Let’s say I’m hitting the $5 Blackjack tables at the boats. If I only bring $5, I’ll be busted if I lose the first hand. If I bring $5,000, perhaps I shouldn’t be at the $5 tables.
So what’s a good starting bankroll? 20x the amount you plan on betting? 50x? 100x?
ETA: Meant this thread for The Game Room. I’ve already asked a mod to move it.
How much can you afford to lose? Bring that.
First, accept this: unless you’re a card counter or an outright cheater in some way, the math says you will lose money when you gamble.
If you play perfect basic strategy at blackjack, you’ll lose more slowly than any other game on the floor.
That’s my goal when I play: I enjoy playing, but recognize that I’m paying for the entertainment, in much the same way I’d pay for tickets to La Boheme.
And occasionally I’ll walk out ahead of the game; I assure you that Mimi never stuffed a couple hundred bucks in my pocket as she succumbs to consumption.
So a good rule of thumb: take 30 times your minimum bet. If you’re playing the $5 table, that’s $150. That all but guarantees you several enjoyable hours of playing. When you’re done, color up and walk away.
Yeah, how much time are you wanting to play? And how much are you willing to lose.
When I’m in a casino and hope to play for a couple hours I’ll sit with about 30 units and buy in at 20.
But still, sometimes you start on a bad streak and still bust out straight away. But usually that’s enough to get me a decent sessions (I never let myself play for more than two hours at a time since after that I’m likely to get bored and start doing stupid things to generate excitement.
You are looking for a “Risk of Ruin” calculator. Fortunately, a variety of these exist.
A generic one. Wizard of Odds’s blackjack RoRuin calc. Yet another.
You might find the Kelly Criterion interesting.
Hope this helps and that you have fun.
Bingo! More importantly, don’t bring MORE than that.
Yup. However, in addition to profiting, casinos also transfer a lot of money from one set of pockets into another. Your best bet at being the pocket that the money goes into is to avoid betting the same dollar more than once (so to speak).
That is, start with X (which would be more than a usual stake, unless you’re not going to be there long). Pile it on the left. Each time you play a game, move all proceeds (your bet plus any winnings) to the right. Continue this way until the pile on the left is empty, and then quit.
This avoids paying the “tax” more than once on the same dollar. The opposite strategy, which is guaranteed to lose you all your stake, is to keep playing until its gone. See the point? If the expectation is 95% (that is, with each dollar you bet, odds are you get 95 cents back), if you keep feeding those dollars back into the system, eventually that 5% “tax” will whittle you down to nothing.
Admittedly, this isn’t the most fun way to gamble, and if you’re sane, you go to Vegas for fun, not profit.
Be sure to study “perfect strategy” for whatever rules you’ll be playing. For me anyway, that makes it more fun, knowing what to do to get the best return. The expectation for perfect strategy is actually over 98% IIRC. Craps also has a high expectation, over 98% if you play “odds” bets, and it’s a lot easier to play craps with perfect strategy than blackjack. Still, I prefer blackjack; I like the pace and mood of the game, and the table interactions. I’m a serious expert, having gambled maybe a couple hundred bucks in my life! haha.
Perfect strategy is mostly the same regardless of the rules, but varies a lot at the marginal bets. You can always ask the dealer, and they’re usually correct.
As others said, bring all the money you can afford to kiss goodbye. I’m actually ahead in casino gambling by maybe $100 still. I could wipe that out on my next visit. The most important thing is not how much you start with, if you get ahead, go home. Keep the money to play again some other day.
It depends on the game. For table games like blackjack, there’s no such thing as bankroll. You’ll eventually lose all of it anyway. “Bankroll” is just another way of saying “rent.”
Poker is very, very different. In general, you want to bring 100X the big blind to the table with you. That is just the buy-in. Behind that is your “bankroll.” You want 100X the big blind just to play that game, but you want 10X that as bankroll to overcome the short-term swings.
So, if you are playing 2/5 hold em, you want $5k total and play $500 at a time. If you get busted down to $2000, you switch to 1/2 hold em.