Keeping control of finances is advice that’s as old as the practice of betting itself. For most casual bettors, that means planning and organising one betting account. But serious bettors can often have accounts at more than one betting platform, as it provides flexibility in the search for the best odds and bonuses.
Finding betting platforms with the most preferable features can be time-consuming if you try to do it manually. But the task becomes much easier if you rely on specialised websites such as legalbet.uk which performs an expert analysis and comparison of the key features of betting sites such as odds, bookmaker margins, and bonuses. If you take into account all the advantages and disadvantages of numerous betting sites gathered in one place, then you can make an informed choice when choosing platforms that suit your needs.
But when holding multiple accounts, bettors can often fall into a ‘fragmentation trap’, where they lose sight of the overall betting funds, compared to simply handling just one account. But is it better to handle each account’s bankroll separately or lump everything together as a unified portfolio?
The Individual Approach
Tracking individual betting accounts comes into focus when there are different betting strategies across them. It could be that one account is solely used for live sports betting, another for a betting exchange and a separate one for long-term futures.
The main benefit of managing accounts individually is that it’s easier to see the returns. Instead of having one account that’s jumbled with all types of betting strategies and wagers, an individual account can show how well a certain type of wagering is performing.
This individual account approach can also be extremely useful for having “circuit breakers”. If one account collapses to zero, then the bettor can be forced to stop with that type of bet.
The Unified Theory
The gold standard of managing online gambling accounts is to unify them. By adding everything together, true bankroll management and risk assessment can be performed, which gives a bigger picture of your betting.
With a single account management approach, there is a danger of falling into a ‘small number trap’ where stake percentages get increased. A 5% stake from Account A may not feel highly significant, for example, which makes it easier for the bettor to instead put down a 20% wager. But that raised single stake still impacts the overall bankroll.
Problematically, if that small number trap plays out across five accounts, then suddenly everything gets terribly skewed as the betting (from a financial perspective) becomes much higher risk.
The stake percentage should stay consistent across all different setups and shouldn’t be changed to fit an account. Remember to adjust the stake based on the overall balance. If the combined sum of balances becomes £200 from an initial £100, then the current stake should be based on that new number (2% of £200 = a £4 stake per bet).
Spreading the View
Bankroll management should happen from the initial balance, which sets the terms for all individual accounts. If there's a total of £500 across all accounts, picking a standard 2% risk level means that the unit per bet is £10, no matter what account is being used.
This highlights the benefit of holding different accounts, as if this were a wager on the World Cup Final, for example, then it’s possible that one bookmaker has better odds than the others, and you can select the one with the best to get more value from the £10 stake.
Balancing It All Out
Another good example of how unified management helps is in line shopping power. If you have a set balance and find that Bookmaker B has the best odds for a current selection, but that account has a balance of zero, then you can move the exact stake from the “unified bankroll” to grab those better odds, without disrupting numbers.
The funding of accounts also becomes a lot easier with this approach, as a percentage of the bankroll (typically 20%) can be held in a liquidity account. If any betting account needs funding, then it comes from this central source.
Working the Hub
The danger of treating accounts individually is arbitrarily topping them up from a bank account, which can lead to overspending. A central liquidity hub manages the overall gambling balance, but requires active housekeeping. Once a week, withdrawals from betting accounts can be done to bring the hub back to 20%.
At the end of the month, anything above the original starting bankroll plus the 20% buffer can be paid as your profit, so you then start all over again with a clean slate. Try not to leave large overages in a betting account too long, as it can become tempting to spend them.
Consistency is Key
The bottom line is that whatever approach you use for funding multiple accounts, consistency is key. The initial step (just as it would be with managing only one account), is determining the starting capital for the period, money which you should 100% be comfortable losing.
From this figure comes the initial unit size of wager to be used and managed across accounts. Keep track of bets and balances as regularly as possible, as managing several accounts as one unified bankroll will help to keep everything in check much easier than trying to juggle them individually.
This article is paid content. It has been reviewed and edited by the Eastern Eye editorial team to meet our content standards.
