33% System

Inexperienced handicappers often use flat betting. Betting this way makes really hard to make a profit on the long run and that is way most of the professional bettors use some kind of system that improves their chances of making money.

Years ago I’ve came across, so called, 33% straight bet system. I’ve been using it for years and it helped me increase my profit. Beauty of this system is that you need to win only 2 games out of 6 to make a profit. That’s why it’s called 33% straight bet system. The system was designed for betting against the spread in basketball or football with fixed odds of -110 (1.91 in decimal odds).

In this system you place a series of up to 6 bets with predetermined amounts of X, 2X, 4X, 6X, 8X and 12.5X, where X is your betting unit value. For example if your unit is 10$, then your predetermined series would look like this: $10, $20, $40, $60, $80 and $125. Place one bet a day and as soon as you make profit, you stop, add your profit to the bankroll and start all over again. You need to win only 1 or 2 games (depending where you are in the series) to make a profit!

Day Amount W/L Profit Net profit
1 $10 L -$10 -$10
2 $20 L -$20 -$30
3 $40 W +$36.40 +$6.40

Here we’ve lost 1st $10 bet, then the next day we made a $20 bet and lost again, but on 3rd day we made $40 bet and won. This gave us profit of $6.40 with winning only 1 out of 3 bets. Flat bettor would be -$20.90.

Now, let’s take a look at another example:

Day Amount W/L Profit Net profit
1 $10 L -$10 -$10
2 $20 L -$20 -$30
3 $40 L -$40 -$70
4 $60 W +$54.60 -$15.40
5 $80 L -$80 -$95.40
6 $125 W +$113.75 +$18.35

Here we’ve lost first 3 bets and then made a winning bet on 4th day, but that still didn’t provide a profit for us, so we continue a series. At the end, winning 2 out of 6 bets gave us $18.35 profit. In the same time flat bettor would be -$41.80.

And, let’s take a look at final example:

Day Amount W/L Profit Net profit
1 $10 L -$10 -$10
2 $20 L -$20 -$30
3 $40 L -$40 -$70
4 $60 L -$60 -$130
5 $80 W +$72.80 -$57.20
6 $125 W +$113.75 +$56.55

Here we’ve lost first 4 bets and won 5th and 6th. Again, winning only 2 out 6 bets gave us profit of $56.55. In the same time flat bettor would be -$41.80.

I hope you can see now how profitable this system can be in the long run. You just need to follow a few simple rules:
  1. Place only 1 bet per day following the series X, 2X, 4X, 6X, 8X and 12.5X (X is your unit).
  2. At the moment you’ve made a profit stop the series, collect your money and start a new series next day.
  3. When you start to win after bet #3, follow the predetermined amounts in the series until you show a profit. You will only need to win 2 games within 6.
  4. If you didn’t make a profit in first 5 days stop the series and accept the loss! You’ve lost your 21 units because you were on the bad streak, that happens. Just recalculate your unit value and start a new series.
In the above examples I’ve assumed only 33% winning rate, but with odds of -110 you can expect (on the long run) winning rate of around 50% which can yield even bigger profit.