Racing Staking Plans
01 Apr Staking Plans
- Here’s the proper way to carry out a Fibonacci Sequence Staking plan. On a losing bet – multiply the fixed stake by one step up in the sequence. After you win a wager – multiply the fixed stake by a number two steps down in the sequence.
- Great Staking Approaches (57) Percentage Betting (8) Target Betting (50) Big Six (2) Doubles (13) Caulfiled Cup Melbourne Cup Group Races (5) Exactas (2) Favourites (2).
Big Six (2) Caulfiled Cup Melbourne Cup Group Races (5) Doubles (13) Exactas (2) Favourites (2) Fibonacci Sequence (1) First Four (9) Frame Betting (1).
The importance of a staking plan was highlighted to me last week after a professional punter I know very well nearly came to grief. For several years now my friend who is in his sixties supports himself solely from the punt, living in a beautiful suburb with harbour views and a decent but not extravagant lifestyle. PP decided after many years of trial and a lot of error that he had a ratings system that would sustain him if he stayed very disciplined, and he has. PP only has several real bets a year, he has small change bets of say 10-20 dollars here and there for interest sake but his real bets after meeting all of his criteria are usually $20-30K on the nose generally around the 2.30 to 3.80 range of odds, he will take shorter but never odds-on is one of his rules, I personally don’t mind taking odds-on as long as it’s not unders. His form has been very good and he has never sustained more than two losses in a row.
Now PP started up his career as a pro with a bank of $120K and some years has had as little as 5 bets and the most being 9 bets in a year, he told me last year it was 7 bets for 3 wins and 4 losses. He invests very conservatively and is a survivor. So let’s say hypothetically his bets were all $25K that equals $175K in outgoing expenses and if his 3 winning bets averaged 2.80 then that $210K returned, yes he lived that year (a leaner than average one but not by much in his words) on a tax free $35K maintaining his betting bank at the original $120K (these are approximates and not showing the variation of wins and losses in real time).
The problem happened this season when he lost 3 in a row and had also placed a large futures bet on Capatilist to win the slipper leaving him with only $20K left in his bank, maybe not enough to trade his way out of trouble and with the way Capitalist went in his lead up race then getting the blows in the market, a life on a paltry government whittled down pension was looming ominously for our very nervous dapper friend. We know the result and he lives to fight another day but has learnt a valuable lesson from this, staking plan upgrade.
Smart punters have a staking plan that allows them to survive a run of losses as high as a 10-15 in a row, it’s called variation and happens to the best of them in the pro ranks but they know that it will swing their way soon enough back to winners and they have an ammo supply to see their way through it when the time comes.
Let’s call a unit 1% of your betting bank so if you start with a $100K bank a unit to you is $1K, if you start out with a $10K bank then $100 bucks is your unit size. The more confident you are in a horses winning chances the more units you bet say 5 units and if you rate a few other runners in a race as winning chances or your confidence level is not as high on your selection then you will decrease your unit size accordingly, say 0.5-1.0 units. As the betting bank increases then increase the unit size and when the bank reduces to a certain limit say 60% of your original bank then decrease the unit size. This is one of the better staking plans loosely based on the “Kelly staking system”, level stakes should not be entertained by pro punters as the level of profit growth is hamstrung and we are all in this for profit better than bank interest.
For the casual punter staking plans often come naturally as per a weekly betting budget taken from another source such as wages but remember if you have $200 a week to spend on the punt remember that you often won’t get far if you whack the lot on the first selection so pace it out over your other selections and adjust the bet size to your confidence level and you will do much better in the long run. So when you see a tipping service giving out suggested units to have on a selection take this as a confidence rating and adjust your staking plan to it. So if you are really serious about your punting making a profit then do some research on staking plans, our dapper friend is ultra conservative in his betting and may only want to have a plan to survive 6 losses in a row now and not have to find too many more betting options in a year but at least that’s an upgraded insurance policy for the better, oh and another word of advice is stay well away from futures markets.
Staking plans for every situation to maximise your profits and limit your losses.
Simple Staking Plans
In simple terms, this is a method of maximising your chances of a long term profit from gambling.
The easiest course would be to follow a strategy of using level stakes for each bet. For example if the amount you have available is £100 (your betting bank) then you might decide to use 5% of that and so your level stakes for each bet would be £5.
There is a lot to be said for this method as any bigger priced winners will ensure a decent return but is probably best suited to selections for a wide range of prices.
Beware of falling into the trap of creating a plan based purely on a set of results unless the results can be shown to be replicable. This especially applies to a plan produced by a tipster to massage his results.
Compound Plans
One of the most common types is the bank percentage plan which involves staking a percentage of your betting bank. Say your bank is £100 and your percentage to wager is 5% then your initial stake is £5. If the bet is a losing one your bank is reduced to £95 and your next stake will be 5% of that ie £4.75. A winning 2-1 bet would raise the bank to £110 so your next stake would be £5.50.
Life of course is never as simple as this - for example you may wish to place five bets on an Exchange before leaving for work. After the result of the first race you may not be in a position to place the next bet at 5% of the resulting bank. In this case it would be best to place all bets at the same stake of £5.
The downside of this compound staking plan is that after a losing run, where your bank is reduced to less than the starting level, you will only be staking small amounts when the winners eventually come. If, for example, after 10 successive losing bets your bank has been reduced to £59.87 then your next stake is a mere £2.99.
We can get round this by using the Square Root staking plan which means increasing the stake when above your starting bank but leaving it the same when it dips below the starting amount. The amount to increase it by is the square root of the profit so far. If the starting bank was £100 and now stands at £120 then the square root of £20 is £1.41 so the total stake is £5 + £1.41 = £6.41
A third option is to use set stakes eg £5 until a predetermined bank is achieved eg £200 and then increase the stakes to say £10.
At some point you will want to take some of yourprofits. This can be done each time you reach a set amount which you remove or you can leave some of the profit to gradually increase your betting bank.
Price or Value and how they can influence your stakes
If you have identified a value bet, your stake could be influenced by the confidence you have in the bet. This confidence can be boosted by a number of factors such as; all the conditions of the race favour your selection as well as the stats and perhaps the advice of one or two tipsters.
The price of the selection can also play a part for example if it is a strong short priced favourite then a larger bet could be in order and vice versa.
Maria Staking Plan
Maria Staking Plan For Lays
If price is below 3.5 then use 1% of Betting Bank
If price is below 7.4 then use 0.6% of Betting Bank
If price is below 11.0 then use 0.4% of Betting Bank
Recalculate stakes on a daily basis unless the bank is reduced by 35% or more in which case recalculate the stakes before placing further bets.
Using this plan with the BF Bot Manager, the author turned a £3000 betting bank into £97,000 in 1 year.
Kelly Method
Depends upon an assumed price advantage over a bookmakers price. If you think your horse has an evens chance of winning and a bookmaker is offering 6-4 then theoretically you have a 10% advantage.
Racing Staking Plans For Beginners
In this case you would detemine your stake according to the percentage advantage - in simple terms you may increase a standard stake by £1 for each percentage advantage. In this case if your advantage is 10% then your stake is increased by £10.
Recovery Plans
There are many variations of this system but the main premise is to increase your stakes until you recover past losses.
Some suggest you increase stakes by an amount sufficient to recover a lost stake while others will attempt to recover the stake plus your profit.
The infamous Martingale system falls into this category which requires the punter to double stakes until a win is achieved.
The drawbacks to all these schemes could result in any of the following before the required outcome is achieved:
Stakes become so large that the betting bank is exhausted
Funds are not available to be matched on the betting exchanges
The punter loses his nerve when asked to place large bets to recover past losses
More reasonable variations of this method attempt to recover losses by spreading the recovery amounts over a number of bets
For example halve the loss to be recovered and attempt to retrieve that and if successful do the same with the second half.
Sequence Systems
The Fibonacci staking plan is the most well known and uses a sequence devised by a 13th century mathematician. The following sequence is used 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 ie the next number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two.
The idea is to use stakes following the sequence irrespective of strike rate or odds. You might try applying the method to past results to see if this method suits your usual betting strategy. Has it improved or reduced your returns?
Dual Banking
What Is The Best Staking Plan
The dual banking staking plan attempts to profit from all possible outcomes of an event by splitting all participants into two banks. Having decided on a target return for the event you then dutch the selections in each half to achieve the desired outcome.
For example you may decide to dutch together the first four in the market in one bank and do the same with the outsiders in the 2nd bank.
Each bank operates a recovery plan so that if, say, bank 1 makes a loss then, for the next event, stakes are raised to recover the loss. While the other bank will have made its profit, as backing all selections means that one of the two banks must always win.
However it should be borne in mind that a long losing run on one bank could result in over large stakes to recover the loss. In this case you can swap the banks selections in an attempt to end the losing run.
Racing Staking Plans Template
This is an interesting method of staking but does require careful management.