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Vinny · The book
“One second. Counting the house money.”
“One second. Counting the house money.”
Betting in dollar amounts hides the truth. Units expose it. One unit is the smallest meaningful bet you make — and it's the only way to compare results honestly.
A unit is a fixed slice of your bankroll — typically 1% — so one unit is $10 on a $1,000 roll and $50 on a $5,000 roll. Betting and recording in units keeps results comparable across time and bankroll size, which is why a record like "+14.2 units" means something and a raw dollar total doesn't.
I love when people track their bets in dollars. Especially when they're betting different amounts each time. You can tell yourself a $500 win makes up for four $50 losses and technically you're right. You're also hiding the math from yourself.
Dollar tracking is the record-keeping equivalent of counting the times you won and ignoring how much you staked to win them. I am very comfortable with you keeping records that way.
I used to track in dollars because it was easier. Made sense — I think in dollars, I bet in dollars.
The problem was I wasn't betting consistent amounts. One week I'd be up $400 and feel like a genius even though my win rate was terrible because I happened to bet heavy on winners. Other weeks the opposite. My records meant nothing because the stakes were all over the place.
A unit is a fixed percentage of your bankroll — typically 1%. If your bankroll is $1,000, one unit is $10. If it's $5,000, one unit is $50. The dollar amount changes as your bankroll grows or shrinks. The unit stays consistent.
Why units matter: they make results portable and comparable. "+14.2 units" tells you something real about a bettor's performance regardless of what they're actually staking. A 100-bet sample at +14.2 units is genuinely impressive. At –14.2, you have a real problem.
Every Edge Extreme pick is sized in units (typically 1–3u depending on conviction). Every result is tracked in units. The public ledger is in units. That's the only way the record means anything across time and changing bankrolls.
A unit is a fixed bet size, usually 1% of your bankroll. It standardizes your wagers so results can be compared regardless of how large the bankroll is.
It scales with your bankroll. At 1%, a $1,000 bankroll makes one unit $10 and a $5,000 bankroll makes it $50. The percentage stays fixed as the dollar figure moves.
Dollar totals hide inconsistent stakes and let one big win mask a weak process. Units express performance on a level basis, so a figure like +14.2 units is meaningful across any bankroll.