Dutching And How The Percentages Work
One of the many popular staking methods talked about a lot in the betting industry, is dutching. There are tipsters, software and calculators all over the place, showing you how to split your stakes across several selections, which inevitably increase your chances of finding a winner.
Dutching works BUT will only work if you have the right selection process.
One thing that I often stress to people when starting out in the betting world is that before placing any bets, it’s imperative to understand the processes involved in “why” you’re placing those bets.
That could be the selection process or the staking plan that you’re following.
Dutching is no different and in this series of articles I’m going to be explaining exactly how the staking method works, what to look out for, and how NOT to make common mistakes.
First, up then, we need to understand how the odds work, working out the probabilities and how these converse into covering the field, which is what dutching is all about.
Let’s assume we’re going to be covering a horse race.
There are 10 runners and our selection method (selection methods can be covered in another article if interest is shown 😉 ) has highlighted 3 runners as viable contenders.
It’s the favourite, the 3rd favourite and an outsider.
Here are the odds –
2.88 (15/8)
5.0 (4/1)
13 (12/1)
We now need to convert these odds into probabilities –
We always use 100 as our dividing number, as there is a 100% chance of an outcome.
So, 100 divided by 2.88 (we always use the decimal odds) = 34.72%
100 / 5.0 = 20%
100 / 13 = 7.69%
We now add these together to get a total of 62.41%
By betting on these horses, we’re covering up to 62.41% of the probability of these horses winning. We now need to convert this into odds –
We do the same thing and divide the percentage into 100 –
100 / 62.41% = 1.6
By dutching these three selections, you’ve now got yourself around 8/13 about the outcome of a race.
That’s despite having a 4/1 and 12/1 shot in your selections!
You’ve covered the favourite which is 15/8 and now you’re showing an odds on situation!
Always worth considering this when dutching.
Now let’s assume that we’re looking to make £100 from our bets. To work out the staking, we simple use the percentages worked out from the probability to calculate the stakes.
If we take the 34.72% probability of the favourite, we turn this into our stake = £34.72p
Multiply this by the odds of 2.88 and we would return £100. Likewise with the other percentages.
Now, that’s a simple breakdown of how dutching works but in the above example, we would need to be winning 7 out of 10 bets to make a profit.
I would suggest that it’s worth paper trading the above staking method and getting the calculations set into your mindset. Once you’ve done this, you can decide if the method would suit your betting style.
Next week, I’ll be looking at how to use dutching in a more complex way, a quick and easy selection process and where best to place your bets.
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