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most people, gambling isn’t a lifestyle. It’s an escape from reality that has the same components of thrill, sizzle, and excitement as other forms of entertainment — well, maybe a little less than skydiving and a bit more than the opera.
A good starting point to determine your gambling bankroll is figuring out how much you spend on different types of entertainment and vacations, such as theme parks, ski resorts, or other sightseeing destinations. Knowing this information can help you compare your casino budget to the cost of last summer’s beach vacation or that week in Paris.
Your gambling bankroll needs to reflect fiscal reality. If your other vacations cost $1,000, why should your gambling vacation cost two or three or even four times as much? Like all trips, hobbies, or flights of fancy, gambling is a form of entertainment. And, just like that Caribbean cruise, your gambling losses shouldn’t affect your day-to-day lifestyle or your ability to pay bills for the rest of the month after the vacation is over.
As you calculate the cost of your gambling trip, consider its value to you in terms of fun and entertainment. If you perceive your casino gambling adventure as a form of entertainment similar to, say, dinner at a fine restaurant and an evening at the theater, you can begin to put a price on its value. Would such an evening cost you $500 for two? Possibly. Would you pay $1,000 for it? Again, it’s possible, though sticker shock may be setting in.
Money for your gambling vacation should come from your entertainment budget. In other words, don’t cash in a savings bond, dip into the kids’ college funds, or take out a new credit card to bankroll the trip. And by all means, don’t budget with money you plan on winning during the trip!
Determining your daily limits
After you figure out your budget for your gambling adventure (whether a five-day trip to Vegas or just a quick jaunt to a riverboat casino), you need to break down that budget into how much you can spend each day. First, calculate how much you’ll need to feed, house, and entertain yourself while you’re on your casino vacation. Don’t forget about transportation and the midnight run to the snack machine. Once you set that money aside, you have your gambling bankroll. Divide that amount by the number of days you’re going to be in the casino. For example, say you set aside $1,200 for gambling on your three-day getaway weekend. You have $400 to play with each day. And provided you stick to it, you’ll still be able to eat three meals a day and pay for an Uber back to the airport even if the tables don’t treat you well.
At the end of each day of your casino caper, whether you’re up or down, you should budget each day independently. For example, on Friday, the first day of your three-day venture, you enter the casino with four crisp $100 bills in your pocket and finish the day with $600 for a $200 win. Congratulations! But how does your success affect your game plan? It doesn’t. The next day, you should stick to your budget and still only gamble with $400. Imagine that Saturday is a disaster, and you lose every last penny of the $400 budgeted for that day. Then the carnage continues on Sunday, and once again, you burn through $400. But because you stuck to your budget, you return home with $600 of your original $1,200 bankroll, which is a lot more money than less-disciplined gamblers (who never had a starting plan or failed to follow it) have at the end of their trips.
Take advantage of tools at your disposal to limit your play. Most banks set a limit on the amount you can withdraw from your debit or credit card at an ATM in a 24-hour period. Once you determine your trip budget, call your bank and set the daily limits to match your maximum spend. Some online gambling sites also offer dollar and time-limit tools that help players who need a little extra support for their willpower.
If you lose your daily gambling limit early in the day, do something else. The free activities in and around casino towns can be pretty entertaining. If you’re in a megaresort in Nevada or Atlantic City, take in the mountain air or the boardwalk (respectively, of course). If you’re in a big city casino in Chicago or Boston, go explore the sites around town. If you’re in a smaller establishment, there might be a swimming pool, workout room, or a quiet lounge. One certainty about casinos: the people-watching is second-to-none. A big mistake many people make is getting so engrossed in gambling that they miss out on all the other attractions.
Sizing up your bets
After splitting your bankroll into daily increments, the next step to budget your gambling is bet sizing — breaking down your budgeted bankroll into the amount you allocate for each bet.
A general rule (for most table games) is to have a bankroll with at least 40 times the maximum bet you plan to make. So, if you decide to ration your trip bankroll into daily allotments of $400, your betting units are $10 per hand. Proper proportional betting reduces your risk of
tapping out (going home flat broke).
Minimum bets at table games depend not only on the kind of establishment you’re visiting but also on the time of day and day of the week. If you’re at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas on a busy weekend night, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything less than a $25 table. But on a Wednesday morning, those same tables might drop down to $10 or $15 per bet. Off-the-main-path casinos might have $5 tables at all times. There’s nothing worse than showing up at a casino and finding out you’ve only budgeted enough for eight or ten hands of your favorite game because the table minimums are higher than you planned on. Do yourself a favor and research ahead of time to find out what bet sizing will look like when you’re there. Either call the establishment or look online at travel forums like
tripadvisor.com.
Keeping your bets consistent
Unless you’re a professional card counter or an expert sports handicapper, you don’t benefit from changing the amount of your bets. The simplest and safest strategy in most casino games is to bet the same amount each time. That doesn’t mean you have to bet the table minimum every time; it just means you should stick to a bet size that’s right for your budget and fits the table betting range. For slots and video poker, that may mean playing the max number of coins or credits each time if you are playing a progressive machine (see
Chapters 12 and
13).
Most players change the amount they bet on each play — typically increasing the bet size — because of two circumstances:
They’ve been losing, so now they’re desperately attempting to regain that money. Consequently, they steam, or increase the size of their bets.
They’ve been riding a hot streak and are playing on house money (funds they’ve won from the casino).
Although games do run in streaks, you can’t know when those streaks begin or end. After you have the money, it’s yours. How you obtained it doesn’t matter, but you still need to be judicious about how you spend or bet the money.
Limiting your losses
In addition to establishing a budget and portioning it out on a daily — and bet-size — basis, you can employ some simple strategies that help
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