Tips & Tricks

Use a Simple Bucket Budget to Manage Your Money

Effective money management is critical to good gambling habits.

Up there, with learning how to make a cup of joe and wiping your nose, budgeting before hitting the tables is an essential skill every human must learn before joining the adult club. That is any human looking to gamble for real money.

Is budgeting sexy? No. It doesn’t invoke the glitz and glamor of a warm summer evening in a European casino. Instead, it reminds us of grandma scratching off numbers in a little black book. That’s about as far from that vision of elegance and opulence that we want to exude.

However, if you don’t keep an eye on what you are spending, you could go from “the man” to “the man crying in an expensive tuxedo outside the casino.” Fast.

Learning the art of bankroll management is necessary for any casino player who has yet to make their first billion. It effectively keeps us in check by limiting what we can spend. If we have a cap on what we can spend, that covers what we can afford to lose.

Most experienced gamblers know what sound bankroll and money management should mean. You will likely develop your strategy for ensuring you don’t overspend. Something that will keep you in line, even when things get hairy.

I’d recommend starting with the basics of bankroll management before thinking about that. The guide below has you covered!

There’s nothing like winning a jackpot. Fewer things in life can make you feel as special.

Whether you are playing the slots, keno, or roulette, you will see the temptation to play a game that promises a crazy payoff.  Always remember that the money for those payoffs comes from all participating players. Naturally.

These days, you can head over to the best real money casinos or app and find numerous jackpots to play for. In times gone by, jackpot slots games were typically geared toward the big payoffs. But not anymore. Many jackpots now pay by the hour, the day, and even before a certain figure has been accrued.

One of my top tips for gambling online is to keep an open mind when you hit the casino. Whether it’s online or in-person gaming, look for the smaller jackpot games, as you will have a better chance of winning one of them.

Traditionally, some players would target games with lower jackpots to bend the odds in their favor.

While I don’t think that is always necessary, it could be worth considering. For instance, pick the game that pays 4,000 max credits instead of the one that pays 10,000 max credits. Again, your chances of winning are better with the smaller payoffs due to lower variance in the game design.

Suppose you ignore all warnings from experienced gamblers to play keno; go for a small number of picks. The safest range of picks is 3 to 5. You don’t risk as much money because you’re more likely to win something.

Whether you target small or big jackpots, just make sure you’re using the top online slots available. Here’s a list of the very best options out there right now.

Ever heard a gambler advising you to “Go big or go broke?”

If so, rest assured that is terrible advice. The faster you lose your money, the sooner you will be out of there. Not only is this a foolhardy way of seeing your bankroll disappear faster than a shady salesman, but it also urges you to fully embrace the luck element of gambling at the expense of strategy or skill.

Unless the rules of the game make it more likely that you’ll win by betting more, there is no reason to “bet more to win more.” Your chances of winning or losing are the same regardless of whether you bet $1 or $100. But you have more chances to win or lose when you bet $1 than when you bet $100.

Of course, if you cannot control what you bet, you must have a word with yourself. Perhaps staying out of the casinos might be an idea until you get a handle on things.

Video slots are probably the most popular games in both online and live casinos across the world. While millions of people regularly play online slots, very few actually know how to win at slots or how these games even work.

It is true that, for the most part, slots are games of chance in which there isn't much you can do to change the odds to your favor. Yet, knowing some of the most important things I will describe in this guide will help you limit your losses and have more winning sessions.

How Slot Machines Work

Before you can know how to win at slot, you need to understand how these games work in the first place. There are many theories floating out there, but most of them are completely wrong.

It is a widely accepted assumption, especially in live casinos, that slots that are loaded with money from one or several players will eventually pay it out to another.

The fact is that all slots, even the older generation ones, are equipped with an RNG (random number generator) chip, which generates numbers within a massive spectrum and decides on the outcome of a particular spin.

This means that the spin’s final outcome is decided the moment you press the spin button, and stopping the reels or doing anything else will not change it from that point on.

It is true that slots are not completely random since computer science has not yet come up with a way of creating a true random number generator.

However, the RNGs used by slot machines, both online and offline, are as close to random as they need to be to ensure that no player is ever cheated in any way.

As long as you are playing a slot game made by a reputable slot developer like Novomatic, Playtech, NetEnt, Microgaming, or other licensed brands, you should not worry about the RNG whatsoever.

Payout Percentages and Slot Volatility

Now that I have explained how all slots are as random as possible, you may still be wondering why people lose so often when playing slots?!

The true reason for that is not in any sinister plot by the slot makers and the casinos, but the sheer slot machine odds and payout percentages.

If you compare slots to any of the other casino games, such as blackjack, roulette, or craps, you will soon realize that the RTP (return to player) percentage of slot games is almost always worse.

If you look at live casinos around the world, you will often see that slot machines only return 90% or even less of the player’s bets.

Compared to card games, in which the RTP is often above 99%, or roulette, where the RTP is 97.3%, the difference is quite massive.

To compare, the casino will only win $0.027 of every $1 you bet at roulette but might be winning as much as $0.1 from every $1 bet you make at slots.

What's even more, slots tend to play quite quickly, and if you don't control the size of your bets, you will be burning through money very quickly.

Even worse, players who don’t understand slot volatility may end up playing the wrong game, which can lead them to massive losing streaks that seem to never end.

This can be even more painful when you see a lucky player hit that big payout just as you are losing big.

To avoid this, you should pick games that don’t have too many massive payout options, unless you don’t mind risking a lot to try and win a lot.

In online casinos, the slot volatility will often be clearly marked as low, medium, or high, and you should take note of this. If you want to play long with a limited bankroll, choosing a low volatility slot will help.

Choosing the Right Slot Machine

One of the biggest tricks to learning to how to win on slots machines is certainly picking the right games. In live casinos, this can mean choosing the right machine to play on, while online, it will be choosing the right title.

If you go online and look at the slot developers’ websites, you will notice that every game has a clearly marked RTP percentage, which is not hidden in any way.

The truth is that most players are completely oblivious of this and seem to play the game that looks and sounds right while ignoring the RTP altogether.

In fact, the RTP is the number one thing you should be looking at, and it is the one that determines how much money an average player will lose per $1 wagered.

If you want to win, the first step you should take is choosing a game that has the highest possible RTP. This will enable you to come closer to being break-even in a theoretical sense and thus increase your chances of winning in reality.