Sometimes we are on a roll when we are play a slots game. It could be a slot machine or an online slots game. It does not matter. Winning streaks happen on both sides of gaming. Today I am going to tell you the tale of Jackie and what happened to her when she was on a winning streak on a slots game.
Jackie is your average slots player. She gets up in the morning, goes to work, has a ham sandwich for lunch, goes back to her desk and then leaves the office at 5 pm every week day. Jackie lives an ordinary life by day, but by night she is a slots player.
Sometimes she plays classic three reel slots games, and other times she plays the newer five reel slots games. Sometime she drives to the nearest casino and other times she plays online slots. But she will play a few times per week.
Normally Jackie will set herself a limit on how much money she will play with, and when she runs out she stops for the night. She watches TV after she runs out of money. This is good bankroll management—the limiting how much she will play with at any one time, the TV part has nothing to do with bankroll management.
One night Jackie came home from another day of ham sandwich lunches and work to play a slots game. This particular night she was playing slots online.
After about fifteen minutes of playing, Jackie hit one of the higher payouts. A couple spins later she hit another. A few spins more and she hit another. And then another. In the span of ten more minutes Jackie had won so much that she had more money than she started with.
This was new! Jackie was on a winning streak! A little voice in the back of her mind told her to quit now, when she was ahead. But the voice of Thrill and Excitement were shouting, ‘Spin, spin! Spin, Jackie, spin!’
And so she did.
Thirty minutes later Jackie had lost the profit she had made from her winning streak and her allotted bankroll for the night. After staring at the screen, not quite believing that she had lost the extra winnings, Jackie shuffled out to her living room to watch TV like she always did. The night had felt so shiny a half hour before, and now it was just ordinary.
And Jackie vowed to quit the next time she heard that little voice telling her to when she was on a winning streak.
The lesson that Jackie learned is one that every slots player should heed. While there is no real way to gauge a slots game as to when to stop, the best rule of thumb is to quit while you are ahead.
If you win a significant amount from a spin, either quit or adjust your bankroll allotment. Say you won $30 while playing a penny slots game. That is significant. Do not think of your bankroll as being $30 richer. At this point, keep playing until you are down to $30. That way you can still have made some money off of a slots game.
I will cover this bankroll management idea more this afternoon.