Surviving and Thriving Across 162 Games
The MLB season is a marathon, not a sprint. With 162 games per team and 15 games on the slate most nights from April through September, there is no other sport that tests your bankroll discipline like baseball. You can be right 55% of the time and still go broke if your staking is reckless. You can be right 53% of the time and make consistent money if your staking is sound. This guide is about the staking.
A unit is a standardized bet size relative to your total bankroll. It's the language professional bettors use to normalize results regardless of bankroll size. One bettor's $50 unit and another bettor's $500 unit represent the same relative risk if their bankrolls are proportional.
The standard recommendation is that one unit equals 1-2% of your total bankroll. For a $5,000 bankroll, that's $50-$100 per unit. For a $10,000 bankroll, that's $100-$200.
Why 1-2%? Because losing streaks happen to everyone. A bettor hitting at 55% still has a roughly 5% chance of losing eight or more bets in a row at some point during the season. If you're betting 5% of your bankroll per play, eight consecutive losses wipes out 34% of your bankroll. At 2% per play, the same streak only costs 15%. The math matters more than the analysis over the long haul.
There are two schools of thought on unit sizing, and the right choice depends on your personality and discipline level.
| Approach | How It Works | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Flat Betting | Every bet is exactly 1 unit, regardless of confidence | Beginners, bettors prone to tilt, anyone wanting simplicity |
| Variable Staking (1-3 units) | Bet 1 unit on standard plays, 2 on strong plays, 3 on top-tier plays | Experienced bettors with proven edge and strong discipline |
Flat betting is the safest approach for most bettors. When every bet is the same size, you can't blow up your bankroll on a "sure thing" that loses. You also can't chase losses by sizing up. The discipline is built into the system rather than relying on your willpower in the moment.
Professional handicappers who flat bet are admitting something important: they can't reliably distinguish between a 54% edge and a 58% edge on a per-game basis. That's honest. The difference between a strong play and a very strong play is often small enough that variable staking doesn't add enough value to justify the additional risk.
Variable staking, typically on a 1-3 unit scale, allows you to put more money behind your strongest opinions. When your analysis identifies a clear pitching mismatch, favorable park factors, supporting weather, and sharp money confirmation via market reads, that's a different situation than a standard 1-unit play.
The risk is that variable staking only works if your confidence ratings are actually calibrated. If your 3-unit plays hit at a lower rate than your 1-unit plays, you're losing money by sizing up. Track your results by unit size rigorously. If your 3-unit plays don't outperform your 1-unit plays over a meaningful sample (200+ bets in each tier), you should flat bet.
Most professionals who use variable staking cap their maximum at 3 units and rarely use it. Over a typical month during the season, a disciplined handicapper might play 60-80 games: 50-60 at 1 unit, 10-15 at 2 units, and 3-5 at 3 units. If you're playing 3 units five or six times a week, you're not being selective. You're just overexposed.
Baseball is not like football or basketball for bankroll management. The sport has unique characteristics that require adjustments:
Beyond individual bet sizing, professional bettors set exposure limits to prevent overextension.
| Limit Type | Recommended Maximum | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Daily bet count | 3-5 plays per day | Forces selectivity. If you have 5 bets, you take the best 5. If you have no limit, you start forcing mediocre plays. |
| Daily unit exposure | 5-8 units total | Caps your single-day risk. Even if all 5 plays lose, you're down 5-8% of your bankroll. Recoverable. |
| Weekly loss limit | 10-15 units | Forces a cooldown if the week goes bad. Prevents emotional chasing in a bad stretch. |
| Monthly review threshold | If down 20+ units, reassess | A losing month of this magnitude means something may be off in your process, not just variance. |
This is the rule that saves the most money and the one that's hardest to follow. When you hit your daily or weekly loss limit, you stop betting. Not "I'll just take one more look," not "but this game is a lock." You stop. You close the app, close the laptop, and walk away until the next period begins.
The logic is simple: when you're losing, you're either unlucky or wrong. If you're unlucky, more bets in the same session won't change your luck. If you're wrong about something in your process, more bets will compound the damage. Either way, the correct response is to stop and reassess.
Set your limits before the season starts and write them down. "I will bet no more than 5 games per day, no more than 8 units per day, and if I lose 12 units in a week, I take the rest of the week off." When you set rules during a losing streak, you're negotiating with yourself while emotionally compromised. Set them while you're clear-headed.
Your unit size should change as your bankroll grows or shrinks, but not on a daily basis. Recalculating too frequently creates a self-reinforcing spiral: when you're losing, your bets get smaller (which limits recovery), and when you're winning, your bets get larger (which increases future drawdown risk).
The common approach is to recalculate monthly:
This approach smooths out variance within each month while still adjusting for long-term bankroll changes. If you have a great April and grow your bankroll by 30%, your May unit sizes go up proportionally. If June is rough and you give back 15%, July units adjust downward. The key is never changing mid-period based on emotions.
Chasing is the single most destructive behavior in sports betting. It works like this: you lose three bets in a row, so you double your stake on the fourth bet to "get even." If that loses, you triple the next one. The math on this is brutal. A five-bet losing streak at escalating stakes can wipe out two weeks of careful, profitable work.
MLB makes chasing especially tempting because there are always more games. Lost your afternoon bets? There are night games. Lost the night games? There's a West Coast late game. The constant availability of action makes it easy to keep chasing deeper into a hole.
You cannot manage what you don't measure. Every bet should be tracked with the following data points:
At the end of each month, review your data for patterns:
The data tells you where your edge actually lives, which is often different from where you think it lives. Trust the numbers over your gut feeling.
Your analysis picks the bets. Your bankroll management decides whether you survive long enough for the analysis to pay off. Flat bet or use a disciplined 1-3 unit scale. Set daily and weekly limits. Never chase. Track every bet. Recalculate monthly. The 162-game season rewards consistency and punishes recklessness. Treat your bankroll like a business asset, because that's what it is.
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Last Updated: January 26, 2026