Online gambling is one of the most fun, most popular hobbies that people have. Millions of people enjoy spending time in online casinos. It has a lot to do with the thrill and excitement that people experience when gambling. And gambling itself is deeply rooted in our psychology as humans, as it’s a trait that has been favored by evolution time and time again in the past.
However, it’s important to note that there’s inherent volatility when it comes to gambling. This means that, as a gambler, you will win some, and you will lose some. This volatility proves to be too much to handle for some people, and they end up losing big sums of money. With this in mind, the importance of managing your budget when playing in an online slots casino cannot be overstated. So, we’ve decided to help you here, and we’ve written for you a list of some of the most important advice nuggets that you need to have in mind when gambling online.
Budget Management Tips
Know what you’re in for. This is a nice set piece for how you should approach gambling in general. There are people that don’t really think about it before visiting an online casino, but this is a grave mistake. Don’t get us wrong; there are many people that know their limits when it comes to online gambling, and they know when exactly they need to stop. But some people don’t know when to leave the casino. As a gambler, it’s important to note that you will win and lose, and there’s nothing that you could do to tip the odds significantly in your favor. It’s the nature of gambling, and it’s the main thing that makes it so thrilling.
The main thing to note here is that the house will always have the edge over the player, regardless of the game that you’re playing. Of course, you could do some things to decrease the house edge, but the fact is that, in the long run, the house will always win. It’s the way the gambling games are designed, and there’s no way around it. This doesn’t mean that you can’t make any significant profits in the short run. The house edge is a long-term statistic, and so, the longer you play, the higher the chances that you will end up on the losing side of things.
Don’t borrow money for gambling. It’s easy to get so carried away that you firmly believe that you’ve had a streak of bad luck, but that if you were to bet another round, then the bad streak would end, and you will start winning huge sums of money. And if you don’t have money to bet with, you may want to go and borrow some money from the people around, or your friends. This is one of the worst things that you could do, as if your “streak of bad luck” continues, you could start losing money that’s not even your own, to begin with. So, long story short, if you’ve lost all the money that you have for the day, you should never continue playing by borrowing money from other people.
Don’t use credit cards for depositing money. On a related note to point two of this list, you should not use credit cards for making deposits in an online casino. Bear in mind that online casinos will try to nudge you in favor of using credit cards for deposits, by making the deposit process easier if you use credit cards or by giving you big bonuses only if you make credit card deposits. The reason is simple; the gambling operators are well aware that credit cards give people the option to have what’s known as a negative balance where they can lose more money than they currently have. However, accruing debt on your credit card and for the purpose of online gambling, no less, is one of the worst things that you can do. You won’t be given credit without having to pay interest down the line. A bad streak while gambling can cost you dearly if you happen to deposit money from your credit card. So, make it a habit to use debit cards or electronic wallets – or any other payment methods with which you’re not able to spend more than you have.
Limit your playing time. This is easier said than done because it is in the nature of gambling to be addictive and to keep you hooked as long as possible. But maintaining a firm grasp on how disciplined you are when playing is of the utmost importance when it comes to online gambling. If you still feel like you can’t control yourself during the game, then there are some tools that you can use to help you on the way. If an online casino is worth its salt, then you’ll have the option to contact customer service and ask the representative to install limits on how long you can be logged into your account or how much money you can wager during a day, etc. Setting limitations is the only thing that can prevent you from overextending your finances and losing a lot of money in a short period, not to mention the fact that you can end up spending a lot of time on gambling that you would have been able to use on more productive purposes otherwise.
Don’t drink when gambling online. We get it. A round of gambling over a round of scotch is one of the best ways for some people to relax after a hard day’s work. If you keep it on a single round of scotch, then you may not experience any side effects. However, if you drink more than that, you will definitely experience side effects in the form of an additional propensity for spending money and gambling. And this is not something that you would want to do in any instance, except if you wish to indulge yourself once in a while. In any case, you wouldn’t want to turn it into a habit. Expounding on the exact ways alcohol influences the mind would be beyond the scope of this article. However, you should note that alcohol is known for making people less risk-averse and more aggressive. This is the main reason why land-based casinos are known to serve free beverages to the visitors, as it’s much more likely that they’ll lose their inhibitions and spend a lot of money – a lot more than they would have spent if they weren’t drinking. So, the main thing to remember is that you should just gamble or just drink – and never do these two things simultaneously.
You shouldn’t lie about your gambling wins. This is more about how you carry yourself when you aren’t gambling. If you find that you’re bragging to people about how much money you’ve won, when you’ve actually lost money, then things may end up spiraling out of control for you. If a person lies about gambling, then it means that they have an unhealthy relationship with it. It’s best if you’re honest about it, first with yourself and then with everyone else. If you’re honest about suffering big gambling losses with other people, then many of them would urge you to tone your gambling habits down. And this is a good thing, not a bad thing. The fact that other people are here to check you and prevent you from losing huge sums of money is a blessing, even though the people that lie about gambling tend to feel otherwise.
Picking the Proper Games to Play
If you have had any type of experience with gambling, then you know that there are many different games that you can play, including:
- Online slots,
- Roulette,
- Blackjack,
- Baccarat,
- Craps,
and many more. The case is that despite the fact that some of these games have some similarities with one another, they are still very much different and unlike each other in many ways.
This is almost always a good thing since it means that you’re not likely to get bored by playing just one game. But the flipside to this is that it may take some time for you to learn how to play a particular game since different gambling games invariably have different rules.
Moreover, the games vary in the respective return to player (RTP) rates that they have. Knowing which of the games have low house edges and high RTP rates means that you will be able to make the most of the playing experience when it comes to making money.
But the thing to note is that knowing how to play most of the games is very important if you want to make the most of it. The reason why we say this is that you can make all the wrong moves in a gambling game which would make the house edge skyrocket and the RTP rate plummet.
What you want to do instead is spend some time getting to learn more about how a particular gambling game is played. You could do this in all sorts of different ways. You could find a demo version of the game, for example, and play it without the risk of losing real money of your own. Or you could watch other people play it, either in real-time or on videos on YouTube. In any case, doing this will not only help you learn how to play the game, but you will also get to learn the ins and outs of a particular game, which will help you not fall into the game’s traps, and you will increase the odds of winning.
This applies to any particular game you want to play, including the aforementioned slots, craps, roulette, blackjack, or others. Each game has its own set of rules, which you can use to your advantage or disadvantage if you’re not careful. So take some time to learn the rules of the game, and it will pay big dividends for you in the future.
The Importance of Creating a Bankroll
One of the most important things you should do if you’re serious about gambling is creating a bankroll. Don’t worry, as it’s very easy to create one. The difficult part is in maintaining your discipline so that you don’t go overboard as you gamble.
Having a bankroll means that you’ve set aside a certain sum of money that you’d be willing and able to spend for gambling purposes. This ought to be a sum of money that you can comfortably afford to lose without great repercussions for your overall budget. Make sure that you haven’t overextended when creating your bankroll, as there are some people that make the mistake of making their bankrolls too big.
Of course, you will need to time the use of your bankroll. Let’s say that you’re on the more conservative side and you’re only able to spend $100 during the month on gambling. What this means is that you should under no circumstances spend more than $100 during a month. Or you could take another approach and only spend 1-5% of your bankroll per day. Depending on the size of your bankroll, this can be an insignificant sum, or it can be a very big sum. The rule of thumb here is that if you’re feeling more aggressive, it means that you should go for spending up to 5% or even 6% of your bankroll in a day, but never more than that. If you want to take a more conservative, cautious approach, then you may want to allow yourself to spend 1% or 2% of your bankroll per day. And most people would agree that taking the middle ground between the two extremes is optimal, with a 3% expenditure of the total bankroll’s worth in a day.
The creation and management of a bankroll is a must for any gambler. The earlier you create and manage a bankroll, the better. It’s one of the tools that will help you maintain your gambling longevity in the long run.
Games and RTP Rates
Another important thing when it comes to gambling is the RTP rate of the games that you’d like to play. The RTP is a concept that we’ve touched on in some of the previous sections of this review. It stands for Return to Player, and it gives the baseline for how much money the casino will give back to the players on average and in the long run.
If we were to analyze the concept of RTP in isolation, in its simplest form, it means that if a game has an RTP rate of 95%, that the casino would pay out $95 for every $100 that the player deposits. This would set the house edge at 5%. But this would mean that casino betting, in general, would be a losing proposition.
So, we have to take our analysis of RTP even further. We must mention that RTP is a long-term statistic. It becomes apparent after millions of rounds in the game. It’s much less obvious in the short run. And it’s simple to see why. One player may spin the reels of a particular slot game for days on end without winning a significant sum of money. At the same time, another player may end up winning the progressive jackpot prize on the third run and potentially win millions of dollars.
The point is that RTP is much more volatile in the short run, so you can most certainly be lucky and end up winning huge sums of money without spending a lot of money of your own. But the longer you play, the higher the chances will be that you will end up losing money.
To use the concept of RTP to your advantage, you will need to analyze the different games and see if and how you can improve their base RTP rates. The RTP rates of online slots, for example, are known to be fixed in most cases. However, some slots do have the feature of enabling players to play with a higher RTP rate if they increase their bets to a certain level. So, if you were playing this game with a smaller bet, you would have a lower RTP rate and vice-versa.
But there are other games in which knowing how to play the game properly can increase the game’s overall RTP rate over 99%. One such great example is the game of blackjack. When played properly, i.e., when the player knows exactly when to hit, stand, and split, the RTP rate is over 99% in some game variants. But if the player doesn’t have a firm grasp on the game’s rules and doesn’t take a strategical approach to the game, then the RTP rate may plummet to under 50%. So, again, you should practice the games you want to play and see if you can increase the RTP rates to win as much money as possible without risking losing a lot of money of your own.
Keeping Track of Time
We can tie this one with one of our previous points, that you should limit the time you spend gambling online. One of the main things about online gambling that attracts more and more players is that it’s very convenient. All you need is access to the internet and a desktop or a mobile device, and you’re good to go. Since the majority of people reading this article already have access to both these things, it means that online gambling is one of the most accessible hobbies for most people.
However, this accessibility, alongside the addictive nature of gambling, may make it easy for players to lose track of time as they’re playing. Land-based casinos are known for employing tricks that make players lose track of time and end up overstaying and overspending. Online casinos are known to have their fair share of tricks that work similarly, as well.
What you’ll want to do is set up some trigger that will tell you when you’ve had enough. You can do all sorts of things in this regard. For example, you can set up an alarm on your phone that would ring at a particular time during the day, signaling that you’re done with gambling for the day. Likewise, you could ask a person living with you to remind you to stop at a certain time during the day.
If you overstay, it means that not only you’ve spent a lot of time on gambling, but it may also mean that you’ve lost a lot of money in the process. The point of gambling is to be fun and to serve you as an exciting pastime and hobby, not to take over your life to an extent where you’re losing track of time and can’t track how much time you’ve spend gambling.
The Importance of Managing the Casino Budget
So, by now, you’ve learned quite a few things that can help you make the most of your online gambling experience in terms of managing your budget. You know that for some people, gambling works in insidious ways to make them spend more money than they would spend under normal circumstances. And you now know of some ways in which you can prevent this from happening to you.
Remember, you should always track how much money you’re spending on gambling, regardless of how much you’re winning. There should come the point after which you should immediately stop gambling. Manage your money properly, and you will be able to enjoy gambling for a long time in the future without your life falling apart because of it. With this, you will get to enjoy gambling for what it is – a fun hobby that, if you’re lucky, can end up winning you a big sum of money.
