Money Management: Calculating the High Cost of Winning
Needless to say, money is a necessity in living and a very precious commodity. And so in every endeavor where money is involved, one must always be wise and careful in managing it. This is especially true when it comes to the subject of gambling.
Many gamblers tend to be free with their money. To them, gambling is as simple as putting their money at stake in the hopes of winning back several times more, and they chalk up losing money as just being part of the game. This may be so, but not many realize that there is a proper time to bet and a proper amount to bet away. If players practice correct money management, no one would have to throw away so much money when it is not necessary to do so.
To properly manage one's gambling money, one should first be knowledgeable of the odds of the game that they wish to play. To illustrate, to get the odds of winning in a roulette game, one should divide the total number of either the black or red sections of the roulette wheel (which would be 18) by the total number of all the black, red and green portions of the wheel (which is 38) in order to get the quotient of 47.36. This would be the percentage of the odds for success in roulette.
According to these odds, a player has an average chance of winning only about 47 out of every 100 spins that the roulette wheel makes. If one had bet 10 dollars on each of those 47 winning spins, it would earn a total of 470 dollars. However, one would also have lost a total of 530 dollars for the 53 other times that they have lost the game. Subtracting the total loss with the total win equals a difference of 60 dollars as the net loss. In this instance, one has not been able to wisely manage their funds in accordance with the game's odds.
The next step to smart money management would then be to realize that even after winning once, one still has a high probability of losing. Continuing from the same example, if a player had bet 10 dollars on a winning spin, then the next bet should not exceed the amount of the previous one. If one decides to bet a modest 5 dollars on the subsequent spins and wins 50 out of 100 of those spins, it would earn a 225-dollar win and a total loss of the same amount. The winnings might be moderate, but at least one doesn't come away from the game having lost more than they have gained.
Wherever money is concerned, nothing should be taken lightly. One should never leave their financial matters up to chance. It is actually much easier to lose money than it is to gain it through gambling, but knowing proper money management can at least reduce those odds.
