Originally <a href='http://www.sportsbookreview.com/forum/showthread.php?p=25140487'>posted</a> on 01/14/2016:

Quote Originally Posted by GunShard View Post
My personal rules that can improve your sports betting:


1. Money management. Bet less than 5% of your total current bankroll per bet. Use Kelly Criterion Calculator.


For example:
If your total bankroll is $2000.
5% of your $2000 is $100.
If you lose your $100 bet, now you have $1900.
5% of your $1900 is $95.
Now you bet $95 instead of $100 because of your total current bankroll has changed.
Bet like this and you can either slowly gain or slowly lose but can never be completely broke.


2. Be a strategic gambler by picking your spots and wait for the right opportunity. Never be a compulsive gambler by betting because it's your favorite team or for the action. Do your research.


3. Stay emotionless all the time. Bet like a robot. There's no place for emotions in this profession. Be discipline.
Items two and three are basically the same but I can certainly appreciate the separation of the points, and valid points they are. But point number one has serious flaws.

Again it’s not that gamblers don’t know; it’s that so much they know is wrong. This is why so many nominations and the points are given, as well as comments for a well thought out post; however, the money management plan is expensive and unwise.

I’ve posted over and over again that changing you bet size is equivalent to progressive betting and it is costly.

Let’s keep it simple and get back to basics. Take a set of 21 bets; give yourself 11 wins and 10 losses. Now take any starting bankroll amount. To keep it simple, bet 5.5% to win 5% for each bet and put the wins and losses in any order you desire. After each bet, win or lose, adjust the next bet to 5.5% of the new bankroll, just like Gunshard says.

Now, if you didn’t change the size of your bets, 52.4%, or 11 wins and 10 losses would result in breaking even.

But Gunshard’s plan requires changing the size of your bets after each play, changing the breakeven point. How much it changes depends on the percentage bet, but the higher the percentage, the worse off you are. With my example, of 5.5%, the breakeven point nears 54%.

Gunshard should be thankful for discount books and vigorish, if he uses them, as his strategy raised his breakeven point, which was offset by the reduced vig.

Again, the percentage doesn’t matter; it’s easier to use 5.5% for this exercise than Gunshard’s recommended 5%, but the results are along the same lines.

Try it again and again. No matter what order you place your 11 wins and 10 losses, after those 21 bets, you always have 97.1% of your roll left.

In fact, after 110 wins and 100 losses with 5.5% bet each time, you would be down somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% of your starting bankroll.

No wonder so many felt Gunshard’s strategy was a good one with points, noms, and comments…it’s not that gambler’s don’t know, it’s just that so much they know is wrong.

Proper money management is essential to maximizing profits or minimizing losses and essential to securing long term profits.