Best strategies for managing gambling budget (+expert tips)

Any player who wishes to gamble with success must know how to manage his bankroll with maximum efficiency. This means maximizing the chances to win while minimizing the chances of going bankrupt, and completely eliminating chasing the losses. In order to play with real money online and increase your chances of winning, one must follow these rules strictly. They apply to all gambling verticals universally, from sports betting to casino, poker and horse races.

1. Set a Budget

Only bet what you can afford to lose, the old adage goes. This doesn’t suggest that you have already given up and will lose this money, but that if you lose it you won’t miss it for paying the electricity bill. In other words, never bet money that you need for something else. Or you’ll be in a dire situation if you indeed lose it.

Successful gamblers dedicate a portion of their disposable income to gambling, and then they try to win some more money. If they lose, no worries, new budget is coming up next month. If they win, they can buy stuff that they otherwise wouldn’t have.

It doesn’t matter what the size of the budget is. It must fit the description of being something that you, with your income, can do without.

2. Divide Your Bankroll

If you intend to play different casino games, or bet on different leagues, or bet on different bet types, divide your bankroll evenly between your games. This will allow you to later see which of these has worked well for you and which has not. If you divide your bankroll like this, you can eliminate a game or a bet that you’re not doing well with.

It also helps to keep track of all playing sessions so you can go back to this and try to identify leaks. It is vital to periodically reshape your strategy and remove the bets that aren’t working well for you.

3. Determine the Bet Size

For each game you’re playing, divide the allocated bankroll into bet sizes that give you enough playing rounds for the chance of going bankrupt to be almost eliminated. For example, in sports betting it is accepted that a maximum of 2% of the bankroll should go to one single bet, which means you’re splitting your bankroll into 50 bets.

For games or bets in which the chance to win is smaller, the budget should be divided into smaller parts. For example, having only 50 bets on Crazy Time live game show will result with quick bankruptcy. Likewise, 50 spins on any slot will only get you to the point where you deposit more money.

More is better. If you think you should give yourself 100 spins on some game, do 200 instead. If you’re thinking 200, do 500. There are no negatives to being careful with this. The one and only goal is to prevent having to top up your budget.

4. Don’t Top Up the Budget

Which brings us to the next point. Don’t top up the budget if you go overboard. If you had set your gambling budget for the month, or for the week, or for the day, and you lose it all – don’t top up. Resist the urge and wait for the next period. You lost in this gambling round, go over your stats to see why, and prepare yourself better for the next round.

5. Don’t Chase Losses

Losses are expected in gambling, and losing streaks are, as well. When they happen, there is nothing you can do about it, it is what it is. A gambler who knows how to handle his bankroll will know how to remain within the boundaries of that bankroll, and this will help him not engage in chasing losses.

Every new game round is a new beginning, and there’s no need to look to the past and be affected by it. If there are some updates that need to be done to the overall strategy, implement those updates and move on.

6. Set a Win Limit

This is probably the single most important thing that winners do, and losers don’t. This is it. Winners quit while they’re ahead, as they’re all too aware that after a winning streak a losing one will likely follow.

In other words, whenever you reach your win limit, when you got lucky and won a decent sum of money, don’t go all crazy and reinvest it to win some more. Accept that fortuna has smiled upon you, take the money, and end the playing session.

Your balance will go up and down as you gamble. If you’d always be able to walk away at the right time when it went up the most, you’d be winning every playing session and you’d be a successful and profitable gambler.

7. Set a Loss Limit

Likewise, there needs to be a stop limit, which is yet another way to protect yourself from chasing losses. It would be good if the win and loss limit were the same. If you set up your gambling activity like this, then each day you’d always only either win 100 or lose 100, and the number of winning days compared to losing day would determine how well you’re doing in gambling.

This is vital to successful gambling budgets, as by having a win and loss limit you’re decreasing the volatility of gambling and are taming the losing streaks. There is no progression of betting more and more when chasing losses, there is no increasing the stake, it becomes a much more pedestrian environment.

8. Choose Your Game Wisely

Be aware of how different games work and what mathematics are behind them. Know what your exact mathematical chances to win are, what is the house edge, what is the RTP, what is the profitability of different bets. Only if you know your game can you set up everything correctly.

It is almost universally accepted that, in gambling, you want to be playing the games that can get you rich if you strike lucky. You want the games that pay big sometimes to lucky winners. The extreme example are progressive jackpot slots. Any slot game that has high variance and a good maximum win will do just fine.

In betting, this would mean that it’s sometimes beneficial to bet on multiple bets on a single ticket, with a smaller stake, just to give yourself a chance to win big if you guess the outcomes correctly.

9. Don’t Try to Time Luck

While we just went over eight important points that are all designed to establish a safe gambling environment that has rules that protect you, the purpose of all this is not to assure winning. When you think like that, you start placing bets on most likely outcomes, you start being conservative, and inevitably lose due to the house edge.

The purpose of this framework is to provide a safe environment in which luck can thrive, so to speak. With good bankroll management, you have an environment that allows you to push your luck and then make the most of it. 

Bet on those outcomes that can get you that big win – you have set up a good environment where you can do that safely.

10. Use the Bonuses

The bonuses are there to help you in your quest for making a profit in gambling. None of the bonuses have a positive expected value (EV), but they’re providing a way to keep playing for longer with the same amount of cash. It is certainly better to gamble the casinos’ own money than your own, if you can help it.

All of the successful profitable gamblers use bonuses to their advantage and have learned how to make the most of them.