Your Bankroll is your lifeline.
It is your precious money and the only thing that connects you to the game. It is the only thing you know for sure and the only thing you can identify its trend. Let’s stop for a while here and think about this. You bet on red, you lose, black comes. but you don’t know what will come in the next spin. You can see the trend only of the previous spin, not the trend that will develop on the next spins. But your bankroll can be your guide. You do know the trend of your bankroll and if you lose you can say for sure that the trend of your bankroll in negative and if you win the trend of your bankroll is positive.
Your bankroll is your enemy and you greatest weakness.
Because the casino has unlimited bankroll and yours is small. According to some mathematicians this bankroll discrepancy between the player and the casino is the number one reason gamblers lose. You are your bankroll. That’s what defines you in the game more than everything else. You are your bankroll. Keep that in mind. This is your hard earned money, or maybe the money you won the previous session, or the previous day or the previous month or the previous year in the casino. Or maybe you have worked hard for that money. You have been stressed, humiliated, overworked or burned out to acquire that money. That money is important. When that money is over you are out of the door. The bankroll is one of the three more important things you have in roulette. The other two are your luck and your mind.
Respect your bankroll.
Cherish it. Enjoy it. And be ready to lose it. But don’t lose it without a fight. Don’t lose it like a robot. I’m sorry gentlemen, but what I’m talking here is a serious bankroll. But then again I take this back. Any amount can be serious bankroll if the gambler is serious and has a mission, a serious plan. Belgian (or Perkin), the guy who started the “Beating roulette with math” thread in our forums, is a great example. He has not posted his complete story there yet – and he will – but I can give you an idea. He has told his story long ago. He actually played his system, the system he describes in the forum, If I remember correctly, with starting minimum bets of less than 1 euro. And he planed to increase his base bet as wins increased his bankroll. If I remember correctly his starting bankroll was very low, in the area of a couple hundred euros. That was mainly a test of his theories and not a plan to win big. You can’t believe the dedication and the discipline he showed in following his system on hours without end with his couple hundred euros bank. His wife was terrified. He was exhausted. He played day after day, hour after hour in a real casino, not online casino. He has experience nerve breaking outcomes. He increased his bankroll exponentially and then the bad run came and ate his profits, depleted his money and he decreased his base bet accordingly and had to start again from the start and fight for hours just to get back where he was. You will read about him in our forums in due time. What I want to point out here is that, yes, even a couple hundred euros can be considered a serious bankroll if:
You show respect.
You have a plan.
You are disciplined.
Spending money aimlessly on the roulette table is not a bankroll. It is simply an entertainment cost. Nothing bad with spending money to have fun, but let’s be clear at least about definitions.
I have been thru many phases in my gambling career. Many systems, many casinos, many financial situations, many attitudes, many bankrolls. Two things I can confess straight from experience and without much thought. These are two things that have worked for me in real life:
1. Be flexible. Show no discipline.
Follow your heart and your guts. I have been in the casino. I have lost my shirt. And my guts told me that the turn of the tide is just around the corner. I found some more money. Yes; I lost a big bankroll and went with confidence to get more money. Sometimes I played all night and the morning when the banks opened I went straight and raised some money to go back and play the same system with a strange faith and confidence. And it worked. I won. You can call this flexibility or ignoring the rules or lack of discipline or faith or confidence or trance or insistence or luck. The fact is that it has worked for me. Again and again.
2. This is how I discovered the power of the Kavouras bet.
Many years ago I was pretty disappointed with roulette. I decided I wanted to go to the casino and just spent some time. I decided to try the Kavouras bet as a system. It could have been any other system. Yes I believed it it, I believed in Kavouras, but I was not in the state of mind of making money from roulette anymore. I just wanted a diversion. Just a system to use in the casino with no great hopes. The reason I decided to use Kavouras strategy was the fact that it was not as boring as some other systems I had in my mind at the time. A good system involving inside bets. A really good system offering adrenalin. How rare is this! Though because I wasn’t planning to make money or win big or anything, I went to the casino with what could be considered peanuts for a player in my league, a couple hundred euros. Yet it worked. To my surprise I made one hundred fifty euro profit that day. Over 50% profit. And I went to the casino again the next week. Cool and relaxed. I didn’t care much if I win. Again with a couple hundred euros. I was profitable again. And again. And again. And all that with a minimum bankroll. Call me lucky. I was. With 5 euros minimum bet, 200 or 300 euros are insufficient bankroll, any way you look at it. Yet it has worked for me. This has never happened to me before. And I tried to understand why. What were the hidden qualities of that system. But that’s another story and I have tried to explain the strengths of this strategy before.
I know, I understand full well that these points contradict each other but they are both true. One talks about following your guts and disrespect any discipline or financial security. And the second point shows how a small bankroll may be enough. Conclusion? Make your own conclusion. I’m just sharing first hand experience here and you are free to think what you want. However if I had to answer the question “what is the ideal bankroll management strategy” I would answer “it depends”.
The only thing you know about the game is… your bankroll
But let’s get back to our subject. Your bankroll is actually the only thing you really know about your session. You don’t know the next spin, you may not know exactly the strong and weak spots of your system, you may not know when to stop, but you do know your money. It is a great indicator and something absolutely real. Not a theory, not the ghost of the house advantage or your computer simulations and your tests on which reality can step upon and crush any given day. Your money is a fact. You see it increasing and decreasing before your eyes and you know when it’s over it’s over. This is why some of the most ingenious systems I know take your bankroll into account. You can even modify progressions like the Martingale or Paroli or Oscar’s grin to take your bankroll into account and they suddenly transform them to powerful and smart systems. Taking your bankroll into account is one of the best ways to follow the trend too. What simpler indicator than this: if your money is decreasing the trend is against you, if it is increasing the trend is in your favor. Yeah, it sounds obvious, but one of the best ways to form a strategy is to take advantage of the obvious. Most progressions take into account your wins and losses. And yes, your wins and losses have a direct impact on your bankroll. But believe me, taking into account your bankroll directly is a different thing. Let me give you a very simple example. You have a specific bankroll and you decide to bet the even chances with a 3-step Martingale. When you bankroll increases you can start betting a 4-step Martingale and when it depletes you can go to a 2-step Martingale. This is just to help you understand what I mean by taking into account your bankroll. There can be formed much more elaborate systems based on this principle.
Conclusion
The bankroll is one of the most important aspects of roulette. One must respect its power and understand its various aspects. One can use it as an indicator and even create a system based on it. And the is much more to learn about it.
PS: One of the benefits of playing roulette online is that you may have a better and more detached supervision of your bankroll.
