Swings/variance in sports betting?

[The13atman]

How big are the swings in sports betting, particularly in baseball, and how big of a bankroll is needed to accomodate them? Of course for poker 300BBs is considered the standard. Is there an equivalent for sports betting?

Sorry if this has already been asked, nothing came up when I searched for it.

[sublime]

they are usually pretty big, but basically depenedant on how small of an edge you need to place a bet. i would recommend that you should wager no more than 2% of your bankroll on any wager, and closer to 1% is better.

i have been betting sports on a serious level for about a year and off the top of my head the worst downswing i had was about 30 units over a 2-3 week period. i expect worse in the future.

[sportypicks.com]

The question I guess you should be asking is if I play "X" amount on a game how big should my bankroll be?

You should never go above 2% of your overall bankroll on one particular play, and you should never vary your bet size across games. Anyone who tells you otherwise is flat out wrong.

The swings in sports on a daily basis can be quite large (Last season I had a run of 0-11), but if you play long enough you will come across such a streak yourself. Just as if you play poker long enough you will come across a Royal Flush at some point.

[tech]

[ QUOTE ]
you should never vary your bet size across games. Anyone who tells you otherwise is flat out wrong.


[/ QUOTE ]

I am generally an advocate of flat betting also, but the statement above is "flat wrong." If you are skilled enough to quantify your edge with reasonable accuracy, you are going to find some situations where failing to vary your bet size would be the worst possible decision you can make.

[sportypicks.com]

Ok Tech,

I guess we will agree to disagree, but there is one fallacy in your argument. How do you quantify whether you have a bigger edge or not? I am of the opinion that most of these situations where people claim to have an even bigger edge don't come up enough to know for sure if these "edge's" are statistically significant.

For example, assume you had 100 such games in the past where this exact same threshold of an Extra edge was crossed. And with these 100 games your win percentage went up 5% (5 more wins than normal). Does this mean that this edge is significant? Or is this just a random sample out of a probability distribution. Now if you told me this situation came up 10,000 times and you won 5% more games, then I would agree with you. However, I doubt most people have the discipline to wait and see if something is significant before diving right in.

[tech]

[ QUOTE ]
How do you quantify whether you have a bigger edge or not?

[/ QUOTE ]

How can you place a bet without having quantified your edge? I do a lot of middling in the NBA. I would not want to bet the same on a 2-point middle as I would on a 3-point middle. My edge is undeniably greater in the second case. Prop bets are the same way -- there are huge variations in one's edge. I agree that on your run-of-the-mill straight bets, there aren't that many situations where varying your bet size is justified. That is why I said I am generally an advocate of flat betting.

As I said before, if you are good at quantifying your edge, there is nothing at all wrong with varying your bet size. Most people are simply not very good at quantifying an edge, and worse still, they fool themselves into thinking that they are.

[sportypicks.com]

Ok Tech,

Now I understand where your coming from. In the case of middling where you get 20-1 odds if a score lands on a particular spread, there is a quantifiable diffence with a bigger "middling" range. There is a discrete number of spreads that could be hit in a particular game, so if you are able to grab 2 numbers that would middle that is DEFINTITELY better than 1 number.

My example was if a Vegas line was pick'em. Normally you would play a game where your line differed from the Vegas line by 3 points or more. For this particular game your line differs by 10 points. Does this mean you should be twice your bet size because of the sizable difference? My answer is No. Maybe you can win over the long run playing these 3 point differences, but how can you PROVE that your 10 point difference is better than say your 3 point difference? Just because your line says 10 does that mean that it's better?

As a fact you would probably have a small number of games where your line actually did produce a difference of 10 points from the Vegas line. But I would venture that the number of times this happens is so small that you would need years to prove that your 10 point line is statistically better than your 3 point line. I'm not sure if this makes sense.

But hopefully you can see why there is a difference between increasing your bet size in your instance and in mine.

[WackityWhiz]

damn, i thought the best way to bet on sports is to do the Alllllll innnnnnnnnnn every game til you're rich!!! Like my 340 bet tonight on Notre Dame, for tha sweet 100 dinner. d0000000 it Irish, make me proud. I say the only way to bet on sports is ballz to the wall.

[Paluka]

[ QUOTE ]
How big are the swings in sports betting, particularly in baseball, and how big of a bankroll is needed to accomodate them? Of course for poker 300BBs is considered the standard. Is there an equivalent for sports betting?

Sorry if this has already been asked, nothing came up when I searched for it.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a purely mathematical question, and if you can't do the calculation you should probably do some reading before you get too deep into sports betting.

[tech]

[ QUOTE ]
But hopefully you can see why there is a difference between increasing your bet size in your instance and in mine.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure. But hopefully you can also see that it is incorrect to say that you should *never* vary your bet size. That was my only point. Good luck to you!