Managing Your Open Bets
BravoWorks · Betting Guides · 18+ Australia Only
Last updated: 05/10/2026
An open bet is any wager that has been accepted by the bookmaker but not yet settled. It can be sitting on a football match that has not kicked off, a racing event hours away, or a live in-play position that has already started. Managing open bets is not about trying to influence the result, which no amount of watching or re-betting can do. It is about keeping a clear picture of exactly what you have on the table, how much is at stake, and whether that level of exposure still sits comfortably within the amount you set aside for entertainment.
The single most useful habit is a personal ledger. For every bet you place, write down the date, the competition, the market, the selection, the decimal odds at the moment you placed it, and the stake. Do this before the event, not after. When the bet finally settles, compare the recorded odds against the outcome and against the price you would have been offered at that moment. Over time this record becomes an honest picture of how the market behaves, and it makes it far harder to convince yourself that a string of results is a sign of skill when it is really just variance.
Exposure is the total amount staked across all of your open positions at any one time. It is easy for this number to creep up without you noticing, especially when live betting is involved and several events are on screen at once. A simple discipline is to keep a cap on how much can be open at any moment, and to treat that cap as a hard line rather than a suggestion. If your open exposure is already at the cap, the answer to a new tempting price is no, not because the price is wrong, but because you have already used the entertainment budget you set for yourself.
Reviewing Without Reacting
There is a difference between reviewing an open bet and reacting to it. Reviewing means looking at your ledger, checking the exposure, and confirming that the position still fits the budget you agreed with yourself. Reacting means re-betting, topping up, or switching markets in the middle of an event because the price has moved against you. The second one is where losses escalate, and it is the behaviour the responsible gambling tools are designed to interrupt. When you open your account, look at the open bet list with the question how much is at stake, not with the question how can I get back ahead.
Every licensed Australian operator is required to provide responsible gambling tools, and they are the most direct way to manage open exposure. Deposit limits stop you from funding more open bets than you intended. Loss limits and reality checks pause the session and ask you to take a breath. Self-exclusion, through the national BetStop register or through the operator directly, removes the option entirely for a set period. These tools do not change the odds of any outcome, but they do change the conditions under which you are making decisions, and that is exactly the change that matters.
Knowing When to Step Back
A useful checkpoint is emotional, not mathematical. If you find yourself checking the open bet list more often than the event, if a losing position is starting to feel like a personal problem rather than a chance outcome, or if the idea of adding to a bet feels urgent rather than optional, those are signals that the activity has moved out of the entertainment lane. None of them mean you have made a mistake, but all of them are worth acting on while acting on them is still easy.
Stepping back can mean pausing the live view, closing the app for the evening, or taking a longer break through a limit or an exclusion. It can also mean a conversation. The National Gambling Helpline is free, confidential and available 24/7 on 1800 858 858, and Gambling Help Online provides the same support online at gamblinghelponline.org.au. Reaching out is a sign of control, not defeat, and it is one of the clearest ways to keep managing your open bets from turning into being managed by them.
Remember: managing open bets is about the conditions around your wagers, not the wagers themselves. No ledger, limit or review changes the chance of any single outcome, and no outcome is guaranteed. Only stake what you can afford to lose, and treat any win as entertainment, never as income.