Leaving the Game

Your starting pitcher has just allowed six hits in a row. He's lost his control and just beaned a batter. Your pitcher is cursing and glaring at the umpire and spitting and washing his ands with dirt. His eyes look sunken into his sockets. You are the manager and you know that your pitcher's usefulness in this particular game is over - he's finished, he's done, so you walk to the mound and you yank him out of the game and tell him to go into the dugout and relax.

Making the above choice was not that hard. The evidence was overwhelming that the pitcher had lost his concentration and his stuff. The other team had clobbered him and he was in a precarious frame of mind. Taking him out was the wise thing to do, for your team and for your pitcher. He'll live to pitch another day - a better day.

But sometimes it's hard to figure out when to make a move with a pitcher. Say your pitcher has allowed a few hits in a row - dinky hits, not really solid ones - and a couple of runs, too. He still seems to have his stuff, but the game just isn't going in the right direction. Do you move in and take him out? Or do you let him continue to pitch and hope that the game starts to turn around?

I don't know. These are the tough decisions that baseball managers have to make all the time. The good managers tend to make the right decisions most of the times; the bad managers tend to make the wrong decisions most of the times.

However, in gambling I do know this - the longer you stay in the game, the better the chance that the casino will win. This is due to two things, the house edge and the poor choices made by casino gamblers when things are going against them.

The best we can do with the house edge is to recognize it, understand which bets have the lowest edge (make these), which have the higher edges (avoid these), and give yourself loss limits so that if the session is not going your way, you have the presence of mind to get out of the game and take a rest. I do know another thing, too; as you start to get tired, you'll have a tendency to make bad bets - high house edge bets that can really cripple your bankroll. These bets are usually made to have a few big wins to bring your session back into the black.

They rarely achieve that end. They usually bring you deeper into the red.

Instead, as fatigue and disappointment take control of the gambler, he tends to lose more and more, and those losses are faster and faster since he's making really poor bets. If casino gamblers had managers, the first wild bet that a player makes would be his last. The manager would walk over to the table and say, "Joe, your session is over. Go take a walk or a nap. You're done for a while." The gambler would heed his manager and color up whatever chips he has left and he'd take the break.

Sadly, casino players have no managers to tell them to quit and leave. Instead, they have to rely on themselves. That's much like leaving it up to a pitcher to take himself out of the ballgame. Only the wisest pitcher would be calm and composed enough to say, "I don't have it today. Get someone else in here."

If you want to be a great casino gambler, you must develop the ability to get out of a game before the game beats you to a pulp. The easiest way to do that is simply to give yourself a session stake and, if you lose that (or most of it), you leave. You make this a law that you live by and you will find that your losses are controlled. You won't have those nights when you keep taking more and more money out - and get hammered with each new buy-in.

While the cards, the dice, the roulette ball and the slot machines are not aware of the fact that you are taking a break, your emotional well being is definitely in need of time off from the gaming wars. So take the time off. The flip side of leaving when you're losing is this: When you are winning, how do you decide to leave? This is a far more pleasant activity because you know that you are going back to your room or your home with some of the casino's money.

There are three easy methods for deciding when to leave a game:

1. If you are starting to get tired, take about 10 percent of your win and play with that. If you double it, put half away and keep playing until you lose that 10 percent. When you lose it, you leave the game and go home with the house's cash.
2. If you are not tired but spunky and aware, take 50 percent of your win, and play with that. If you double it, take half and play with that. Keep doing this until you finally lose that 50 percent or feel so tired that you must take a break.
3. As soon as you think, "I should leave now," then leave now! That little voice welling up inside your mind is the voice of reason; why not listen to it?

The greatest thrill in casino gambling is actually leaving a game ahead. Considering that you are facing a house edge, the times when you can enjoy your game and get away with the house's money are the great times. Enjoy those times. Leave.