Bankroll

Your bankroll is the pool of money set aside specifically for betting. It is not your savings, not your rent money, and not a fluid number tied to mood. It’s a fixed starting amount, and every bet sized as a percentage of it. Bankroll discipline is the #1 thing that separates sustainable bettors from people who blow up.

The most important rule

Your bankroll is risk capital you can lose without affecting your life. If losing the whole bankroll would change how you eat, where you live, or how you sleep, the bankroll is too big.

A common heuristic: your bankroll should be at most ~3% of your net worth, and ideally an amount that, if it went to zero, you’d be annoyed but unaffected.

Sizing bets — units

Once the bankroll is fixed, individual bets are sized in units — typically 1 unit = 1% of bankroll. So with a $5,000 bankroll, 1u = $50.

• 1u = standard bet on a line with light edge
• 2-3u = strong play with measured edge
• 5u+ = max-confidence sizing, used sparingly

Casual bettors often jump to 5-10u when they’re “feeling it” — that’s the path to rapid blowups. Sharps almost always cap at 3u or use Kelly criterion sizing instead.

Why fixed unit sizes matter

Mood-based sizing creates a structural problem: you size up when you’re winning (overconfidence) and size up when you’re losing (chasing). Both blow up the bankroll faster than expected. Fixed unit sizing flattens variance.

When to “scale” your unit

Some bettors recompute unit size every month or every season based on the new bankroll. Others lock the unit at the season-start bankroll. Both work — what doesn’t work is recomputing every day based on yesterday’s results.

Bankroll vs entertainment money

Some people bet purely as entertainment ($10 on a Monday Night Football game with friends, no math, no records). That’s fine — but treat it as spending, not bankroll. Don’t blur the line. Sustainable bettors keep entertainment money and bankroll completely separate.

Tools that touch bankroll

• Kelly criterion sizes bets as a percentage of bankroll based on edge
• Bankroll trackers log bets, ROI, and win rate over time
• A bankroll-aware bettor never thinks in dollars; they think in units and percentages