Progressive Betting and Bankroll Management: Avoiding Disaster

The world of betting and gaming is filled with strategies, each of which promises you to increase your chances of success or, failing that, to reasonably reduce your chances of failure. Although a bit of a controversial statement to put outright, understanding the core principle of betting, such as progressive betting, and pairing it with time-tasted stratagems, such as bankroll management, has been known to yield the best results for players.

Today, we take a look at both and how they can help you improve your own situation when making your next bet. Websites such as xonbet casino offer ample opportunities to test virtually any betting strategy, but before you do, it may be worth your while to understand some of the core principles better.

What Is Progressive Betting?

Progressive betting is a term that suggests that you will increasingly be spending large amounts of money. This is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. After all, there are many valid strategies that rely on this principle. In roulette and online casinos, you can come across or test strategies such as:

• Martingale;
• Paroli (AKA Reverse Martingale);
• D’Alembert;

These strategies are generally agreed to be “progressive.” Virtually all of them will ask you to wager more if you end up losing your current round – save one, Paroli.

Although they tend to be popular for roulette games, you will see players implementing these strategies across a wide array of games, be that craps, baccarat, blackjack, or even slots, although with admittedly dubious returns where it concerns these last games.

How do the strategies work? Well, it’s pretty simple. Martingale will simply ask you to bet more if you lose. If you were to bet €1 and lose, you would need to bet €2. If you were to lose again, you would then bet €4, effectively doubling your stake size until you have won.

Once you do, you default to the basic unit of the strategy or, in the case we have used to illustrate it – €1. This amount can change and depends on the specific player’s preference. However, it’s advisable to start small because if you were to bet €1 and lose 10 times in a row, you would need to bet more than €2,000 to actually recover your losses.

You have a 0.13% chance of losing ten consecutive times, which is pretty good – it means that it will not happen very often. However, extensive testing shows that over 1,000 rounds, it may happen at least once, so watch out! The Paroli system, for example, is even more daring in what it asks from players.

It will ask you to double your stake after every win and go back to the basic unit after you lose. For example, you will bet €1 and win, after which you will bet €2 and perhaps – win again. If you won a second time, you will now be betting €4. If you lose, you will default to €1. Knowledge of progressive betting and how it behaves in the long run is very important, but so is bankroll management!

How to Master Bankroll Management Quickly

Bankroll management is a far more intuitive skill, but it takes discipline to apply it yourself. Essentially, you want to make sure that whatever strategy you use, you have the bankroll to sustain it.

For example, drawing on the previous examples, €1 unit may be a great basic unit to use, but if you only had a budget of €50 or so, you may want to reduce this betting amount. A good rule for bankroll management is to never exceed a tenth of your budget per single wager, or in our case, with €50, this would be no more than €5.

If even this looks a little steep, you can reduce the amount further, and very well bet €1 per wager. In progressive betting, though, the lower your base unit is, the slower the progression will go, shielding you against an abrupt win due to insufficient funds or table limits.

On the flip side, you may need to arm yourself with more patience, as it will take a while to see bigger wins on the screen. Ultimately, though, it will all come down to luck, and you ought to exercise any betting strategy only so far as you understand the risks. Remember, if your gambling stops being fun, you should stop!