Gambling always comes down to a blend of strategy and chance. However, there are clever strategies you can implement into your staking to increase your chances of winning and tip the odds slightly in your favor.
All successful gamblers use staking strategies to steer clear of major losses. While strategies can still have risks, they can help you better manage your money and avoid betting recklessly.
In this article, we’ll introduce you to three casino staking strategies to consider, and also explain how you could implement them into your betting.
The Martingale System
The Martingale System is a popular staking strategy due to both its simplicity and versatility. It’s a negative progression system and is mainly applied to roulette. However, it can also be used for blackjack, baccarat, and other games.
It’s an easy strategy to learn: all you need to do is double your bet every time you lose. While this may sound risky, it should ultimately lead to you gaining back your losses. This way, you have a better chance of coming away from the casino with a profit rather than a loss.
So, if you start with $20 and lose, you need to bet $40 for your next bet. If you lose that, you’ll need to bet $80. If you win that, you’ll have made back the money you lost for your initial two bets.
Now that you’ve won, you can reset your bet back to $20.
For this to work, you’ll need a large bankroll, as the amount you’re required to bet can quickly grow to a significant figure.
However, when learning how to use the Martingale System, you should start with small stakes. This will help you get to grips with the strategy while keeping your financial risk low.
Look for a website that accepts low deposits – ideally as low as 20 dollars to help you manage your bankroll. Once deposited, start your bet small. For example, start with $2, and then go up to $4 if you lose, etc.
The Fibonacci Sequence
The Fibonacci Sequence is recommended for those who don’t have a big enough bankroll to use the Martingale System.
The Fibonacci is similar to the Martingale as it’s also designed to win back your losses. However, instead of doubling your bet after every loss, you simply add the sum of your previous two bets together. This means your bets grow at a much smaller speed.
For example, if you start with $20 and lose, you bet another $20 the second time. If you lose the second time, you’ll bet $40, as this is how much your previous two bets equal.
If you lose the third time, you’ll bet $60, as $40 + $20 = $60.
If you lose that time, you bet $100, as $60 + $40 = $100.
You continue this pattern until you win.
However, instead of returning to your initial bet of $20 after a win, you move down just two places in the sequence.
For example, if you follow the above example and win at $100, you move down two steps and bet $40 in the following round. By doing this, the Fibonacci Sequence can turn out to make you more profit than the Martingale System, but you must still be prepared to continue increasing your stakes even when on a long loosing streak.
Proportional Betting / Kelly’s Criterion
Proportional betting typically follows what is known as the Kelly Criterion. This is a formula that can be used to calculate how much you should stake, and takes into account the odds you have of winning or losing the particular bet.
It’s designed to proportionally increase your bets when winning and decrease your bets when losing. This way, it keeps your betting in check and organized.
The Kelly Criterion looks like this: (f = [bp – q] / b)
‘f’ represents how much you should stake out of your current total amount of capital.
‘b’ is the odds you’ve received for the bet. This needs to be in decimal form. So, if the odds you’ve been given are even (i.e., 1:1), ‘b’ needs to be calculated as ‘2.0’, which is the decimal form of 1:1. Or, if your odds are 2:1, you’d calculate ‘b’ as ‘3.0’, and so on.
‘p’ represents your probability of success. This also needs to be calculated as a decimal point. For example, if you were given a 60% chance of success, you’d calculate this part as ‘0.6’.
‘q’ represents your probability of failure.
So, if you were given a 60% of winning a stake that had even odds (2.0), your formula would look like this:
(f = [2.0 x 0.6] – 0.4 / 2.0) = 0.2
The answer being ‘0.2’ means that you should bet 20% of your funds.
So, if you’ve got a total of $1,000, you should bet $200.
The Kelly Criterion is not only used for staking. It’s also used by investors when calculating how much money to put forward. The Kelly Formula has notably been used by such famed investors as Warren Buffett and Bill Gross. So, given its wide use, you can rest assured that following this formula is a safe way to manage your money when staking – it just needs a bit of forward planning and calculating so you know how much to stake each time.
