The unit and the increment
Before any bet is priced, an operator decides the smallest amount of money that exists in an account and the steps a stake may take. Those two numbers are published in the rules and rarely read, and they decide more of the arithmetic than the odds do.
- markets
- 8
- increments
- 7 distinct
- min unit
- 0.01
- largest tail
- 0.33
The smallest unit is the smallest amount of money the currency can express - one cent, or one hundred-millionth of a coin. The increment is the step a stake must take, published per market, and the minimum is the smallest stake the market accepts. A request is rounded down to the increment and refused if it is below the minimum, so the same request places a different stake on each market.
Three numbers, not one
It is tempting to treat "the smallest stake" as a single figure. It is three. The unit is what the currency can express: an account in a two-decimal currency cannot hold a fraction of a cent as money, and an account in an eight-decimal currency can. The increment is the step a stake is allowed to take on a given market, which is a commercial choice and is usually coarser than the unit: 0.10, 0.20, 0.25, 0.50, 1.00, 2.50 or 5.00. The minimum is the smallest stake the market will accept, which is a separate published number and is sometimes higher than the increment. A market can therefore accept 2.00, 3.00 and 4.00 but refuse 1.00 even though 1.00 is a multiple of its increment.
| Market | Unit | Increment | Minimum | What 10.33 becomes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| m1 | 0.01 | 0.10 | 0.10 | 10.30 |
| m2 | 0.01 | 0.20 | 0.20 | 10.20 |
| m3 | 0.01 | 0.25 | 0.25 | 10.25 |
| m4 | 0.01 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 10.00 |
| m5 | 0.01 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 10.00 |
| m6 | 0.01 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 10.00 |
| m7 | 0.01 | 5.00 | 5.00 | 10.00 |
| m8 | 0.01 | 1.00 | 2.00 | 10.00 |
Seven distinct increments appear across eight markets, and one of the eight raises its minimum above its own increment. The unit is the same everywhere, which is what makes the increment the number that actually bites.
What this means for a reader
The practical consequence is that "the amount I typed" and "the amount I placed" are two different numbers, and the gap between them is money you did not stake and cannot see. On sample A the same request leaves a tail between 0.03 and 0.33 depending only on the market. Nothing in the interface announces this: the tail is not a fee, it is not a line on a statement, and it does not appear anywhere as money. It is simply the part of the request that was never placed.
- Find the increment for the market before you size a stake: it is published in the rules, not on the bet button.
- Check the minimum separately; a market can have a coarse increment and a higher minimum at the same time.
- Prefer round amounts only if the increment itself divides them: 10.00 divides every increment on sample A, 10.33 divides none of them cleanly.
- Remember the tail is not refunded, not credited and not shown - it was never placed.
- Where a market's increment is 2.50 or 5.00, expect a tail up to one whole increment on any request that is not an exact multiple.