I am looking for experienced opinion on the best form of staking. I have 2 systems that have continued to turn a profit at level stakes for approx 18 months. I am keen to increase this to something more. What is safest way to increase profit but protect my hard earned bank....

Welcome Bobbydazzler,

This topic has been raised many times on this forum and opinions are varied on the best staking plan to use from level stakes, percentage of bank, Retirement plan to loss chasing schemes. My preference is 2% of highest point of bank (non-reducing). If you want to be a little more conservative you could use 0.5% or 1% of bank.

Check this out on your 18 months results to see how it suits your 2 systems.

Hi Bobbydazzler,

It depends a lot on your strike rate and personality type.

Partypooper has a thread called cover to win/target, which is worth a look. It works for his system but won't be for everyone, as you have to be able to cop a few big hits, for long-term gain.

If you use any kind of target betting, make sure you have a safety brake so you don't lose your shirt.

This retirement staking system gets a lot of press and seems to be quite logical:

http://www.grandstand.com.au/retirement.html

It also depends how much time you want to spend on working out your staking.

You may be best off long term with level stakes and focusing on getting a better price for your winners. A really good article that was posted a few months ago is:

www.trb.com.au/best_prices.html

If you're backing longer priced horses you can often get ridiculously good prices on Betfair. For instance a horse yesterday was $14 Unitab and I secured $30 on Betfair, though for a small stake.

Best of luck Bobbydazzler, may your systems long keep producing!!!

The Schmile

There,s lots of FREE stuff on the Practical Punting site.
One of them is the EBOOK of STAKING PLANS
Cheers
darky

cheers boys - will probably go to 1.5% bank staking - seems safe.... Thats the hardest thing for me, to keep treating this like an investment.... slow .... steady.....calculated...... disciplined .......... that why the turtle wins .....

One method that is often overlooked by punters , is betting to price , targeting a set take out figure.

This method is favoured by Bookmakers & certain Professional Punters because the figures take on a similar Liability shape as reflected to when they are balancing their Book values to make a profit on multiple selections, no matter which horse wins.

This is considered to be the strongest approach according to Bookmakers,
mainly due to the fact that generally , more of our shorter priced selections tend to win, than our longer priced selections & it evens the spread of money over these values ,more evenly..

Example over 3 separate races
Price 2.50 -Take out 50.00 = O/L 20.00

Price 11.00 -Take out 50.00 = O/L 4.55

Price 3.00 -Take out 50.00 = O/L 16.65

Total O/L over the 3 races is 41.20
To return 50.00
Profit if just one of these gets up +8.80

If just one of the 3 gets up , we are in profit +8.80
If 2 get up , that's a bonus.

Where as at level stakes , we would only be in profit if ...
2 selections get up
0r
The one at the longest price gets up.

It is natural for a punter to have second thoughts to place the same amount on a 40/1 shot as he would on a 2/1 shot.
What usually happens is that the punter frightens himself off the selection, as soon as he claps eyes on its price, then bets something else at a shorter price , only to see his 40/1 pop get up to win , that's when he rants,...
"I was going to bet that ,but changed my mind"

Now if he bet it to price say 40.00 To take out $50.00 = O/L 1.25
He would feel a lot more comfortable with his original decision, & more likely to have made the bet , after all , there may have been a good reason why it qualified as a selection in the first place.

The downside to this approach is that we miss out on the big payers if they arrive , but if one looks at most selection plans , they nearly all lose at level stakes, mainly because they say, that the shorter payers that got up did not pay enough.
In other words they put too much on the losers & not enough on the winners , which are usually the shorter payers.
So Betting to Price tries to address this situation.

One could bet to a min price of say... (Optional)
$3.30 ,even though its actual price is less than this , that way we are not over betting the really short priced horses that may fall over any way & it wont take as long to recover those losses because there would be less to recover.
Example
2.00 T/O 50.00 = O/L 25.00 (Loss if it losers.)
3.30 (actual price 2.00)T/O 50.00 = O/L 15.15 (Loss if it losers.)
That's a 40% difference in O/L for minimal profit advantage.

__________________
Cheers.

I forgot ...


Can you say what the Rules of those selection methods are?

__________________
Cheers.

not all but i will say this

* i only ever bet on sat in quality races
* i only ever bet on quality horses that i believe are overpriced


it is impossible to make money with under priced horses ......I bet the percentages - strong horses in form at good odds ..... it took me approx 4 years learning about odds and percentages (alot through this site and others), reading books and doing the maths......

disciplined informed punting .... i see the mugs who lay at betf#$r and UNIT$B as the enemy......

"GOOD HORSES WIN GOOD RACES"

I like your style bobbydazzler!

Your comments remind me of the great Bart Cummings when he said; "Patience is the cheapest thing in racing but most people don't use it"

Before reading your post, I was going to suggest having your main bank set at level stakes of 1.5% and having a smaller bank and start at say %5.

The idea was thus for the smaller bank:

Every time your bank increases by 50%, you add another .5 of a percentage point to safeguard profits.

E.g. initial stake set at say:

5% --> bank increases 50% --> New stake =
4.5% --> bank increases 50% --> New stake =
4% etc.
until you get back down to a desired safe level, say 1-2%.

It's a way to turbo charge a bank at the beginning and safeguard profits should the good times roll. You could start with as little as $100 and really get aggressive depending on your strike rate/average run of outs etc.

On another topic:
I also have a question, can you recommend any of the books you have read regarding the mathematics of betting? I'd really appreciate it!!

Best of luck bobbydazzler, it sounds like you've got everything pretty sorted.

The Schmile

Gotta love the library and the internet - free info.......

Sounds really dumb but I read books on roulette and casino games... gave me a great understanding of odds and how the house always win...

I then got hold of every book i could on bookmaking....started to understand that bookies don't care who wins- the books are set at a percentage and they win regardless of the race result.

Thereby ensuring the average punter cannot win (with the odds they offer)....

Don Scott certainly knew about betting and bookmaking.... He was adamant that the only way to make profit is to bet "the overs".... he is worth a read ..

cheers