When entering or sitting down to any Casino, one always has
to be aware of a predefined bankroll. A bankroll is a certain
amount of money that you set aside at the beginning of the evening,
one that you can always afford to lose. This is your pot of
honey for the evening. You can gauge your winnings or losses
against this mark. Most pro's will tell you to set aside about
2 to 300 times your usual wager. So if you play at $5 blackjack
tables, and usually bet in $5's, then your bankroll should be
about 1500 dollars. This may seem a little excessive,
but split it up mentally into sessions at the table and it seems
just right. If your bet spread is 1-4 (meaning your bets are
most often 1,2,3 or 4 times your base unit - so at a $5 table
you usually bet $5, $10, $15, or $20), take 5% of your bankroll
and make it your session limit. This comes out to about $75
bucks. Much more in line with reality.
If you play a larger spread of bets, you will want to increase
your session limit too. Say your spread is 1-8 instead of
1-4, you will probably want about $400 per session. Now, keep
in mind that your session limits have to be stuck with, and
that your bankroll has to be large enough to withstand some
losing sessions. Bankroll is different from session bankroll,
for a reason.
Sessions and bankrolls require even tighter attention for
the card counter. Card counting does not preclude winning,
and so the counter must also keep track of maintaining their
bankroll.
