If you follow any betting accounts on social media you have seen someone say something like “3 units on the Bills tonight” and had no idea what they meant.
We were the same way when we first started. Here is what it means.
What a unit is
A unit is your standard bet size. That is it. If you normally bet $25 on a game then one unit is $25 for you. If someone else bets $500 a game then one unit is $500 for them.
When a tipster says they are putting 2 units on something they are saying they like it enough to bet double their usual amount.
Most serious bettors keep the majority of their plays at 1 unit and only size up when they feel strongly about a game.
Why people say units instead of dollars
Nobody wants to tell the internet how much money they are actually betting.
Saying “2 units on the Celtics” gets the same message across as “I put $1,000 on the Celtics” without broadcasting your financial situation to strangers.
It also makes it easier to compare results between people with different bankroll sizes.
A tipster who is up 40 units on the season is giving you useful information whether their unit is $10 or $10,000.
Why it actually matters
We did not bother with units when we first started betting and we were all over the place.
One night we would put $300 on a game we liked and the next day we would throw $15 on something for fun.
We had no idea if we were actually profitable or just getting bailed out by a couple of big bets.
Once we started keeping everything at 1 unit with the occasional 2 unit play on our strongest opinions it became way easier to track our results and figure out which sports and bet types we were actually good at.
We set our unit at about 1 to 2 percent of our bankroll and honestly that one change helped more than anything else we have tried.
