I adjust amounts with fluctuations using Kelly somewhat like Christian and JR Miller advise. Everybody tends to bet more when they've made a substantial gain. I think it's necessary to also reduce bets when losing, otherwise you're overbetting. Most people use Kelly principles even if they don't call it that.
Ice man - I keep a running bankroll on excel and have Kelly algorithm on there too so i adjust bet size after every bet. If I were to do 5 bets that were to go off in close time i would prioirtise the bets and bet 2 would be on the assumption that bet 1 lost, bet 3 that 2 & 1 lost etc for bet sizing purposes.
actually doug, i don't recommend anything other than flat betting...i'm not sure how you thought i was advising any variation of the kelly criterion or any other progressive betting technique...
but no problem, maybe there was some miscommunication....
anyway, you know that i believe in flat betting...and my personal risk tolerance is 1% of my bankroll on each and every play...
while i do agree with NEVER downsizing your betting unit, since, as has already been stated, once you downsize any amount you actually have to win more just to "catch up"....
but unlike most, i actually NEVER upsize either...don't get me wrong, i would never argue AGAINST anyone else doing so after, say, a 50% increase...
(if i remember correctly from reading one of bob mccune's books, i think he recommended upsizing after a 25% increase in bankroll)
so, i have no problem with upsizing after 50% (or even 25%, i guess)...i just prefer not to myself.
that's just my personal risk tolerance. as we've talked before, i'm doing this full-time now...and i've set aside $100k for my bankroll, and $1k/play is enough for me to sweat out each and every wager...trust me!
i just have no desire to raise my unit, even when i increase my bankroll by $50,000....
but the reason for this is mostly because i'm also heavily invested in stocks. i choose to siphon off most of my profits and transfer them to my stock portfolio (instead of keeping them offshore and increasing my bet size, as most would do)...i just have different goals with my money.
however, if i 'were' to upsize after a predetermined amount....well, i actually think i'd do it a little differently. i probably wouldn't upsize after 50%...i probably would just resize my bet to whatever 1% of my bankroll happend to be at the start of opening day in MLB...
and i would probably just continue that each and every year. i'd just resize each opening day in MLB and then keep my betting unit the same ALL calendar year long...no matter how much i won throughout the year.
that might sound a little strange to most, but i think it would work best for me. my favorite sport to handicap is MLB, and for me, that's the start of "my new year" that's my Jan 1. so to speak so i think i would use that as my predetermined bet readjustment date.
changing topics quickly.....i wouldn't strongly disagree with what someone stated earlier...the old "bet more when you're winning" and "bet less when you're losing" unless that statement was in the context of using prearragned bankroll positions (i.e +/- 50% of beginning bankroll, for example) as we're discussing in this thread...
...but from the sound of that statement it sounded like what i've heard so many guys say, "yeah, if you have a couple winning weekends, that means you're in a winning streak...go ahead and up your bet a little bit"
and of course, conversely, they always say "if you're in a losing streak, make sure you step it down a bit"
i don't agree with that at all! it's too hard to truly know when you're still in a winning or losing streak. you could lose for 2 straight weeks (as i've just demonstrated in the NHL and think "i'm in a losing streak, i have to step it down" and then the very next day (after you downsize your bet) you could go 5-0 on big NHL underdogs...you could make 6 units in 1 day! you just made back a lot of what you lost the weeks prior...
.....BUT......
you just downsized your bet at the start of that betting day! those "6 units" you just won...were actually only 3 units of what you used to risk the day before (depending on how much you downsized, of course). you just screwed yourself!
and of course, it's even more brutal when you win for weeks, upsize your bet and hit an 0-5 or 1-6 day! or worse (hey, 0-8 will happen eventually!)
so just keep your bets the same amount and only resize at predetermined bankroll positions. i think that's good advice.
for all the guys who practice the kelly criterion, well, we'll just have to have a gentleman's disagreement on that one...
i remember seeing an experiment once that showed you how to test the kelly criterion vs. flat betting and no matter how you did, no matter what your winning pct. was, etc. etc....
the flat betting techniqe (flat-betting the same amount as what your average kelly criterion bet was over the course of all the plays tested) beat the kelly criterion technique 100% of the time.
but there are guys who swear by it, and i'm assuming have made plenty of money by it...
so i wish them well. i really do. there's more than 1 way to beat sports guys. we don't have to agree on everything. and we often won't.
good thread though!
but no problem, maybe there was some miscommunication....
anyway, you know that i believe in flat betting...and my personal risk tolerance is 1% of my bankroll on each and every play...
while i do agree with NEVER downsizing your betting unit, since, as has already been stated, once you downsize any amount you actually have to win more just to "catch up"....
but unlike most, i actually NEVER upsize either...don't get me wrong, i would never argue AGAINST anyone else doing so after, say, a 50% increase...
(if i remember correctly from reading one of bob mccune's books, i think he recommended upsizing after a 25% increase in bankroll)
so, i have no problem with upsizing after 50% (or even 25%, i guess)...i just prefer not to myself.
that's just my personal risk tolerance. as we've talked before, i'm doing this full-time now...and i've set aside $100k for my bankroll, and $1k/play is enough for me to sweat out each and every wager...trust me!
i just have no desire to raise my unit, even when i increase my bankroll by $50,000....
but the reason for this is mostly because i'm also heavily invested in stocks. i choose to siphon off most of my profits and transfer them to my stock portfolio (instead of keeping them offshore and increasing my bet size, as most would do)...i just have different goals with my money.
however, if i 'were' to upsize after a predetermined amount....well, i actually think i'd do it a little differently. i probably wouldn't upsize after 50%...i probably would just resize my bet to whatever 1% of my bankroll happend to be at the start of opening day in MLB...
and i would probably just continue that each and every year. i'd just resize each opening day in MLB and then keep my betting unit the same ALL calendar year long...no matter how much i won throughout the year.
that might sound a little strange to most, but i think it would work best for me. my favorite sport to handicap is MLB, and for me, that's the start of "my new year" that's my Jan 1. so to speak
so i think i would use that as my predetermined bet readjustment date.changing topics quickly.....i wouldn't strongly disagree with what someone stated earlier...the old "bet more when you're winning" and "bet less when you're losing" unless that statement was in the context of using prearragned bankroll positions (i.e +/- 50% of beginning bankroll, for example) as we're discussing in this thread...
...but from the sound of that statement it sounded like what i've heard so many guys say, "yeah, if you have a couple winning weekends, that means you're in a winning streak...go ahead and up your bet a little bit"
and of course, conversely, they always say "if you're in a losing streak, make sure you step it down a bit"
i don't agree with that at all! it's too hard to truly know when you're still in a winning or losing streak. you could lose for 2 straight weeks (as i've just demonstrated in the NHL
and think "i'm in a losing streak, i have to step it down" and then the very next day (after you downsize your bet) you could go 5-0 on big NHL underdogs...you could make 6 units in 1 day! you just made back a lot of what you lost the weeks prior........BUT......
you just downsized your bet at the start of that betting day! those "6 units" you just won...were actually only 3 units of what you used to risk the day before (depending on how much you downsized, of course). you just screwed yourself!
and of course, it's even more brutal when you win for weeks, upsize your bet and hit an 0-5 or 1-6 day! or worse (hey, 0-8 will happen eventually!)
so just keep your bets the same amount and only resize at predetermined bankroll positions. i think that's good advice.
for all the guys who practice the kelly criterion, well, we'll just have to have a gentleman's disagreement on that one...
i remember seeing an experiment once that showed you how to test the kelly criterion vs. flat betting and no matter how you did, no matter what your winning pct. was, etc. etc....
the flat betting techniqe (flat-betting the same amount as what your average kelly criterion bet was over the course of all the plays tested) beat the kelly criterion technique 100% of the time.
but there are guys who swear by it, and i'm assuming have made plenty of money by it...
so i wish them well. i really do. there's more than 1 way to beat sports guys. we don't have to agree on everything. and we often won't.
good thread though!
Christian, I have read your comments about same size bets in past and not sure I agree, but like you said everyone has their own thing. I am going back to a 1%,1.3%,and 1.6% of bankroll among my bet size . I do agree that your style is a little less stressfull( and we all need that). About the not re-adjusting I'm really going back and forth on this one. Have heard both sides of the argument and not sure what one I like most. With your style 100 units down and you are TAPPED out( the worst thing), if you readjust than you cut into your win%/profit. I guess it boils down to what is more important tapping out vs cutting into ones profit.
This is one of the better threads I've read about money management, a must read in my opinion.
http://forum.therx.com/showthread.php?t=195898&highlight=oldmanted
http://forum.therx.com/showthread.php?t=195898&highlight=oldmanted
iceman, i remember reading somewhere (in support of flat betting) "why try to handicap your own handicapping?"
meaning, why try to assess your own probability of each play...does this play have a 55% chance of winning? does this one have a 60%? maybe this one has a 75% chance? etc. etc.
i just strongly feel that it's better to use a set amount for EVERY play that you feel you have the odds in your favor.
the 1 unit, 1.3 unit, 1.6 unit betting that you describe could work in theory...
but i would make sure that i tracked myself for at least a couple hundred plays...ideally, 1,000-2,000 to make sure that i really knew which one of my plays were the "normal" plays, which ones were the "strong" plays, and which ones were the "really, really strong" plays...
i think it just makes things so much easier to choose a set % of bankroll and apply that set % to your bet each and every time you feel you have a betting advantage in your favor...
and about the 1%...after 7 years of handicapping, i know damn well that i'm not going to lose 100 units over the course of any given period of time....
could i raise that to 1.6? probably. i can't see myself ever losing 62 units either...but i wouldn't want to risk it, or at least not yet. maybe if i had been doing this longer, say, 20-30 years, i'd be willing to increase that set % of my bankroll. but at this point in my life, this is just where my comfort level is.
having said all that, there are certain times each year when i will up my bet size...usually to 1.5 units for a particular play...
but that's only when my buddy gives me one of his college plays in FB or BB and he tells me this is one of his strongest plays of the season so far...
i usually up those to 1.5 units, but he only has a couple of those over the course of a full season usually. but he's been doing this for almost 20 years. and i'm much more confident in his assessment of the strength of his individual play, than i would be of my own assessment of my own plays.
i just think for anyone starting out in this business, trying to "handicap their own handicapping" is the last thing they need to learn...
once they've been doing this a few years and have a couple thousand plays recorded to look back over and analyize, sure, they can give it a shot. but i wouldn't recommend it at first. just keep things simple while getting your feet wet.
meaning, why try to assess your own probability of each play...does this play have a 55% chance of winning? does this one have a 60%? maybe this one has a 75% chance? etc. etc.
i just strongly feel that it's better to use a set amount for EVERY play that you feel you have the odds in your favor.
the 1 unit, 1.3 unit, 1.6 unit betting that you describe could work in theory...
but i would make sure that i tracked myself for at least a couple hundred plays...ideally, 1,000-2,000 to make sure that i really knew which one of my plays were the "normal" plays, which ones were the "strong" plays, and which ones were the "really, really strong" plays...
i think it just makes things so much easier to choose a set % of bankroll and apply that set % to your bet each and every time you feel you have a betting advantage in your favor...
and about the 1%...after 7 years of handicapping, i know damn well that i'm not going to lose 100 units over the course of any given period of time....
could i raise that to 1.6? probably. i can't see myself ever losing 62 units either...but i wouldn't want to risk it, or at least not yet. maybe if i had been doing this longer, say, 20-30 years, i'd be willing to increase that set % of my bankroll. but at this point in my life, this is just where my comfort level is.
having said all that, there are certain times each year when i will up my bet size...usually to 1.5 units for a particular play...
but that's only when my buddy gives me one of his college plays in FB or BB and he tells me this is one of his strongest plays of the season so far...
i usually up those to 1.5 units, but he only has a couple of those over the course of a full season usually. but he's been doing this for almost 20 years. and i'm much more confident in his assessment of the strength of his individual play, than i would be of my own assessment of my own plays.
i just think for anyone starting out in this business, trying to "handicap their own handicapping" is the last thing they need to learn...
once they've been doing this a few years and have a couple thousand plays recorded to look back over and analyize, sure, they can give it a shot. but i wouldn't recommend it at first. just keep things simple while getting your feet wet.
ice man said:
I do adjust it, but i know i shouldnt...Last year (last gambling season ie from
september to about april this year) I lost about 10 games over 2 days....Come the weekend, i halved my single bet unit and stormed back with an obscene record like 20 wins to about 3 losses...
I only ended up recouping my losses and bringing back my account to exactly what it had been before the losing streak started...
If i had held firm i would have made back not only what i lost but a huge profit to boot!!!! (but then again by single unit is about 8% of my total bank roll so losing 8 games in a row puts me in serious, serious trouble)
you use 8% of you bankroll as your betting unit!?!?!?! are you serious?
i mean, we're all grown men in here...and we can all do what we want with our money...
but at 8% it's only going to take you 12 losses in a row to bankrupt you!
trust me, if you gamble long enough.......you will eventually lose 12 games in a row....
even at a 55% win pct. long-term, the odds of going 0-12 over the course of any 12 bets is 'only' something like 1 out of 14,500...
if you make a career out of this, you WILL eventually go 0-12 (or something similar enough to that, maybe 1-13, 2-14, 3-13, etc) over a short-term period...
at 8%...you WILL eventually go bankrupt. i'm sorry to have to say that, but that's just the reality. 8% is WAY too risky.
i hope you reconsider your bet size in the future...
if anyone of us ever gets tapped out...let it be because we can't pick winners! not because we can't practice sound money management. good luck!
i mean, we're all grown men in here...and we can all do what we want with our money...
but at 8% it's only going to take you 12 losses in a row to bankrupt you!
trust me, if you gamble long enough.......you will eventually lose 12 games in a row....
even at a 55% win pct. long-term, the odds of going 0-12 over the course of any 12 bets is 'only' something like 1 out of 14,500...
if you make a career out of this, you WILL eventually go 0-12 (or something similar enough to that, maybe 1-13, 2-14, 3-13, etc) over a short-term period...
at 8%...you WILL eventually go bankrupt. i'm sorry to have to say that, but that's just the reality. 8% is WAY too risky.
i hope you reconsider your bet size in the future...
if anyone of us ever gets tapped out...let it be because we can't pick winners! not because we can't practice sound money management. good luck!
