Staking Plans Compared: Flat, Percentage, Kelly and More

What a staking plan actually does

A staking plan is simply a rule for deciding how much money to risk on each bet. That’s it. It is one of the most over-hyped topics in betting because it feels like a system — and systems feel like edges. They are not the same thing.

Here is the uncomfortable truth up front: no staking plan overcomes the bookmaker’s margin. If your bets have negative expected value (and for the vast majority of bettors they do, because of the built-in overround), then every staking method converges on the same destination — a shrinking bankroll. What staking plans do control is variance: how bumpy the ride is, how fast you can go broke, and how much of a genuine edge you capture if you have one.

Think of staking as risk management, not profit generation. With that framing, let’s compare the main approaches.

Flat staking

Flat staking means betting the same fixed amount every time — say £10 per bet, regardless of odds or confidence.

Pros:

• Dead simple to track and audit.
• Lowest risk of ruin for a given bankroll.
• Removes emotion from stake sizing entirely.

Cons:

• Ignores that some bets may be “better” than others (if you can even tell).
• Slower bankroll growth if you genuinely have an edge.

For 95% of recreational bettors, flat staking is the correct answer. It’s honest about the fact that you probably can’t reliably rank your own bets by quality. Set your unit at 1–2% of your total bankroll and stick to it.

Worked example

Bankroll £500, unit £10 (2%). Whether you back a 1.5 favourite or a 6.0 outsider, you stake £10. Over 100 bets you’ve risked £1,000 in turnover from a £500 bankroll — and your outcome depends entirely on whether those bets beat the margin, not on the staking rule.

Percentage (proportional) staking

Percentage staking risks a fixed percentage of your current bankroll — so the stake shrinks after losses and grows after wins.

Bankroll £500, 2% stake = £10. Lose it, bankroll £490, next stake £9.80. Win at 2.0, bankroll £510, next stake £10.20.

Pros:

• Automatically de-risks during losing streaks — you can never go fully broke (in theory).
• Compounds gains during winning runs.

Cons:

• Recovers slowly after a drawdown because stakes shrink just when you’d want to bet more.
• Requires recalculating every bet — keep a betting record to do this properly.

Percentage staking is a sensible upgrade from flat for disciplined bettors who track their bankroll carefully.

Level-profit (“to return”) staking

This method varies your stake so that every winning bet returns the same profit regardless of odds. To win £10 at odds of 2.0 you stake £10; at odds of 5.0 you stake £2.50.

The hidden danger: at very short odds you must stake enormous amounts to make the target profit. Backing a 1.1 favourite for £10 profit means staking £100. One upset and you’ve lost a huge slice of your bankroll. Avoid level-profit staking unless you fully understand this risk — it quietly concentrates your exposure into the bets most likely to lull you into overconfidence.

The Kelly criterion

The Kelly criterion calculates the mathematically optimal stake to maximise long-run bankroll growth. The formula is:

stake fraction = (bp − q) / b

where b = decimal odds − 1, p = your estimated true win probability, and q = 1 − p.

Worked example

You believe a team has a genuine 55% chance (p = 0.55) at odds of 2.10 (b = 1.10). Then q = 0.45.

Kelly fraction = (1.10 × 0.55 − 0.45) / 1.10 = (0.605 − 0.45) / 1.10 = 0.141, or 14.1% of your bankroll.

That’s a huge stake — and here’s the catch. Kelly is only optimal if p is correct. If your real edge is smaller than you think (extremely common), full Kelly massively overbets and can devastate a bankroll. Errors in probability estimation are punished brutally.

Because of this, serious bettors use fractional Kelly — typically quarter-Kelly or less (3.5% in the example above). This sacrifices some theoretical growth for far more tolerable swings. Honestly, if you can’t estimate your edge to within a couple of percentage points, you shouldn’t be using Kelly at all — and almost nobody can.

Progression systems (Martingale) — avoid these

Martingale doubles your stake after every loss to recover previous losses plus a small profit. It feels bulletproof and it is a classic route to ruin. A run of 7 losses (entirely normal) turns a £10 stake into £1,280, and you hit the table limit or empty your account long before the “guaranteed” win arrives. Every progression system that increases stakes after losses shares this fatal flaw. Do not use them.

How to choose

For most people, the honest recommendation is flat or percentage staking at 1–2% units. Keep your unit small enough that a bad run doesn’t hurt, and remember that the plan protects your bankroll — it does not create profit.

Before you stake a penny, understand the product you’re betting into. Compare margins across operators on our best betting sites page, read the detailed reviews, and always set deposit and loss limits via responsible gambling tools.

18+. Gambling involves real financial risk. If it stops being fun, take a break — play responsibly.