Football Staking or general gambling staking

Have a look at Joseph Buchdahl's book, Fixed Odds Sports Betting. It has a very detailed analysis of staking systems.

It depends on your average bet price. You cannot bet 10% if your average price is 17.0. General rule of thumb is to expect a losing streak of 10x the average price. So if your avg price is 17, expect a losing run of 170. So in this instance you should bet no more than 0.5% of bank, giving you 200 'chances' to cope with the losing runs.

So go through your last 200/300 bets, work out the average price and stake accordingly. I am not a believer in ramping up or down, if there are doubts in the selection then it is a no bet.

But ultimately if you are not finding value than you are wasting your time. Are your bets systematic or mystic? If they are mystic (personal opinion) than you might as well have one big bet a year and pray to God you picked the right one. When I mean systematic, I mean bets found using rules and proved over several hundred of 'live' bets. If you are in profit after several hundred - you have found value and have a chance of making money. Then comes the hard bit of getting enough on to make all the years of research worthwhile.

The PIes My Eureka moment came when I forgot all about the short ones. Sometimes I still can't help myself when you see a penalty kick (I bet one at EVS @Southwell the other day). But generally there is no value in the top end of the market. You should be having more on the 16/1 than the EVS shot if anything IMO. Ultimately though, it's all about making a few quid - whichever way you do it. How would you feel if you had two 10/1 winners and two 4/5 losers and ended the day with a loss?

Very rarely would I bet anything under 5BSP nowadays (horses). Sometimes you get the odd penalty-kick and I will play. But I have the same on as my 16/1 bet. The plan is to win more when the big ones strike and you know horse/dog racing - the big ones strike often.

Shapeshifter General rule of thumb or worst case scenerio if you like.

If you have an edge you gotta accept the inevitable losing runs.

Infact I've just came out of my longest losing sequence of 33 bets and within 2 days and 3 bets, the -33points was recovered and then some. In my early days I wouldn't have had a good enough mindset or bank management to accept going -33.

I'm currently through 300 bets this season and I expect to go 100 consecutive losers at some point in the future. You say 'you shouldn't be in the game' if you go 20 in a row. This attitude will blow your bank. Trust me I've got the T-shirt with this kind of talk. Anything can and WILL happen in live sport and you have to be prepared for everything.

At the end of the day, you can spend 7 days on a race but you will never be certain. 1.01s get turned over every day. There is no explanation to the losing runs and ditto the winning runs - they are just  random numbers (meaningless). The same preparation and rules will bring you 1 in 30 one week, 8 in 30 the next week. There is nothing you can do about it - only protect your bank by using 'worse case scenerio' % staking.

I'm talking horses and greyhounds, I don't win betting short prices and like I said my Eureka moment was when I dismissed most of the shorties which included betting on football. If a price goes bigger - you should have a little bit more on. Trust your judgement is the most important thing in this game. Like I said I bet the 'bigger' prices, so I win more, the bigger the price, which suits me fine.

There is not a lot of difference between the SP and BSP which is the simplest explanation of why there is no value in the top-end of the market. Ask any pro horse racing bettor - most of their profits will come from horses between the 5-10 BSP price range.

If you are consistently finding value - level staking is plenty good enough.

Just realised 2/1 is 3 in decimal terms, so expect a losing run of 30

A good article that DFC. I could have done with reading that 15 years ago New gamblers have it easy nowadays, there is so much info to get them started and keep them on the right track. Nobody taught me nothing, I had to learn the hard way.

Even the most successful punters have long losing runs eg read Dave Nevison's book. Hugh Taylor highlighted the probability of losing runs based on strike rate/ average price on the interesting ATR programme he did before Xmas with James Willoughby and the extent of those surprised me.

I ultimately had a very good last year (% profit on turnover)but it included a 24 bet losing streak that wiped out half my profit at the time. I'm not sure whether if that had occurred earlier in my betting life that I would have survived. Based on above comments, it seems that I got off lightly based on the average price of my bets. As it was I kept the faith and actually increased the fixed profit I was after because I believed it would turn around and that it's a natural progression to try and win more if you perceive you have an edge.

Did a bit of post season analysis of my betting last year and found that Kelly staking would have got me another 1.5% profit over fixed profit so maybe that't the way to go this year.

I re-read this post and perhaps will find more time to contribute but some racing is happening today.

First, my response did come across a bit harsh(?) concerning the 10x rule that was mentioned. 

But the number of "winners in a row" or "losses in a row" are all part of the math of: strike rate.

So the number of winners/losers is irrelevant since if you OVERALL strike rate is not greater than the odds YOU AVERAGE, you will not make money.

This week, with horses, I had a streak of 14 without a winner with 1 EW returning dividends.  This included seven bets in one day.

The flip side is that I 'regrouped' and had 5 winners from 9 with 2 of the other 4 returning EW dividends.

It is all documented here starting on Monday (11th-Feb): http://community.betfair.com/shapeshifter/blog


But what is also 'key' to me is that if you are in a losing streak, regardless of the average odds, you can't let it continue and use an "expectation" of 10x your average as a guide. 

The psychology on this is detrimental.  i.e. If you are a 2/1 (3.0) average player and you are at 10 losses in a row, you'll feel that you are within an 'acceptable' amount of losses since you 'can expect a streak of 30'.

I quit my country....read your own post

I'm currently through 300 bets this season and I expect to go 100 consecutive losers at some point in the future. You say 'you shouldn't be in the game' if you go 20 in a row. This attitude will blow your bank. Trust me I've got the T-shirt with this kind of talk. Anything can and WILL happen in live sport and you have to be prepared for everything.

At the end of the day, you can spend 7 days on a race but you will never be certain. 1.01s get turned over every day. There is no explanation to the losing runs and ditto the winning runs - they are just  random numbers (meaningless). The same preparation and rules will bring you 1 in 30 one week, 8 in 30 the next week. There is nothing you can do about it - only protect your bank by using 'worse case scenerio' % staking.


Reading this post sounds like (though I may be wrong) that you are playing more with systems than trying to research events.  Your whole approach is more concerned about the 'negative' results and almost justifying your losses.

I would say that 95% of the time when I have a bet lose in horses, I can pin-point the reason and learn from it.  Yes, there is an element  (repeat element) of sport where 'luck/randomness' steps in, weather it be a bouncing ball or a horse that has started like a bullet for 30 starts suddenly freezes at the stalls and finds itself behind traffic.  But, overall, if you research and eliminate as much 'chance' as you can, then you will have a much more positive outlook AND will react quicker to consecutive losses.

For example:

As I said, this was my week:
Monday: 1 for 3
Tuesday: 0 for 7
Wednesday afternoon: 0 for 6 though one EW returning dividends

Then, as written the following day (Thursday) (note: Lingfield was in the afternoon/Kempton in the evening):

Instead of watching the last two at Lingfield, I put on the hard disc and chilled.  The streak of poor results came down to me and nothing else.  So time to reboot and 'reconnect' with my approach to making selections.

One ability I have is to look at the field, the results, the time, the tracks and my ratings on a grid I have developed and a couple of horses will visually rise off the page and 'float' above the rest.  If nothing 'floats' within a minute or so, a line has to go through the race until I'm left with maybe four races to go through.

From there, time to dive deeper and find the value plays.

That was the case with Kempton last night.  But to try to get back on a positive track, I did it in 'shifts'.  I hit the timer to go off after 15 minutes.  I then walked away for ten each time and cleared my mind to continue through the past to predict the future.

The result; Three selections - Two winners and an each way paying dividends.


There is no randomness.  There is no 'expectation of losses'.  There is no worse case scenario. 

There is a performance that is well below the average strike rate of, say, twenty bets.

And it wasn't randomness or luck that turned it around.

And Thursday: 3 winners, 1 EW paying dividends from 6 bets.




If one is to have the proper mind-set to be successful, you cannot base your approach on losses or feeling you have to 'protect your bank'. 

If you feel you have to take that route, the best 'protection' you can do is what my mate does:

15% of his paycheck goes in each month.  If he is bust, he has £30 in a jar for his weekend football flutters till his next pay check.

If he is ahead, he takes out the profits, whether it be £1 or £500 and leaves in equivalent to 15% since that is what he can afford to lose.

Shapeshifter Reading this post sounds like (though I may be wrong) that you are playing more with systems than trying to research events.  Your whole approach is more concerned about the 'negative' results and almost justifying your losses.

You are wrong, I have a system that brings me to a horse but then I thoroughly research the race. Then I look at the prices to decide if it's a bet. The research and prices available will make half of them 'no bets'. 

The general topic was based on staking and I will stand by what I said. If your avg price is 3.0 - you will go 30 and out at some stage in your life. So 3% stakes is the way I'd play. But like I said v rarely would I bet at 3.0. I will tell you my average price is in double figures, strike-rate is 10%. Are you saying bet 10% of bank? I'd do a bank every fortnight. The other subject is bank. I'm talking a bank you will never add to again, not a gambling mini-bank.

My staking is not based on negativity but REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS. It's all v well being confident in what you are doing, but you have to be prepared for the inevitable losing runs. Like I said the same process will give you 0 from 33, the next week 8 from 33. Yes you can look back and find reasons why you lost, but going the other way: you can also find moments where you were a little lucky to win. In an ideal world for me I would go 9 losers and then a winner but it never works like that. It is also based on a huge sample size (not 20 bets). When you have such a large sample you will see the sequences and there is no explanation.

There is nothing wrong with being a slave to a system if it's brings you a healthy ROI Infact it's quite comforting and takes away a lot of pressure. You will naturally 'pull back' if you stick to what you are doing. You will not pull back if you increase stakes, get emotional about the 'numbers' or try too hard. ROUTINE

BTW nice blog and good commitment There is no overall profit and loss so I can't fathom how it goes. It seems it was going v well laying favourites but like most gamblers you have changed tack recently after hitting a losing run. But tbf you did say originally it was meant for finding EW alternatives. I'm not sure about the EW part, my advice (if you don't mind) is to cut the stakes and ACCEPT the sequences. Stop trying to GUARANTEE a profit every day, there is only so much you can do. There are not enough hours in the day to cover everything. Personally I specialise. What is your avg BET price? I would be interested in the ROI with horses 5 or bigger BSP.

Something that might help with research: only study in 20 mins intervals, the brain will absorb twice the information of 2x20min spells, than 3 hours of continuous study. I don't know how true it is - my missus told me this when learning a language and it helped.

The same with going through form and watching continuous videos of C6 plodders at Southwell, after 20 mins you are not really taking anything in. I do one race, have a break and come back refreshed. On a busy day, time is a problem. I don't get too concerned about missing races. I prefer to put 100% into beating the bast_ards than put in a half-hearted effort. There are no short-cuts to making a profit that's for sure in this game.

TrevH I remember the x10 rule I read on here, so thanks if it was you

Yeah it was me IQMC, glad to have been of help :) I have up to 1000 matched bets per week and keep fairly accurate records. We sound fairly alike, I agree with pretty much everything you've said.

SHAPESHIFTER, what do you do in your spare time?