Best Gambling Strategy - Bankroll Management

If you love online sports betting, the heart racing rush that comes from being in action, then this is for you. A good gambling strategy can be the difference to a gambler between having his session bankroll tapped out in 2 hours to being able to gamble for 2 days and 2 nights straight and still having a chance of being ahead.

Whichever particular gambling strategy you do settle into, remember that the most important gambling strategy is Bankroll Management, make sure you are playing at a level that your bankroll justifies. The Golden Rule is that your average bet size should be 2% of your session bankroll. So either get more money or just bet a lower level. This will ensure that you won't face alot of volatility and be taken out by the first cold streak. No gambling strategy will be very successful without good bankroll management.

You can go ahead and read around now but remember gambling is fun, especially when you finish a monster rush but keep it under control. More than the house most gamblers will destroy themselves. Work out how much much you can afford a week, $50 or $100 or $1000 whatever, and keep your gambling budgeted and your bet sizes appropriate. Play smart, keep your action on the lowest house edges and you'll have fun. You'll even get your share of big winning nights.

Kelly Criterion

The Kelly Criterion is a mathematical approach to bankroll management and growth. It is interesting to players who want to know what the most mathematically efficient percentage of their bankroll they should gamble to maximize their bankroll growth.

The Kelly criterion is a mathematical formula:

Where,
f* = percentage of player’s bankroll
b = the odds being offered on the wager
p = the probability of winning
q = the probability of losing, i.e. (1 – p)

For example, we have a horse race where the bookies are offering 2-to-1 but on some inside information we judge the true odds to be around 3-to-1. Also, our current bankroll is $10,000. So according to the Kelly Criterion:

b = 2-to-1 = 2
p = 3-to-2 = 40% = 0.4
q = (1-p) = 0.6

f* = ( (2 * 0.4) – 0.6 ) / 2
= 0.2 / 2
= 0.1 or 10%

So we should put 10% of our bankroll on the horse or $1000 of our $10,000 bankroll.

The Kelly Criterion is used by horse and sports gamblers but also by fund managers for stocks and other financial investments. You could even apply it to poker, where often the odds are as if all players have equal chance of winning but the probabilities of each player winning are not equal.

The Kelly Criterion is a much more sophisticated approach to bankroll management beyond the ad hoc rules of thumb. Yet, in chasing the fastest long run bankroll growth the Kelly Criterion is quite aggressive. In application there is a real risk in making a mistake in assessing the true odds. To reduce this risk and the inherent volatility of betting so much your bankroll, it is common to bet half of what the Kelly Criterion suggests.

This approach sets the Kelly Criterion more as a maximum cap on the betting amount. This makes sense because betting anything over what the Kelly Criterion suggests is counter-productive and will only reduce long run bankroll growth. Never-the-less, if you want to go for maximum bankroll growth, the Kelly Criterion will tell you how much to bet in order to achieve the highest level of long run bankroll growth.

Good Luck