Accepting Your Bankroll

Recognize Your Shortcomings

Recognize and accept your shortcomings! If you don’t have what it takes, get out or forget it!
The bulky 275-pound football player would like to be the glamorous tailback and score all his team’s touchdowns, but he is force to play tackle.

The five-foot, six-inch basketball players longs to play the pivot and wow the crowd with slam dunks, but he is made to play point guard and feed the rest of the team.

The plain Jane high school coed is dying to be homecoming queen, but instead is assigned to sell popcorn at the victory dance.

Like everyone else, these people have dreams, but are made to accept roles that are less than what they want. They accept the roles but swear to improve themselves. For the present, they make the best with what they have.

Time and patient work can transform the future into something different. Tomorrow and each day thereafter may move them closer to the experience of a dream come true or, may bring events to fashion a new dream.

The football player sheds a few pounds, works his legs into powerful pistons to become the best in the land at his position, and hears the roar of the crowd.

The plain Jane enters womanhood, leaving behind her adolescent failings, and grows into an interesting and beautiful person who meets her Prince Charming.

Patience. They all had it to help them tolerate, but also overcome, their shortcomings.

The Proper Amount

Your bankroll is probably your shortcoming in gambling. How much must you have in your pocket when you enter a casino? What’s the proper amount?

There is no proper amount. There is no hard and fast rule as to what you should start with. But you must accept what you star with as your own bankroll, and you must stay within its limits.

You think I’m going to tell Bertram Bigbucks that he can’t take more than $900 to the casino? He’d laugh himself onto the floor of his twenty-eight-cylinder Rolls Royce.

Percy Pennywise can barely scrape up enough to take his three kids to a movie on Saturday. If I told him he couldn’t go to Atlantic City with less than $900, he’d faint.

The decision is personal. Each player is different and will be limited by what he or she can bring to the casino. How you manage your money will determine your rate of success, but the importance of the starting bankroll can’t be overemphasized.

Going with too much gives a false sense of security and a tendency to “Overspend” at the table. Going with too little causes a “scared” reaction, or panic, as soon as you lose a couple of dollars.

I resent jerks that write books about gambling and tell their readers to go to casinos with an amount of money they can “afford to lose”. These poor people can scarcely afford to lose a dollar playing the lottery. And they are expected to believe nonsense about throwing away money they can “afford to lose“?

No wonder the casinos win.

I’ve never yet heard a dentist say to a patient, “Well, you have a nice set of thirty-two teeth; you can afford to lose eight or nine of them”.

Eighty percent of the people who come to me for help are $3 and $5 bettors. That is all their bankroll will allow them to play. Do you know how hard I have to work to convince these people to play at the table that is right for the size of their bankroll? Many feel that having a general idea about the game of Blackjack is sufficient to assure immediate winning results. They’re wrong.

Winning Is an Art

Winning is an art like skiing. When you first learn to ski, don’t you begin on the training slope? How about football Players? Don’t they scrimmage against weaker teams before they are sent into the Saturday fray? Even Muhammad Ali had his share of pushovers to see if he could win, before taking on the top contenders.

Where do you learn how to win? At the smallest tables. The casinos are going to be there for a long time. They’ll wait for you. I would like to see you put aside a decent bankroll of maybe $800 or $900. Hopefully, it will take you long enough to save that much to keep you away from the tables until you master Basic Strategy which you will find described in this book in great detail.

When you know Basic Strategy perfectly, and have $900, you’ll be ready to attack.

First thing you do is break your $900 in half. Take $450 as your starting bankroll. Put the other $450 in a drawer somewhere to be used only when the starting bankroll is depleted.

Here’s wishing you’ll never have to rely on the second $450.

If you can come up with a bigger stake, cut in a half. The amount in unimportant after you surpass the minimum.

Stuff your wallet with the $450 (or some larger starting bankroll if you prefer), plus a few bucks for chow and gas, and head for the casinos.