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If you’re trying to take betting seriously, deciding how much to stake is just as important as deciding what to bet on.
That’s where a staking plan comes in.
A staking plan gives you a consistent way of deciding how much money to risk on each selection. It can be as straightforward as using the same stake every time, or more flexible, with stakes changing according to the odds, your betting bank or the size of the edge you believe you have.
Having some kind of structure also makes it much easier to avoid emotional decisions. A losing run shouldn’t suddenly have you doubling stakes to win your money back, just as a few winners shouldn’t tempt you into betting far more than usual.
There are several different staking methods you can use, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. In this guide, I’ll go through some of the most common approaches and look at when they might make sense.
What Is a Betting Staking Plan?
A staking plan is simply a set of rules for deciding how much you will bet.
For example, you might decide to:
- stake £10 on every selection
- risk 1% of your betting bank on each bet
- change your stake depending on the odds
- stake more when you believe you have a bigger edge
The exact method matters less than having a reason behind the amount you are staking.
Without a staking plan, it is very easy for bet sizes to become inconsistent. You might stake £10 on one selection, £30 on the next because you feel more confident, then increase again after a loss because you want to win the money back.
That can quickly turn what might have been a manageable losing run into something much more damaging.
Why Use a Staking Plan?
The main purpose of a staking plan is to help manage risk.
Even if you have a profitable betting strategy, you are still going to lose plenty of individual bets along the way. Losing runs are part of betting, and the stakes you use determine how much damage those runs can do to your bank.
A sensible staking plan can also make your results much easier to analyse.
If your stakes are being changed randomly from one bet to the next, it becomes harder to tell whether your strategy is actually performing well or whether a few unusually large bets have distorted the figures.
Consistency gives you a much clearer picture.
The Main Types of Betting Staking Plans
There is no single staking method that will suit every bettor or every strategy. There are actually dozens of different staking methods you could use.
The Staking Machine, for example, includes more than 50 staking plans in its software, which can be useful if you want to test different approaches and see how they would have performed using your own betting results.
I’ve focused on some of the most common methods below.
Flat Staking
Flat staking is probably the easiest method to understand.
You use the same stake on every bet, regardless of the odds.
For example:
- Arsenal at 2.00 — £10
- Liverpool at 2.50 — £10
- Aston Villa at 4.00 — £10
The main advantage is simplicity. You always know what your next stake will be, and your results are very easy to track.
Flat staking can work particularly well when most of your selections fall within a fairly narrow range of odds.
The drawback is that it treats every bet in exactly the same way.
If you regularly bet across a very wide range of prices, using the same stake on a 2.00 selection and a 10.00 selection can leave you exposed to much longer losing runs at the bigger prices.
Even so, flat staking is a perfectly reasonable starting point for many bettors.
Fixed Percentage Staking
With fixed percentage staking, you risk the same percentage of your current betting bank on each selection.
For example, if you had a £1,000 bank and decided to risk 1% per bet, your initial stake would be £10.
If your bank later grew to £1,200, your stake would increase to £12.
If it fell to £800, your stake would drop to £8.
This has the advantage of automatically adjusting your stakes as your bank changes.
You naturally bet more as the bank grows and less during a poor run, which can help prevent a large drawdown from becoming even more damaging.
The downside is that your stake changes constantly, which some bettors may find unnecessarily fiddly. You can get around that by reviewing the bank periodically rather than recalculating after every single bet.
Stake To Win
Stake To Win is a variable staking method where you adjust the stake according to the odds so that each successful bet produces roughly the same profit.
Suppose your target was to win £20 from each selection.
At odds of 2.00, you would stake £20.
At odds of 3.00, you would stake £10.
At odds of 5.00, you would stake £5.
The higher the odds, the smaller the stake becomes.
I quite like this approach when betting across a wide range of prices because it stops the biggest-priced selections automatically carrying the same cash risk as much shorter-priced bets.
It can also make the swings in your bank a little easier to manage.
There are a couple of downsides. You need to calculate each stake, and the amounts can sometimes look a little unusual if you end up betting figures such as £7.43 or £13.67.
Most betting calculators will work this out for you though, so it does not need to be particularly time-consuming.
Kelly Criterion
The Kelly Criterion takes a more mathematical approach.
Rather than basing the stake purely on the odds, it also takes into account the edge you believe you have over the market.
In theory, the stronger the value, the more you should stake.
That sounds ideal, but there is one fairly big catch: you need a reliable estimate of the true probability of the selection winning.
If your probability estimate is wrong, the stake suggested by Kelly can become far too aggressive.
This is why many bettors who use Kelly prefer a reduced version such as half Kelly or quarter Kelly rather than staking the full amount suggested by the formula.
It can be a very effective method for someone with strong pricing models and reliable probability estimates, but I would not describe it as the most practical option for the average recreational bettor.
Martingale Staking
Martingale works very differently from the methods above.
The idea is to increase your stake after a losing bet so that a future winner recovers the previous losses.
The classic example is doubling your stake after every loss:
£10 → £20 → £40 → £80 → £160
You can probably already see the problem.
A relatively short losing run causes the stake to increase very quickly.
Five straight losses starting from just £10 would mean the next bet requires £320.
That creates two obvious risks. Your betting bank may not be large enough to keep increasing indefinitely, and bookmakers may not even accept the stake you eventually need.
The method also becomes more complicated once you move away from even-money selections.
For those reasons, Martingale is not an approach I would recommend for sports betting.
Which Staking Plan Is Best?
There is no staking plan that is automatically best for everyone.
The right choice depends on the type of betting you are doing.
If most of your bets are at similar odds, flat staking may be all you need.
If you regularly bet across a much wider range of prices, Stake To Win can help reduce the amount you risk on the bigger-priced selections.
If you want your stakes to grow and shrink automatically with your bank, fixed percentage staking gives you a straightforward way to do it.
Kelly can make sense if you have a reliable way of estimating probabilities and your edge, but it requires much more accurate information than most staking systems.
The important thing is to understand why you are using a particular method rather than choosing one because it sounds more sophisticated.
How Staking Plans Work With Your Betting Bank
Whatever staking method you choose, it still needs to fit the size of your betting bank.
A £20 stake could be perfectly reasonable for someone with a £2,000 bank and far too aggressive for someone betting with £200.
This is why betting stakes are often expressed in points rather than pounds.
If you use a 100-point bank, one point represents 1% of the bank. Someone with £500 available could therefore use £5 per point, while someone with £2,000 could use £20.
The staking plan itself can then stay the same even though the cash amounts are completely different.
I’ve covered that side of things in much more detail in the separate guide to betting bank management, including how many points you may need and what affects the size of bank that is sensible for a particular strategy.
Common Staking Mistakes
Whatever method you use, there are a few mistakes worth avoiding.
Increasing stakes after losses
Trying to recover a losing run by increasing the next stake can quickly make a bad run much worse.
If your staking plan says £10, losing the previous three bets does not make the next selection any more likely to win.
Staking more because you feel confident
Confidence is difficult to quantify.
Unless your staking system already allows for different stake sizes based on a measurable edge, increasing a bet because it “feels strong” can quickly make results inconsistent.
Using stakes that are too large for your bank
A staking system can look sensible on paper while still being too aggressive in practice.
If normal losing runs are causing huge percentage drops in your bank, the problem may not be the strategy itself. Your point value or stake size may simply be too high.
Changing staking methods constantly
It is very difficult to judge whether a staking approach is working if you keep changing it.
One bad week does not necessarily mean the staking plan is wrong, just as one winning week does not prove it is perfect.
Give yourself enough data before making major changes.
Expecting staking to create an edge
This is probably the most important point of all.
A staking plan manages how much you risk. It does not improve the quality of the selections.
If you are consistently taking poor value, changing from flat staking to Kelly or Stake To Win will not fix the underlying problem.
Staking Plans and Variance
The amount you stake also has a big effect on how severe losing runs feel.
A strategy backing short-priced favourites will usually produce a very different pattern of results from one backing selections at 10/1 or 20/1.
That does not automatically make one safer or better than the other, but higher-priced betting generally comes with longer losing sequences.
If you are regularly uncomfortable during a normal losing run, that can be a sign that the stakes are too high for either your betting bank or your own tolerance for risk.
I’ve covered this in more detail in my guide to variance in sports betting.
Final Thoughts
A good staking plan gives you structure.
It helps you decide how much to risk before emotion gets involved, keeps your betting more consistent and gives your bank a better chance of surviving the inevitable losing runs.
For many bettors, there is nothing wrong with keeping things straightforward. Flat staking, fixed percentage staking or Stake To Win can all work perfectly well depending on the type of bets you place.
More complicated methods such as Kelly can also be useful, but only when you have the information needed to use them properly.
The main thing is that your stakes make sense for your betting bank and the level of risk involved.
And whichever staking plan you choose, remember that it can only manage your money. You still need to find bets that offer genuine value in the first place.
