How Much to Bet Per Hand/Round
(aka, "Bet Sizing")

Last Update: August 2018

If you've never gambled before, you'll want to figure how much you can afford to bet on each round of blackjack, craps, roulette, or slots for your playing session.  You'll have to make sure you can afford at least the casino minimum, which is never less than $5 on the Vegas Strip and downtown, but $10, $15, or $25 at many casinos.  Most slot machines come in penny, nickel, quarter, and dollar flavors. 

The anwer is in the table at right.

Let's say you go to Vegas with $200 and want to play blackjack for two hours.  The calculator shows that you can afford to bet $7 per hand.  Note that this doesn't account for the standard $5/hr. for tipping. To keep the calculator less complicated, figure that your budget is really $210, to account for the $5 per hour x 2 hours in tips.

The figures in the calculator are designed to give you a 10% risk of ruin, meaning that you have a 90% chance of surviving your play and only a 10% chance of losing your whole bankroll.  I came up with these figures through computer simulation.

There's more about all this in my cover story in the Oct. 2005 issue of Casino Player magazine, "Secrets of Money Management". Someday I may get around to reprinting the whole thing here....

If you have any money left at the end of your session, you might want to consider using my Halfies System.