Betting Banks and Why All Punters Need Them

Author
Recent Posts

I opened my Betfair account on 22nd April 2003. I was one of the first subscribers to Adam Todd's BetTrader and was a founding partner of JuiceStorm.com on 17th February 2007.

Latest posts by Man of Mystery (see all)

The TopTrap Greyhound Profit And Loss Account On Betfair - March 17, 2022
Betfair Best Execution – 11 Requested & Filled At 320 - January 16, 2022
BTB System e-book - March 13, 2015

Article by The Secret Betting Club

Our new Master Class articles are here to help you with key areas that will help contribute to your success when betting. These articles are designed to be all-encompassing, explaining each concept from the ground upwards.

In this article, we look into the concept of betting banks and why they are so vital to the professional gambler. We also provide examples of how you can quickly formulate the most optimal betting bank for each service you follow.

WHAT ARE BETTING BANKS?

A Betting Bank is a set amount of money that you put aside for each service or system that you follow for the most effective returns. For each service/system that you follow, you should have a separate and designated betting bank.

A good betting bank will

• Protect you from losses caused by inevitable losing runs

• Help to maximize effectively how much profit you make overall following a service.

Without a betting bank in place, the dangers of large losses are great and very often this can be one of the main reasons why some people fail when it comes to betting for profit.

The good news is that setting up a betting bank is extremely simple and we provide advice on doing just that for each service we recommend.

If you need assistance setting up a betting bank, read through our explanations below.

HOW TO SETUP A BETTING BANK

The following example is taken from the Betting Portfolio service on how to setup a correct betting bank.

Betting Banks can be split up into 2 areas which we are going to call, A Points Betting Bank and a Financial Betting Bank.

Points Betting Bank (PBB)

For each service we calculate the optimal amount of points you need to assign into a betting bank. This protects you from losing runs, enhances winning runs, and keeps staking consistent over time.

Each service stakes differently so this Points Betting Bank (PBB) is optimised for each individual service. This allows you to stake efficiently on each service and with confidence that your Financial Betting Bank (see below) will not go bust.

The PBB for each service take into account the historical worst losing run for that service. Our general rule of thumb is to double the previous longest losing run, so that should such a poor run happen again in the future, then no more than at worst 50% of any betting bank should be lost.

Why double the longest losing run? If the credit crunch has taught us anything, it’s relying on past data for risk assessment is imperfect. Many of the banks modelled their risk of mortgage bonds going bust base on a couple of decades data. They didn’t contemplate that the worse could happen so weren’t prepared when it did. Just because a service or system has had a worst losing run of 25 points in the past doesn’t mean it won’t surpass this in the future. There’s no way of knowing how bad a losing run could get. For this reason, we think it prudent to at least double the longest losing run. It’s not perfect, but we believe it’s a safer method of staking than simply staking based on the worse run exactly.

For example, a service may advise regular bets all at 1 point stakes. Historically we can see that the worst historical losing run is -20 pts. Therefore, it is safe to assume that a 50pt bank should see you right if joining at the onset of a similar losing run, no more than 40% of your bank lost.

In our opinion it is better to be safer than sorry when it comes to betting banks, so very often our recommended sizes are fairly cautious. This is because we wish to protect our investment and aim to make a long-term profit.

Financial Betting Bank (FBB)

Of course the amount of money you can actually make from following a service depends on the real-life Financial Betting Bank (FBB) you can apply to it.

This refers to the amount of money you set aside to follow a service, when considering the PBB.

This FBB amount is related to the PBB as we will go on to demonstrate in the example below.

This FBB amount should be an amount of money you feel comfortable risking in following a particular service. This should be a lump sum of money you have available for investment and should be separate to funds needed for living expenses.

BETTING BANK EXAMPLE

To illustrate all these points lets use a few examples.

For each service we recommend, we list the Points Betting Bank required for optimal following. You can find this listed each month in our reports.

For the service, ‘Equine Investments’, we recommend you need a PBB of 150 points. This 150 point figure takes into account historical losing runs, and the current method of staking that Equine Investments utilises.

At the current time of writing, if following Equine Investments over the past 12 months this would have brought you 237.33 points profit to their advised staking.

Let’s say we decide to follow Equine Investments with a FBB of £2500 in real money.

We then divide the FBB by the PBB to get our staking per point.

2500/150 = £16.67 per point…. £16.67 is our stake per point.

If you had made 237.33 X £16.67 over the past year that brings a £3955.50 actual profit.

When bearing in mind the cost of subscription to Equine Investments is £1295 a year, the overall profit after subscriptions would be £2660.50 to your FBB.

Very simple ruling for effective staking

As you can see it is very simple to calculate your own staking.

All you need do is divide your Financial Betting Bank by the recommended Points Betting Bank, which gives you the amount per point you can financially risk.

Simplicity!

DANGER OF NOT USING A BETTING BANK

If you chose to ignore the need for a betting bank for any particular service it can be extremely damaging.

Take a recent example that we came across, whereby we received an email from an SBC member who was £2000 down following a particular service, and he was wondering how much longer he could continue to follow it.

In breaking down his loss further, it transpired he was betting for this service at £50 per point, and so was effectively 40 pts in deficit. (£2000/50)

Our recommendation for this particular service was to operate to a 250 point betting bank, therefore at £50 a point (his staking), he should have a total financial betting bank of £12,500 invested. (£50 X 250).

It transpired that this wasn’t the case and he did not have a £12,500 financial betting bank in place. This therefore placed extreme stress on his betting as he was not working to the official standards.

This particular member’s approach was not rare, as for many betting banks are a new concept. It doesn’t help as well when certain services don’t supply advice upon joining about running a betting bank, therefore leaving you high and dry and needing to work this out yourself. Thankfully this is where we can come in with our own points betting bank recommendations.

Going back to the credit crunch as an example, the banks lost a ton of money effectively betting on house prices. As we all now know, it was a bad bet. What made it so bad wasn’t the bet itself, but the size of the bet. Had they kept their exposure small, the bet wouldn’t have bankrupted the entire system. Instead they got greedy and overleveraged. The banks effectively were betting at £50 per point on a £2,000 account. This maximised returns in the short run, but left them massively exposed in the end.

ADVANTAGE OF USING A BETTING BANK

If we use the above example service again, whereby there is a 250 point betting bank recommended, we can see how effective a betting bank can be.

The member above was concerned that he had lost £2000 in following this service, but the reality was this should have only accounted for a loss of 16% of his entire bank.

The advantage here is that 16% is obviously very manageable, and the 40 pt loss had to be expected, bearing in mind that we recommended a 250 pt bank to follow.

If using the points betting bank, you can absorb this 16% loss easily.

Bear in mind that our recommended points betting bank sizes are designed to cover a loss no greater than 40 to 50% of the overall size. If therefore you are extremely unlucky and join at the exact wrong time, then you should lose no more than 50% of the bank.

The chance of losing 50% of your bank is very rare but still has a small percentage chance of occurring; therefore we include this in our calculations. We’re also covering the all too real chance of the worst losing run from the past being exceeded.

BUILDING UP GRADUALLY

There is also no harm in starting small with your betting and building up over a number of years. By doing this you are building a platform for long-term success, and it provides a foundation on which to develop your betting further.

Many of the services we recommend have been with us for sometime and will still be here for a number of years at least, so there is no rush to make large sums quickly.

Our advice is to not feel pressurised to instantly start making thousands of pounds in your first few months, and instead allow the returns to gradually evolve over time.

In our own experience we began our own successful betting by starting small and building up in this exact manner; gradually increasing stakes, and adding further services into our portfolio over time, in line with our growing profits.

From small acorns can great trees grow!

This especially helps you get to grips with any new services that you begin to follow. By betting to smaller stakes to begin with, you can ensure that each service fits into your lifestyle and that you are able to get the bets on at the required odds. This way you can ease yourself in to each service, become comfortable with their way of working and increase your stakes in line with your confidence.

Quite often we hear of people rushing into following a service with large stakes, before realising actually it’s not for them and that it doesn’t suit their lifestyle. By being gradual and steady this helps to reduce this from happening and eases the pressure of making lots of money in your first few months.

Betting for profit is also not exclusively for the rich amongst us. You can get into a routine of making betting profits via a small starting amount if you are disciplined enough.

Even starting with a total of £2500 in total for your first year, you may be able to do the following:

Turn £2500 into £6000 in year one

Turn £6000 into £16000 in year two

Turn £16000 into £40000 in year three

In your 2nd year you are already making about the average salary for a person in the UK when bearing in mind all returns are tax-free.

If you have been betting for 2 years without success, it maybe worth reflecting on what you could have achieved during this period with such a strategy.

Sadly far too many services are geared towards telling you how much money you can make and how quickly you can generate them. In doing so they create unreasonable expectations that filter down and it helps to create a short-term mindset amongst their subscribers.

We are here to say the opposite of this, and with correct betting banks and staking you can give yourself the best chance of making your betting a success.

THE IMPORTANCE OF USING YOUR BETTING BANK FOR BETTING ONLY

It is also extremely important to re-iterate that any money you are investing in betting be totally separate from that which you need to keep going on a day-to-day basis.

If you are betting with money that should be used for things like the mortgage or the payment of bills, you should not be gambling with that money at all. If this is your own situation, then we would encourage you to stop betting immediately and evaluate the situation very seriously.

Please be sure that any money you are investing in a betting service is money that you can afford to lose. That is not to say that your portfolio will go bust, but it is the most sensible and professional approach.