I am really struggling with this question. I have been picking in the high 50% this year but I have lost a majority of my big unit plays. If I would have flat bet id be up, but instead I am down. What do you guys prescribe to?
-
-
There's not enough information in your post to say that you are doing anything wrong. One would need to ask - how many plays?, what kind of Units?, are you making +EV selections to begin with?
If you weren't chasing and if the bigger wagers were rational and justified - maybe you just had some bad luck on those shots. But if you're talking football and you are high 50's but down overall at this point in the season something is probably wrong with your staking.
Most of the guys here are going to direct you to some form of Kelly staking. But that's not to say you can't do well with Unit betting if your formula for it is not irrational, it has it's basis in your actual edge and you don't get crazy with the multiples.
In assessing your strategy - apart from bottom line results - you can also measure your performance by Z-score and importantly - by examining how your plays are doing against the closing line. You definitely should be beating the close on those big plays.Last edited by BeatingBaseball; 12-13-10, 11:10 AM.Comment -
If your bets are winners overall, you probably just got unlucky and had the "wrong" ones lose.
Depends on your stomach for these sorts of variances within variances. If you can live with it, it should all average out.
I really don't like it when that happens, so I just flat bet, slow and steady is fine with me.Comment -
flat bet. It's a marathon not a sprint. If you're handicapping you should be playing with an advantage, so flat betting and winning more than 52% of the time will put you into the black. There's always going to be fluky games, why take chances. I've seen too many people fall victim to large unit wagers.Comment -
Dr. Bob on his web site has some great articles on Moneymanagement, definitely take a look at them. He writes about the pros and cons of flat and kelly betting, excellant material.Comment -
If you are just randomly picking games off of feel and have no way to accurately assess each teams probability of winning you should most definately be flat betting. If you have a model that can accurately produce each teams probability of winning you should be adjusting your bet sizes according to your edge.Comment -
There is a ton of threads on flat and Kelly betting here in the "historical" Tank. Do a search on them.Comment -
Flat betting is by far the best way (IMO) to turn a profit over a season. Start with a bankroll and flat bet until you double it then double your flat bets, and so on. My bankroll is always moving but it never really goes up that far because I try to cash out my winnings every two - three weeks and this seems to help me stay on top without ever having to re-deposit. I'm turning a profit on a monthly basis but never "building" a huge bankroll. Got $$ in my pocket though. GL sirComment -
WTF is going on lately, a bunch of people conspiring to recreate the FishTank?Comment -
While it's good to maximize profit by betting more on games that are more +EV, if you put too many units on a few bets, you're essentially putting your bankroll in the hands of variance. If you want to to vary units do something like betting between 1 and 2 units rather than 1 and 5. For example 1, 1.25, 1.50, 1.75, and 2 unit plays.Comment -
ok
I will check out his articles. I started out flat betting and only had 300 in my account. That was the start of the nfl football season. I was slowly making progress then got bored and got very aggressive. I turned that 300 into 5200 buy unit betting and with my bigger bets I was doing well. Then I made a large wager on Eagles/ Bears and got hammered with the Eagles, and then again got hammered with the Colts. I know aggressive unit betting got me to 5200, but it has also got me back down to 1,000 now with those two major losses. I have to ask myself though, that 1,000 may still be more than I could have achieved flat betting.Comment -
I believe in the past that Ganchrow has given reasons why betting to win a fixed amount is preferred to betting a fixed amount if I understood what he was saying. Can anyone verify this? I've been flat betting myself, but that option is intriguing.Comment -
Always hard to say but I like unit betting but the key is good money management and picking your spots.Comment -
Betting to win a fixed amount means you bet more when the event is more likely to happen and less when it is less likely to happen. This increases EG.
This has a pseudo-Kelly effect (actually with an assumption of constant edge it may produce results that are quite close to a Kelly / fractional Kelly system, I don't have time to test this now but it seems intuitive).Comment -
here is my answer to you..
bet 2% of your bankroll on each selection.
recalculate your bankroll each day..
simple as that...Comment -
@The Investor
2% for fun&games
0,1%-0,5% for proffesional gambling. (1% when going BIG)
If you like to be super safe. But when you gotta pay the rent you better be super safe...Comment -
I'm going to do this, and actually stick with it, thanks. I have read about betting more units depending on your edge, but after thinking about it, it really seems impossible to know your edge. It's all perceived and just made up. If you could really judge your edge you would only bet the highest edge games and bet them big.Comment -
I read something about this before I can't remember where but I think it said if you recalculate you bankroll everyday and change you betting size the breakeven at -110 goes to 55% instead of 52%
Dont know if this is true but I can remember it made sense at the time I read it.
The jist of the article was you should never lower your bet amount you should bet 2% of you bank and when your bankroll increases 25% recalculate your unit size.
So if you start out with a $10,000 bankroll bet $200 a game untill your bankroll grows to $12,500 then change your bet size to $250 and so on. This is how 99% of people should bet but I honestly doubt if many actually do.Comment -
Maybe all the Kelly guys either
1) Made so much money betting their edge aggressively that they no longer had a need to piddle with sports betting or
2) Over-estimated their edge on particular events so badly that they tapped out.
Either way, the flat bet turtles are still around, plodding their way through......Comment -
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the tank.Comment -
You know i used to get confused here when I first heard some of the pros here talking about "calculating" or "knowing" their "edge" but after obsessive and relentless research that took many hours on my part I finally understand it and see it clearly now.
Its the ONLY way to win long term. Justin7 and them guys are right. If you dont have or know your edge you are basically blindly betting and eventual will lose. You might as well bet on anything cuz it wont matter in the end.
The answer I beleive is units along with proper money management. Money management just means being conservative with a % of BR on max plays to preserve capital.
Flat betting is a waste to me. There are literally thousands of threads here started by guys hoping to make winning bets and grab up a lot of attention here and say "Hey look at me" but all those threads end up going to the waste side eventually. You know why? Because they cant hit over 53% long term after 200 plays or let alone 500 or more.
Think about it- last time I checked theres like over 70,000 members signed up here..... Show me 1 thread of 200+ plays where the winning % is above 53%. I certainly dont read all the threads but I dont think I've come across one. Maybe there is I just havent seen any.Last edited by sneak-a-peak; 12-17-10, 01:37 AM.Comment -
Generally, if you are outside the massive middle range of gamblers, which we can say is above average or below average for lack of a better term, recalculating after every bet (or every day) is good because you win more or lose less. If you fall into the "average" category (like a large majority of us who do this thing) then you are better off flat betting. As dogman points out, sports statistician and gambling guru Dr Bob probably gave the best overview I've seen online. Read through his money-management essays as he covers a lot of this.
Everyone should work toward being in a place where recalculating/using Kelly is standard procedure, but that should come after you learn to consistently find value and reasonably figure a presumed edge. That takes a lot of plays; more than a year of success normally. Then you can place more on games you are more confident in, because you will have a concrete reason to be more confident in them. You will know that your "big plays" should be your big plays. You also can go begin to recalculate bet size daily or after every wager.
Depending on how big the bankroll is, I would suggest you flat bet something like 2%-3% of your current bankroll (which most people will tell you is high so be wise about it). Set up mileposts where you recalculate this bet size as you reach certain highs or lows (you can use the MROUND or FLOOR functions in most spreadsheets to make this easy). Concentrate on learning how to quantify your plays, then you can worry about using KC, units, etc. Until then you are much better off flat betting.Comment -
Did you read it in The complete mouth breathing Idiot's guide to completely misunderstanding numbers and randomly making **** up?
That's some of the worst bad math / logic I have ever seen in my life.
The amount I bet on a wager has as much effect on its chance of winning and therefore my breakeven % as whether I am wearing my lucky socks when I place it (unless my lucky socks have some sort of D+D magic effect entitling me to a 2 cent moneyline bonus).
I think what happened is all the Kelly guys finally gave up and realised that while you can lead a flat betting horse to water you can't punch it in its stupid horse face and drown it so it stops posting new threads.Comment -
I think what happened is all the Kelly guys finally gave up and realised that while you can lead a flat betting horse to water you can't punch it in its stupid horse face and drown it so it stops posting new threads.
You know i used to get confused here when I first heard some of the pros here talking about "calculating" or "knowing" their "edge" but after obsessive and relentless research that took many hours on my part I finally understand it and see it clearly now.
Good to see a few of the Kelly boys still around, bankrolls intact (and hopefully growing).
Comment -
flat betting sucksComment -
I have learned a lot from this thread. I still think it sounds ridiculous to say you have this much edge in a game. You either have an edge or you don't, you can't put a concrete number on how big your edge is. Well you can, but it is just a made up edge that you perceive. When talk about edge I think about accuscore, giving their perceived outcome of games and the farther it is from the spread then the bigger the edge, but it's still just a prediction.Comment -
No sh*t it's "just a prediction". That doesn't mean you can't have an accurate ESTIMATE of your edge. And in fact if you're betting without having a good idea of what that estimate is, you're a certain loser over the long run -- which from many of the ridiculous comments in this thread, it's clear that most posters are such losers.Comment -
Welcome back, bztips.Comment
