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What are units in sports betting?

Published on June 22, 2022
Updated on December 19, 2023
Janne
Written by Janne

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What are units in sports betting?

Units staking is an international term, and it used from the majority of the tipsters for a few major reasons:

  • Standardize the bet sizes quoted from tipsters
  • Protect us from losing our entire bankroll
  • Reduce the psychological pressure during losing runs
  • Measure the performance of the tipster so we can benchmark

Why tipsters quote their predictions in units? As most of you already know money management in sports betting is from crucial importance in order to achieve profits in the long run. However, different punters have different money management preferences – some of them are willing to take bigger risks, while others are more risk-averse.

Tipsters don’t know the money value of the bank sizes of their followers, so they have to offer their services in a unified format. Therefore, units staking is used to standardize tipsters’ staking size, but also to protect punters from losing their entire bankroll in a few bets.

Example:

If my betting bank dedicated to a certain tipster is £4000, and his recommended bank is 100 units, that means I will be risking £40 per unit. It is extremely easy to calculate how much money you are risking per one unit, simply divide your entire bank dedicated to this tipster to the number of units he recommends. In mathematical terms: £4000/100 = £40. By doing that you can see what is the percentage of your bank that you risk per single bet £40/£4000 = 0.01(1%).

Nevertheless, if you are not that much of math guy, Betting.com does all the calculations automatically for you.

There will be another person who follows the exact same tipster with a different bank of £2000. In that case, he is risking £2000/100 = £20 per unit. The given tipster might have 2 subscribers or 2000 subscribers.

Therefore, there is absolutely no way he can know what the betting banks of each individual who follows him are and adjust the stake for every single person. So instead of quoting the recommended stakes in money value, the tipster will quote them in units in his email. In this way, all people following him can adjust their stakes accordingly.

Another, really important reason why tipsters quote stakes in units is to protect sports bettors from quickly losing their banks. The case here is pretty straightforward. At the end of the day, tipsters are the people who are spending numerous hours building betting models, analyzing events and much more.

They know their betting strategy extremely well, so they have the highest chance of building the appropriate money management strategy. Tipsters can accurately predict the longest losing runs and know how to protect their followers from them. So do not be surprised if in occasionally you are risking 4 units instead of 2, there are some strong reasons behind this decision.

Being a successful punter which effectively means that you are beating the bookmakers translates to the following: you are extremely disciplined, have and stick to a certain betting strategy as well as have solid nerves and patience. Through my years of experience, I have seen many people having almost everything in place but not the right psychological approach to losing runs. Clearly, sports betting is very volatile activity and are plenty of ups and downs on the way to profit.

It is extremely hard to deal with losing runs when you are following a tipster, especially if the losing run occurs during the first month of your subscription. It is a simple psychological trick, but it does work and has helped many people.

Imagine you are having a betting bank of £4000 and you have lost £1000 in the first month, surely you will not feel okay simply because it £1000 is a lot of money. Now imagine exactly the same scenario but you lost 25 units out of a 100. Well, how does it feel – I assume slightly different, right?

Last but not least, worth mentioning that quoting stakes in units help us to evaluate the tipsters’ performance. It can give us a clear idea of how good given tipsters is, has this tipster been a good fit for us, what is his turnover compare to ours and many other statistical metrics we can use to identify whether we should keep on following him.

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Janne

Janne är en tävlingsmänniska med passion för sport och betting i alla dess former. Med över 15 år i bettingbranschen är hans mål att hjälpa spelare att betta ansvarsfullt och med rätt kunskap. Hos Betting.com delar han speltips, analyser och recensioner av bettingsidor. När det kommer till betting har Janne alltid något värdefullt att säga.

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