15. Staking Plans For Gambling

Before we begin on this topic, we wish to make the point that we insist on using the term "Staking Plan" rather than "Staking System", largely because the word "system" implies a degree of sophistication that is horribly lacking with most of the well-known methods of stake calculation.

When considering the use of even a good Staking Plan, the most important point to bear in mind is that it will be totally useless if you are unable to employ it in conjunction with a good Selection System. When we say "a good Selection System" we mean one that will improve your chances of winning to the extent that, overall, you have the edge over the "house" (be that a Bookie, a Betting House or a Casino). If all you are relying upon for your selections is Lady Luck, then no Staking Plan in the world will help you make money. Neither will you find a way of consistently winning at roulette or any other game of pure chance, because such a system does not exist anywhere in this universe. If it did, it would have to defy all the laws of mathematics as we in this world understand them.

As you will already know, there are many different Staking Plans to choose from, many of them with fancy names. What you really need to know is if any of them are relevant to you placing bets on the outcome of sports matches.

Most of the Staking Plans you will have heard of will be those designed for "luck-of-the-draw" type betting, such as card games or roulette, where the player is unable to exercise any degree of skill or expertise. They are based on the principle that you have a fixed Base Bank that you are prepared to lose in an effort to make a killing in a short space of time, and where the odds will generally be stacked against you (even if only slightly).

For an occasional night at the casino - and using a Base Bank you can afford to lose - a sensible application of an appropriate Staking Plan can prove exhilarating, even if you do walk away empty-handed at the end of it. The same principle can be adopted for soccer betting of course. Instead of 40 spins of the roulette wheel, you can opt for 40 bets across the full season at one bet per week - provided that, with the Staking Plan you have adopted, your money will hold out that long (which it won't with most of them).

However, whereas the adrenalin would be flowing at the roulette table because it all takes place within an hour or so, you wouldn't get that same buzz with weekly football betting. Even less so if, by week 10, you have blown your entire Base Bank for the whole season!

We have looked into just about all the most well-known Staking Plans you can think of and, using a software program we have specially devised, we have thoroughly reviewed each and every one of them. We couldn't possibly have achieved this manually, due to the colossal number of permutations involved.

What we were looking for was to identify the best possible Staking Plan for Fixed Odds soccer betting. What we demanded of a good Staking Plan was that it had to:

1. cater equally well for the individual betting style/approach of both the cautious and the more adventurous gambler;
2. ensure that, if the Bettor hit a prolonged losing streak, a reasonable amount of funds would remain available to make a recovery;
3. be capable of taking advantage of a winning streak to enable greater gains to be made, without putting the original gains at too much risk;
4. offer ease of application (and thus be capable of adaptation to a spreadsheet); and
5. be capable of being structured so that it would flag up precisely what the value of the next bet should be, given the starting parameters and the outcome of the previous bets placed.

We believe that any Staking Plan that fulfils all the above requirements would give the Bettor a very good chance of staying on top with his/her betting.