Recently I’ve been researching different Staking Plans to see if I can improve the profits from the Over 2.5 goals system.
One thing that seems to be acquired wisdom is that if your system or method can’t deliver a profit using level stakes then forget about any other type of staking plans.
I’m hoping my system can show profit from level stakes in the long term and that’s what I’ll do for now but I think it’s worth researching this now even though it’s early days.
Kelly Criterion
I’ve always been intrigued by the Kelly Criterion – you can read loads about it on the internet.
Kelly criterion, Kelly strategy, Kelly formula, or Kelly bet was developed by J. L. Kelly, Jr, a researcher at Bell Labs, in 1956.
It’s a formula used to determine the optimal size of a series of bets and in most gambling scenarios in the long run will do better than any essentially different strategy.
The formula for working it out for one bet is fairly simple and the figure the Kelly formula comes up with what percentage of your betting bank you should stake on the bet.
Bet 72% of my Betting Bank?
My difficulty has been I could never figure out how to do the calculation when there were three or four or even more bets I wanted to place at the same time.
If you have six football matches all kicking off at 3 p.m. on Saturday afternoon that could mean investing a lot of money all at once – potentially most of your betting bank. Six matches each using 12% of your betting bank comes to 72% of your betting bank! For me that’s just too much, too risky. If a good number of the bets won then that works out fine but what if they all lost?
Looking back over the Over 2.5 goals system selections there have been times when there have been high numbers of selections for a particular day. Take the 29th July 2017 for example. There were 14 selections for that day. Kick-off times range from 10 in the morning to 8 in the evening so that’s something. At least I don’t need to commit a lot of money all at once. I can put the bets on as the day progresses. But there’s a group of 7 matches all kicking-off at 3 p.m. and that’s where I hit this problem with the Kelly staking approach.
Luckily the internet has come to my rescue – again.
Kelly Calculator
I found a super Kelly staking calculator that will calculate the Kelly stakes for up to 15 bets that need to be placed at the same time. It even handles combination and accumulator bets. If I get the time I’ll maybe investigate that later.
I found it a bit tricky to use at the start but I’m into it now and I think this is the solution to my problem.
It may still suggest stakes that are just too big of a risk for me but I can now at least see how I can proportion what I’m prepared to bet across all the selections.
Interesting to see that if the odds are too low it will suggest not betting on the selection at all.