,000 bankroll. His unit size is now $90. He repeats the same process as year 1 and his profit is now over $18,500 for year 3.

  • His bankroll for year 4 is now $27,500. His unit size is now $275. He repeats the same process as year 1 and his profit is now over $56,700 for year 4. The process repeats and Ivan continues to build his bankroll

• This example shows how starting slow and steady and building a bankroll can yield to profitable growth in the future.

If you have any topics that you would like covered in future articles, please reach out to me in the chat rooms or on Twitter @friedeggpaulie.