Optimal bet size (and the advantage of small bets).

[stompix]

I will be writing about sports betting here, not casino games. Let's discuss what the optimal bet size is depending on the profit expectation. Most likely, different strategies allow different percentage values ​​of a single bet as a percentage of the entire bankroll. You often see the opinion that the size of a single bet should be from 1 to 5%. This is a logical opinion, but I came across an interesting argument that quite logically justifies lower bets.

You're confusing two things, he probability of you winning and the amount you might win, one is variable the other one is fixed, with a gambler fallacy in the example in which you are destined to actually win after 1000 picks because of randomness, but in betting the problem is that you might now have actually those chances.
A 1.5 bet doesn't mean that out of x you're going to end x out of y, in sorts, these never happen, you might be more lucky or less lucky, and in other casino-based games it's useless since there the RTP will be your enemy.

You can make bets with 1 cents to keep enough bankroll and you will see that the results are nowhere near what they seem. I've done my experiment with under 1.5 bets, after 60 games I'm less than 6% in the green, nowhere to the math the bets would lead to by their odds.

In addition, I wrote that we mean a strategy with a small win. The approximate ratio is that out of 10 bets, 6 are winning and they somewhat exceed the size of 4 losing ones.

Will it? Second, how will you pick your 60% chance games?
You make it sound it so easily that everyone would be able to make money by just betting a small amount yet look around, nobody managed to get this strategy working, because it is flawed from the start. you're confusing odds with the chance of winning

[hahay]

I also do a single betting method like that, I expect the winning bets to be more than the losing ones, so I will still get a good profit. At least, when I decided to do a lot of single bets because previously I always made parlay bets and I often got the results when there was one match or two matches that lost in my parlay bet. With an incident likethat,  then I decided to make a lot of single bets, even  though at first it went according to plan because I got a lot of my winning single bets, but over time I found it difficult to get a good profit. The reason is,  because our bets will not always be according to plan because when there are  many  matches or bets that lose it willreally destroy  my balance. It's different when I make a parlay bet, even though I get a loss but at least it's only a small loss.

[Smartprofit]

You didn't quite get my point. Nobody forces us to make many bets per unit of time. The point is to simply use small bets of 1/1000 of the bankroll. In this case, your clear advantage will only manifest itself over a long distance, which corresponds to a large number of bets already played, conventionally this corresponds to the number 1000. This is a manifestation of the law of large numbers. Small bets are needed to protect against unfavorable dispersion. That is, small bets allow us to save the deposit when luck is not on our side. In addition, I wrote that we mean a strategy with a small win. The approximate ratio is that out of 10 bets, 6 are winning and they somewhat exceed the size of 4 losing ones.

I got the gist of it, the answer to many bets per day was on the post above, which said that he can make ten bets per day on the NBA and have a good profit, for me it looks too complicated in the sense that after a few days of such an intense game the player can burn out.

As for the bet size, I agree that the smaller part of the deposit we risk, the easier it is to play, but even in this case it all depends on the size of your bank, one player's bankroll can be $1000 and he will risk a bet of $1, and another player's bankroll can be $10,000 and the bet size can be $100 (in this case, the bet will be 1% of the deposit - more often than not, this ratio is enough for safe play for experienced players).

We were talking about the odds because you say that 6 out of 10 can be winning, but in this case the size of the odds is important so that the winnings can cover the losses, otherwise if it is a small odds, the loss will be higher even with 6 winning bets.

As far as I understand, we are talking about the fact that the general betting strategy has an efficiency of 60 percent.

That is, for simplicity, we assume that both outcomes have equal probability. If we assume that the odds are different, then the number of bets should change. For example, if we bet on an event whose probability is twice as high, then the number of bets is halved. And if we bet on an event whose probability is twice as low, then the number of bets doubles.

After all, the probability of winning is halved and in order not to drain the entire bankroll, the number of bets will have to be increased.

This is also a simplified scheme, since it does not take into account, for example, the bookmaker's reward.

[Julien_Olynpic]

You're confusing two things, he probability of you winning and the amount you might win, one is variable the other one is fixed, with a gambler fallacy in the example in which you are destined to actually win after 1000 picks because of randomness, but in betting the problem is that you might now have actually those chances.
A 1.5 bet doesn't mean that out of x you're going to end x out of y, in sorts, these never happen, you might be more lucky or less lucky, and in other casino-based games it's useless since there the RTP will be your enemy.

You can make bets with 1 cents to keep enough bankroll and you will see that the results are nowhere near what they seem. I've done my experiment with under 1.5 bets, after 60 games I'm less than 6% in the green, nowhere to the math the bets would lead to by their odds.

I understand what you mean and I agree with you in some ways. Indeed, we will not be able to make a profit if we win 6 games out of 10 with a coefficient of, say, 1.5. After all, losing 4 bets out of ten will lead us to losing 40% of the bankroll (we assume that the bets fixed in size).
At the same time, winning 6 bets out of 10 with a coefficient of 1.5 gives us 90% of only the previous bankroll (6*1.5 = 9). Thus, with such coefficients, we will slowly lose money. This means that to win we need odds of around 2. Thus, we lose 4 bets out of 10 (or 400 out of 1000), but the remaining 6 winning bets with odds of 2 will bring us 6*2=12, i.e. 120-100% = 20% of winnings to the previous bankroll. More precisely, it is about odds greater than 2 (the author writes about 53% of winnings).
How difficult is it to win 6 bets out of 10 with odds of 2 - this is, of course, a separate question.

Will it? Second, how will you pick your 60% chance games?
You make it sound it so easily that everyone would be able to make money by just betting a small amount yet look around, nobody managed to get this strategy working, because it is flawed from the start. you're confusing odds with the chance of winning

I wrote about 60%, but the author admits that the percentage could be much lower.
Here is what the author of the book I mentioned writes about this:

Let's say you started year, with a bankroll of $10,000, and you decide to bet $220 on 1 event, and by the end of the year you have made 2,000 bets… Let's also say that you win 53% of all bets. It is clear that you will win 50% of your bets even just in theory probability, that is, in fact, there is no miracle in guessing 3 more winners out of every hundred bets. Sports betting is not at the level of creating atomic bombs. If you do a little research, read the news and stay up to date, it is not surprising that you will be able to guess 530 bets out of 1000. So after 2000 bets with a win percentage of 53 you will have 1060 winning bets at 220 dollars for a total profit of $212,000 and 940 losing options at $220 each for a total loss of $206,800. That's a net profit of $5,200. When was the last time you were offered a 52% return on your investment in a year? In the stock market? In the real estate market? Also, if you invest in sports betting - you can always withdraw all your capital.

[Nrcewker]

The problem with your betting method is the time.
Making 1000 sports bets isn't easy at all.

Exactly, people are overlooking this. Practically, if we follow this strategy, then it will take tons of months. Moreover, finding good games with sufficient odds to match the requirements is very hard. And in order to try this above method mentioned by the OP, you need a big bank roll. With a small bank roll, let's say 100 dollars, after a few months, hardly you will be able to make 105 dollars max. Profit is always equivalent to the risk taken in the bets, so the less risk you take, the more time it will take to make good profits.

[GreatArkansas]

The problem with your betting method is the time.
Making 1000 sports bets isn't easy at all.

Exactly, people are overlooking this. Practically, if we follow this strategy, then it will take tons of months. Moreover, finding good games with sufficient odds to match the requirements is very hard. And in order to try this above method mentioned by the OP, you need a big bank roll. With a small bank roll, let's say 100 dollars, after a few months, hardly you will be able to make 105 dollars max. Profit is always equivalent to the risk taken in the bets, so the less risk you take, the more time it will take to make good profits.

Still, it's still low risk: low reward or, high risk: high reward.
But I agree with the advantage of small bets, plus you will able to get experience of the game here, over time you will gain experience on the game or different teams playing over the time and important in gambling also, the more you stay in the game, the longer your capital stays, the more bets you can do and it will help you get more profits.

[tread93]

I will be writing about sports betting here, not casino games. Let's discuss what the optimal bet size is depending on the profit expectation. Most likely, different strategies allow different percentage values ​​of a single bet as a percentage of the entire bankroll. You often see the opinion that the size of a single bet should be from 1 to 5%. This is a logical opinion, but I came across an interesting argument that quite logically justifies lower bets.

To put it briefly, the point of very small bets is to not lose the bankroll in the worst-case scenario. Let's say the effectiveness of your strategy is 60%. That is, for every 100 bets you will have 60 winning and 40 losing ones.
1. It is logical that these bets will be fixed in size.
2. At the very beginning, the size of this fixed bet will be approximately 1/1000 of the bankroll.
3. 60 winning bets should significantly exceed the size of 40 losing ones.
The thing is that average values ​​are characterized by dispersion. And if on average you have 60 winning bets out of 100, this does not mean that within each hundred bets you will have exactly 60 winning ones. It may well be that at the very beginning the ratio will be different. And you will come to the ratio of 60/40 only with a very large number of played bets (about 1000).
Here is what the author writes about this in the book "How to beat the line of the handicap"

It may help you to stay in the game if you imagine a cigar box that contains 1000 tickets with sports bets - 575 winning and 425 losing. Your task will be to pull out one of the coupons, write down in a notebook whether you won or lost, put the ticket back in the box, shake it and repeat the process. This is analogous to waiting for a win equal to 57.5 percent. Common sense dictates that you should eventually win more than you lose, all the time, given enough observations. After all, every time you stick your hand in the box, you have 575 chances of getting a winning ticket and 425 chances of getting a losing ticket. The problem is how many winning tickets you will get over the next ten or twenty bets, and that is, in the grand scheme of things, just guessing. You will probably get more wins than you lose, but there are no guarantees. Those 425 tickets can really hurt. You can very well end up with an incredible number of losses, even after playing for a long time. However, given enough attempts, you will eventually win. Your main goal is to make sure that you can predict more winners than losers with some accuracy. In other words, you should keep your bet sizes small enough in relation to your bankroll so that a losing streak doesn't "kill" your bankroll and force you to stop betting as a business.

This is very interesting but I honestly thought that there was going to be a much better golden nugget in there at the end. The problem with this is that the 60% is never guaranteed and who is to say that don’t you hit a shit streak and lose it all? It all comes down to having 80% Luck 10% balls to place the bets and 10% you have the money to wager - IMO

[stompix]

How difficult is it to win 6 bets out of 10 with odds of 2 - this is, of course, a separate question.

You do realize at this point we have stopped talking about he amount gabled and moved o the actual problem of the said strategy, the way toa actually win those bets? The "author" talks about a 3% like it's nothing but in reality, it's actually that 3-5% that makes the whole difference between winning and losing all your money. I have yet to see someone who would be able to claim a nonstop streak of managing to keep 2x odds on a 60% winning rate, and if you would be able to do it, the stake you start becomes of little importance, you can start with 1 cent, because of 20% gain in 10 bets you're looking at doubling your money with 24 bets,  let's assume you do these bets during a week and by 9 months you have millions!

You're focusing too much on the result rather than the way to achieve that, and that is simply not doable!

[DubemIfedigbo001]

Well I can sense some wisdom in your analogy as well as limitations, 1000 bets may sound reasonable to measure profitability, but it isn't easy to come by. For a careless gambler, he/she must've been liquidated before arriving at that number of bets and for a responsible gambler, it would take years to get to that mark.

This analogy presents gambling as an investment like Bitcoin which is going for a long term to be very profitable, but the last line in the quoted text is something in not very comfortable with which is treating gambling like a business. It shouldn't be so. In the end this strategy is still just logic and isn't applicable to everybody.  For some people the percentage could be more and for some it could be lesser.

[Stablexcoin]

As far as I understand, we are talking about the fact that the general betting strategy has an efficiency of 60 percent.

That is, for simplicity, we assume that both outcomes have equal probability. If we assume that the odds are different, then the number of bets should change. For example, if we bet on an event whose probability is twice as high, then the number of bets is halved. And if we bet on an event whose probability is twice as low, then the number of bets doubles.

After all, the probability of winning is halved and in order not to drain the entire bankroll, the number of bets will have to be increased.

This is also a simplified scheme, since it does not take into account, for example, the bookmaker's reward.

This a unique pattern but the 60 percent efficiency does not work for all betting strategy. Betting on favorite, ca be misleading to achieve the 60 percent efficiency. While its true that people gamble blindly on their favorite team, they are bound to lose most times more than their wins. I can say its more like a 40% efficiency because sometimes their favorite team mess up the game.

Both sides are flawed, the bookmakers and the casino. A gambler can luckily see a loop hole and make good use of that chance. This means 80% efficiency is possible.

[Gozie51]

It may help you to stay in the game if you imagine a cigar box that contains 1000 tickets with sports bets - 575 winning and 425 losing. Your task will be to pull out one of the coupons, write down in a notebook whether you won or lost, put the ticket back in the box, shake it and repeat the process. This is analogous to waiting for a win equal to 57.5 percent. Common sense dictates that you should eventually win more than you lose, all the time, given enough observations. After all, every time you stick your hand in the box, you have 575 chances of getting a winning ticket and 425 chances of getting a losing ticket. The problem is how many winning tickets you will get over the next ten or twenty bets, and that is, in the grand scheme of things, just guessing. You will probably get more wins than you lose, but there are no guarantees. Those 425 tickets can really hurt. You can very well end up with an incredible number of losses, even after playing for a long time. However, given enough attempts, you will eventually win. Your main goal is to make sure that you can predict more winners than losers with some accuracy. In other words, you should keep your bet sizes small enough in relation to your bankroll so that a losing streak doesn't "kill" your bankroll and force you to stop betting as a business.

There is alot of sense and meaning to what this writer said, it buttress the point of having a range of staking power like between 1-5% of bankroll and in fact, keeping it on a steady amount so that by random in 1000 bets, you have more chances of increasing your capital or gain than reducing it. If a gambler is competent to win more with 575 chances in 1000 games than 425 loses in same number of games then to make it a flat rate of bankroll can be a sure source and doing it as business with steady turn over rather than increasing your risk after you have won or lost out of anxiety or frustration For me I still favour smaller risk and more chances of winning and staying in the game than taking risk and losing all bankroll.

[Promocodeudo]

The reality is the longer you gamble, the longer you will ended up losing.

Lots of people gamble in hopes of bagging hundreds of dollars but you are not going to get that by playing again and again. I have tried playing again and again and all it landed me was a loss of money. Mind you that I had already earned some profit at that point but again I lost it when I kept playing. So keep this in mind when you want to do more. If you want to keep gambling but can’t help but lose then I would suggest waiting for a bit. Gain your mojo back and strike

Buddy this is easy said than done, every gambler gambles for the money apart from those people that are categorizeed as gamblers who gambles for fun and there is this kind of mindset most gamblers has which is consistency sometimes I even feel if they think that gambling is part of investment, some gamblers dont see taking a break as an option instead they see it as an act of weakness not knowing that they are digging into some kind of stuff that aren't that realistic as they see it to be.
In the aspect of winning and wanting to win more from the amount you have won already, this character is common among gamblers, many gamblers exbit this character thereby failing to ccknowlege the fact that if you win a bet, it's not a criteria that you will win again within that period though sometimes it happens that people still win but we are really looking at the possibility of such happening.

You got a good advise in your conclusions, hope it could be seen as an advise thats much more good to adhere to by many gamblers that see chasing of loss as a good thing without considering the likely outcome.

[Julien_Olynpic]

In the strategy of small bets, the key element is the small bets themselves, approximately equal to 1/1000 of the bankroll. Of course, at the same time:
1. We have to place bets with a coefficient of about x2.
2. We must have some kind of strategy that allows most of these bets to have an advantage over the bookmaker's line.
3. This advantage in a stable form is likely to manifest itself over a very long distance (about 1000 bets)
   Of course, no one forces you to make 1,000 bets per year. Perhaps you will do so much in just a few years. It's just about not losing your money, despite the fact that you have a good strategy overall, but you don't take into account the possibility of adverse variance.
     If you do not have a reliable strategy that would allow you to have an advantage over the bookmaker's line with a coefficient of 2, then, of course, small bets will not bring you much benefit. But in any case, they won't let you lose your bankroll too quickly.

[mak013]

When i tried to make sport betting the main income, my betting strategy was:
1. One bet - 1/10 pf the bankroll.
2. Odds - higher than 2.5
3. Bet only after analyses
4. Get bankroll back - first of all.
5. After 4 - fix the bet size.

It worked. But i can`t say that it is good strategy for everybody. The main problem is to make good research for such odds. I could wait for a day or two days to make one such bet. If we make small bets - the prize would be really small. I tries to get stable profit, it means that i must make large enough bets and regularly withdraw money and i tried to increase  bankroll same time. So the result was about 1/30 of bankroll per bet.

[Cryptmuster]

In the strategy of small bets, the key element is the small bets themselves, approximately equal to 1/1000 of the bankroll. Of course, at the same time:
1. We have to place bets with a coefficient of about x2.
2. We must have some kind of strategy that allows most of these bets to have an advantage over the bookmaker's line.
3. This advantage in a stable form is likely to manifest itself over a very long distance (about 1000 bets)
   Of course, no one forces you to make 1,000 bets per year. Perhaps you will do so much in just a few years. It's just about not losing your money, despite the fact that you have a good strategy overall, but you don't take into account the possibility of adverse variance.
     If you do not have a reliable strategy that would allow you to have an advantage over the bookmaker's line with a coefficient of 2, then, of course, small bets will not bring you much benefit. But in any case, they won't let you lose your bankroll too quickly.

I think that in reality everything works a little differently (although of course there are always exceptions), I will assume that the average player makes about two bets per week (as I understand it, we are discussing bets), this will be approximately 10 bets per month, in a year this will be about 100 bets, I think this is the average for the majority of players.

As for the bankroll, the same average player is unlikely to deposit more than $100, and in this case no one will divide 1/1000 with such a budget, at best it will be 1/100 (that is, 1%) and in practice, players can bet 10% or even more if they are confident in the bet, therefore the risks are higher, the adrenaline is stronger and the loss has a greater impact on the bank. Players risk more than 1% per bet because in the end it becomes boring to play for $1, you will not be able to win anything significant and you will hardly worry about such a bet, which means you will not get the emotions that you will get if you bet 10% or more.

[mak013]

In the strategy of small bets, the key element is the small bets themselves, approximately equal to 1/1000 of the bankroll. Of course, at the same time:
1. We have to place bets with a coefficient of about x2.
2. We must have some kind of strategy that allows most of these bets to have an advantage over the bookmaker's line.
3. This advantage in a stable form is likely to manifest itself over a very long distance (about 1000 bets)
   Of course, no one forces you to make 1,000 bets per year. Perhaps you will do so much in just a few years. It's just about not losing your money, despite the fact that you have a good strategy overall, but you don't take into account the possibility of adverse variance.
     If you do not have a reliable strategy that would allow you to have an advantage over the bookmaker's line with a coefficient of 2, then, of course, small bets will not bring you much benefit. But in any case, they won't let you lose your bankroll too quickly.

I think that in reality everything works a little differently (although of course there are always exceptions), I will assume that the average player makes about two bets per week (as I understand it, we are discussing bets), this will be approximately 10 bets per month, in a year this will be about 100 bets, I think this is the average for the majority of players.

As for the bankroll, the same average player is unlikely to deposit more than $100, and in this case no one will divide 1/1000 with such a budget, at best it will be 1/100 (that is, 1%) and in practice, players can bet 10% or even more if they are confident in the bet, therefore the risks are higher, the adrenaline is stronger and the loss has a greater impact on the bank. Players risk more than 1% per bet because in the end it becomes boring to play for $1, you will not be able to win anything significant and you will hardly worry about such a bet, which means you will not get the emotions that you will get if you bet 10% or more.

I think that i have some moments to correct.
We can`t talk about common gambler - i don`t think that the gamblers with 2 bets per week will plan his bankroll for a year at least. Such player will bet as much if he decide that moment.
But i can agree that 1/1000 bankroll is too small bet. It may be correct bet, but you need huge bankroll to feel the interest to such bets.