Staking plans for a betting bot: level stakes, percentage of bank, fixed liability, and the ones that empty banks

Last checked 13 October 2026

A staking plan decides how much goes on each bet. It can't turn a losing system into a winning one. It can make a winning system unbearable to follow, or make a flat one look like a disaster, or hide a real edge under a pile of noise. Pick the plan before you switch anything on, and pick it for a reason.

Level stakes

The same amount on every bet. £10 on the first, £10 on the thousandth. It's the dullest plan and the most useful one, because it's the only plan where the record's return is your return. If a system shows 8% on level stakes over two thousand bets, that's what you'd have made with £10 on each. Every other plan bends that number one way or the other.

It's also the plan to judge a new system on. Run anything new at level stakes, in simulation or small, until you've seen a losing run and know what one feels like. You can always compound later.

Percentage of bank

A fixed percentage of whatever the bank is right now, recalculated before each bet. With a £1,000 bank and 2%, the first bet is £20. Win and the next one is a bit more; lose and it's a bit less.

The appeal is that it compounds on the way up and protects on the way down. Ten straight losses at level £20 cost £200. Ten straight losses at 2% of a shrinking bank cost about £183, because each stake is 2% of a smaller number, and the bank can't reach zero. The catch is the way back: after that run you're staking £16.34, not £20, so recovery is slower than the fall. Over a long winning record it finishes well ahead of level stakes. Over a flat one it finishes slightly behind, because you're always betting a little more after wins and a little less after losses.

Fixed liability

For lays. You risk the same amount on every bet and let the stake move with the price. Risk £40 and a lay at 5.0 wins you £10, a lay at 3.0 wins you £20. The point is that no single result can cost more than £40, whatever the price, which is the thing fixed-stake laying can't promise. The full maths is in lay betting liability explained.

Loss recovery, Martingale, and friends

These are the plans that raise the stake after a loss so that the next winner claws the losses back. Double after a loss. Add a unit after a loss. Stake whatever is needed to recover the deficit plus a target profit. They all share one assumption, that a winner is coming before the bank runs out, and the sums say the bank runs out first more often than people think.

Double after each loss from £10 and a run of eight losers goes 10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640, 1,280. You've now lost £2,550 and the ninth bet needs to be £2,560 to get back to level. On a bank that started at £1,000 you stopped being able to follow the plan at bet seven.

How often does a run of eight come along? For a system that wins half its bets, about twice in every thousand bets. For a backing system that wins one in four, which is normal for horses around 5.0, a run of eight losers turns up around 25 times in every thousand bets, and runs of twelve or more about eight times. It's not a rare event you can plan around. It's Tuesday.

The subtler versions, where you recover the deficit over the next few bets rather than the next one, fail the same way more slowly. They put the biggest stakes on exactly when the system is cold, which is the opposite of what a plan should do.

Stop settings aren't a staking plan, but use them

Stop at a loss for the day, stop at a profit for the day, or stop after a number of winning or losing bets. A daily loss stop is the brake. It can't stop a bad month, but it stops a bad afternoon turning into a bad week, and it means the worst day is a number you chose rather than one you found out about.

How to choose

1. Judge on level stakes. That's what the record means.
2. Size the bank from the record's worst drawdown, and assume the next one will be worse. How to read a tipster's results covers where to find that number.
3. Use fixed liability for lays unless the record was built on fixed stakes, in which case cap the price.
4. Compound only once you trust it. Percentage of bank after you've seen a losing run and stayed in.
5. Leave loss recovery alone. If the system has an edge it doesn't need rescuing; if it hasn't, no plan rescues it.

Staking plans in xCloudBot

There are 48 plans to pick from: 26 for back bets and 22 for lays, including level stakes, percentage of bank, fixed liability and a custom plan you set up yourself. You choose one per system, so a tipster you copy can run level while a system of your own compounds. Each system also has its own minimum and maximum odds and its own stop at a profit, a loss, or a number of bets won or lost. Simulation mode runs any system on paper with the same staking and the same limits, which is the cheapest way to find out what a plan does before it does it to real money. If you're on Premium and not sure how to set stakes up, that's part of what support is for.

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