Percentage bankroll betting explained

The stake is a live function of the bankroll, so it changes after every settled bet. There is no floor beyond the €1 minimum needed for a bet to be executable, and no rounding up to a round number.

stake = current bankroll × 1% (minimum executable stake €1.00)

Starting from a €1,000 bankroll, the first stake is €10.00 — identical to flat staking. The two diverge from the second bet onward.

Losing 1% of what remains can never empty a bankroll: after ten consecutive losses the balance is still roughly 90% of where it started. Flat staking, by contrast, keeps taking the same absolute amount from a smaller and smaller balance.

The trade-off is symmetrical. Recovery from a deep drawdown is slower, because the stake shrinks exactly when a larger stake would earn back more.

The percentage is a risk dial, not a performance setting. Doubling it doubles both the growth rate and the depth of the swings. One percent is deliberately conservative for a process whose edge is still being measured.

Betting carries financial risk and no staking plan removes it. Historical performance does not guarantee future results, and BetBuddy runs in paper mode: stakes are simulated and no bookmaker account is connected.

• 0.5–1%: conservative, appropriate while the sample is small.
• 2–3%: aggressive; expect drawdowns that are uncomfortable to sit through.
• Above 5%: a small losing run does structural damage to the bankroll.

At 1% of the current bankroll, a €1,000 balance stakes €10. After a good run to €1,300 the stake becomes €13 without any decision being made; after a drawdown to €700 it falls to €7. The plan geometrically scales exposure with the resources that support it, which is why a percentage bettor cannot be bankrupted by a losing sequence in the way a flat bettor can.

The same mechanism slows recovery. Ten consecutive losses at 1% leave roughly 90.4% of the bankroll, and climbing back requires a longer winning run than the losing run that caused the damage, because each winning bet is sized off a smaller base.

The percentage is a risk dial, not a performance setting. One percent is conservative and survives long losing runs; three percent grows faster and produces drawdowns most people abandon before they end. BetBuddy runs 1% because the strategy comparison is only meaningful if every plan survives the full sample.

Small bankrolls eventually produce stakes below anything a bookmaker would accept. BetBuddy rounds to a €1 minimum executable stake and records the raw calculated figure alongside it in the stake audit, so the deviation from the pure formula is visible rather than silently absorbed.