Guide
Betting ROI: How to Measure Your Results Honestly
Quick Summary
- Betting ROI is profit divided by total amount staked, shown as a percentage.
- Small samples are noisy: 100 even-money bets can swing roughly 10% either way by chance.
- Break results down by market and odds range to learn what is really working.
- 18+ only
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- Checked 5 Nov 2026
- Know your limit
Most people judge their betting by feel: a big win last week, a bad weekend, a sense that cricket goes better than football. Feelings are poor accountants. Return on investment, or ROI, is a simple measure that cuts through them, and keeping it honestly is the single most useful habit for anyone who bets on sport. This post explains how to calculate betting ROI, why short records can be badly misleading, and how to set up a record sheet that tells you something real.
The formula
Betting ROI = net profit ÷ total staked × 100. If you staked a total of ৳8,000 over a month and finished ৳240 up, your ROI is 3%. If you finished ৳600 down, it is −7.5%. Some people call this "yield". It is different from growth of your bankroll, which compares profit with the money you started with.
The distinction matters. Staking ৳8,000 from a ৳2,000 bankroll means you turned the money over four times. A 3% ROI on turnover is a 12% gain on bankroll. Both numbers are useful, but ROI on stakes is the fairer way to compare one strategy or market with another.
A worked record
Here is a hypothetical month of 40 bets at ৳100 each, split by market. The totals line shows overall ROI, but the breakdown is where the insight is.
| Market | Bets | Staked | Returned | Profit | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cricket match winner | 15 | ৳1,500 | ৳1,620 | +৳120 | +8.0% |
| Cricket runs lines | 15 | ৳1,500 | ৳1,410 | −৳90 | −6.0% |
| Football 1X2 | 10 | ৳1,000 | ৳880 | −৳120 | −12.0% |
| Total | 40 | ৳4,000 | ৳3,910 | −৳90 | −2.3% |
Why small samples mislead
It is tempting to conclude from that table that you are good at cricket match bets and should drop football. But 15 bets is a tiny sample. For bets near even money, the natural spread of ROI from luck alone is roughly 100% divided by the square root of the number of bets. For 15 bets, that is about ±26%. For 100 bets, about ±10%. For 1,000 bets, about ±3%.
So a +8% ROI over 15 bets is well within what pure chance produces. Even +5% over 100 bets is not strong evidence. Only over several hundred bets does a positive ROI start to suggest skill rather than luck, and even then the bookmaker's margin means most long records end slightly negative. Patience with data is part of the discipline.
- 15 bets: luck alone spreads ROI about ±26%.
- 100 bets: about ±10%.
- 400 bets: about ±5%.
- 1,000 bets: about ±3%.
What to record
A good record sheet has one row per bet with the date, sport, market, odds taken, stake, your estimated chance and the result. Adding the closing odds, the last price before the event started, is a powerful extra: if you regularly get better odds than the closing price, that is often a sign of good judgement, even before results catch up. Record in units as well as Taka, as our unit betting post suggests, so months with different stakes can be compared.
Acting on the numbers
Review your sheet monthly. If a market has a long negative record, cut it. If your estimated chances are consistently higher than your actual win rate, you are overconfident and should reduce stakes, or reconsider the Kelly criterion fraction if you use one. If the overall figure is steadily negative, that is the cost of your entertainment, and it is worth comparing with your budget. The cricket betting tips page has more on building a routine.
Three steps
How to track betting ROI in 3 steps
- 1Record every bet
Log date, market, odds, stake, estimate and result straight after each bet.
- 2Calculate ROI monthly
Divide net profit by total staked for the month and for each market type.
- 3Judge with sample size
Treat results from fewer than a few hundred bets as noise, not proof of skill.