Locking Up Slot Winnings
Most slot players tend to think about the huge payoffs possible and then blow their bankrolls and walk out broke. If you are in this camp, I am going to try to change your attitude. A great secret of how to win at gambling is to set realistic win goals and then learn to accept them. Another way of saying this is that the amount you are likely to win is directly related to the amount you bring with you for slots play, your slots' bankroll.
If you bring $1,000 as your bankroll, you may easily win $100 or even $300. If you bring $5,000 to play slots, you might want to shoot for a $500 or even a $1,000 win. If you are like most slot players and bring $300 or $500, you can't expect to win the same amount as someone who puts more money into play.
Notice I didn't say won't win the same amount. Anything can happen once in a while. These long shot wins are the stories the casinos like to play up. We have all read about the player who puts three bucks in a jackpot machine and wins ten gazillion dollars. These things do happen.
People win lotteries. Or find oil in their backyards. Or are left millions by long forgotten rich uncles. When you look at millions of people and then focus on the events that happen to a mere handful, the improbable seems probable.
But we will deal with the probable. Methods will not prevent you from becoming one of the fortunate handfuls who win millions. But we want to stay with the probable, with what is likely to happen nearly every time you play. And you know you are not going to win a million bucks every time you plunk three bucks in a slot machine.
What you want to do is set a reasonable Win Goal related to your bankroll size. A reasonable Win Goal is an amount such as 30%, 40% or 50% of your bankroll. Before you sneer at amounts as low as 30%, remember that the lower the Win Goal, the easier it is to hit it!
Let's say you decide on a Win Goal of 50%, fine. If you bring a bankroll of $500, then you will be shooting for a win of $250. If your bankroll is $1,000, your Win Goal will be for $500 and, if you bring only $100, and your Win Goal is 50%, you will have to be satisfied with a win of $50.
However, your Win Goal is not an absolute upper limit on your winnings. Instead, it acts as a signal telling you that it is time to start locking up profits. Here's one way you can use a Win Goal. You have just finished a round of play on a slot machine. One round consists of playing all the coins in your session bankroll. You count your coins at the end of the round and discover that you have reached your win goal of 50% winnings for that session.
Now what you do is critical. You will set aside all of your original session bankroll and at least one-half of your winnings. You can continue to play, but only with your Excess Winnings. Let's put some numbers to this approach. You just ran fifty coins through a quarter slot, and after this round of play you count coins and come up with 80 coins, for a net win of 30 coins. Take 15 coins from your winnings and add the fifty coins you started with. Place all 65 of these coins in a separate coin bucket. You will not touch these coins again. You can add more coins to the bucket, but you will never take any of these coins out until you cash them in.
Your second bucket with 15 coins is your Excess. These coins you will use to continue to play the slot machine. At the worst, if you lose all of your Excess coins, you will have a win of 15 coins, locked up with your original session bankroll.
But you might keep on winning. Let's say your next round produces a 10-coin win. There are several moves you can make now. You could place all ten coins in your Lockup bucket, bringing it up to 75 coins. You could place one-half of your 10-coin win with your Lockup. Or, you could call it quits and leave with a total win of 40 coins, representing a win of 40 coins won from a 50 coin original bankroll, winning 80% of your bankroll.
Once you set a Win Goal, you will have an automatic way of knowing when it is time to start locking up you winnings. Notice that using a Win Goal will never prevent you from continuing to play and win. I will continue to use No-Payback Pulls after a win, and in addition, I may set other limits to prevent me from giving back a win. You may decide to limit my losses to a set number of coins, such as ten coins.
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