Staking Plans With Betfair Games

Hopefully you will have read my article relating to understanding the concept of value and how we can use this to our advantage when playing the Betfair Games. Today dear reader we go through the complex world of staking plans and how to obtain a better understanding of our betting banks.

For the purposes of this article all examples below will be using a 100 point bank. Now this could be a £100 or £1000. It all depends on your comfort zone. The first thing to mention here is that whatever your bank, it should be an amount that you can afford to lose. Never bet with money you haven’t got. I’ve mentioned before the psychology of gambling and this is the first and most important factor to being successful. We have a sum of money we can afford to lose. Next lesson without being patronising is that we now need to lose the word “lose” and as long as we have done our homework then this bank should be looked at as an investment.

Once we have a system that we are comfortable with and we understand the concept of value, we paper trade our system with various staking plans to find out which one maximises our profit whilst minimising our losses.

We start our “tour” of staking plans with probably the most popular and simplest one to follow and that is the “Level Staking Plan”
Simply we divide our banks into a percentage and stick to it. If your 100 point bank is split into 2% then for every bet that you place on Betfair Games its £2.00. This equates to 50 bets.

This is where we need to understand the average odds of our selections and the strike rate at which we are winning. It’s no good having a 30% strike rate when all your bets are 1.5 (odds on) as you will be at a loss! (You may want to look at laying!)

Another plan is to stick to the same percentage per bet but increase it and decrease it as our bank does. So if we’re still on 2% and our bank has grown to £110 then our next bet is now £2.20.This can really increase our profits but be careful as if the bank decreases then remember that our minimum bet is £2.00 on Betfair.

S.A.W (and I don’t mean the film!) stands for stop at a winner. This is where we have a set amount of profit that we want to achieve in a given time. Let’s say for example that we want to make £20.00 in a sitting on Betfair Games. With our selection criteria set in place we look at the odds of our first bet. Let’s say its 8/1. We divide the £20 by 8 which gives us a bet of £2.50. If this wins then we stop and walk away. We have made our profit. If it loses then our new target is still the £20 but we now need to add on the £2.50 from the previous bet. The next bet is now 6/1. We have to stake £3.75. If it wins we have £22.50 profit (-£2.50 from our previous bet). What we need to filter into this is a stop/loss trigger. If we have lost, say £20.00 then stop betting and walk away. Start again at a later time or date. Again this can be a good plan to use but you need to have a good strike rate and some discipline!

I’m actually going to stop it there as there are so many staking plans out there that involve everything from square rooting through to the “Fibonacci” sequence. Although they all have their merit I personally don’t think there necessary to making a profit from the Games.

Have a look at the little handicap system I showed you in this article: http://www.laytheodds.com/2010/01/18/value-profiting-from-the-games

With this system try using the S.A.W staking plan I described above. This does not involve trading though so there is no need to lay your selection when the price shortens. We are simply backing to win here. If you are looking for something quick to calculate your stakes or you struggle to work out the math (this link is a fantastic S.A.W calculator but it relates to Horse racing) then this is for you:

I hope this helps in your pursuits at being a better Betfair Games player.