Money matters

9 May 2017

By Frank Scoblete

FROM MAX: I want to know what the best money management plan to use when I play is. I know I can’t win with money management, but at least I can control my overall losses. My wife always checks our bank account, and she notices when I take money out to go casino gambling.

FRANK RESPONDS: What money should you use to gamble with in a casino? Your daughter, Little Lulu, needs braces on her teeth and your wife is insistent that the family go on vacation to some remote national park and everyone will sleep in tents, get bitten by mosquitoes, and where your son, Big “Bull” Biff, will delight everyone in the middle of the night with his gift for cutting monstrously loud and hideous-smelling farts.

Your camping money can come from your normal workday bank account; after all, it is for the sour Little Lulu, the odorous Big “Bull” Biff and your wife Nabby’s vacation. (If you are a woman reading this just turn everything around and make the husband the person who wants to go camping.)

In short, your gambling money should never come from the regular bank account. You must have a separate account, what I call the 401G (the “G” stands for gambling), that is used only for gambling purposes.

If you are not rolling in money (as most people are not rolling in money), then take a small amount out of every paycheck and put it in your gambling account. When that account becomes large enough – and you determine what the definition of large shall be – then have fun and go to the casinos.

Never use all the money in your gambling account on one trip. Divide the money up into sessions. If you plan to play three times in a day, then maybe take one tenth of your stake and only use that money for this trip. Divide that up into three sessions.

Limit how long a session lasts. Try to leave without losing your entire session stake. Losing everything in a session, even if it is a small percentage of what you have in your 401G, can be quite disheartening. Maybe play your money through once and then quit (or twice!). You’ll have to determine when quitting time arrives.

That’s my money management advice in a nutshell.


FROM LUMAS: My boyfriend loves to gamble and he always wants to borrow money from me. He never pays me back. What should I do?

FRANK RESPONDS: Dump him.

FROM JAMES: My girlfriend is really cheap. When we are at a casino she gets upset if I borrow some money from her. What should I do?

FRANK RESPONDS: Dump her.

[Read Frank Scoblete’s books I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack, I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps and Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! All available from Amazon.com, on Kindle and electronic media, at Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores. Visit frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com.]