Managing Your Casino Bankroll Guide

Your bankroll is the dedicated pot of money that you set aside for betting. No matter if you’re playing blackjack, poker, or roulette or if you’re betting on sports, it pays to manage your bankroll so that you can play responsibly and make your money last.

Some common principles of bankroll management apply to all forms of betting, though there are also elements that are specific to individual games and sports betting. In this guide, you’ll discover everything you need to know about bankroll management, why it’s important and how best to do it.

What is bankroll management

In betting, your bankroll is a reserved fund that you use for placing wagers. It should be an affordable amount that you set aside for betting, allowing you to play responsibly without having any negative impact on any other areas of your life.

Your bankroll rises and falls as you win and lose, so if you go all-in on a single bet, there’s a chance you’ll exhaust this fund for the rest of the month. Since you don’t want to be left unable to play, it’s a good idea to use some techniques to set limits and pace yourself.

Generally, bankroll management is made up of these key areas:

• Setting a budget for the week or month and sticking to it.
• Making smaller bets so that you can spread out your bankroll over the whole week or month.
• Having a plan for your betting.
• Not letting your emotions get in the way.
• Using the tools provided by the casino to help you.

How to manage your bankroll

Managing your bankroll takes a little bit of effort but it’s worth spending time to get right as it’ll mean you can play and bet for longer, maximising your casino and sports betting experience.

Properly managing your bankroll involves a few separate steps, here’s how each one works.

Setting a Budget

One of the biggest and most important principles of bankroll management and playing responsibly is to only bet what you can afford. The easiest way to do this is to set a budget each week or month.

Your budget should be big enough to cover the bets you plan to make but, above all, it should always be affordable.

Some players like to put their bankroll in a separate bank account and only use the cash from that to fund their betting, others simply deposit their allocated funds at the beginning of the week or month.

Bet Small

It might look cool in the movies, but going all in on a bet isn’t usually an advisable move. Making smaller stakes allows you to spread your bets across the week or month, giving you a better betting experience.

Track Your Bets

Keep track of what you’re betting, which ones win, and which ones lose. Over time, this will allow you to spot patterns, and identify which bets are working for you and which ones aren’t. You can then adjust where you’re spending your bankroll to try to improve your returns.

Don’t Get Emotional

You play casino games and bet on sports to have a good time. If you’re having a bad day or a loss has made you feel frustrated, it’s a good idea to call it a day and walk away. Save your bankroll for another time when you can bet with a clear head and stick to your plan.

It’s also a good idea to avoid chasing losses. You might feel like you want to end a session on an up, but it’s better to take a breather and come back later.

Change Your Unit Size

Be flexible with your wagers. If you take a big loss or find yourself on a losing streak, you may need to adjust your bet sizes to help stretch the rest of your bankroll out over the remaining time.

Use the Tools Provided by the Casino

You have a wealth of responsible gaming tools at your disposal at BetMGM, each one designed to help you set and stick to your limits so you can manage your bankroll more effectively. These tools include:

• Deposit Limit - Set the maximum amount you want to deposit so you can stick to your budget.
• Loss Limit - Protect your bankroll from heavy losses by setting limits so you can take a break and come back later.
• Session Limit - Put a cap on how long you spend playing so you can more easily spread out your betting.
• Wagering Limit - Placing a ceiling on the size of your bets means you can spread out your bankroll over the entire week or month.
• Reality Check - This tool will pop up at set times to remind you how long you’ve been playing so you can stick to your plan.
• Time Out - A tool to help you sit out betting for any time between a day and six weeks so you can preserve your bankroll and stick to your plan.

Games that bankroll management is important

Bankroll management is important for all types of betting, but there are some in which you may find it more useful than others. These include blackjack, poker, and sports betting. In this next section, we’ll look at each one in more detail and what specific steps you can take to better manage your bankroll in them.

Blackjack bankroll management

Blackjack games run very quickly. If you’re playing online, each round can be over in less than a minute, so bankroll management is particularly important here.

The house edge in blackjack is not fixed as it is something that you can influence by making the best decisions. This means that part of your bankroll management will be to learn and use blackjack strategy.

Using Basic Strategy, you can bring the house edge down to around 0.5%, protecting more of your chips with each play. If you can manage the more difficult Perfect Blackjack Strategy, you can reduce it even further.

Some key tips for this include avoiding side bets, including insurance, never splitting 10s, and always splitting aces and eights.

However, even with perfect strategy, losing streaks can happen, especially since the chance of losing any single hand is 49.1%. Therefore, it’s vital to make smaller bets in blackjack so that you can spread out your bankroll over the entire session.

Poker bankroll management

Poker is a game that can be played against the house or other players. The poker bankroll management techniques needed are similar for both, though player vs player games can require more emotional control to better protect your chips.

In video poker, casino poker, and live dealer poker games, the house edge is dependent on the way you play. Therefore, a key step in protecting your bankroll is to understand the optimal strategy so that you can minimise how much the house will statistically take. If you can master this, it can be as low as 0.82%, though it’ll likely be higher for most players.

In player vs player poker games, more factors can influence how well (or not) you manage your bankroll. Firstly, almost all poker variants have multiple betting rounds with more cards revealed each time. Therefore, it’s important to re-assess your position each time and not be afraid to fold frequently since this defensive approach will better preserve your bankroll for longer.

There is a lot of room for emotion in poker. Since psychology plays a role in trying to beat your opponents, it can be easy to fall into a trap set by another player. Therefore, it’s important for your bankroll that you can keep your emotions in check, identify when you might be letting your ego take control, and bring it back under control.

Roulette Bankroll Management

Roulette is a fast-paced table game, making bankroll management key. Your efforts in this regard need to start right at the beginning - choosing which variant to play.

This is because the different variants have different house edges. As the player, it’s in your interest to select games with the lowest edge, which is almost always French roulette since its house edge can be as low as 1.35% while American roulette has one-four times as large at 5.26%.

Once you’ve chosen a variant, you should select a table with minimum and maximum limits that match your bankroll and preferred bet size. If you choose one that’s too high, you may find yourself without any chips after just a few games.

You also need to consider the bets you place. Even money wagers like red or black offer the lowest payouts but are more likely to hit than a bet on a single number. Therefore, you may wish to preserve your bankroll by making more conservative choices.

Some players like to play roulette with a strategy like the Martingale or Fibonacci. These can be a great way to add structure to your gaming sessions, but they can quickly make your bet sizes balloon so it’s prudent to not follow them blindly but use them as a guide instead.

Bankroll Management for Slots

Slots are an even faster-paced casino game than roulette as it’s possible to spin a dozen or so times within a single minute. Choosing the right slot game is one of the biggest steps in slot bankroll management. The RTP rates on slots can range from around 85% to more than 95%, and the games with higher percentages are more favourable to you than the lower ones, making them better for your bankroll.

Finding a high RTP slot game is easy since the percentages are displayed next to each one.

While not as important as RTP, you may wish to look for slot games with lower volatility too, since this will mean more frequent (but smaller) wins, rather than having to wait for longer intervals for bigger ones.

Some slot games allow you to select how many paylines you bet on with each spin. Choosing more increases your chance of a win every time you play but means you’ll spend more with each one. Therefore, you should find a balance that fits your bankroll, bet size, and how long you plan to play for.

Sports betting bankroll management

Bankroll management in sports betting is similar to the approach you should take for casino games. It involves setting a budget, pacing yourself, and using the tools provided by the bookmaker to help you stay on track.

With so many different types of sports bets that you can make, one of your first steps to preserving your bankroll will be to decide what sorts of wagers you want to make and use that to develop a strategy. It’s not usually a good idea to put money on sports you don’t know much about, so stick to your circle of competence.

In sports betting, you should be looking for bets that offer value, not just easy wins. Professional sports bettors look for wagers where they believe the odds of the event (such as a team winning) happening are greater than the actual odds being offered by the bookie. Doing this takes time, practice, and effort, so you will need to use the other bankroll management techniques alongside this.