Money and betting management become crucial in horse racing betting once your horse handicapping is at a level that guarantees some profit. It's this seriousness, and the ability to bet on horse races with a high level of savvy that separates "pros" from "dabblers". Many handicappers are good, but few are professional bettors.
There are three basic ways to bet on horse races.
When you win, increase your bets.
Increase your bets when you lose
Bets should be placed at the same stake level
This is just plain old "flat" bets. A player who is comfortable placing $20.00 wagers, but not $300.00 ones will fall into the habit of betting between $15 and $25. It's fine. We've stated many times that some players may be playing for entertainment or handicapping challenges.
The serious horse race bettors will not just stick to the same level of flat betting without considering ROI, the winning percentages, the average payout prices, etc. It will prevent optimal growth of your bankroll.
A better tactic would be to increase flat bets by a certain percentage for each double of your betting bankroll. This is covered in "Professional Horse Betting Now!" We won't go into detail here.
This second approach, which involves increasing bets after losses, is potentially the most dangerous. The "betting progressions" have worked well in the past, but can easily result in a loss of betting money. We'll explore this type of betting in a future article.
This first method - increasing bets after a winning streak - is the most likely to boost your profits. This is the approach we will discuss.
This is most often achieved by betting a certain percentage of your bankroll. Kelly's formula is probably familiar to many of you: return on dollar divided by win percentage.
This money management strategy for horse betting has been touted as the best way to maximize profits in many racing circles.
Kelly's real flaw is its tendency to increase bets too quickly, while allowing for a short loss streak that can wipe out large gains made over a series of successful wagers.
As a solution to this issue, most players use "fractional Kelly". It's usually too extreme to go beyond 1/2 or 1/4 Kelly.
It is important to profit from any "spike" that occurs in your bankroll. It will also help with the volatility problem. This way, when the inevitable loss streak occurs, you will already have good profits in your bankroll.
No matter how big your advantage, old handicapping wisdom said you should never wager more than 2-5 per cent of your total bankroll. A player who has a true advantage may be able to push these parameters a bit, but not by too much.
This is a suggestion for an alternative to Kelly.
How can you approach this method in a less radical way than Kelly's formula?
It is important that we deal with streaks, both positive and negative. It is inevitable that streaks will occur. Your losing streak will be longer if you have higher odds. A short streak of high-odds wins can explode your bankroll ufabet.