Appendix E
The sixty-second toolkit
Three tear-out cards: the ten-point price check, the Kelly quick reference, and the safety stack.
Three cards, meant to be photocopied, laminated and kept somewhere less dignified than a shelf. Mine live on the fridge, which my wife regards as evidence rather than decor. They are laminated because coffee and the odd rained-off Saturday have already ruined enough paper, and a card meant to last a season should survive a coat pocket. Nothing here is new. It is Chapters 15, 29 and 32, compressed to the size a thumb can hold at kick-off.
Card 1: The Ten-Point Price Check
- Convert the price. p* = b/(a+b) for any fractional price a/b. Say the per cent out loud (Ch.2).
- Form your probability before looking. Written down, before the price exists for you (Ch.4).
- De-vig the sharp market for fair. Strip the margin; that is the market's honest opinion (Ch.8, Ch.14).
- Compute the edge and demand your threshold. Edge = p(a+b)/b − 1. At least 4 per cent on this book's evidence, or walk away (Ch.4, Ch.14).
- Ask why the price exists. Name the bias, or concede the error is probably yours (Ch.13).
- Longshot? Raise the required edge. The longshot tax understates the true cost of outsiders (Ch.5).
- Has the sharp market already moved? If it has eaten your news, your edge is a memory (Ch.14).
- Stake by fractional Kelly. Card 2 has the arithmetic (Ch.29).
- Record it. Date, price, stake, your probability, the fair closing price (Ch.30, Appendix D).
- Audit closing line value monthly. Kill any angle that persistently beats worse prices than the close (Ch.30).
Default output: no bet. Ten points, sixty seconds, every price, no exceptions for the ones that feel obvious.
Card 2: The Kelly Quick Reference
Full Kelly: f* = (bp − q)/b, where b is the profit per pound staked (a/b in decimal for a fractional price a/b), p is your probability and q is 1 − p.
Worked: 13/8, p = 0.40. b = 1.625, q = 0.60. f* = (1.625 × 0.40 − 0.60)/1.625 = 3.08 per cent of the bankroll. Quarter Kelly: 0.77 per cent. Worked: evens, p = 0.55. f* = 10 per cent. Quarter Kelly: 2.5 per cent.
Full Kelly is optimal and brutal: a 50 per cent chance your bankroll is halved at some point on the way. Half Kelly cuts that to 12.5 per cent for three-quarters of the growth. Quarter Kelly cuts it to 0.78 per cent. Stake quarter to half Kelly on a genuine edge. If the edge is not genuine, the correct stake is nil, and the formula already knows it.
Card 3: The Safety Stack
Ring-fenced bankroll, sized while calm → fractional Kelly staking → operator deposit limits → device blocking software (Gamban) → GamStop, free national self-exclusion, locking every licensed operator at once → the phone call: GamCare's National Gambling Helpline, 0808 8020 133, free, 24 hours a day. Each layer does a job the one below it cannot. Skip one and the gap it leaves is exactly where the next losing session finds its excuse. GambleAware closed on 31 March 2026; its commissioning role transferred to NHS England, OHID, UKRI and the relevant devolved bodies, so it is not signposted here.
A betting balance is not a bank deposit. It carries no Financial Services Compensation Scheme cover, and the protection an operator offers a customer's funds ranges from minimal to properly ring-fenced; check before it matters, not after.
This is reference lifted from the book. The chapters are where the arithmetic gets built and argued for.
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