18. Fixed Staking

For many people, Fixed Staking (also known as Level Staking) is the preferred Staking Plan. With Fixed Staking you decide how much you are going to spend on each Bet Type within each period, and then select the appropriate number of bets to lay out against that fixed stake. The same amount per bet is laid out, regardless of whether you are winning or losing. The discipline imposed by Fixed Staking means that the finances can be controlled relatively easily, even if you are losing.

Where roulette is concerned, if you are betting on the "reds" or "blacks" then the odds being offered are "evens" (you get 2 units back for every 1 unit staked). So if you are betting using Fixed Staking, then after 20 losses and 21 wins you will be 1 unit up on a 1 unit stake. This is easy to control because the bets are placed consecutively. You can soon see when you are up or down for the day, and quit if you have won sufficient to keep you happy or lost too much to encourage you to lay out yet more bets.

However, when you are betting on the Saturday soccer matches then, firstly, you won't have the luxury of being able to see how one bet has done before putting on the next bet. This is because your bets all have to be placed near enough at once, due to the match kick-off times being almost the same. It is perfectly possible therefore that you could lose 10 out of 10 bets in one single day. The best way to deal with this when using Fixed Stakes is to bet the same amount per week and limit yourself to the same number of bets per week, all for the same stake per bet.

But the second problem with soccer betting is much more difficult to overcome: to get reasonably-assured winners you will probably be going for the Fixed Odds, where you most certainly won't be offered "evens". Instead, you will probably receive no better than Decimal Odds of 1.25. Even if you win 15 out of 20 bets, at those Odds you will receive a gross return of £18.75 and lay out £20.00 to do so, leaving you £1.25 down! Hmmm…. but what else can you expect from betting on the favourites?

On the other hand, if you elected to go with Asian Handicap Betting, then the Odds will be pretty close to evens. Typically, if you had won just 11 out of 20 bets with Asian Handicap Betting then you would have grossed £21.10 (or thereabouts) and laid out £20.00, leaving you £1.10 up. At a return of 5.5% for the day, that wouldn't be bad!

There is, of course, the problem of ensuring that you will call 11 out of 20 Asian Handicap bets correctly. For that you will need access to a good Selection System. If you don't like or trust what is in the market, then your only other choice is to devise something for yourself. But you must make sure that it is reliable, and that can only be done by testing it out over many predictions. With most Selection Systems on the market you will find that they do not predict a Score Line, but without one you won't be able to see if the handicap is too great or not (and then, of course, you will almost certainly be at a disadvantage if you opt for Asian Handicapped Betting).

Having sorted out a reliable Selection System for yourself, you are still faced with how to set the level for the stakes. Fixed Staking is, in effect, the same thing as laying out a fixed percentage of your Base Bank. It gives many people comfort because it means that they always know exactly what their commitment is per bet, although the trade-off is that they will be unable to capitalise on winning streaks.

An alternative version of the Fixed Stake is to set a fixed percentage of the Current Bank as the staking level. This can work well, provided that your Bank never drops below its starting level. The moment it does, the value of your next stake will drop to below what it would have been if you employed a straight Fixed Stake, so it will take you longer to catch up your losses.

Another alternative of fixed staking is to set a fixed percentage of the Current Bank as the staking level for as long as your Current Bank stays above its starting level. However, if the Current Bank dips below the value of the Base Bank then you swap to employing a Fixed Stake (an amount equal to a fixed percentage of the Base Bank). In this way you will (i) be able to take advantage of a winning streak and (ii) not put yourself at a disadvantage when you have suffered losses but are beginning to find the winners again.

A further refinement of the latter methodology is the Plateau Staking Plan, which is the one we advocate is best, and which we deal with a later section of our Betting Advice.