Casino bankroll management tips & managing your money

1. Get a good welcome bonus

It's free cash. Most casinos offer a welcome or sign-up bonus to new players if they sign up. Some require a deposit. Some welcome bonuses are extremely generous; others are paltry (like $10), but it's still free money.

If you're strapped for cash, you can find a casino that offers an attractive welcome bonus offer without a deposit. You can take that bonus and use tried-and-true gambling strategies (for example, the blackjack basic strategy) to try and make that money grow. You also have the option to bet small with $1 deposit casinos.

2. Don't chase your losses

This is one of the most common mistakes seasoned players and novices alike could ever make at a casino. It's natural to want to recoup your losses, but you'll probably end up losing even more money. You need to know when it's time quit. Here are a few tips and tricks you can use to bring yourself to cut your losses and walk away:

• Set a time and money limit: Let's say you bring $500, and you have three hours to kill at the casino. You tell yourself, 'I will leave when I'm down to $250, or when those three hours are up. Try not to lose more than 50% of the money you bring into the casino. Setting a time and money limit and strictly enforcing it will help you walk away before losing all of your money.

• Take frequent breaks: There are a lot of emotions involved in gambling, and taking frequent breaks will help you keep them in check. You can take cigarette breaks, snack breaks, or restroom breaks.

• Avoid ATM machines and lines of credit: When you're not holding cold, hard cash and instead a slip of paper indicating the amount of money you have, it's easy to forget the value of the money you're gambling with. It also doesn't help that ATM machines are everywhere. So in such a scenario, it'd be really easy for you to chase your losses by hitting up the ATM or going over your line of credit. Avoid ATM machines and lines of credit altogether.

3. Gamble only with the money you can afford to lose

Here's a trick: don't bring your credit card or debit card to the casino. Instead, bring only the amount of cash you can afford to lose. If you're playing at an online casino, well, you need more willpower.

Always keep the rent check separate. Not only is this a smart financial move, it's also easy on your emotions. Nothing takes the fun out of gambling faster than placing bets with money you're scared to lose.

4. Don't bet too big for your bankroll

The key to managing your bankroll effectively is to last a long time. The more bets you'll be able to make, the more wins you'll get. So if you have $500, avoid the $100 slots like the plague.

You need to consider the amount of time you're planning to spend at the casino, and then figure out how many bets you could squeeze in. For example, if you're playing with quarters or dollars in a 3-hour session, every bet should be .5% of your bankroll. The key to figuring out how long your money would last is to look at how many bets you could make per hour. We have a few statistics that can help you with this:

• Video poker: 50 bets per hour

• Table poker: 33 bets per hour

• Blackjack and other table games: 18 bets per hour

• Penny and nickel slots: 83 bets per hour

• Quarter and dollar slots: 67 bets per hour

• Five-dollar slots: 50 bets per hour

5. Accumulate small wins

Here's a secret: success in gambling comes from small margins. If you bet small and lose, you won't feel much of a dent in your bankroll than if you had bet big. You'll still have plenty of money left to make some more small bets. All you need is time, patience, and a good strategy.

If you're playing roulette, you should look into employing the Double Street Quad Strategy or the Five Quad Strategy, as both strategies are designed to let you accumulate small wins when you're not being hit with small losses here and there.

In order to accumulate small wins, you will need to bet on yourself. That means no slot machines. Those things are played purely on luck; you have no way of controlling the outcome of each spin, so you can't employ a strategy that will help you accumulate small wins.

It'd be a good idea to play a game with the lowest house edge. If you're looking to get the most bang for your buck at the casino, you'd want to get into blackjack, craps, or baccarat because those games offer the lowest house edges out of all the games at a casino, and you can use a strategy to improve your chances of winning. You can learn more about other card games here.

The bottom line: set limits for yourself, play with patience, and walk away when you need to.