#How to manage your sports betting bankroll

Believe it or not, bankroll management can be just as important as picking winners. The goal is to map out a disciplined, consistent strategy that allows you to maximize your profits and minimize your losses, providing long-term sustainability. Think of bankroll management as the way to invest in sports, not just bet on them.

Before placing a single wager, bettors must ask themselves this fundamental question: How much can I afford to lose? Whatever number you end up deciding on, this is called your bankroll. It is the total amount of money that you have set aside specifically for betting on sports. Consider it disposable income.

Betting on sports is a roller coaster. It can be very volatile and unpredictable with massive ups and downs in short periods of time. We all want to get rich quick, but that just isn’t realistic. Betting is hard. If it were easy, Average Joes would all quit their day jobs and become millionaires. The ultimate goal is to steadily build your bankroll over time, not become a millionaire overnight. Always remember; sports betting is a marathon, not a sprint.

The best and easiest way to manage your bankroll is by embracing flat betting. Flat betting means you are risking the same amount on every game regardless of your confidence level. Flat betting isn’t sexy or flashy, but it puts you in the best position to stay in the game long term. It allows you to stay afloat when you’re in a tough losing skid, but also turn a positive return on investment when you’re doing well.

In order to determine how much to bet on each game, take your starting bankroll amount and divide it into equal units. Once you decide this number it becomes your unit size. This is the amount of money you are betting on every game.

A good recommendation is risking between one and five percent of your bankroll per bet. Consider 3 percent a solid medium. To find out what this means for you, just take your starting bankroll and multiply it by .03. For example, if your starting bankroll is $1,000, this means you are betting $30 per game.

Once you’ve established your unit size, stick with it. Don’t change day-to-day, week-to-week or even month-to-month based on your performance. Flat betting is all about grinding long term. You would hate to have a good week, adjust your bankroll upward, then get mired in a losing skid and lose it all quickly because you are betting more on each game. Typically, you should adjust your bankroll once per year, usually at the end of the summer as you prepare for the busy football season.

An alternative bankroll management strategy option is Kelly Criterion, created by J.L. Kelly Jr. in 1956. Kelly Criterion is a famous mathematical formula used to determine how much to bet in order to maximize your profit. This is the opposite of flat betting. Instead of risking the same amount on every bet, you are weighing your bets based on confidence level.

This system is used by some professional bettors and can be highly profitable. However, it can also be dangerous because it is very complex and hard to calculate. If you are a math whiz who attended MIT or Harvard and you know your way around excel sheets and pivot tables, Kelly Criterion might be for you. But for the vast majority of bettors, flat betting is the simplest and best way to go.

Josh Appelbaum writes for VSiN.com, The Sports Betting Network.