OZmium Sports Betting and Horse Racing Forums

Hi Benny,

Staking , IMO is not a weekly consideration, it is a per selection consideration and it should reflect the level of risk that you are comfortable with.

Most professionals stake proportionaly to the market chance of their selection. That means that the better the chance the market gives the horse the more they have on it. That protects the bank and reduces the risk.

Alternatively a flat stake per selection based on a percentage of the bank, may be 1% or 0.5%.

You have to have the ability to know the risks to your betting capital from the selection method. THAT will determine the staking for each of your selection (more importantly the method).

What does that mean?
If your selections are predominantly based on long-shots then 1% or proportional will not work, traditional 4% proportional will probably not give you enough to stake to make a bet on the longer priced selections and 1% will send you broke.

You need to know:
What is my risk, based on long-term past result sample. (I have seen profitable systems that go broke during the sample size; which is obviously untenable)
What level of bank draw-down am I really comfortable. (you have to be honest, most people say oh 50% is fine and crumble after 25%)

The above will give you your staking. I believe, and have proven this many times that methods need their own staking individually worked out for each method. Obviously Axis does that and clients can play around with the risks, staking percentages and amounts and dividends and see what risks and rewards each permutation brings; to work out what the right risk/reward scenario is the best for them.

It makes no difference to your bank size; there is no bank of any size that is OK to loose, everyone should approach their punting with the same professionalism, if you cant do it with $1 bets you definitely wont when the bets get higher!

We have several articles on our site that may help you, look at 'Learning to bet like a pro'.