Don’t Cut Off Your Bankroll’s Blood-Flow

Without a heart you die.

Your bankroll is at the heart of the casino experience.

Without a bankroll, your chances of making money are pretty much dead.

The more blood-flow that you can circulate through that heart, the higher your stamina.

Higher Bankroll circulation means better and healthier “staying power” at the tables.

WHAT you bet and HOW you bet, will determine your “stamina”.  Size of bankroll is only one consideration of how long you can actually stay at the table.  Here are a couple of other things you have to consider:

• Having goals and setting limits.
• Following reasonable strategies and employing workable methods.
• Precision-Shooting and the ability to de-randomize the dice.
• Understanding the laws of house edge, probability, chance and expectations.
• Your attitude, maturity and level of commitment.

If you want to maximize your “bang for the buck”, each of these contribute to an overall effect.  The more of these factors that you employ to improve your performance, also enhances the likelihood of your success.

So let’s look at “staying power”.  The average turnover of a bankroll during a session is called the recirculation factor.  It’s calculated from house edge, the number of betting units your bankroll represents, and the “win/drop hold percentage” or “PC” for craps.  

To find how many bets you can expect to make in a session, multiply the number of betting units in a bankroll by the recirculation factor for the edge at which you are playing.

 *(Source, Alan Krigman, How to Lengthen Your Stay at the Tables)

Here’s a few examples:

Buy-in for $500.

Bet $10 on the Pass Line with 1x odds.

Place the 5 or 9 for $10.

Your total at risk is $30.

Your stake is $500 divided by $30.

That equals about 17 betting units.

The house has an effective edge of 1.9%, and we’ll round it off to 2%. 

Multiply the 17 units by the factor of 8 shown for the 2% house edge shown above.

We find that 17 x 8 equals 136 bets we can expect to make during the session.

What if you trim the house edge for the same amount of money at risk?

Bet $10 on Pass Line again, but back it up with 2x odds without any other bets.

Now the house advantage is only 0.6%.

That gives you a recirculation factor of 20, halfway between 0.5 and 0.75 percent.

You now have an expected 17 units x 20.

That equates to 340 bets during the same session, from the same size of bankroll.

What happens in casinos that have 3x, 4x, 5x, 10x, or 20x odds available?

While betting more money, you get a lower house edge on a 3x or higher odds table.

Bet $10 on the Pass Line, then back it up with $30 in odds.

Your buy-in of $500 divided by $40, gives you 12.5 betting units.

The edge is now less than 0.5%.

You now have 12.5 units x 25, or about 312 bets during the session.  If the table limit is $2, and the max odds are 10x, then you can easily see where your advantage is to be found.  You may want to re-read The Ground Zero of Opportunity article of mine for a more complete explanation of this concept.

So how is all of this applicable to you?

Very simply, it lets you consider the recirculation factor when you are trying to determine the optimum size and placement of your bets. 

If you are only able to stay at the table for a very short period because you have exhausted your bankroll before the dice even made their way around the table to you, it does no one but the casino any good.  

If you are a Precision-Shooter, it is important to be able to stay in the game long enough to get into a shooting “groove”.  This may take one, two, or even three trips around the table.   If you don’t have the staying power or “bankroll stamina”, you may never be able to fully capitalize on your skill.

If you want to survive and eventually THRIVE at the tables, don’t cut off your bankrolls Blood-Flow.   

Good Luck & Good Skill at the Tables…and in Life.

By:   The Mad Professor

* For more articles by Alan Krigman, click here