Bankrolling: Play Within Your Means
Bankrolling: Play Within Your Means
Determining the correct bankroll for you as a player is not just about the money you can afford to risk at the machines from a financial point of view, it's also about what you can afford to lose emotionally. You must never gamble at a level that exceeds what you can afford, and that goes for financially as well as emotionally. There is no more important rule in all of gambling than this.
The possibilities of taking a loss are real, and if that loss will hurt, you're playing like a fool. It is inevitable that players who gamble over their heads will lose more than they can afford. Luck won't help these players because even when the good music comes their way, as it surely will, they won't quit winners. They must keep on going and going and going until the inevitable occurs. It is almost axiomatic that the player who bets too much is going to lose.
By definition, the player who loses when he or she bets too much is getting hurt. Don't let that player be you. Gambling with needed funds is a foolish gamble. However, if you never play over you head, you'll never suffer.
Luck fluctuates in gambling. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Every player knows that. However, the goal for intelligent gamblers is to protect themselves in the times they lose, and that means to set loss limits not only for a particular session, but for an entire trip as well.
Let's go over some basic bankrolling principles.
Session Bankroll
You want to bring enough money to the machines so you can handle a moderate losing streak, but still have enough playing stake money so that luck can turn itself around and maybe swing the fortune in the other direction. That amount, which we'll get to in a second, will be your one session stake. If that stake gets drained, then you call it a day.
The key concept in formulating single session bankrolls for a machine is to restrict losses to affordable amounts. That's why when I discuss bringing money to a machine, I say to bring "moderate" amounts, not substantial amounts. Minimizing losses is the key. You can't always win. That's a fact of life for gamblers. If you're losing, keep the losses affordable, take a break. Don't let yourself get caught in a situation where you get beat badly. There's always another day.
You should have enough money at the machines to cover about 60 plays. A play is the amount of money you'll be betting on one spin. For example, if you're playing 25 cent machines and are playing five coins at a time, your play costs $1.25. Thus, your bankroll for the session should be about $75. If your coin instead was $1, then you would need a $300 machine stake (60 plays x $5). 5 cent players would bring $15 at five coins per spin. These are the maximum numbers. You can risk less, which you might want to do anyway.
These conservative numbers are designed to keep your losses to affordable amounts. This doesn't mean that you'll lose the amounts shown above, only that you won't lose more than that. That's a big step in the right direction right there.
Trip Bankroll
A trip to a casino is really a multitude of individual sessions. For short trips, like a weekend jaunt, you want to have enough to cover three sessions, for longer trips, say up to a week or two, four to five sessions. The purpose of the trip bankroll is to have enough money to keep you playing, even though you may be having a particularly bad run of luck, but at the same time to restrict your overall losses to "acceptable" amounts.
That's why we take such a conservative approach. By avoiding over betting, you give yourself the opportunity to bounce back after bad luck. You also avoid getting wiped out or, even worse, digging deeper in your pockets and getting destroyed.
Thus, using the figures we worked out above with five coins average per play, 25 cent players should bring $225 for a weekend, $1 players should bring $900, and 5 cent players, $45. These bankroll amounts allow you to withstand any normal losing streak and still have the resources to play more and bounce back on top. If the numbers scare you, then you need to think lower denomination machines. Money can be lost at the machines, and you probably know that as well as I do. It's better to play it safe.