Guide to the Unit System used in Betting

The unit system in betting is a common strategy that many experienced punters adopt. If you have been in and around the betting community for some time, you must have heard people talk about winning or losing units. While it may seem like a complex idea, in reality, it's very simple.

To put it in simple words, a unit refers to a percentage of your total account value. It can be 1% or 5% or even 10% of your total account value. It can be any arbitrary number, but deciding on a 7% unit, for example, is counterproductive.

Bettors look at their account balance as units because it makes calculations and budgeting easier. Instead of thinking in terms of hard cash, you can start thinking in terms of units. If you take each unit as 1% of your account value, you can easily understand how much you are betting in each event.

What is a unit in sports betting?

In sports betting, a unit is a way of keeping track of your bets. While that definition tells you what a unit is, it doesn't tell you anything about the implications of using units and why people use them in the first place.

Taking an example will make things easier to understand. Let's assume you have £1000 in your account. As a rule of thumb, bettors do not generally go over 10% of their total account on one bet. Some keep it at 5%, while others may stretch it to 20%. Anything more than that is unusual and unsustainable.

Before we get into units, it's important to understand why bettors cap their bets in the first place. If you are betting a very high percentage of your account, say 25%, you can lose all your money very quickly. In the case of 25%, it would only take four losses to wipe out your entire balance. It goes down to 5 losses if your cap is 20%, 10 losses with 10%, and 20 losses with 5%.

Since you want to maximise winnings, you need to be in the betting market for a long time. That makes self-imposed caps necessary. Most sports betting platforms also allow you to set a cap, which you then can't cross. The concept of units in sports betting is closely related to the concept of capping maximum bets.

Units in sports bets

Once you have a cap in place, you can start deciding your unit size. Here again, we would need an example to better illustrate the process.

Let's continue with the same assumption that you have £1000 in your betting account. Let's also assume that you cap your bets at 10%, that is, £100. Now you know you won't bet more than £100 on any single event.

From here, you need to start working on your unit size/value. If you decide to take the simplest route (1 unit = 1% of your account value), your unit size will be £10. Every time you bet one unit, you are staking £10. When you bet 2 units, you are staking £20, and so on.

Since your upper betting limit is £100 (as we already decided), the maximum number of units you can stake on one bet is 10. That means you will bet 1 unit at least and 10 units maximum, which makes your smallest bet worth £10 and your biggest bet worth £100.

If you are using the above calculation, you are using a 1 to 10-unit system. If you chose to cap your bets at £50, you would be using the 1 to 5-unit system.

Risk assessment and units

Let's work with the 1 to 10-unit system to keep things simple. The same principles would apply to any other unit system you choose, be it 1 to 5 or 1 to 20.

You would bet more units in events where you are confident about winning and the odds are worth taking a shot at. For the events you are not confident at all, you would bet only 1 unit. That's the simplest way of thinking about the unit system in sports betting. The better the prospect of winning, the more units you stake, and vice versa.

Example of the unit system

Let's take an example of how to keep using the unit system for a long time.

Let's assume you start with £500 in your betting account. Now you use the 1 to 5-unit system where each unit is worth £10. You have decided to not bet more than £50 in any single event.

Assuming that you rack some winnings, let's take your account balance after a year to be £800. Since your account balance has increased 60%, you can also increase your unit size accordingly. Now instead of taking each unit as £10, you will take them as £16 (60% increase). Your betting cap should also increase by 60% to be £80.

However, many bettors choose not to take this approach. For the sake of simplification, you can keep the same unit size while increasing your maximum betting units to 10 from 5. Alternatively, you can choose an easier percentage to work with, like 10% or 15%. Some choose to retain their unit size and upper cap despite overall growth in account size.

How to pick your unit size?

How you will pick your unit size depends on a lot of factors. First, you need to honestly evaluate your financial situation. If £100 is a big amount for you, you should cap your bets at £50. But if £100 is a small number for you, you can cap your bets at £200 or more.

Once you have your betting cap, determining the unit size is simple. It's much more difficult to decide how many units you want to put in a bet. Here again, everything from your instinct to your risk-bearing capacity plays a huge role.

Always decide your own unit size after going through all the relevant factors. Do not let others sway you into a unit size that's not feasible or sustainable for you.

Conclusion

There are many benefits of adopting the unit method in sports betting. We hope this guide has introduced you to the basics of the unit system and how you can make the most of it.