How Much You Lost Gambling
- How Much Money Have You Lost Gambling
- How Much Have You Lost Gambling Reddit
- How Much Have You Lost Gambling
- How Much Have You Lost Gambling
If you anticipate gambling more this year, get on track with your record-keeping now. This will make your reporting all the easier in 2021 and reduce your risk of an audit. Keep track of how much you win and lose per gambling session at all times. You can do this manually (with a good old-fashioned ledger!) or electronically. That's the total amount spent: not every dollar spent on gambling is lost - that's the whole risk-reward appeal. The same report tallied our national gambling losses at just under $25 billion - $24.88 billion to be exact. Per person that's more than $1,260 lost to gambling every year, and a 5% increase on the figures from 2016-17. One final tip: the deductions you claim for gambling losses do not have to be for the same type of wagering activity for which you have gambling winnings. For example, say for the year you won $800, all from a slot machine jackpot, and you have documentation to support $300 of slot machine losses. I cant imagine how much you guys bet if your down 300K. It scary for me to think that when i started i was betting 5$ a game and now im at 200$ a game. I do plan on stopping soon.
Millions of Americans love betting on sports. The sad reality is that the vast majority of them will lose money over their gambling career.
Understanding why so many people end up in the red is a complex proposition.
With that being said, there are a few main reasons why even the most knowledgeable sports fans end up losing in the end.
In this article, I’ll lay out some of the most common reasons why only a small percentage of gamblers end up being profitable over the long run. Keep these reasons in mind and maybe you can avoid the pitfalls that have kept so many bettors from consistently winning money.
1 – Lack of a Bankroll
If you’re not familiar with the concept of a bankroll, it’s no surprise that you haven’t been able to establish a profitable betting strategy.
Your bankroll is the single-most important thing to monitor because it helps you understand the money coming in and the money going out.
If you aren’t diligently keeping track, you can find yourself down a lot of money, quickly.
Your bankroll is the pool of money from which you bet. To create one, simply set aside a pool of money that you’re comfortable losing.
Once you have that set aside, decide how much of that pool (as a percentage) you’re willing to bet on any one play. Most pros recommend between 2% and 5%, but you can make this determination for yourself based on the size of your bankroll.
While simply having a bankroll isn’t going to turn you into a money-making machine, it will make you aware of the financial aspect. It will also help you treat sports gambling more like a business and less like a hobby. When you’re aware of the numbers, you’re more thoughtful in your plays.
2 – You Chase Losses
Chasing losses is the practice of trying to win back your losses by doubling down on your next bet.
This is obviously a big, yet common, mistake.
Chasing your losses doesn’t just often result in massive financial loss, but it ignores a key principle of sports gambling—the long-term mindset.
The way to become one of the few who end up profiting from sports betting is to remember that sticking around is important. Assuming that you’re going to keep on betting regardless of your outcomes, you need to minimize your losses to give yourself a chance to win in the end.
Do everything in your power to avoid having to “reload” your bankroll after you’ve lost it all and you’ll realize the importance of making small bets.
3 – You Bet Without a Reason
I understand that betting on sports is a form of gambling like roulette or blackjack. However, unlike those games, sports betting isn’t necessarily a game of chance.
If you’re betting on sports simply by choosing a team and letting the chips fall where they may, you’re losing the very real advantages that can be gained by doing research.
Before placing a bet, ask yourself why you’re making a certain play.
Take into account all the information available to you.
Sportsbooks depend on an uninformed public to make their money. They rely on bettors to make their plays based on feelings and hunches rather than real data. Think critically about why you’re making a play and you can avoid falling into this trap.
While it’s true that two informed bettors can end up taking different sides on a play, that doesn’t mean gathering information isn’t important. Before you make your next bet, make sure you have a concrete set of reasons for why you chose the team you’re betting on.
4 – You Always Choose Favorites
Generally speaking, the public has a major bias towards choosing favorites. It’s not hard to see why the favorite will usually win the game outright, and it’s a mental trick to realize that winning, in no way, equals covering. Simply put, people don’t like betting on teams that are probably going to lose, regardless of the spread.
This presents a tremendous opportunity for bettors to take advantage of underdogs.
Because the public bets so heavily on the favorite and the sportsbooks want to even up the money, often times, that will cause the spread to grow. The underdog will get more points than they “should.”
I don’t want to make the blanket statement of saying the underdog is always the better play. Just be sure that you’re betting underdogs at the same rate as you’re playing favorites.
5 – You Bet to Win the Game and Forget Value
Everyone likes to win their bets, but winning more than half your bets does not equal winning money.
Betting for value is a simple concept that’s hard in practice. Value betting means not risking significantly more money than you stand to win on any given play.
Sure, you’re going to win most of them, but the money you’ll win doesn’t outweigh the risk. Taking huge favorites on the moneyline means that one loss can derail your entire bankroll.
On the flip side, betting the moneyline on underdogs can mean you might lose more than half your bets, but still win money in the end.
This isn’t to say that it’s wise to bet moneyline underdogs at +500, but if you’re able to find some matchups where the underdog is around +150 to +200, consider mixing it in.
Additionally, if you take the time to actually track your winnings, you’ll recognize that you can overcome losses if you consistently bet for value.
Much like the public’s tendency to have a bias towards betting favorites because they’re more likely to win, the public also has a bias towards winning bets over winning money.
Next time you sit down and lay out your plays for NFL Sunday, remember that if you’re risking way more than you stand to gain, it might not be worth it to make the play.
6 – You Only Use One Sportsbook
With today’s increasingly accepting laws regarding sports gambling, there’s no shortage of sportsbooks to use for your plays. Take advantage of all the offerings by line shopping.
Line shopping is simple.
When you have a play in mind, visit different betting sites to find out which one has the best odds for your play.
Because sportsbooks work to even up the money, it’s likely that different books will have different odds based on the action they’ve received for a particular game. This is especially true of the moneyline, which typically varies more significantly across sportsbooks.
While the spread is usually a little more set-in-stone across different sites, there’s still a chance you might be able to steal half a point or even a full point if you look around. At the end of the day, you have nothing to lose by looking for better odds somewhere else. In the end, even small advantages pay off over time.
Conclusion
If you’ve been having a rough year betting on sports, it’s likely that you’ve been committing some of these betting faux pas along the way. These weaknesses in the general public’s betting strategy can be turned into opportunities if you’re willing to put in the time necessary to be successful.
Do you feel like you’re losing too much money gambling? If so, that can be a serious problem. You’ll probably find plenty of advice aimed at problem gamblers or gambling addicts. That advice usually amounts to absolute abstinence, which, frankly, is the correct approach—if you’re really a problem gambler.
On the other hand, you might not have an addiction. You might be a recreational gambler who overdid it one weekend. Compare it to the person who goes to a party one weekend and overindulges and wakes up with a hangover. That, by itself, doesn’t qualify one for membership in Alcoholics Anonymous. It takes a little more drinking than that.
If you’re a recreational gambler, here are 10 reasons why you’re losing so much money gambling, and here’s what you should do instead:
1- You’re Placing the Wrong Bets at the Casino
All casino games have a house edge—a mathematical advantage for the casino that’s impossible to beat in the long run. They create this edge by creating a game where the odds of winning are worse than the payout odds. One easily understood example is roulette. A bet on a single number at the roulette table has a 37 to 1 probability of winning. (You have 37 ways to lose, and you only have 1 way to win.) But that bet only pays off at 35 to 1 odds.
It’s important to realize that this is a long-term mathematically expected result, and in the short run, the results are random. Your actual results will only start to look more like the mathematically expected results over a long period of time. But the more negative expectation bets you place, and the higher the house edge is, the more money you’ll stand to lose in the casino. In roulette, all of the bets (save one) have the same house edge, but this isn’t true of every game.
Craps, for example, is a game which has some bets with a house edge of well under 2%. But it also has some bets with a house edge of well over 10%. The difference in expected value is tremendous. If you stick with the pass line bet at the craps table, or the come bet, the house edge is only 1.41% But if you start betting on silly stuff like “hard 8,” the house edge is 9.09%.
2- You’re Betting Too Much Money on Each Wager
The way to predict your mathematically expected loss per hour on a gambling activity is to use the following formula, where:
- A = The house edge
- B = The average bet size
- C = The number of bets you make per hour
- A X B X C = Expected hourly loss
Increase any of these factors, and the amount of money you lose per hour goes up. It does you little good to stick with a game where the house edge is 1.41% if you’re just going to start betting $500 per roll instead of $100.
If you’re gambling spending has gotten out of control, consider scaling down the stakes for which you’re playing. If you’re betting $100 per hand on blackjack, you can cut the amount of money you’re losing in half by betting $50 per hand instead.This is true in any gambling activity where you’re fighting a negative expectation. Bet less per wager, and you’ll lose less money in the long run.
3- You’re Using Betting Systems
Some people think that raising and lowering their bet sizes based on the previous round’s results can change the odds in their favor. The most popular of these methods is called the Martingale System, and it involves doubling the size of your wager after every loss until you win.
What happened on the previous spins has no effect on the probability of getting red on the next spin of the roulette wheel. There are 38 numbers, and 18 of them are red. The probability of getting a result remains 18/38, regardless of what happened on the previous spin, the previous dozen spins, or the previous 100 spins.
The other thing that these betting systems fail to account for are the size of your bankroll and the betting limits at the casino. If you start off betting $10 per spin at the roulette wheel and double your bet after every loss, you don’t need an outrageous losing streak to start putting a serious strain on your bankroll.
Losing 8 times in a row at roulette seems next to impossible, but it happens every 4 or 5 hours. Look what happens to the size of your bet when you hit a losing streak like that:
- $10
- $20
- $40
- $80
- $160
- $320
- $640
- $1280
Keep in mind that if you succeed on bet #8 or #9, your net profit for the entire progression was only $10. The rest of that bet was just to recoup your previous losses. And after losing 7 or 8 times in a row, the odds of winning the next bet are still against you. The probability is still 47.37%, no matter what happened earlier.
No betting system can compensate for having the odds against you in the first place. That’s just not how gambling works.
4- You’re Not Using Basic Strategy in Blackjack
Most people know by now that blackjack offers some of the best odds in the casino. The house edge is less than 1%. But that figure assumes that you’re playing every hand with perfect basic strategy. Every deviation you make from basic strategy adds to the house edge.
If you’re going to play blackjack, memorize basic strategy and use it on every hand. This will limit your losses. The more you deviate from basic strategy, the more money you’ll lose on average over time.
5- You’re Playing Slot Machines
The most expensive game to play in any casino is the slot machine. It combines lousy odds with a high rate of play, which is devastating to your bankroll. It increases the average expected loss dramatically. The average slot machine player gets in about 600 spins per hour. At $3 per spin, you’re putting $1800 per hour into action. Contrast that with a blackjack player wagering $10 per hand at a reasonably crowded table. He’s probably lucky to get in 100 hands per hour, which means he’s only risking $1000 per hour.
How Much Money Have You Lost Gambling
Play whatever you want to in the casino, including slot machines, but if you think you’re losing too much money too fast, you should get away from the slots.
6- You’re Playing Too Many Hands at the Poker Table
One of the keys to winning at poker in the long run is tight-aggressive play. The first part of that is probably the more important part if you’re losing too much money playing poker.
Tight and loose are 2 ways of describing how selective you are with which hands you play and how far you continue with them. Tight players fold most hands and only play the hands that are strong. Loose players, on the other hand, play lots of hands. Loose players might win more pots, but it’s only because they’re involved in more pots.
How Much Have You Lost Gambling Reddit
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t put money in the pot. Betting and raising are keys to aggressive play, which is the 2nd half of a winning poker strategy. But in terms of losing less money, the first trick you should learn is how to fold a lot. Even tight-passive players lose less money than loose-passive players.
7- You’re Gambling with Money You Can’t Afford to Lose
Have you ever heard the expression, “Scared money always loses?” It’s true.Scared money is money you shouldn’t have been betting in the first place. It’s money you can’t afford to lose. Since you can’t afford to lose that money, you make decisions that aren’t mathematically optimal. You also recklessly chase losses in a desperate attempt to get even.
You get to the blackjack table, and you have $100 down on a hand, and you split. Then you re-split. Now you have $400 in action. Then suppose the dealer winds up with a total of 21, and all 4 of those hands of yours lose. You have $1600 left and can’t pay the rent.
So you think, well, I already can’t pay my rent—maybe I can catch up and get ahead by placing a couple of bigger bets. So you bet $200 on the next hand, with the intention of just getting in enough hands to break even for the night. This time you get a hand where the correct play is to double down, and you do so. But you still lose. Now you’re down to $1200. You’re going to lose a lot of money if you’re playing with scared money.
8- You Really Do Have a Gambling Problem
It’s not my place to diagnose whether you’re a problem gambler or not. That’s for you to decide. I can offer some clues to look for, though.
If you’ve ever done any of the following, you might consider getting some help for a potential gambling problem:
- You’ve missed work because of your gambling.
- You’ve felt remorseful after gambling.
- You’ve gambled until you were completely broke.
- You’ve sold something or hocked something to gamble.
- You’ve lied about your gambling activities.
You can find a list of 20 questions to think about if you’re concerned about your gambling behavior here. That’s from the Gamblers Anonymous website, but that’s not the only game in town when it comes to getting help for a gambling problem.
Getting help is crucial, but I’m a believer in getting professional help as well as the support and fellowship of people who have experienced similar problems. Find a licensed professional counselor to talk with, too. Gambling addiction ruins lives, so don’t let it ruin yours.
9- You’re Obsessed with Climbing the Ladder of the VIP Club
I have a friend who visits the Winstar Casino more often than he’d care to admit. He has recently been climbing the ladder in the players club there, and he gets free food and rooms all the time. To pull this off, he had to gamble a lot more than he probably would have otherwise. And the way negative expectation games work is to drain your money the longer you stay in the game and the more you play.
And let’s face it. The percentage that the casino awards you for your play is so paltry in comparison to the house edge that it’s pitiful. Most casinos award you 0.2% or so in rewards. That might go up to 0.3% or 0.4% as you climb the VIP player club ladder. The house edge on most casino games, though, is at least 10 times that much. Most casino games have a house edge in the 2% to 4% range.
Blackjack and video poker are exceptions, but it’s all but impossible to make a living with either of those games even if you play profitably and optimally. Don’t get sucked into the trap of thinking you need to play more to get more player rewards. That’s a recipe for losing more money.
10- You’re Not as Good at Betting on Sports as You Think
It’s hard to make a profit betting on sports. The vig creates a situation where a guy who’s right with his picks 50% of the time is bound to lose. That’s because the book requires you to wager $110 on a 50/50 proposition to win $100. Most people overestimate how well they pick winners. They think that they’re better than they are, and since they’re not keeping careful records anyway, it’s easy for them to claim they’re breaking even or showing a small profit.
Do this for a month or two, and I can guarantee you’ll be surprised at what your actual results look like when compared to how you thought you were doing. This doesn’t make you delusional, by the way. It makes you human. It’s human nature to have selective memory. You’ll naturally remember the winning bets more than the losing bets. That’s why keeping written records is so important.
Conclusion
How Much Have You Lost Gambling
So you’ve been losing too much money gambling? It’s almost certainly because of one of the 10 reasons listed above. That’s good news, too, because once you’ve put your finger on the problem, you can solve it.
With each of the reasons for losing money listed above, I’ve tried to include a piece of advice about how to stop losing so much money for that reason. What other reasons can you think of that might be causing you to lose so much money gambling?
