Stake sizing, and thinking in units.

Why units, not money

A unit is a fixed, small slice of a betting bankroll that you decide in advance.

Thinking in units does two useful things. It keeps the decision about the bet rather than the money, so a cold run does not tempt me into sizing up to win it back. And it means my numbers and yours can be compared without judging the results on monetary value, and instead on bankroll.

A common way to set it is that one unit equals about one percent of your total betting bankroll, chosen once and left alone. The exact figure matters less than the discipline of fixing it in advance, and not moving it because you are up, down, or feeling certain. There is a point where it should change, and I come to that below.

Flat stakes, and why I do not chase

I keep my stakes in a tight band. I do not double up after a loss, and I do not pile in when I am winning. Flat staking is what lets a hit rate under half stay ahead.

My current week is running at about 20 percent return over 94 bets. That is hot, and it will regress, because keeping that up over any length of time would be seriously impressive. If I scale my stakes up and then start losing, I give back the good streak faster than I earned it.

The reason flat staking works is bound up with the price. If 46 percent of my bets win and I am still ahead, it is because the winners and losers land at similar sizes and the edge lives in the odds I took. Vary the stake by mood and you break that: the big losers arrive exactly when your judgement is worst, after a loss or deep in a good run. A steady stake takes the decision away from the version of me that wants to chase.

When to raise your unit

There is a calculated point where the unit goes up, and it has nothing to do with how the last bet went. A unit is a share of the bankroll, so when the bankroll moves far enough, the unit moves with it.

This is the part a flat-staking rule can hide, and it matters. If one unit is one percent of your bankroll, then the unit is not a fixed amount of money at all, it is a fixed share. Grow the bankroll by half and keep staking the old amount, and you are now betting well under one percent, which is under-betting whatever edge you have. Lose half of it and keep staking the old amount, and you are betting two percent, which is the quick way to run out.

So I re-base rather than raise. The trigger is the size of the bankroll, never the result of the last bet.

Re-base on a schedule, not a feelingOnce a month, or whenever the bankroll has moved 25 percent from where it stood when you last set the unit, whichever comes first.

Recalculate, do not incrementOne unit goes back to one percent of the bankroll as it stands today. Round down, then leave it alone until the next trigger.

It works downwards tooSame trigger, same arithmetic. A bankroll a quarter smaller gets a smaller unit. This is the half people skip, and it is the half that protects you.

Never mid-matchdayNot after a win, not during a losing run, not while a bet is open. The unit you start the day with is the unit you finish it with.

My own record shows how large that change can be. One unit at one percent means a starting bankroll of 100 units. Up 96.21 units to 8 September 2026, the bankroll is close to double what it started at, so a re-base at one percent would put my unit at nearly twice its first-week size. That is a serious increase, and it arrived without me raising a stake once because I liked the look of a match.

That is the distinction worth keeping. Raising your stake because you are winning is chasing with a nicer name. Recalculating the unit because the bankroll has actually grown is arithmetic, and doing it on a fixed schedule means the decision is made long before the emotion turns up.

Sizing by how wild the bet is

The one adjustment I make is to lean slightly smaller on the longer, wilder prices, never larger. A longer price swings the balance more, so it earns a smaller stake, not a bigger one to make something back.

My corners sit at an average price around 2.56 and my goals around 3.26. The goals bets move the balance around more, win or lose, so I tend to stake them a touch lighter. It is the idea that the bet with the lower probability gets the smaller stake, regardless of the value. The instinct to put more on the long shot because it pays more is a bad habit to get into.

The bankroll has to survive

Everything else assumes you are still here next month. The bankroll is the part that has to survive a bad run, so size it for the drought, not the good day.

Set the bankroll at an amount you could lose in full without it mattering to your life, and set a deposit limit with wherever you bet before you start. Do not top it up in the middle of a losing run. Size for the weeks when nothing lands, because those weeks come.

The uncomfortable part

Stake sizing and bankroll rules do not turn a losing bettor into a winning one. They decide how long you last and how much a cold run costs. That distinction matters, so here is the honest version.

My record is 96.21 units to 8 September 2026, from one person over 386 settled bets and five weeks. A few months can flatter anyone, and it is not what to expect.

Good staking will not make a losing edge win. What it will do is stop a cold run from ending you, and give a genuine edge, if you have one, enough time and enough bankroll to show up. If betting stops being fun, or you find yourself chasing, that is the signal to stop. Support is at begambleaware.org. Bet only what you can afford to lose.

How I made 96 units in my first five weeksThe bet I look for, the corner markets explained, and what the record actually says.

When to wait for a priceThe gap between the price and our line moves minute by minute. How I decide whether to wait or take it now.