Exposing Your Bankroll
I want to talk about a concept that is key to my winning and losing: EXPOSING YOUR BANKROLL. In fact, it is the concept of “exposure” that led me to the the most important rule in all my play: “Three Strikes and You’re Out.”
In order to understand the usefulness of “exposure” in gambling, we first must have a clear definition of what exposure is. Exposure is that part of your buy-in or bankroll you are willing to jeopardize in your daily play to secure a profit. The key word here is JEOPARDIZE. And those players who do not expose or jeopardize enough of their buy-ins during a session will never see any big profits. On the other hand, those players who over-expose or over-jeopardize their bankrolls will inevitably encounter big losses, leaving them with no money to play.
For example, when I play craps, I plan to risk no more than a third to a half of a buy-in lost per session. To risk this amount of money, I may have to expose, at times, 20 or 30 units of my buy-in. This exposure is absolutely essential for me to have a chance of winning. Sometimes, I amaze myself when look down at a craps table. I could have $600 invested on both the do and the don’t. It doesn’t mean I will lose the $600, it just means I must be able to jeopardize my money to make money. If you don’t have the psychological make up to expose your buy-in, you will not win. It’s that simple.
But just simply having the guts to expose you money does not make a gambler a winner. Higher rollers have a lot of guts and can expose millions. That doesn’t make them winners. No , the trick to winning is HOW YOU EXPOSE YOUR MONEY. That is, to over-expose your buy-in in any one session could have you risking, not 20 or 30 units, but 100 or 200 units. You don’t believe me? Go play 10 or 15 tables of craps on the do and the don’t side and see how much money you put out there. Playing $20 units, I can easily find myself risking $6000. That doesn’t mean I will necessarily lose $6000, but why take the risk? All it takes is just one bad session with this reckless kind of exposure and bye, bye bankroll.
That’s why I feel it’s very important for all players to really understand what exposure means in their daily play. I recently played with a student in AC and after 4 tables of craps we found ourselves up 3 units. I told him that according to the departure rules, we were finished for the day. We could either wait an hour or two before playing again or could start a completely different game, like baccarat or blackjack.
The student was absolutely amazed that we stopped and insisted that we really hadn’t played that much craps. After all we weren’t down that much, nor did we win that much. It took me over an hour to convince him that winning and losing had nothing to do with how much we actually played. Some players know that we had just played as much craps as the player who might have lost 15 or 20 units after three tables or won 100 units after three tables. That is, for some players the real determination of how much a gambler plays is by the amount of money he exposes!
The player who loses, the player who wins and the player who breaks even all EXPOSE about the same 20 to 30 units over 3 or 4 tables. The fact that one player wins and one loses doesn’t mean one player has played more or less than another. It just means that for the player who loses or breaks even, things aren’t really going his way and he should look to leave. And for the player who wins, things are going his way and he should continue raking it in. But believe me, each of these player — win, lose or draw — have all played the same amount of time, a full 20 to 30 units worth of play! And until you completely understand this last statement, you will never know how to beat the casino.
In craps, exposing your buy-in over 3 or 4 tables gives you enough opportunity to see if a session is going your way, without risking it all in any one session. In blackjack, the 20 unit buy-in and the salvage bet makes any daily exposure manageable. A similar formula of exposure is used in baccarat and roulette. Always have the money to come back and fight another day. Till next time.
