Gambling: Self-control and Money Management

If I were to name one key factor in gambling that makes the difference between winning and losing, it would be self-control.

No mater how skillful you are, no matter how much you have studied a game, if you do not have self-control, you are not going to win.

It is my contention that the odds are 2-1 against you whenever you enter a casino. First, you are fighting the house and its edge, and secondly and most important, you are fighting yourself. If you cannot control your own feelings, there is no way you are going to win. You have got to have self-control; and while it can't be learned in the same way that you learn a strategy at a particular gambling game, it still must be mastered for you to be a winner.

To become skilled at the correct moves, such as blackjack, is a study in reason and intellect; to learn self-control, we must move into the realm of feelings. But feelings are just as important as reason, not only in life, but in gambling, and increase bets, not when you are losing. The winners know this and the losers do not; and often that's the only difference between the winners and the losers.

You keep winning, increase your bets accordingly.

Ride out the winning streak for all you can get. If you have turned that extra $150 in blackjack to $300, raise the neutral bet to $20 and keep raising it as you win. And keep putting away some more and more of your winnings. When the streak is over, do not linger. Leave the table. This advice will hurt when casino's profit margins, not yours.

However, money management in terms of gambling is not a simple expedient of betting of either winning or losing, then taking a final tally. If you handle gambling money in such an offhand manner, you are not going to be a winner.

The most important thing to remember is that managing the money you gamble with correctly is as vital as knowing the best strategies of the game you are playing.

If you are, for example, playing poker and have studied the game carefully, so that you are a skilled a knowledgeable player, but you have one losing session that wipes out your entire bankroll, then all your knowledge and skill is worthless, because you can't play poker without money. Handling and controlling money, managing your gambling stake or finance, is to be studied and taken seriously as studying the correct moves in any gambling game.