Staking and bankroll basics.

Your bankroll is the money you have set aside for betting, separate from the money you need for anything else. A staking plan is the rule you follow to decide how much of that bankroll goes on any one bet. The simplest and most common approach is level staking: pick a unit, often one or two percent of the starting bankroll, and stake that same unit on every bet regardless of the price or how confident you feel. Level staking keeps your exposure honest and makes it possible to judge results over time without a single big loser wiping out weeks of work.

A useful bankroll is one you can lose in full without it affecting your daily life. Set the size deliberately, size your unit against that, and only revise the unit when the bankroll has grown or shrunk enough to make the old unit feel wrong. If you find yourself increasing stakes to chase losses or trimming them after a couple of winners, that is the staking plan breaking, not the plan being wrong. Write the rule down, stick to it, and let the record it produces tell you whether your selections have an edge.