{"id":37714,"date":"2018-02-27T09:36:29","date_gmt":"2018-02-27T17:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=37714"},"modified":"2018-02-27T09:36:29","modified_gmt":"2018-02-27T17:36:29","slug":"history-of-your-bankroll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/history-of-your-bankroll\/","title":{"rendered":"History of Your Bankroll"},"content":{"rendered":"

A player, \u201cAlex,\u201d came to one of my video poker classes and chose to tell me how his bankroll developed. I\u2019m guessing he was 45 years old, although I could be off in either direction. He started by borrowing $100 from a friend, hitting a good hand which allowed him to end the first day up $500, and slowly building it up from there. Now he was up to \u201cfive figures\u201d with no money input at all from himself. It was a point of pride with him that his gambling bankroll was entirely sourced by other people\u2019s money and his skill. He called this his \u201cpure\u201d bankroll.<\/span><\/p>\n

He never told me what his \u201cfive figures\u201d actually meant. While it could be anywhere between $10,000 and just shy of $100,000, I\u2019m going to assume for this article that it\u2019s $11,000 or less. I\u2019ve never heard of anybody bragging about their bankroll in terms of a number of figures and I imagine he probably passed the $10,000 threshold recently and was quite proud of it. <\/span><\/p>\n

Playing mostly for quarters while building up a bankroll of that size is pretty impressive, and it definitely took some time. In no way am I putting him down.<\/span><\/p>\n

He then shared what games he was willing to play and under what conditions. He treated this $11,000 pure bankroll as though if he lost it all, his life as a gambler would be over. Even though he had considerable wealth outside of this bankroll, that other wealth was totally out-of-bounds insofar as his gambling went. But within those parameters, he wanted to grow his bankroll as fast as he safely could.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is this the right way to look at bankroll? Not to me, but every player has to make that decision for himself. <\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you have ten $20 bills in your wallet. Do you know the provenance of each bill? I don\u2019t, unless I just received all ten of them from the same place. If you spend one of those bills for lunch, is it important to decide whether you\u2019re actually spending one of the bills you got from a jackpot at a particular casino or one of the bills you got from a tax refund check? <\/span><\/p>\n

Not to me. I might care that I had $200 and now have $180, but exactly which bill I was spending is irrelevant. I\u2019m looking at the total only.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact that Alex is proud of \u201cnever spending a cent of his own money in a casino,\u201d is understandable. But it\u2019s short-sighted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alex is 45 years old now. He will not live forever. Video poker opportunities, in general, are declining. They will probably not be as good five or ten years from now as they are today. <\/span><\/p>\n

Alex\u2019s insistence of only using his pure money, when he has plenty of other money available, is restricting his opportunities in an environment where opportunities in the future won\u2019t be as good. Does that make sense to you? It doesn\u2019t to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alex should ask himself why it is so important to only gamble with pure money. Is it for purposes of pride? Okay. But who is he going to brag to and do they really care? If someone were concerned about his total wealth, would they be more concerned with the total amount or the pathway it took to get there?<\/span><\/p>\n

With all that said, I\u2019m not recommending Alex plunge and suddenly start playing bigger stakes because his real bankroll is much larger than his $11,000 pure bankroll. He still has to limit himself to good opportunities.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s still possible to find 100.8% opportunities and larger in Las Vegas if you limit yourself to quarter single line games. You won\u2019t always find opportunities that size for dollars. But 100.4% opportunities for dollars offer twice the earning potential per hour played as 100.8% opportunities for quarters, simply because you\u2019re playing four times as much. <\/span><\/p>\n

Playing for dollars entails larger risks. If things went badly while playing for dollars, Alex could go through that $11,000 bankroll. While he has plenty of actual wealth behind that $11,000, I\u2019m not at all sure how much psychological wealth he has. He\u2019s going to have to figure this out for himself.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s much to be said for \u201cmaking hay while the sun shines,\u201d meaning take bigger risks while the opportunities are bigger. There is also much to be said about staying within your comfort zone. These two philosophies lead to different paths going forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no unique best path for everybody. The only thing I can recommend with certainty for you is that you should examine your alternatives. Sometimes tweaking your philosophy can pay off more in the long term. <\/span><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A player, \u201cAlex,\u201d came to one of my video poker classes and chose to tell me how his bankroll developed. I\u2019m guessing he was 45 years old, although I could be off in either direction. He started by borrowing $100 from a friend, hitting a good hand which allowed him to end the first day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[208,428,196],"yoast_head":"\nHistory of Your Bankroll<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A player came to one of my video poker classes and chose to tell me how his bankroll developed. 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