A Comprehensive Guide to Bankroll Management

Posted by Harry Kane on Thursday, September 3, 2020

When people talk about gambling and betting strategies, a large proportion is actually based on fallacies. For example, some wagering strategies in games of skill such as blackjack are promoted as being almost fool-proof, but this is an inaccurate perception that can cost players considerable sums of cash. However, bankroll management can help you make the most of your capital and increase the value proposition of each wager. So, here’s our comprehensive guide to bankroll management when gambling online, regardless of your favourite games or unique behaviour as a player!

Getting Started – What Is Bankroll Management, and Why Is It Important?

Let’s start with the basics; as the fact remains that bankroll management has nothing to do with how you play specific games or hands. Instead, it’s focused solely on how you manage the funds at your disposal, in a bid to minimise losses and ensure that you always have available and designated cash to play with even when you go through a lean spell on the slots and tables.

Of course, there are a couple of fundamental rules to bear in mind before you grapple with the complexities in bankroll management. Most importantly, you’ll need to have a detailed comprehension of bankroll management as defined above, as this enables you to approach it confidently and with the appropriate mindset.

Not only this, but it’s also imperative that you establish a viable and manageable bankroll and one that’s based on your wider financial experiences. On a fundamental level, you should never wager more than you can afford to lose within a specific period, while it’s better to adopt a conservative approach when setting this limit. We’d also recommend starting out with some UK low wagering bonuses to also get properly acquainted with various terms and conditions

General Advises for Effective Bankroll Management

Interestingly, the concept of bankroll management also requires you to organise your gaming capital further, primarily by ensuring that you only ever risk a set amount of your overall funds at any given time. This will allow you to make the most of your haul, while this figure will vary depending on the real-time value of your bankroll and the terms of the wager in question (we’ll have a little more on this later).

To understand the basic principle in greater detail, let’s consider a simplistic 50/50 wager, should a sports bet on a specific football game where the draw option has been eliminated. This type of wager carries a 50% probability of winning and losing. However, the speculative nature of the bet (regardless of the odds in question) means that staking all of your bankroll in this instance would represent an unnecessary and disproportionate risk.

Furthermore, restricting your stake to just 5% of your bankroll offers far better value for money, while it spreads your risk and minimises losses in real-time. At this stage, it’s also wise to comprehend the other seminal reasons why you may benefit from effective bankroll management, particularly when applied over an extended period of time. These include:

• Play for Longer with Minimal Risk: Risk is an inherent part of all gambling, including games of skill such as blackjack and poker. However, effective bankroll management and wagering strategies can minimise the real-time risk associated with each bet, while enabling you to manage your spend within a fixed percentage and ensuring that you can play for longer periods of time successfully.
• Make Smarter and More Informed Gambling Decisions: Once you’ve set your bankroll, managing this requires you to track your wagers and any associated wins or losses. This data will be organised within a specific time-frame, but regardless of this, it allows you to monitor your activity over time, highlight potentially insightful behavioural trends and ultimately improve your overall decision making.
• Wager in an Organised Manner and with Genuine Peace of Mind: Creating and managing your bankroll is effectively an exercise in organisation, which can, in turn, make it easier to plan and schedule your activity over the course of each day, week or month. This will also enable you to identify new high-stakes bonus and VIP promotions while affording you genuine peace of mind as a regular gambler.

Bankroll Management and You – the Basic Considerations

In simple terms, exercising bankroll management is relatively easy. More specifically, you need to portion off a percentage of your bankroll for a specific game, wager or gambling session, and not exceed this within the predetermined time-frame.As a general rule, players often section off 10% of their bankroll for specific bets, and this works particularly well when playing popular casino games such as slots, roulette and blackjack.

The reason for this is simple; each player’s probability of winning during these games is governed by a series of fixed odds and a limited range of potential outcomes, so wagering with a predetermined amount of cash makes perfect sense from a bankroll management perspective. In the case of slot gaming, for example, you’ll find that each title has a specified number of paylines (winning combinations) and an advertised return-to-player (RTP) rate, which determines the average amount that a player can recoup for every £1 spent.

In the case of the iconic NetEnt slot Starburst, for example, this game features 10 fixed paylines and an RTP rate of 96.01%. This translates into a so-called ‘low variance’ slot that delivers frequent (if relatively modest) base game wins, while players can expect to recoup an average £96.01 for every £1 wager online. Essentially, this makes for a relatively low-risk but low-return game, so committing no more than 10% of your bankroll when wagering on this should offer the best possible value over time.

When determining individual stakes, you should note that variance is arguably the single most important consideration. The reason for this is simple; as this has a direct impact on how many turns or hands you’ll need to generate a specified return. In the case of low-variance slots and games such as blackjack, you’ll generally need less turns to bank the desired return. Alternatively, you can even try some blackjack beginner strategies, but we advise you not to rely to heavily on them.

However, when playing higher variance slots with an RTP rate of around 90%, you may want to reduce your stake value to the minimum level so that you can enjoy an extended and more rewarding period of gameplay. This process can be a little more complicated with sports betting, as while there are often fewer potential outcomes when wagering on a football match, each of these will have variable odds that offer a different value proposition to punters.

For example, let’s look at the upcoming two-legged Europa League tie between Manchester United and LASK Linz. The Red Devils won the first leg 5-0 in the Linzer Stadion in Austria, and are priced at ¼ to win the return match at Old Trafford. Of course, this is a bet that’s likely to come in, but the returns on a low stake will be negligible. In this case, you should consider increasing the size of your bet and the precise percentage of the bankroll that you’re willing to commit, as this offers the best possible value and enables you to optimise your returns.

However, if you wanted to back LASK to spring a surprise in the second leg, you’d have to recognise that this wager is far less likely to be successful. However, the odds of this occurring are relatively long at 12/1, creating significantly higher returns if the club were to prevail. This type of wager should command a significantly smaller portion of your bankroll, as this takes into account both probability and the stake required to achieve a sizable win.

With this type of approach, you can micro-manage your bankroll according to value and your probability of winning, offsetting risk and optimising potential returns in the process.

The Top Tips for Managing Your Bankroll in Real-Time

While the theory behind effective bankroll management is sound, applying this in practice is far more challenging and fraught with potential dangers.With this in mind, we’ve prepared some key tips for managing your bankroll applicable in conjunction with some of the best online casino bonuses in the UK, so let’s get started!

1. Treat Losing and Winning in an Even-Handed Way

While it may sound overly simplistic, you’ll either win or lose when wagering at an online casino or engaging in remote sports betting. Not only is it important to accept these two realities, but you’ll have to embrace them with a consistent mindset that remains focused on your long-term wagering strategy and bankroll management techniques.

When you lose cash, it’s important to manage any negative emotions and avoid the temptation to chase even sizable losses. You can achieve this in part by managing your expectations from the outset, and respecting the underlying elements of chance and opportunism that underpin all forms of gambling.

On a similar note, you also need to avoid becoming overcited when making gains, while avoiding placing too much stock in so-called ‘winning streaks’. To understand this further, you should understand the so-called ‘coin flip’ gambler’s fallacy, which can cause players to pre-empt trends and patterns that simply don’t exist.

This is one of the most commonplace gambler’s fallacies, and it’s centred on the mistaken belief that if you land 10 ‘heads’ with consecutive coin tosses, you’re more likely to land ‘tails’ with your next turn. However, the odds of each landing heads or tails with any coin toss are always 50/50. It’s important to keep this in mind while also recognising the random number generating (RNG) software that drives outcomes online, such as the ones at the operators with best slot bonuses.

With this type of approach, you’re more likely to remain focused on managing your bankroll successfully and avoid the type of reckless and knee-jerk decisions that often cause gamblers to incur unmanageable debts.

2. Avoid Betting on Your Favourite Team!

We’ve already touched on the subject of sports betting, which can be a complex and challenging pastime that poses numerous issues to punters. One of the biggest challenges is partisan betting, with an estimated 76.8% of all football fans known to wager on events in-play in order to create a more engaging and immersive viewing experience.

Much of this cash is wagered by fans as they watch their favourite teams, as they look to achieve the double-whammy of seeing their beloved sides win while also raking in a cash prize. However, this is an obvious form of emotive betting, and one that’s based on factional support rather than genuine insight or the appraisal of each wager’s value proposition.

The same principle can be applied when wagering on any sport where you have a partisan preference, while it even extends to casino games like roulette. For example, if you have a lucky number and consistently wager on this when playing roulette, you’re placing an inside bet that’s high variance in its nature and priced at around 35/1 (when playing the European iteration of the game).

This could well cause you to exceed your bankroll within a relatively short period of time, even in instances where you reduce your stake to the lowest possible betting unit. So, be sure to avoid this type of wager if it’s driven by superstition or personal preferences rather than strategy, as it represents a great way to lose your hard-earned cash!

3. Set Your Betting Unit and Limit!

On a final and related note, you’ll need to set a viable betting unit, which essentially refers to the minimum stake amount that you’ll wager at any given time. We’d recommend keeping this as low as possible (depending on the precise games that you’re playing), as this creates genuine flexibility and allows you to scale your stakes upwards in an organised and manageable way.

It’s also wise to establish a viable betting limit, even if you prefer claiming some of the best high-limit bonuses. This should ensure that you don’t waste your bankroll or incur losses that are disproportionate to the size of your wins. Make no mistake; it’s easy to believe that you’re winning when you’re actually losing as a gambler, with slots and table games designed specifically to distort the impact of results and create false perceptions in the minds of players.