Drawdown in betting

Drawdown is the fall from a bankroll peak to its subsequent low, usually quoted as a percentage. It is the practical measure of how painful a strategy is to run.

Track the running maximum of your bank and the deepest point after it. A 30% drawdown on ₦400,000 means the bank touched ₦280,000 before recovering. What makes drawdown important is asymmetry: losing 50% requires a 100% gain to recover, so deep troughs cost far more than they appear to.

Drawdown % = (peak - trough) / peak. Recovery needed = drawdown / (1 - drawdown).

Bank peaks at ₦600,000, falls to ₦390,000 — a 35% drawdown. Getting back to peak needs a 53.8% gain from the trough. At a 4% yield with ₦6,000 average stakes, that recovery takes roughly 875 bets. This is why controlling drawdown matters more than chasing growth.

Drawdown determines whether you can psychologically and financially stay with a strategy. A method with a great long-run yield and 60% troughs is unusable for most people.

Set a written drawdown stop — for example, pause and review at 25% — before you start. Deciding in the middle of the fall is when the largest, worst-priced recovery bets get placed.

• Measuring drawdown from deposits rather than from the bankroll peak.
• Raising stakes inside a drawdown, which deepens it geometrically.
• Having no pre-agreed pause point, so the only stop is running out of money.