How do betting limits and market liquidity impact decisions punters make?

As you get into the world of profitable betting there are some key parts of how betting companies work that you need to learn. Two of the most important is understanding what are betting limits and market liquidity and how that impacts how much and when you should bet.

What are betting limits?

A betting limit is a pre-determined maximum bet (or amount of winnings) that bookmaker will allow on specific market before either reviewing the bet or rejecting the bet.

There are two types of betting limits. 

1. Market-level betting limits: these are betting limits placed on markets

2. Account-level betting limits: these are betting limits placed on your specific account

Market-level betting limits

For every market, bookmakers have a pre-determined amount of winnings that someone can win from a bet before it may go to a trader to review the bet.

For heavily betted and well-modelled markets, bookmakers are usually happy to take bigger bets. These are markets like head to head, total points and spreads/handicaps. This is the bread and butter for bookmakers. They are very confident they have edge on these markets and are not so concerned with big bets being placed. They welcome activity on these markets. These are markets are often referred to as having high liquidity as they take on a high volume of bets. The ultimate goal for a bookmaker is to take enough action on either side of the market so that they lock in a profit no matter the result of the bet. Usually on these markets they are accepting large amounts of actions on both sides of the market.

Because bookmakers are so confident in these prices, these are also the markets with the lowest margin. These make these markets great for turning over money and mug betting as you minimise the expected loss. 

Check out our article about the most effective ways to turnover money in your betting accounts.

Markets that are not heavily liquid, or do not receive a high volume of bets will have way lower limits. These are markets like player props. The majority of markets for arbitrage betting (link) and positive EV betting (link), will be from player props. Bookmakers have much lower limits on these markets as there is a lot more price volatility and not enough liquidity.

For a given NBA match, bookmakers may be offering 500+ props. There is just not enough betting volume to be spread across the over and under for all props to get enough liquidity for them to accept larger stakes. Further there is so much nuance and day to day changes that pricing thousands of props accurately is a really hard job. Player props is one market where bookmakers know they can lose money, but it is a very interesting prop for the casual punter. As a result, in order to keep offering the props, they need to have much lower limits to avoid sharp punters winning too much.

See this arb below, as much as I would love to put $10,000 down and lock in $364 profit. It just will not be possible and will kill your account.

More realistically, if you want to keep your account live for long, keeping your stakes less than $200 on either side is a safe zone.  As player props tend to be market they want casual punters playing, anything above $100 would be considered a “serious” bet by the bookmaker.

Other things to note:

• Betting limits are different across different bookmakers, the larger the bookmaker, the larger the limit (generally speaking)

• Betting limits are different depending on the time till the start of the event. Limits for match markets and player markets tend to be much lower 48 hours from the event starting as volume of bets in this time is much lower and bookmakers are looking to see if punters are sniping value

Account-level betting limits

In addition to market-level betting limits, bookmakers can also impose limits that are only for your unique account.

When you first set up your betting account, you will be on standard limits. Usually within the first 2 to 4 weeks, bookmakers will perform a review of your betting activity and try and map you into an archetype. Based on these archetype it may reduce your limits. The standard limits you start on are usually quite high.

If bookmaker decides you are sharp (which usually means you have made some money), they may limit you to that specific market, that specific sport or in more extreme cases can be limited across the entire book. The size of the limit is different in every situation. It is common to be allowed to only win $50 or $25. But some books will just not allow you to even bet on the market or limit you to winning $1. Every bookmaker will limit you different and on different timelines. It’s just a part of being a winning punter. Some bookmakers are much quicker at limiting any signs of positive EV betting behaviour.

Once you are limited, there is not much you can do. But I have heard of some instances of limits being removed but I would never count on it.

Any successful punter will eventually get their account limited. It’s a sign you have made money. 

Check out our article about how to extend the life of your accounts with various turnover opportunities

How much should I bet?

This is one of the most common questions we get from people who are getting into positive EV, arbitrage and middle betting.

It is impossible to give a one-size fits all answer as it depends on:

• How liquid is the market?

• What bookmaker are you using?

• How far out is the event?

• What is your betting history?

• How much risk do you want to take?

Without knowing all of these answers, it’s genuinely impossible to answer. Further, as you could guess from these questions, the answer is going to change from bet to bet for each person. But here are some things you can think about:

• If your account has a history of being a $5 punter, it will be a massive red flag all of a sudden to be betting $500

• Stakes of positive EV bets should match stakes of previous betting history or mug bets

• Reduce your stakes if betting far from an event starting and want to avoid review

At the end of the day, it is a bit of a balancing act between keeping your account alive and getting enough volume down and making money.

Book in a strategy call

If you have any questions or want to go deeper on this stuff, for a limited time we are offering free strategy calls. On these calls we can go through everything you want to know about betting limits as well as discuss any winning betting strategies you can implement. We try and make these strategies as personal as possible ensuring that it fits your financial goals, schedule and preferences. 

Book in a call today.