Signals

So for the next two years, he became a regular visitor to that casino and others in the area. Soon he was known as a high roller and was given lots of perks, comps, freebies, gifts, and so on. He thought he was the king of slots. But he wasn’t winning any more. Instead of learning something about the casino games, he began to play bigger amounts and more often. Within months of his two big wins, he had lost all of it back to the casino. Then he started to dip into his savings and retirement money. Soon the casino, and other casinos, started to offer him large lines of credit, slot promotions not knowing that he was now playing with money he couldn’t afford to lose. As careful as casinos are not to extend credit to people who may be in trouble, there was simply no way for anyone to know. And so he gambled, and lost. And kept losing. He never won anything again, but he was still convinced that he was a great player, and that if he only bet more, bigger, and more often, he would recover the money he lost, and the money he borrowed, and everything would be fine. It wasn’t. Two years after those great casino wins, he was not only flat broke, but had spent all of his retirement money, his retirement bonus, mortgaged the house and all their property, sold all the jewelry and assets, ran up all their credit cards and lines of credit and loans, and was in hock to the casinos for $2 million on top of that. In desperation, he tried to rob the only bank he knew. He was familiar with the bank, so he was convinced that robbing it would be easy. He was caught in the parking lot near Admirals Inn, tossing the bags of stolen money into his car. He is now in prison. His wife lives with her children - six months with one, and six with the other. They lost the family home. All their social security income and pensions are levied against debts, with only that portion allowed under law paid to them to live on.

What is the point of this very sad story? To remind you to select your bankroll carefully. The size of your gambling bankroll should always reflect your ability to survive its total loss.

Individually, for each machine or game you select, the size of your bankroll should be called your session bankroll. This is the part of your overall bankroll which you will greatest Slot allocate to this one machine or game, on this particular playing session, this one time. Such an allocation should reflect the overall size of your casino bankroll, divided into the session stakes according to the game of your choice, the time you wish to play, and the win goals you desire to achieve. I provided a framework for this strategy in the section about Bankroll. Please look it up and read it again in light of this additional information. It will help. Believe me, I know.

One day, as they were considering what to do that spring, they decided to visit a casino. Neither had ever been to a casino before. They had rarely gone anywhere, having spent their lives working and raising a family. So, they thought, why not? Off they went. Neither knew anything about gambling, casino games
, slot machines, or greatest Slot. For the first few days, they had a great time. They went sightseeing, enjoyed the fine dining, the shows, and even played a little here and there. The wife didn’t like it much, though, so they had decided to go back home earlier than they had planned. On the last night, the man went to play a slot machine one last time. He put in a few coins, pulled the handle, and won a $250,000 jackpot. Wow! He and his wife were overjoyed. They planned to spend the money on their children, buy them each a house, invest some money for their expected grandchildren’s education, and so on. They packed up and went home with all that money.

About two years went by. Then one day the local news-paper reported that the man had been arrested for trying to rob the local bank, where he and his family had banked all their lives. Not only was this a stupid act, since everyone in the town knew these people, especially at the bank, but as the investigation proceeded, it revealed that this man was

far from the pillar of the community he had pretended to be. Much to the surprise of everyone, particularly his wife and children, he was in debt to several casinos for over $2 million. It seems that shortly after he won that $250,000 jackpot, he had started to play slots regularly. He apparently hid these trips from his wife by claiming to have taken a part-time job in the travel business, which required him to do some destination traveling. He went back to that same casino. His initial success was reinforced again when he was lucky the second time and won another $50,000. From this point on, he convinced himself that he was a great gambler, and that this would be the easiest money he would ever make for himself and his family.

To be continued…