Bankroll management: how to stay in the game

Set aside a dedicated bankroll — money whose loss changes nothing about your life — and never top it up mid-stretch. Every staking decision is then a percentage of that pool, not a feeling.

Flat staking (the same 1–2% of bankroll on every bet) is boring and effective. It caps the damage of a losing run and stops your worst-judged bets from being your biggest. Proportional staking (recalculating the percentage as the bankroll moves) shrinks stakes automatically in a downswing, which is exactly when you want them shrinking.

Chasing losses — increasing stakes to "win it back" — fails for a simple reason: each bet's expected value is unchanged by what happened before it, but your exposure grows exactly when your judgement is most compromised. Doubling after losses (a martingale) guarantees that the one losing streak long enough to find your limit takes everything.

Track every bet: stake, odds, your estimated probability, result. The spreadsheet is where you find out whether you actually have an edge — and if the record says you don't, the smartest stake is zero.