Blackjack bankroll management for beginners

Most new players at a casino have an idea of how much money they’ve got to gamble with before they start. Unfortunately, many of them do not know the best way to get the most enjoyment from it. Sure, they might head for their favorite game, like blackjack, but then wonder why they have lost their money quickly and need to run for the exit.

The issue is they have not understood the basics of bankroll management, a crucial concept to understand before you play something like blackjack for real money.

Your blackjack bankroll is the amount of money you have set aside to play the game. It is never the sum of all your available cash, which would include money for food and bills. It’s just the amount you are willing to play with at the casino. Bankroll management is how you use this sum on the casino floor or at an online casino website.

How does blackjack bankroll management work?

Bankroll management is critical for working out what stakes you should play to give you the best chance of staying in the game and, hopefully, profiting from it.

Let’s take a simple example. You have $100, and a friend offers to bet $100 on the toss of a coin. If you take up the offer, you have a 50/50 chance of going broke in one go. Your money is gone; any enjoyment you may have got from playing the game disappears in an instant.

Now imagine your friend offered to bet on the toss of a coin for just $5 a go. With the same $100 in your pocket, you’re not going to go bust any time soon. Barring a freak run of results, you shouldn’t really go bust at all.

You can see that the smaller the wager, the more tries you will have at the game without feeling under pressure. If we bet $25 a time, that would still be too much because a short run of defeats will wipe you out.

This principle applies equally to the blackjack table. With the same $100 in your pocket, you should stick to stakes that will give you the best chance to remain in the game and even make a profit. So betting $5 on the blackjack table makes sense. You are betting 5% of your starting bankroll.

Blackjack bankroll calculator

Sticking to the $5 bet, in this case, is fine for a single session of blackjack. But when you gamble, you should consider your bankroll as your permanent pot for gambling. You might not have $100 available to lose on a particular day – it might be all you have for the month.

In this case, you might be even more prudent, and reduce each $5 to $3, or 3% of your bankroll. And as this is a longer-term blackjack bankroll strategy, you can adjust as you go along, from one session to the next.

For example, if you lose $25 one night, your bankroll is now only $75. Next time you play, you should not still bet $3, but adjust to 3% of your new total of $75, so $2.25. Maybe you won in your previous session and now have $150 in your bankroll. Using the same 3% rule, you can now increase your blackjack bets to $4.50.

Adjusting your stakes in this way means you are always in balance with your bankroll, and have the best chance of preventing the "blackjack risk of ruin" where you end up with nothing.

Blackjack bankroll strategy

While there is every chance you can win at blackjack over a number of sessions, you will know the house always has the edge. For this reason, there may come a time when you replenish your gambling bankroll from other available funds. Doing so is fine in moderation, just make sure you don’t overstretch and stick to the 3% blackjack bankroll rule.

Another way of working out your necessary funds is by looking at how much you want to bet each hand. Let’s say you want to play blackjack for $25 a hand. If you stick to the 3% rule, that means you should have a starting blackjack bankroll of $833. If you don’t have that sort of spare change, you must bite the bullet and reduce your stakes accordingly.

Play blackjack now

You can play blackjack with real dealers at many online casinos. It’s the most realistic experience online, and the ideal place to follow our blackjack bankroll tips. Sign up for an account today, and make sure you take advantage of the new player bonus, which will add more funds to your starting bankroll and get you off to the best possible start.