You've done it. You've passed the challenge, proved your discipline, and now you're trading with real capital that isn't yours to lose. That shift in pressure changes everything.
Most traders who blow funded accounts don't do it because they lack strategy. They do it because they underestimate how differently funded trading feels compared to the challenge phase. The rules are the same. The markets are the same. But the psychology? Completely different.
Here's how to stay funded, stay profitable, and treat this opportunity with the seriousness it deserves.
Understand Exactly What You're Risking
Before placing a single trade, you need to know your precise drawdown limits inside out.
Most funded sports trading programmes have two key thresholds:
Daily loss limit – the maximum you can lose in a single day before being suspended or disqualified
Maximum drawdown – the total loss from your account peak before losing access permanently
If your funded account is £10,000 with a 5% daily limit and 10% maximum drawdown, that means you lose access after a single bad day of £500, or a total of £1,000 in accumulated losses. That's not much room for error.
Write these numbers down. Put them somewhere visible before every session. Traders who blow funded accounts rarely forget the rules — they just stop actively thinking about them mid-session, when it matters most.
Size Your Positions Based on Drawdown, Not Confidence
Here's where most traders go wrong immediately.
They size positions based on how confident they feel about a particular market. High confidence equals bigger stake. That's a fast track to losing your account.
Professional traders size positions based on risk. Specifically, they risk a fixed percentage of their account per trade — typically between 1% and 2%. On a £10,000 funded account, that means maximum £100 to £200 per trade.
Why does this matter so much? Consider two scenarios:
Trader A bets 5% per trade, hits a losing streak of 6 trades (which happens to every trader eventually), and is down 30%. Account blown.
Trader B bets 1.5% per trade, hits the same losing streak of 6 trades, and is down 9%. Account intact. Recovery possible.
The difference isn't skill. It's position sizing. If you don't have a fixed staking rule before you open your platform, you don't have a risk management strategy.
Never Chase a Loss
This single rule, if followed without exception, would save the majority of blown funded accounts.
You have a losing trade. Maybe a strong favourite gets beaten in the final minute. Maybe a lay trade goes against you on a market swing. The instinct is immediate and powerful — get the money back. Place a bigger trade to recover.
Don't.
Chasing losses is the fastest route from a manageable drawdown to a blown account. Why? Because emotional trading decisions are consistently worse than calculated ones. When you're trying to recover money, you're no longer evaluating markets objectively. You're reacting. And markets don't reward reactive traders.
Ask yourself this: if a trader you respected told you they just had a losing trade and were now doubling their next stake to compensate, what would you think of their strategy?
Set a rule. If you hit your daily loss limit — even if you haven't technically breached it — stop trading for the day. A predetermined stopping point removes the decision from the heat of the moment.
Pick Markets You Actually Understand
Funded trading access can create a temptation to trade everything. Horse racing, football, tennis, cricket, basketball — the markets are all there. But spreading across multiple sports you don't deeply understand is a guaranteed way to dilute your edge.
Profitable sports trading is built on a genuine information advantage. You need to understand:
How odds move in specific markets and why
Where the liquidity is and when it appears
How different events — a red card, an injury, a rain delay — affect price behaviour in real time
That knowledge takes time to build in any single sport. Trying to build it across five simultaneously means you're trading at a disadvantage in most of them.
Start with the sport you know best. Trade it consistently for the first 60 to 90 days of your funded account. Only expand when you have evidence that your edge is holding up.
Keep a Detailed Trading Log
You cannot improve what you don't measure.
A basic trading log should capture:
Date and market
Entry and exit odds
Stake size
Profit or loss
The reasoning behind the trade
A brief note on whether you followed your rules
That last point is particularly important. Sometimes you'll have a losing trade that was the right decision — the market just went against you. Sometimes you'll have a winning trade that was the result of poor discipline and luck. Treating all wins as good decisions and all losses as bad ones is how traders stay stuck.
Review your log weekly. Look for patterns. Are you losing more in evening markets than afternoon? Are your in-play trades consistently underperforming your pre-match positions? Are you sizing correctly, or do you notice you've been creeping up stakes when confident?
The data will show you things your gut won't.
Treat Your Funded Account Like a Business, Not a Lottery Ticket
The traders who sustain funded accounts over the long term have one thing in common: they treat the capital with the same seriousness you'd treat a business loan.
That means:
Defined trading hours, not trading whenever you feel like it
A written plan for each session before it starts
Clear criteria for what makes a trade valid
A hard stop on impulsive trades that fall outside your criteria
It also means accepting that some days produce zero trades. If no qualifying setups appear, you don't trade. A £0 day is infinitely better than a £300 loss chasing marginal opportunities.
This is psychologically harder than it sounds. There's pressure — real or imagined — to justify the funded account by being active. Resist that pressure. Activity isn't profit. Discipline is profit.
Manage Your Emotions After Big Wins, Not Just Big Losses
Everyone talks about managing emotions after losses. Fewer people discuss the danger after a winning run.
A strong week can create overconfidence. You start feeling untouchable. Position sizes creep up. You trade markets slightly outside your core expertise because you feel sharp. You hold trades a little longer because your recent winners have reinforced your instincts.
This is often when funded accounts get blown — not after a catastrophic losing streak, but after a period of success that quietly erodes risk discipline.
After any winning run of 5 or more trades, take a moment to recalibrate. Review your log. Confirm your sizing is still within your rules. Ask yourself whether your recent wins were the result of genuine edge or market conditions that won't repeat.
Know When to Step Away
The most underrated skill in funded trading is recognising when you're not performing at your best.
Bad sleep, a stressful day, personal problems — these all affect decision-making in ways that are difficult to perceive in real time but obvious in retrospect. A study by the University of Cambridge found that traders who monitored their physiological stress levels made significantly worse financial decisions when those levels were elevated.
You don't need a scientific study to accept the logic. Trading under stress is dangerous. Trading while distracted is dangerous. Trading when you're angry about a previous loss is dangerous.
Build a short pre-session check into your routine:
Am I rested enough to focus for the next two to three hours?
Am I emotionally settled, or carrying stress from elsewhere?
Do I have a clear plan for this session, or am I just opening the platform out of habit?
If the answer to any of these gives you pause, consider whether today is actually a good day to trade. Protecting your funded account sometimes means protecting it from yourself.
The Funded Account Is the Starting Point, Not the Goal
Getting funded at GetBet Funded is an achievement. But it's only the beginning.
The traders who build real, sustainable income from funded accounts treat the first account as a proving ground — a place to demonstrate consistency, refine their edge, and build a track record. That track record is what opens access to larger capital, better terms, and long-term viability.
Every trader who has ever blown a funded account wishes they had treated it with more patience. Every trader who has sustained one will tell you the same thing: it comes down to discipline over outcomes, process over emotion, and consistency over big wins.
The market will always be there. Your funded account isn't guaranteed to be.
Trade accordingly.