As a problem gambler you don’t set out to lose money, what you’re doing is spending an amount you’re comfortable wagering, and if you lose that, for some people it ends there. It’s when £20 – which.

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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:

On the other hand, “disordered gambling,” as the American Psychiatric Association now calls gambling addiction, seems to afflict just 1 to 2 percent of Americans, according to studies. Yet according to a long string of studies, and as Schull notes in her book, those people can generate 30 to 60 percent of revenues for the machine-gambling. But this dude, in a spectacular display of stupidity, managed to lose $127 million in a year-long gambling and drinking binge. And amazingly, when it was all done, Terry had the nerve to claim that. Multiply that man's losses by 17 billion, and you'll have something like the annual damage suffered by U.S. Gamblers each year, a total of $119 billion in 2013, or about the same as Americans spent. How did Americans manage to lose $119 billion gambling last year. That's a crazy amount of money; more money than Bill Gates has (with $72 billion) or Warren Buffett (with $58 billion),.

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.

If you bet $100 on 38 spins of the roulette wheel, the mathematically predicted results would look like this: You’d win once, and you’d get paid off $3500. You’d lose 37 times, and you’d lose $3700. That’s a difference of $200 over 38 spins, or $5.26 per spin. The house edge for the game is 5.26%.

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%.

This means you’ll lose an average of $1.41 every time you bet $100 on the come bet or pass line bet, but you’ll lose an average of $9.09 every time you bet the same amount on the hard 8. So one reason you’re losing so much money gambling is because you’re making bets on propositions where the house has a high edge. Choose games with a lower house edge, and you’ll lose less money.

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.

These kinds of betting systems ignore a few factors, but the most important of these is this: Every bet is on an individual, independent event. You’re not placing a bet that red will come up 8 times in a row. You’re placing a bet on whether a red will come up on the next spin.

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.

The average player probably gives the casino back 2% or more by making basic strategy mistakes. Sometimes this is because the player didn’t bother learning the correct strategy to begin with. Other times, it’s because the player knew the right strategy but ignored it in favor of a hunch.

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.

When you account for the dramatic difference in house edge, the numbers become even more staggering. $1800 worth of action on a slot machine with an 8% house edge results in a loss of $144. $1000 worth of action on a blackjack game with a 0.5% house edge results in a lot of $5. That’s a 30-fold diff

How Much Money Did You Lose Gambling