Why units make records comparable

Expressing results as a multiple of a fixed stake removes bankroll size from the comparison. Ten units of profit means the same thing whether a unit is five or five hundred.

Without a fixed denominator there is nothing to compare. Two bettors reporting '2,000 profit' may have staked 10,000 and 200,000 between them, and the second had a bad year while the first had a very good one.

Percentage-of-bankroll staking is a legitimate method and it is simply a different one. What cannot be done is reporting results in units while quietly using a moving unit, because the number stops meaning anything.

Which is where it goes wrong. A unit that changes with mood rather than by rule is the most common quiet corruption of a betting record, and it is invisible in the final figure.

What to do with it. Fix the unit in writing, in currency, and change it only on a schedule — quarterly, or at a defined bankroll threshold.

Check one. The tipster record checker takes a claimed record and its usual price, and shows the break-even rate and how often luck alone would produce that record.