Managing your bankroll

26 August 2017

By John Marchel

When it comes to managing your bankroll for gambling, you must have a basic money-management plan; however, it’s also important to remember that such a type of plan will not help you win at the tables or machines. Rather, a good financial plan will help you to reduce your losses and give you a better chance to come out ahead in the long run.

Basically, the idea of gambling is to win more frequently than you lose, and you need to restrict your losses to a minimum when you do lose. Without a money-management plan, it will leave you without the ability to remain in the game and make a comeback. A good plan is an important tool for the player regardless of what specific game is played.

When it comes to gambling systems, or betting systems, remember this: They don’t work! You will see them advertised in popular magazines, in newsletters and on the internet. Take them with a grain of salt. The cards, dice and wheel don’t know what system you are using; therefore, you cannot expect them to respond in the positive.

Ask yourself this question. If this system (the one they are selling) is so good, why are they willing to part with their “winning” strategy? The reason is simple: They are trying to make money by selling the system, not by using it.


BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

• Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany made one trip to Monte Carlo. He had heard about a roulette system developed by a Dr. Schott, a mathematics professor at Heidelberg University. He brought it and in one night the Kaiser lost 100,000 francs. He left the next morning and never returned to Monte Carlo.

• It was Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (1717-1783) a French mathematician, a physicist and rational philosopher, who worked out a wagering system for gambling known as the “Method d’Alembert.” The strategy of decreasing one’s bet the more one wins and increasing one’s bet the more one loses.

• In 1877, when American racetracks began to use the French system of pari-mutuel wagering, the system was called “Paris pools.”

• Admiral John S. McCain Jr. (1911-1981), Senator John McCain’s father, is quoted as saying “Life is run by poker players, not the systems analysts.”

• There have been more gambling systems devised to beat the roulette wheel than any other game.

• In mathematics you know exactly what will happen. When it comes to gambling it’s seems to be the exact opposite, you never know what will happen.

• On 24 June 2004, Spain's Supreme Court ruled, after 10 years of litigation, that roulette player Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo, had not cheated at roulette. Garcia-Pelayo simply used a number-crunching system to predict where the ball would land. Working with a group of colleagues, the crew wrote down the winning numbers of the Myriad casino roulette games, and then had a computer digest them. The idea was that roulette wheels had tiny construction flaws that favor certain numbers over others. It was reported that the crew won more than one million euros ($1.7 million) from the Madrid casino.

• July 30, 1982 Toronto hairdresser, H. André Nader, put $140 on “Sweep Six,” a betting system offered at the local racecourses. In order to win, the better had to pick the winning horse in six specific races. Nader won, he collected $140,000. The next day he again bet on six races and all six horses came in first.