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Trader11
28 Nov 11 17:29
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Date Joined: 02 Jul 07
| Topic/replies: 856 | Blogger: Trader11's blog
OVERSTAKING: We all know where this leads to.

UNDERSTAKING: Uncharted and probably hampering waters for me.

We all, at some point, fell for the bad old chasing and overstaking demon.

But, how do we handle our stakes in the heat of the moment?

You are a trader or you ar a gambler, it doesn't matter, both can overstake or understake.

I'm a mix of both, I do both things. At the beginning of the days, when I thought gambling was piece of cake, I didn't have any staking plan in place.
I kept overstaking a lot, to the point I used to put 50% or even 100% my bank on "dead certs", oh yes, you get winners, but when you get too confident... you are fecked big time. I still remember my last overstaking adventure on a dead cert, I layed certain bottom of table team at 19.5, a team that in 15 away games lost them all and had a terrible GD record, something like only 3 goals scored away in 15 games, well, they won that day against a top 4 team.

With time and experience I became wiser, since some time ago I'm having very good success with a football laying system (check my other thread "My football Lays") and some trading, I built a considerable bank and I found a new problem: UNDERSTAKING.

When laying I keep my maximun liability at 0.5% of my bank.
When trading I risk 5% of my bank.

Thing is, when you have a 500 units bank you handle it differently than when you have a 10K 15K 20K or whatever.
Personally it scares me to lose 5% of my current bank. Why? First, it is a lot of money, second I aim to 0.5% daily growth of bank, which I do not achieve everyday, but on weekly average it reaches the target. So, 5% equals around 10 days winnings.

Last night I lost 4% of my bank on one single trade and I was gutted. I know I will make it back in the coming days, but still...

I tend to protect my bank as much as I can, but I feel I'm understaking, because I know my winnings could be much bigger if I increase my maximun liability.
In all these years I have read many staking plans and %, anything from 0.5% maximum liability at anytime, to 5%.

I read that "pro gamblers or traders" are happy with a 3% weekly bank increase, which I agree, and I would be happy too. I realise that if I increase my maximum liability to 1% or even 2% I would have much better and faster results (providing I keep my current striking rate).

I hope this post is helpful to someone (specially newbies) and I would like to read comments or ideas.
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Report TheInvestor2 • November 28, 2011 5:55 PM GMT
The way I deal with it is to have a big cash reserve, so that even big (short term) losses will have zero effect on my ability to pay living costs, bills etc.
One thing you can do is build a 'risk fund'. From now on, a portion of your profits goes to build up a fund to place larger bets.

I vary the risk I take based on recent pnl. If I have a big loss, I scale down. If I've been making loads, I'm more willing to risk this profit than starting capital.

Risky lumpy bets are good for PC purposes.

I'm delighted with a 1.5% weekly avg bank increase by the way Wink
Report ror • November 28, 2011 5:57 PM GMT
What such a gross liability difference between max. liability "laying" and "Trading".

You must realise that laying a result is the same thing as backing all the other results dutch.

There is no difference between backing and laying in a closed market*.

So why if you only risk 0.5% in one form of your activity do you risk up to 5% in another.

Why not trade with a max liability of 0.5%? It'll focus you more, and you'll need to trade more aggressively and confidently, for example if my max liability is £10 and I look to back result A to trade out, then when I see value to lay again, I'd want to then lay all the way until I see -10 on A, rather than even green.

If something is value, it's value, it should be value to lay all the way to liability the other side.

Eventually you might decide that the market is "about right" and to escape even green but if you're always looking to keep trading, then until you close with even green then go for max liability swings each time.

A) You'll build up bigger green on the other side each time.
B) You'll never lose more than 0.5% if you keep your disciplne.
C) Once you've "even greened" then that's closed the market for you, you should just leave it and not bet again, keeping discipline.


This is easier said than done, but betting on parts of green etc are fundamentally bad value bets that lead to overstaking (because to make a final even green high enough by backing/greening/laying/greening) you need to initially overstake.


*This is important, but most markets are closed by way of having "any other".
Report ror • November 28, 2011 5:59 PM GMT
p.s. Try to keep your bank level.

Withdraw your winnings, deposit when it's down.

At the end of each week, get your bank back to where it started. This will deliver two things:

A) It stops a big bank going to your head leading to overstaking
B) It stops you panicking that your bank is getting smaller, leading to bigger bets to "catch up".
C) It keeps you realistic about whether you're withdrawing more or less than you're depositing, i.e. whether you're actually making a profit.
Report ZEALOT • November 28, 2011 6:44 PM GMT
Laying to lose 0.5 per cent of your bank seems very very low to me .

Unless your bank is frighteningly big

good luck
Report ror • November 28, 2011 7:09 PM GMT
It depends how you define 'bank'. I think it's best described as the maximum you could afford to lose on betfair. It doesn't have to be deposited on betfair to be your bank.

For example, people talk of "a second bank" or "reloading your bank" but that's not how to work out your bank for these purposes.

So if I figure I never want to lose more than 1000 on betfair, then I should stick to £5 max liability. This feels comfortable for me. FWIW I rarely have more than £50 deposited on the site, but if your bank isn't "frightening" then you won't be frightened to lose it. And if you lose it and reload it, then it wasn't really your bank, and then you effectively have no bank, because you just reload your sub-bank whenever you bust it, so you actually have no control.
Report ror • November 28, 2011 7:10 PM GMT
p.s. It would take me nearly 3 years to deposit £1000 to lose it on this site, I figure if I lose for 3 years straight I should stop.
Report zooot • December 3, 2011 10:23 AM GMT
I think most traders overstake relative to their bank and pretend it is okay to do so.  The youtoob vids often show the guru trading using virtually the whole bank on the assumption that they will hedge any losses to a small % of the bank.  So a typical loss is only say 30 pounds (3%) from a 1000 pound bank.  In the long run though when things go wrong such as the site going down, a brain freeze with seconds to go before the off or a heat of the moment decison to let a bet ride rather than take the loss, the liability can be 25-50% of the bank not the theoretical 3%

Trading is more like laying 250 to 1 long shots than most traders admit.  You can do 500 good trades and then lose half your bank in one crazy five minute disaster.  A good trader can go way above what a straight backer or layer should risk (in terms of maximum liability - not hedged liability)- perhaps 10% of their bank or perhaps what they can make back in a couple of weeks solid trading - so it is painful but not totally demoralising. More than that spells trouble.


Straight backing or laying will eventually give you some long losing streaks and if you have done a thousand bets with say a 2% edge in racing a 20 unit losing streak is most likely happened to you already. 1% or less is the go.

The above approach makes it slow and in a good run you'll feel like you are missing faster growth possibilities but means you'll protect your bank.
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