Drawdown measures the drop from your bankroll's peak to its lowest point before it recovers. Go from +30 units to +18 units and you're in a 12-unit drawdown.
Every bettor has them, because of variance. Smaller unit sizes keep drawdowns manageable.
Staking too aggressively, or using full Kelly criterion with an overestimated edge, leads to much deeper drawdowns.
How it works
Drawdown is measured from your highest point, not from where you started. If you were up 30 units and fall back to up 18, you're in a 12-unit drawdown even though you're still in profit overall.
Every bettor goes through them. Even with a real edge, long losing runs are a normal part of variance. At a 46% loss rate, for example, a run of eight straight losses somewhere in a 500-bet season happens often.
The size of your stakes decides how much a drawdown hurts:
| Unit size | A 15-unit drawdown costs |
|---|---|
| 1% of bankroll | 15% of bankroll |
| 2% of bankroll | 30% of bankroll |
| 5% of bankroll | 75% of bankroll |
Losses also take more to recover than they cost. Losing 20% of a bankroll needs a 25% gain to get back to the start.
The worst response to a drawdown is raising stakes to win it back quickly. That turns a normal bad run into a serious loss. Consistent flat betting and a sensible bankroll are the best protection.
Examples
- Example 1
At a 46% loss rate (about what a 54% bettor sees), there's roughly a 42% chance of at least one run of eight straight losses in 500 bets.
- Example 2
A bettor staking 2% per bet loses ten in a row. At flat stakes that's 20% of their starting bankroll gone, which needs a 25% gain to recover.
- Example 3
A capper peaks at +45 units in March and falls to +31 by May. That's a 14-unit drawdown, even though the overall record is still strongly positive.
Common questions
What is a normal drawdown in sports betting?
It depends on your stake sizes and how many bets you place, but drawdowns of 10 to 20 units are common even for winning bettors over a season. Smaller units keep them manageable.
How do I recover from a betting drawdown?
Keep betting the same way with the same stake size, as long as your process is sound. Raising stakes to win losses back quickly is the most common way a drawdown becomes a much bigger loss.