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We are all familiar with that oft-repeated statistic that says that 95% of all Betfair punters do not make a long-term profit. Whilst I cannot find any Betfair press release that proves such a statement to be a fact, I can well believe it.

And yet it need not be like this.

All you need to do is to ensure that you stick 100% faithfully to a fundamental set of rules that will guide your betting and which ensures that you must end up with a profit.

A strong statement, I’m sure you will agree.   In this series of posts I intend spelling out what the fundamental set of rules are. If you follow them, then you will have a solid foundation for your betting.

OK – let’s get started.

The most important rule is: You Must Protect Your Betting Bank At All Costs.

What do I mean by this?

Your betting bank is the most important asset that you bring to your betting. Without one, you cannot bet and make money – so your first priority is not to put your betting bank under any unnecessary risk.

Note that I used the word ‘unnecessary’. Ideally, your bank should be exposed to no risk – but to achieve that would require that you did not bet at all! Hardly what we are trying to achieve!

So by betting, we accept that there will be some risk to our bank – but the aim is to ensure that the risk per bet is managed so that even a long run of unsuccessful bets does not wipe out the bank.

The best – and I believe only – way to achieve this is for each bet to be to a fixed liability. And that liability should be fixed somewhere in the range 1% – 5%. 1% if you are a cautious punter; 5% if you are more adventurous – but NEVER higher.

What does this mean in practice?

Suppose our betting bank is £1000. Then a 1% liability is £10 and a 5% liability is £50.

You  must decide what percentage liability you want to work with as you grow your betting bank and ideally you should stick with it for a long time.

If you decide to work to a 3% liability (my preferred percentage for my own betting), then every bet that you make (and it doesn’t matter if it is a back bet or a lay bet) should only give rise to this liability.

So for a back bet your stake would never be higher than £30 because that is the amount you will lose (ie the liability) if the bet is unsuccessful.

And for a lay bet, the liability would be £30 – ie that would be the amount you would lose if the lay was unsuccessful.

Note that none of the above has anything to do with the sport you are betting on (it could be horse-racing, greyhounds, football, snooker, or whatever); nor does it involve the odds to which you are backing or laying.

Too many punters increase the risk to their betting bank depending on the sort of bet that they are making. You hear people say ” I always increase my stake if the dog/horse/whatever is short-priced?”. Or – the worst sin – they increase the size of their bet following an unsuccessful bet to try to recoup losses.

I will be writing more about loss-recovery systems in a future post.

You must ensure that every bet has the same percentage liability because this will ensure that you can never go bust.

Let me explain in more detail.

If you have 1% liability of your bank per bet, then you would need  100 unsuccessful bets in a row to lose your entire bank.  If you are using a good system or tipster for your bets (another topic I will cover later on in this series),  then you should never experience such a bad run.

For a 3% liability, then you would need 33 consecutive unsuccessful bets; and for 5% liability, it would be 20 consecutive unsuccessful bets.

This assumes that you never change the original liability amount as your bank decreases. But what you should be doing is keeping the percentage liability constant as your bank increases and decreases.

Yes – there will be periods when your bank decreases and to be a successful pro-gambler you must learn to deal with such adversity calmly.

Let me give an example:

If your bank grows from £1000 to £1200, then to keep the 3% liability you would increase the liabilty from £30 to £36. And if the bank dropped to £800, then the 3% liability would be dropped to £24.

In a perfect world, you would recalculate the liability after every bet, but this may be a bit too much of a hassle. I would certainly recalculate once per week,  or every time the bank changed by a £100 amount either up or down.

By keeping the percentage liability constant regardless of the bank size, you can never be in a position where you can lose your entire bank. For example, with a 3% liability that is constantly adjusted, then you are always 33 bets away from losing your bank.

Betting to a fixed liability is a real fundamental building block for successful long-term betting. If you are not already doing it, then start now and stick to it!

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Chris