Table Games Bankroll management question

With a $15,000 bankroll, how much can I bet per hand for four hours without too much risk of going bust?
Thanks guys.

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I forgot to say I'm playing blackjack.

 

Someone more experienced may correct me, but I believe it would be roughly $480/hand...so, call it $500.

 

are we talking bj

if so i went thru that in under an hour the other nite infact the number was 15,500$ and went bust , avarerage is around 500$ a hand give or take, so going bust is all realitive, ive gone thru 15 k in under a half hour if the cards are bad also so its a give and take.

rember at 500$ a hand if you dont make your splits and dounbles u can be losing 1000-2000 per hand or more


went to another casino right after bought in for 7 grand won 20 k in an hour and half, going back to get my rating, was doing good till guy sat down and started counting and killed the table so i moved and finished my play so total was 1.30 hours up 20 k buy in 7 k

 

$15,000 at $500 a hand is only 30 units, I don't know the math but I can tell you that one or two negative downswings and you are at a very high risk of going bust in four hours. You are leaving out critical factors such as bet variance, multiple hands etc, but in my opinion and I stand to be corrected by the experts on this board, you would be better off betting around $100 a hand maximum. I was sure there is something on the wizard of odds web site about risk of ruin, so I looked and found the link below, I hope it helps

http://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/appendix/12/

 

For four hours, you'd probably want to play $150 max per hand, as you'd have 100 betting units then.
Figure 250 hands in 4 hours of playing, probably losing half, so you'd PROBABLY be ok...

 

I would play 300 a hand. If you are winning press, if you are losing, back your base bet off to 200 until the negative variance passes. If you get into positive variance, i press with a win, win, 3xbase,2xbase,4xbase,2xbase,5xbase progression.


Good luck

 

It depends on what you consider "too much risk". Using the Wizard's RoR table blackjacker posted I'd probably say 5% is low enough to be considered conservative. 4 hours assume 400 hands that means 46 betting units or $326 average.

 

I'd bet 1K a hand until I got down to 10K then I'd martingale $250.......

Cliff notes: this won't end well.

 

Better yet play 12k
One Hand. You win, keep 20 in your pocket and play 500 a hand til down to the 20 or up another 10. Then walk

 

Thanks guys. I appreciate it.

 

Good luck buddy, have fun

 

I came up with my $500/hand this way:
Assuming 320 hands total (80 hands per hour, four 1-hour sessions @ a double-deck game), using a 10%-of-buy-in rule for the base bet, (which is how I play) that would be roughly $375/hand if he divided his bankroll by 4.
However, if we assume a 0.50% HA, with decent basic strategy, he could easily have very close to his initial buy-in after each session. So, even if he lost 20% net after a $5000 buy-in, he would have $14K after the first session. Session 2 - he buys in for another $5000 and loses another 20%. He's now got $13K with two 1-hour sessions to go.

Assuming he loses another 20% for each those sessions, he will finish his gambling with $11K, or 73% of his bankroll.

Even at a 40% loss-rate per session, (-$2000), he would still have $7,000 at the end...and if he's losing more than 40%, he should probably not be playing blackjack.

Of course, variance can be a killer. But that can happen regardless of his base-bet. If he loses every hand, ($15,000/320 hands), that would only be $47/hand or so.
Nobody thinks that would happen. So, nobody is suggesting he bet only $50/hand.

Realistically, if he flat-bets and plays good basic strategy, he won't lose more than about 20% per session, or 2 base-bets per 80-hand session...41 unit-losses and 39 unit-wins. That represents a 1.25% house take.


If he adds the remaining cash to each successive session buy-in, assuming he loses as much as $2500 of his $5000 per session, it would go like this:

Session 1: $5000 buy-in, end the session with $12500 bankroll.
Session 2: $5000 buy-in, end the session with $10000 bankroll.
Session 3: $5000 buy-in, end the session with $7500 bankroll.
Session 4: $5000 buy-in, end the session with $5000 bankroll. All gambling completed.

...and that would be a terrible run of cards!

If I had $15K for gambling, I would be very comfortable betting $500/hand for 4 hours. I would be very confident that I would still have at least half of my cash left over after the 4-hours.

I get that $500 is only enough to survive 30 net-losses. 30 net-losses in four hours is a lot! Even getting horrible cards, I would not see it getting any worse than 20 net losses in that short of a time period.

 

Do all the math you want but if you run into a good patch of negative variance at 500, your sunk. If you back off your bet after 3 losses and then attack when you hit a positive variance than you will be goid.

Think of it a s a reverse martingale. You actually can have an edge in BJ if you if you play3-2, stay ons17, and have all of the other betting edges in your favor if you are a card counter.

 

I always buy in at blackjack for 20x my flat bet. So if I'm playing quarters that's $500, if I want to play $50 a hand I buy in at $1000, or black chips buy in is $2000. I will always get off the table if I lose my stake or triple my stake. When I double up, I will rathole my original stake and play with the remaining. I bring two buy-ins per gambling day in Vegas.

The majority the time I'll last for four hours flat betting with that stake, going up and down. Sometimes I'll end up either winning my 3x (that has happened in less than an hour) or ending up even (from doubling up and then losing) long before 4 hours. However, on a bad stretch of cards it can go fast. I've blown through a stake in less than 20 minutes.

For $500 a hand my stake would be $10,000. Since I know that can get eaten up quick...If I wanted to make pretty sure that I was able to play four hours at $500, I would want at least twice that or $20,000. Even then, I think there is a pretty good shot you'll lose it. However, there is also a pretty good chance you'll triple up...and that's a good day when it happens.

 

Awesome!!! This got an audible laugh from me.

 

If you've seen the movie "Heat", with Burt Reynolds, which i loved, "Nick" (Burt), bets 2 $500 chips, keeps doubling them up to $100,000. Then he goes all in, and the next thing that happens is..............

 

The other method is to use a running percentage of remaining bankroll for each session.
It should probably be a range so that he's not having to modify his bet every hand.
Something like 10-15% of bankroll bet on every hand (if he's losing). Starting at $500/hand (10%), if he loses 2 net units, he would then back his bet down to $400 (10% of $4000). If he loses 3 net units from there, he would back his bet down to $300 (10.7% of $2800), and so on.
If he's up, (and not a counter), he should continue to flat-bet $500.

 

Me too. But the OP didn't describe what he meant by "without too much risk of going bust". I can't blame him, that's a tough thing to describe. I went a $325 average because that's 5% risk-of ruin which is low but realistically he could average much more and still have a very good chance of surviving for 4 hours. My average usually comes out to around $200-$250 and I start with a 5k marker. More often than not it lasts me well over 4 hours, sometimes it will be the only marker I need for an entire trip. So by that measure he could average more than $500.

30 net losses is a lot, but I don't think its very unusual. According to the same RoR chart you'd have over a 20% chance of 30 net-losses after 400 hands. I know I definitely lose 20 units in pretty short order sometimes.

 

I get what you're saying...I suppose it's just that I personally wouldn't consider a 20 or 30% risk-of-ruin to be particularly scary.
As you suggested - odds are that he'll do far better than that, and not lose 30 units in 4-hours of play.

But sure - if he keeps it to $200 or $300 a hand, he will likely be very comfortable with his bankroll-protection for the entire time he's playing. I'd be surprised if he ever found himself down more than $4000 to $5000.

(PS - Even at that level, he should really be playing S17, DAS double-deck pitch. Then, I think, it would be more like 80 hands/hour, or 320 total hands.)