While pondering what to write about this week I came upon a thread in the Goodforthegame Betting Forum titled “Banker Bets or Level Stakes?” In it Chris Sturdy laments the fact that despite having tipped more than his fair share of winners since the football season begun he is nonetheless down a few rand.

He attributes this to the fact that on the occasions he has really fancied a team strongly and backed that conviction up by placing a big bet he has been let down. This past weekend for example he labeled Norway as good things away to Iceland at odds of 9/10. Many of his other selections arrived but his Norway bet was a good few times bigger than his average bet and his football balance ended up taking a knock when they drew 1-1.

He raises the question as to whether he would have been better off playing all of his selections to level stakes rather than weighting the wagers towards his stronger fancies and using his main bet as an anchor in multiples?

For example if you like 5 teams to win on a weekend, let’s say Man United at 1/1, Villa at 11/10, Spurs at 12/10, Liverpool at 15/10 and Sunderland at 3/1 and have R1000 to spend you may structure your bets something like this:

500/500 United, 220/200 Villa, 180/150 Spurs, 150/100 Liverpool and 150/50 Sunderland.

Sunday morning brings what appears to be good news with the Villa, Liverpool and Sunderland bets all arriving. Spurs though were beaten at home and United conceded a late equalizer in their match.

3 of your 5 selections arrived but because of the big bet on United who were your banker bet you wind up losing R130.

Had you played to level stakes your bets would have been 200/200 United, 220/200 Villa, 240/200 Spurs, 300/200 Liverpool and 600/200 Sunderland.

The same set of results would see you nett a profit of R720 and may leave you wondering whether backing to level stakes is perhaps the way to go?

Of course things could have gone the other way and my personal preference is to weight my bets according to how confident I feel about them but there is clearly an argument for level stakes as well.

Whichever strategy you follow stick with it as changing tactics each week can only lead to frustration and heartache in the long run.

This article first appeared in the Citizen CitiGaming section on Thursday 10 September 2009

Brent Graham is a blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za and presents a sports betting radio show every Saturday morning at 07h30 on 1485AM Radio Today or Channel 169 of the DSTV Audio Bouquet.

You can follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/brentgraham or get on his mailing list by dropping him a line at brent@goodforthegame.co.za

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