BRM, which stands for bankroll management, is how you can keep gambling fun in the long run. Failure to set a bankroll and stick to it increases the chances of spending more money than you can afford to lose at online casinos. The likelihood of developing problematic gambling habits also increases if you do not determine how much cash you are willing to spend at online casino games in advance.
This guide explains the concept of bankroll management and provides tips and strategies to inform your gaming patterns.
What is Bankroll Management in Gambling?
Most gambling content we cover at Pokies.bet surrounds casino and game selection, bonuses, and strategic decisions for a range of games. However, no matter how skilled you are in blackjack or poker, smart bankroll management is what saves the day.
Losing streaks will eventually hit. It is in those times that you should not lose your temper and risk going broke. Bankroll management has to do with how much money you bring to the casino, online or live. Players often consider that the more money they put into the table, the more they are likely to win. Prolific streamers betting millions of dollars at online pokies don’t help the few of us who advocate gambling responsibly either.
In layman’s terms, casino bankroll management means effectively managing the money you gamble with. The amount of cash you risk per gaming session, day, week, month, or year could be viewed as your bankroll – planning this amount according to your financial situation and gaming habits is paramount.
Expert strategies and tools can help you effectively set and manage your casino bankroll, and this is where we come in. Let’s start with the basics.
Tip 1: Identify casinos with low deposit and high withdrawal limits
To successfully manage your bankroll, you must find casinos that match your needs.
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Let’s assume you want to risk A$2 per day; you need to find a casino with such a minimum deposit amount. Or you could search for operators accepting A$10 minimum casino deposits and then it is up to you to stick to the respective daily gambling budget.
Likewise, withdrawing winnings often is paramount if you want to make some money from your gambling endeavours. Most online casinos let you withdraw A$30+ to A$2,500 per transaction. But that’s not always the case. Delays in payout processing may also result in playing back all your winnings.
Our list includes casinos with flexible banking limits, facilitating low deposits and high max withdrawals without delays. It doesn’t matter if you play A$20 at the casino per week or regularly cash out A$10,000+. Your bankroll will be facilitated.
Tip 2: Utilize responsible gambling tools proactively to set a budget
A crucial area of our casino review process is the analysis of the operators’ safety features. Every online casino claims to offer responsible gambling tools, though most of them simply copy/paste some generic info and 3rd party links. We only recommend operators facilitating tools that let you time your gaming sessions, deposit limits, etc.
Probably the most important bankroll management tip is to use these tools to force your bankroll on yourself. Set daily, weekly, and monthly deposit and spending limits and the casino will inform your progress and stop your gameplay when those are reached. More importantly, those limits ensure you don’t spend more than you were originally planning and let you cool off after a bad beat.
Why Casino Bankroll Management is Important
It’s no secret that gambling can be addictive. Casino developers create games to attract and hook players. Some are particularly good at it. Winning big sums on the roulette wheel or having a near 50/50 chance of doubling your cash on the blackjack table is alluring. The jackpots featured at online pokies often reach millions, and even standard games can pay as much as 5000x your stake.
The rise of online and mobile gambling has brought thousands of casinos to every household and only exacerbated this situation. The need for proper bankroll management is more important than ever. Failure to set a bankroll and sticking to it can turn your entertainment into a nightmare. There is no shortage of horror stories where casual players gambled away their life savings drunk in a matter of hours.
The following three concepts are the most common explanations of gambling going wrong.
Common Mistakes: Chasing losses
Stopping yourself from gambling is easier when you are in the black. It is when recurring losses occur that players continue wagering to win it all back. There is nothing worse than chasing losses. Some players wake up with the sole goal of winning back what they lost the previous night. This mindset inevitably leads to a vicious cycle of anxiety, where you are gambling purely to recoup losses. What’s even worse is that players chasing losses often increase their wagers continually, further digging themselves into a rabbit hole.
If you find yourself in such a scenario, you should hit the cool off button at the casino and take a break. Setting a bankroll in advance and only risking money you feel OK losing is how you can protect yourself.
The Gambler’s Fallacy
The term Gambler’s Fallacy is used to describe the misconception that a random event is more or less likely to occur due to previous outcomes. It perfectly aligns with pokies: players wrongly assume that a bonus round is just about to hit because they landed two scatters in the previous roll, or because they haven’t entered it after playing 100 spins.
Unfortunately, gambling outcomes are determined by random number generators or the game rules. There are no guarantees, and you shouldn’t go overboard wrongly assuming better things are coming.
Tilt
Tilt is a term mostly used in poker, when a player forfeits a strategy due to emotional distress, often resulting from losses. Tilt can make you forfeit your bankroll strategy, so it’s helpful to know about it in advance and that everyone is prone to it. This is where casino responsible gambling tools can save the day.
Another negative outcome of tilt is giving up on a staking plan or betting system you had in place by increasing your wagers or staying in the game longer. As long as you are playing within your bankroll strategy, that’s okay. It could negatively affect your mood and success, though.
How to Manage Bankroll in Pokies – strategies that actually work
Online pokies don’t leave room for strategy. The outcome of each round is determined by software you have no control over. This means that having a bankroll strategy for pokies is the bare minimum you can do.
Step 1 – Set aside the amount you are willing to spend on pokies over a month, and then break it even based on how many days you are gambling. Adjust accordingly in case you have more time on your hands on selected days.
Step 2 – Set daily/weekly/monthly deposit limits at the casino aligning with your budget.
Step 3 – Set spending and time limits per day. These can help you track how much of your winnings you are playing back and the time you spend at the pokies.
If you have selected a casino from our list, you should have access to all of the above resources. Make a deposit according to your budget and consider the following bankroll tips for pokies.
Staking Plans: Recommended betting amount
The term staking plans is employed in the gambling industry to describe the size of your bets. Theoretical concepts established by philosophers and scientists have been applied to betting by experts. Other staking plans have emerged from the betting patterns of pros in the field.
The most popular ones are the following:
- Martingale – a primarily roulette betting system. It suggests doubling your stake after a loss, while the Reverse Martingale (Paroli) instructs you to double your stake after a win. Both systems may lead to excessive gambling behaviours and eventually fail due to casino betting limits.
- Fibonacci – the famous sequence has been suggested to work in gambling as in the natural world. To me, the Fibonacci sequence is a bunch of random numbers that won’t positively or negatively affect your gambling outcomes.
- Confidence Model/Kelly Criterion – both of these systems apply to sports betting, despite several experts referencing them in relation to casino gambling. They suggest betting more on events that are more likely to happen.
Even matched betting, where you bet on two different casinos using free bet bonuses as a safety net cannot be applied these days due to wagering requirements. It should be clear that my view is that no staking plan works for pokies. However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t properly manage your pokies bankroll:
- Flat betting model – decide on a fixed wager, i.e., A$1, to bet on pokies per spin.
- Percentage betting model – wager 1 – 5% of your starting bankroll per round.
- Progressive betting model – alter your wager based on a fixed percentage according to your balance each time.
My preferred system is the flat betting model. If you increase your pokies wagers, going back to smaller bets is really hard and doesn’t provide the same excitement.
The following section is paramount in determining the flat size of your wagers.
Game Selection: RTP and Volatility
Return to player, or RTP, is the term used to describe the long-term payout rate of pokies. It is formatted as a percentage and in reverse form highlights the casino edge. A 96% RTP means that the casino will hold 4% of your total wagers. I say theoretically because the RTP reflects the hold over millions of spins. You could win big or lose hundreds of times in a row in the short term. Though the RTP is great in putting things into perspective and going for high RTP pokies is the best you can do.
Volatility, on the other hand, reflects the risk involved in the game. The higher the volatility, the riskier the game. Risky pokies translate to less frequent but larger wins. Zeus vs Hades by Pragmatic Play is a perfect example of a really volatile game.
You should consider the pokies volatility to adjust your flat bet per spin. That’s the best practice to manage your bankroll in pokies effectively. For high volatility pokies, I would suggest betting no more than 0.5% of your bankroll. Increasing your stake to over 2% is not advisable even for low-risk games.
Casino Bonuses: Extend your bankroll
Online casino bonuses are attached to numerous rules and conditions these days. The most important one is the wagering requirement, showcasing the number of times you must turn over the amount before the bonus becomes cashable.
Still, utilizing bonuses offered by legit online casinos I’ve recommended in this guide makes sense. They help extend your gaming sessions and potentially create room for large wins to occur. No deposit bonuses give you a bankroll for nothing and are especially useful to low rollers.
Bankroll Management in Other Gambling Activities
Bankroll management in the sense of setting a budget and sticking to it applies to all gambling activities in the same way. How much you are risking per bet and how you could adjust your stakes significantly varies.
As an example, sports betting requires a lot of research and experience plays a massive role in winning bets. Blackjack, poker, and fish games also leave room for strategic gameplay and the risk involved is less compared to pokies. As such, betting more per round on some casino games is reasonable.
Pokies Bankroll Management Tips – 9 Key Takeaways
I covered a lot of ground throughout this guide. Hopefully, you now know what bankroll management is in gambling and how you can apply its principles to online pokies. Here is a quick summary of the main points:
- Set a budget per session and periodically
- Force your budget on yourself through responsible gambling tools
- Select approved casinos with banking limits that match your needs
- Never chase losses
- Don’t give up on your staking plan after recurring losses
- Don’t make assumptions for future gambling outcomes
- Optimize your bet size, using the flat percentage staking plan, to the pokie you are playing
- Claim bonuses to extend your budget
- Take a break from the casino if you are considering breaking your bankroll management strategy
The betting system I recommended here doesn’t necessarily apply to skill-based games, so feel free to consult other guides if you are into sports betting or poker. However, the bankroll management steps, tips, and principles I laid out are universal.
I cannot stress the importance of playing at reputable casinos with responsible gambling tools in place enough. As a gambler myself, I know how easy it can be to lose control and deviate from plans – this is where the cool off button becomes essential.
- About the Author
- Affiliate Disclosure
Michael has reviewed and verified all information on this page. Having worked in the iGaming industry for over 8 years, he is the most capable person to help you navigate online casinos, pokies, and the Australian gambling landscape.
