How Much Should You Bet?

Sports Betting for Entertainment

Like most forms of gambling, money management is an important element of sports betting. At the outset, it is important to define your objective.

For many people, sports gambling is primarily entertainment. You might have a small budget set aside for your favorite sports season and you simply want to place some bets every week to add excitement to watching the games. Of course you want to win your bet, but losing the bet is not the end of the world.

For this type of sports betting, you may want to use a simple budgetary type of money management. Give some serious thought to your budget for the season. Then divide that budget by the number of weeks in the season. This is your betting budget for the week. Stick to it even when you come across that game that you think is a sure thing.

If you like, you can readjust your budget by adding your winnings to your remaining budget and dividing the total by the number of weeks left in the season. Recognize that if you do this, you increase your risk of volatility.

You will have larger bets being placed on fewer games. Therefore, it is more likely that you will have won more money or lost more money at the end of the season. The more conservative strategy is to avoid readjusting your bets and place smaller bets over the entire season.

Sports Betting for Professionals

The professional sports gambler is interested in maximizing his betting return. This requires a more disciplined approach to sports betting that primarily focuses on spreading smaller bet amounts across a larger number of bets. The goal here is to minimize volatility and never put the bankroll in jeopardy.

You will generally want to keep your individual bets to less than 3% of your bankroll, with 1% to 2% being ideal.