Staking Plans

First things first, if the system you are using to make your selections is not producing a profit, then no staking plan on earth will turn that loss into a gain, that is a mathematical certainty and anyone who tells you other, is misleading you.

However, if your system is a winning one, then by adjusting your Staking Plan you can certainly increase your profits and bank more quickly or reduce your losses if you find yourself in a losing run. Never increase your stake to recoup losses, it can only lead to disaster in the end.

At the sort of odds we are betting at in football there are 2 solid options with a further 2 that can be used, if you are confident enough about the system you are using. The solid options are Level Stakes and Variable Stakes. The other options are Percentage Bank and Square Root.

Level Stakes

Level stakes is by far the simplest staking plan to use. It is the plan by which all others are measured. If you cannot make a profit using Level Stakes, you will not make a profit using any other Staking Plan. If you can make a profit using Level Stakes, then other plans may help you increase that profit quicker.

Level Stakes means you are staking the same amount of money on each bet you make. Let’s say you have a £1000 bank and you have split that up into 50 points, that means each point will equal £20. Every bet you make, whether it be an evens home shot or a 4/1 away winner, will be a £20 bet. Win or lose you will stick to this £20 bet every time. There is nothing difficult or exciting about it. Your bank will grow slowly but steadily, as long as your selections are correct.

Variable Stakes

With this plan you place different sized stakes depending on what odds you are betting at. It is often used when you are working with a smaller sized bank. Whereas with level stakes you would normally have a 50 point bank, with Variable Stakes you can work with a 25 point bank, as your stakes are reduced.

For instance, if you have a £1000 bank and split this into 25 points, it will give you £40/bet. In football betting we would equate this £40 to an even money shot. So, if you backed Liverpool at home at evens, you would place £40 on the bet. However, if you were backing Hull and they were 4/1, then you would decrease your stake by the odds you are backing at i.e. 40/4 = £10 stake. If they were 2/1, it would be 40/2 = £20 stake.

Obviously, the longer the odds, the longer the potential losing runs and so by cutting down your stake, it helps protect your bank. In effect what you are doing is fixing your profit on each bet, to the limit of your maximum stake. In this particular example £40 is your maximum stake at evens. Anything above evens and your stake is reduced, so that the profit you make is always £40. Any bet below evens and your stake stays at £40.

Percentage Bank

This plan can be used when you are confident of the strike rate of the system you are using. As your bank increases or decreases, then you adjust the level of your stake to a percentage of your current bank. The first thing you need to decide is what percentage of the bank you are willing to stake.

With football betting I think 2% of the bank is a good yardstick, it will give you 50 points and plenty of leeway. After every bet you need to re-calculate your new stake for the next selection. There are options with this plan. Some people increase their stake if the bank has gone up but if it has gone below its’ start mark, they don’t decrease their stake, they leave it at 2% of the original bank, which is a perfectly viable option.

The other option is to keep your stake at the same level until your initial bank has increased by 25% and then start betting at 2% of the new bank and keep it at that level until it has grown another 25%. All these are viable options as far as the odds we are betting at in the football arena.

Square Root

This is a plan where you can increase your stake, if the bank has gone up, by a square root proportion of the bank increase. Sounds complicated but it really is not. Let’s say your starting bank is £1000 and it is a 50 point bank, therefore making your bets £20. Your first bet is a winner and takes your bank up to £1050.

Now instead of staking £20 again, what you do is, take the square root of 50 (which is your profit), this gives you 7.07 or to the nearest £ it is £7. So instead of staking £20 on your next bet you stake £27 and continue in this manner with succeeding bets. Obviously you only increase your bet if your bank is in profit and you take the square root of whatever total profit the bank has made and add that figure to the initial £20 stake. Told you it was simple.

So there you have 4 Staking Plans that can be used with football betting. Level Stakes and Variable Stakes are the solid, conservative methods which will keep your bank safe but will not encourage rapid bank growth. The other two are really for those who are completely happy with the betting system they use and can, with confidence, predict that it will continue making profits.

At the end of the day, it is up to the individual to decide which is for them. I would not put anyone off using any of the 4 plans above, they all have their benefits but I have to re-iterate, that for any of them to work, you must first have a system/method/plan/formula that works, without it none of the above Staking Plans would turn it into a profit.