Glossary / Operations / Stake
A ParlayAPI glossary entry

Stake

The stake is the amount of money risked on a bet. Payouts are quoted relative to stake - American odds against $100 of it, decimal odds as total return per unit of it - and staking policy, not pick quality alone, decides whether an edge survives variance.

In practice

The two standard disciplines are flat staking - the same fixed fraction of bankroll (a “unit”, commonly 1–2%) on every bet - and proportional staking like the Kelly criterion, which scales stake to estimated edge. Flat staking is robust to bad edge estimates; Kelly compounds faster when estimates are honest. Over-staking a real edge is the classic way winning bettors go broke anyway.

Where it shows up in ParlayAPI

Stake sizing consumes the two numbers the feed produces: the offered price and a fair probability (via devigging the anchor). Every sizing formula - flat units, full or fractional Kelly - is arithmetic on those inputs.

Related terms