Raising stakes.

In the Comment section the other day, the following question was asked:

When do you think it is okay to increase stakes rowan ..i was given advice look at where you are at every 3 months and adjust staking if you have made a profit in that term

Good question. And like a lot of good questions, I don't think there is one right answer. It really does come down to the preference of the individual looking to grow their bank via increased levels of staking.

The question was well timed. I think I mentioned last week that I was having to rationalise my portfolio a little after an unexpected expense was incurred (and if I catch those bastard tenants, they'll be what for!) and I had to take the money out of my betting bank. The plan though, is to grow the bank back up again and return to the previous staking levels. It's not a big jump that is necessary, but I did have to think about how I was going to make it. My solution was to drop a couple of services, and use those remaining running at a slightly lower £/pt value until the money I had taken out has been replaced through profits. That's the plan anyway.

I would suggest that there are many different approaches we could take to deciding when was the right time to raise stakes. When I started out, the approach I took to grow the portfolio was to work backwards in my calculations. I first worked out what my target profit figures were (in terms of money made). Then how much capital it would likely take to earn it, and then I would stake at levels that allowed my bank to reach a certain size which meant I could join another service without having to decrease the staking levels I was using on the services I already followed. This process was repeated until I reached the figure I had worked out in Step 2, at which point I stopped. Thus my levels of staking didn't really rise within each individual service, but rather my overall staking levels - or turnover, if you wish - grew as I joined more services and the portfolio expanded. That makes it all sound very simple, which it wasn't of course. Not with joining unsuitable services and the various other mistakes I made.

There are other ways of deciding when to raise stakes. There is the option the chap who asked the question was advised - to see where you are after a certain amount of time and then adjust staking if your have banked a profit. Some services suggest that you do the same but after a certain number of bets, and others suggest using a compounding staking system. Sportyy is one such example of the latter, which involves reinvesting any profits and increasing stakes as you go along; an ongoing strategy that uses the profits you make as soon as you make them. That's not how I follow Sportyy, but I can see how it works.

Another very sensible suggestion that I have seen on the CD Systems website is to double your bank, take your original funds out, and then simply use the profits as your betting bank. I guess then you can simply double your stakes once you have doubled this "second" bank, whenever that may be. I like that suggestion, and were I starting again, I think I would try and adopt this strategy in some way.

Of course this is all dependant on the staking levels you are at. I'm pretty sure for example, that if I doubled my staking levels on the Winning Racing Tips service selections, my bookmaker accounts wouldn't last very long at all. Compare that to say Football Elite - I'm certain I could easily double or even treble my current staking levels if using only the Asian bookies. So perhaps instead of looking at raising stakes on a pan-portfolio basis, it might sometimes make sense to look at the individual services and how much room to manouevre there might be?

So, no right or wrong. Personal preference all the way. But hopefully, there's a few ideas there that provide some food for thought.