Amount Per Game

This is a tricky part of your sports betting day and will be addressed again in the Money Management section, but since it is an important part of handling your Bankroll, let's take a look at it right now.

Say $200 is your working capital and the max amount of your basic bet. Remember the word basic. It is the total amount you can put into action but not necessarily the total amount you can wager that day.

Suppose your friend Freddy is open for business for all 3 time zone games. You put the whole $200 in action on the first set of games. If you lose all the bets, you're done for the day. Period! No wavering from this hard and fast rule.

But let's say you're hot in your initial picks and end up with your original $200 cash plus an additional profit of $100. You have a lot of options:

(1) Quit for the day with your $100 profit. (I got a better chance of Loni Anderson tearing off my clothes than you have of being able to quit for the day)

(2) Betting all $300 on the middle and night games.

(3) Gambling your $200 stake into the upcoming games, rat holing the $100.

(4) Bang $100 back into action and sitting on the $200.

There are off shoots to each of the above and the decision is yours to make. My opinion comes later.

If you wager your entire $200 on the first set of games, you gotta be cognizant of the fact you could be out of action by the time the middle games come up. You're done for the day if you blow the whole $200.

If you win on the first set of games, you're able increase the amount of bets on the middle games. If you break even on the first set of games, you're still able to reinvest the $200 into the middle set of games.

Notice that there are a lot of options with bad and good reasons in your decision to put your entire $200 at work in the first set:

The good part:

(1) If you win the first set of bets, you can now up the gambling amounts in the second set and point towards a killing with extra cash to bet.

(2) You can sock away a few bucks and still have your original investment working for you in middle games.

So the prospects seem good reason to bang out $200 in the opening round. Now for the bad part  a small slice of Reality:

(1) You lose the whole wad in the first set of games.

(2) Will you have the guts to quit? (I doubt it).

Since the possibility is always alive for a washout, the loss puts you into a psychological let down, but more importantly, leaves you open to the possibility of breaking the rules of betting Discipline.

No matter how much you promise to eat your hot cereal everyday for a month, if you break Discipline, you'll still find a reason to pick up that phone for the middle games, even with a total wipeout fresh in your mind from the early games.

There are plus factors working for you and minus factors always lying in the weeds. You'd be conning yourself if you said you'd quit for the day if you lose the opening games, so the best idea would be to not put yourself in the position of possible wipeout. I would bet 50% of my stake in the early games.

The next chapter defines various breakdowns.