It’s not always easy to quit while you’re ahead.
If you’re like me (and most gamblers), one of your main goals when you play is to walk away with your gambling winnings. The reality, of course, is that this can be easier said than done…especially when you’re on a roll or you’re so close to reaching your win goal.
To stop myself from falling into the trap of not quitting while I’m ahead, over the months that I’ve been playing, I’ve learned and adopted a few strategies I find helpful when I play. By following these tactics, nine times out of ten (I’m not perfect 😂) I walk away with my gambling winnings (when I’m lucky enough to win).
If you’re looking for tips on how to walk away with your gambling winnings that’s what this week’s Mia’s iGaming Journey post is all about. I’ve put together a few of my favourites that have helped me to keep profitable wins instead of losing them back to the casino.
How to Walk Away With Your Gambling Winnings – 5 Tips
The following tips are based on the methods I use when I play and are what personally work for me. Some of them might make sense to the way you play or how you want to play, and others might not.
What’s important is that you figure out what works for you and what is practical for your specific gambling experiences. The primary objective of whatever responsible gambling strategy you employ should be to leave with your casino winnings while never betting beyond what you can afford to lose.
Tip 1 – Define what “gambling winnings” means to you
One of the reasons why I think it can be difficult to keep your gambling winnings is that it’s not always easy for us players to define “winnings”. Technically, winning a profit of 10 cents can be considered gambling winnings, but are you really going to call it quits if you’re up 10 cents? Likely not. I certainly wouldn’t.
With that in mind, logically consider what winning enough means to you. In other words, how much money do you think would be satisfying/worth while to win. Is it $50? $100? $500? For me, it’s $50 and above. Obviously, we’d all like to win hundreds of thousands and million-dollar-jackpots, but chasing that big winning dream will see you quickly chasing your losses and journeying down the problem gambling path.
Once you’ve defined what gambling winnings means to you, the next step is to create a logical win limit based on the amount of money you actually have to play with.
Tip 2 – Create a win limit based on your budget/bankroll
How much you want to win and the win limit amount you create for a playing session, won’t always align. What I’ve learned is that the most logical win limit is one that is created based on the size of your bankroll.
For instance, I usually set my win limit (profit) to be 20% of my bankroll. This means if my budget is $100, I’ll stop playing if I’m up $20. If my budget is $200, then I’ll stop playing if I win $40, etc. This might not sound like a lot, but I’d rather give myself the chance to walk away with a little profit than nothing at all. Additionally, because I’m not a high roller or a huge risk taker, when I play games, I usually stick to lower bets (sometimes as low as $0.10) so I can play for as long as I want within my personal limits. While it’s possible to get lucky and score a big win with low bets, typically lower risk means lower payouts. As such, making a profit of $20 isn’t as quick or easy as you might think with 10 cent bets.
Bottom line, a controlled and lower win limit makes it far more likely that you’ll keep your gambling winnings.
| ❗Creating a win limit does not mean you’re creating a win goal. A limit means you stop if you reach it. A goal means you’re working toward achieving something. It’s best to avoid setting a win goal when you gamble. Creating a goal creates expectations. It’s never a good idea to have expectations when gambling. A win goal will only set you up for disappointment and risks you chasing your losses. |
Tip 3 – Know the difference between “winnings” and “profit”
Not every gambling win is a profit. Profit occurs when what you win amounts to more than what you risked playing. For instance, if over the course of 10 minutes you bet $20 and your total winnings up to this point is $15, you haven’t made a profit of $15, you’re down $5. You would need to win more than $20 to make a profit. Naturally, the more you risk, the higher the amount you’ll need to win to make a profit. This is why it’s easy to make the mistake of chasing losses.
Knowing the difference between winning and profit matters because to walk away with your gambling winnings refers to you having had made a profit (any profit – even if it’s just 10 cents). Otherwise, you’re walking away at a loss (which is usually the case for most of us).
Realizing this difference helped me to understand the importance of choosing a lower win limit, because the win limit amount (at least in my case) is based on profit, not on simply getting a payout of the same size.
Tip 4 – Once you’ve hit your win limit walk away – no excuses!
If you hit your win limit, it’s time to call it a day (or night) and walk away. If you want to keep your gambling winnings, there are no exceptions to this rule.
It doesn’t matter if you’re on a winning streak. Stop.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve only been playing for 5 minutes. Stop.
That’s all there is to it.
Tip 5 – If you hit your loss limit or time limit walk away – no excuses!
Sometimes – okay, let’s be real – most times you won’t win. A huge part of knowing when to walk away with your gambling winnings is knowing when winnings just aren’t in the reels, wheels, dice, or cards for you that day, and calling it quits.
More to the point, there is never any guarantee you will win when you gamble. Therefore, just as you need a win limit, you also need a loss limit and a time limit. Like the win limit, with the loss limit, you select a max amount you’ll lose. Once you hit this loss limit, you stop playing and walk away with what you have left.
For me, my loss limit is 75% of my bankroll. For instance, if during my playing session my $100 bankroll drops to $25 (75%), I call it quits for that day – no matter how much time has passed. I do this to ensure I don’t bleed my bankroll dry and to prevent myself from considering making another deposit during the same playing session. I play once a week and usually make a deposit each time I play (completely within my budget). I like this strategy because it means the next time I play, I’ll have the money from my fresh deposit plus the $25 I left for my bankroll.
As for a time limit, you choose an amount of time you want the playing session to last. This can be 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour, etc. I usually play between 30 minutes and an hour (but never longer than an hour). If the time limit you set for yourself expires before you hit your win limit or loss limit, stop playing for the day.
Loss and time limits won’t result in you keeping your gambling winnings, but they can help you keep some money in your bankroll.
My final thoughts
Ultimately, gambling is a lot of fun. While you can implement certain strategies to keep your gambling winnings, more often than not, we lose far more than we profit from gambling. That’s just part and parcel to playing games of chance, especially if you play them regularly.
What is always more important than knowing when to walk away with your gambling winnings is ensuring that you never bet more than you can afford to lose. Make use of the free responsible gambling tools offered by the online casino where you play. And if you are ever concerned about your gambling behaviour (or someone else’s) there is help. A good place to start is the Responsible Gambling Council.
With that said, my tips aside, do you have a strategy that you use to walk away with your gambling winnings that wasn’t covered above? I’d love to hear about it! Please comment here or share it with me on social media.
Until next time, good luck and have fun.
Mia 👩💻
*All links and images in this post are for informational purposes only.