Baccarat How to control your greed in gambling and stay discipline

Hello All!

I am a new member here but I am an old player enough to share my experience with others.

I would like to speak in this thread about GREED.

Can anyone share his experience of how they control greed? The reason why I am writing this post because seems I am ok to play Baccarat and really most of the time I win, but when I come to emotions and greed, I am weak at it and sometimes it kills my 30 days or more work on building my bankroll. I never learn from my mistakes and if I design a strategy of play to myself I can not prove that this strategy is working (or doesn't working) because my greed is taking over control during the play and I do not follow the strategy.
Greed and discipline I think is a basement for all games!

Any bits of advice guys and girls?

Cheers from Iceland!

 

Years ago I worked as a fairly successful futures trader for a large firm in Toronto. My mentor once told me that to be successful at the futures game that ya needed to control both greed and fear. I always found that to be the nice piece of advice and apply to the baccarats and any other form of speculations. The best way to control both greed and fear and to instill discipline and structure to yer enterprise is to set an ironclad limit as far as how many days per week and how many shoe per day yer gonna buck up against. If you do that you will conquer the greed and fear because you will leave after you put in yer pre-determined number of shoe yer gonna play regardless of how good or bad that particular session has been. It ain't rocket science, baby, hey hey!

 

Put it into prospective.. If you are $980 up but want to make a thou' remind yourself what the average wage is, what interest banks pay, that what you have is tax free. Sure gun for that thou' but with minimal so it won't take you below say $950.

One of the The BIGGEST problem players have when they are one foot out the door, is IF they drop, they want tat least get back to were they were, so they rush things, become in a hurry., rapidly unravel, start talking bets that they would normally do if they had just arrived. Then they fall apart after a few losses and the bets sky-rocket, before you know it, the casino have their money back and plus your buyin.

Tomorrow is another day, you should be content with leaving a casino "even", never mind a small profit, nobody ever went broke walking with small profits.

 

Yup, ya need mechanisms. One thing I do is to say to myself "If I lose the next bet I'm going to quit the shoe." This wether I'm winning or losing. This helps me. If I don't do it I can kind of scold myself. This pushes me out.

At the same time it's important to articulate exactly how you're going to play. The more the bet selection and betting are structured the easier it is. Much harder when selection and wager amounts are subjective. So then you need specific time, shoe and/or $ constraints. Whatever you choose, conscious mechanisms going to help.

 

If you play Baccarrat you ARE already greedy Win and quit is Easy. Lose and quit is hard.

 

I forgot to add, always set off to a casino with a goal target in mind. If it comes early, then fine continue playing, if you start dropping, protect your goal target which was reached previously. If you keep records like I do, nothing worst entering a sizeable loss and in the comment section, adding "was xxx" up. That is more than enough that should have you seething never repeat the same mistake.

As somebody over at LTW had in his signature "Never turn a profit into a loss"

 

JK, Anyone who is not keeping a record, lives in a fools paradice, There should be a subject taught in high schools to stop all the damage in the community from problem gambling, and to stop all these bastards ripping off the naive newbies and dreamers, i watch the football,rugby etc, its awash with bookie ads, you know lose your paypacket with _ _ _, its so easy with our app, young people are losing millions, education is the answer.

 

I use advice that I got right here at this forum a while back. Somebody posted a video on how to trade stocks like a casino. The video talked about a strategy to watch support and resistance values in moving averages. In that video he then went on to explain that there must be a stop loss point as well as a stop win point too. His reasoning was simple. He knew that he would lose on a lot of trades and that those losses must be at a fixed point in order for his method to end up in the positive for growth. He also knew that he was going to win about the same amount of times as losses. He set his win stop point at twice his loss stop point.

It was not the points and their values that was a right fit for my style of play though. I needed to find my own sweat spots that fit my own win to loss ratio. So I settled on three net wins at $270 to $300 for each won session. I set my loss point in any session to $630 to $700 that was seven net losses. This method takes all frustration, fear, and greed out of the picture. I needed that. I pretty much told everyone around here that I needed this structuring and that I was very grateful for that video. I still am. With 3 / 7 I need to win 2.33 sessions at 3 net wins per session to make up for every lost session at 7 net losses.

After a long time using this I discovered that I was winning around 5 sessions for each lost session. Once I added virtual bets, that is a bet selection in my live playing charts that is not backed by a bet, I discovered that I was winning even more sessions. So I changed things up a little. Once I reached 3 net wins I would continue on to 7 net wins where I could only allow myself to fall back to the 3 net win point if it started to lose. If I lost the first try past 3 net wins then I would quit at 2 net wins, $180 to $200. Also added was that I could stop anywhere from four net wins to seven net wins. This is where I am now with my method.

In any case, I play this money management method against Roulette & Craps. It's just way better for me to play it against Roulette because with my playing chart I'm tracking 12 sets of 18 -20 sized unique number groupings. In Craps I only have the pass or don't pass bet that is two sets or one grouping by equivalence. I'm a trend player. I play off of coincidence. I look for times when the same size of continuations have a tendency to swarm. I trained myself to see these coincidences. Because it is a kind of an educated guess I still lose sessions. But now these wins and losses are all structured so as to take out anxious moments and bad decisions.

I don't know if this kind of structuring will work for you. I taught it to one person as an experiment. I wanted to see if the same structuring would produce a similar result and it did. But that might have just been luck. Perhaps this kind of thinking is only good for a very small handful of people. That I don't know for sure. But I have to say for myself that it takes fear and greed out of the picture for me. It's all very tight within the normal moving averages for games that are close to 50 / 50, or known as Even Chance. I'm no longer required to seek the huge win streak every time that I play. That was greed and fear motivated. It was my Achilles Heel.

Hope you might find some of that useful for yourself.

 

All right, thanks for many answers and advice, by reading it I got some more thoughts which I would like to share.
Why I lose or why people go out of control by playing. One answer is TIME!!
Sometimes when I have plenty of time and outside is raining, I can spend hours watching the game and choose only the best bets for myself or use a low-risk strategy. But I wish to get/win more money sometimes and that just kills peace in my mind. I am starting to chase little loss with high bets as someone described in this post.
I have plenty of strategies in my PC and also in my head, but sometimes I just forget to use one of them.

Regarding BOB message, well, you are right, many young people dream to become a millionaire with gambling and they not even understand how everything is working here. I always register all my losses and taking screenshots of the shoe to analyze why I lost and what I should change to win next time.
I invested many years in searching a perfect way to get a stable income from gaming at roulette, blackjack and this year I started to play baccarat. After I learned this game (i use my math knowledge from past gaming at roulette) I understand that I will never come back to play EU Roullete.
In general, I have few ways to win constantly, but only one thing left to fix, to be not afraid of TIME and to work with my psychology during my play, to control greed and to be more disciplined. Profit will come sooner or later, and everyone must learn to take one step back and then move two steps forward!

I am not complaining about ODDS at all when I lose my bankroll, there is nothing wrong with the game, everything it is in our heads.

 

You can't know when you need to be more cautious and use best bets or a low risk strategy. You must be that way at all times. I spent over 25 years as a rock climber. You don't climb 1,000ft to 3,000ft all at once and with the same intensity. You conserve energy by backing off when it gets easier. It does too. You just keep your focus on where you are. You move one thing at a time. You change a hand hold or a foot hold one thing at a time. Sometimes it's a combination move but almost all the time it's just one critical move at a time. You don't try to climb 100 or 200 feet ahead. If your focus is just on now then maybe TIME won't be a problem for you.

 

ALWAYS set a Loss limit for every session.

NEVER set a Win limit for any session.

The idea is to always limit your losses but if you are winning always let those winnings run.

How do you know when your winning streak has ended? Simple elementary mathematics my friends.

THE 20% RULE :

If you are +$1,000 during a session and you find your winnings have dwindled to +$800...
Get your azz up out of your seat AND LEAVE.

Can't make it any simpler than that, THE 20% RULE. Because you don't know how long a winning streak will last, do you? That +$1,000 could wind up being $10,000.

NEVER limit your possible winnings when on a winning streak.
ALWAYS limit your possible losses when on a winning streak to 20%.

 

Winning 21 card counter don't set any stop loss/win limit, they grind! Winning poker player don't set any stop win/loss limit, they grind! So cats buckin up against the baccarats similarly should not set the stop loss/win limit and just grind, hey hey!

 

This is a great episode, btw.

 

Our composure changes the longer we've been gambling, then you become more at risk of having a rush of blood, more easily rattled, going fuck it, this how profits are turned into losses. As I posted in the psychology thread, if you can remember in the heat of battle, "Monitor yourself"ask yourself how am I feeling, recognise it and act accordingly.

Perform a gear change, implement the gear change with even more discipline. If you don't, now you risk suffering a severe loss. Take that video were you dropped £100. A lot of people in this country have to work 8 hours a day reporting to somebody and still don't take home that amount of money which you dropped within an hour, so keep it in prospective. While you might die of boredom, even if you made 4 x £5 chips per hour, you are doing a lot better than many who have to work for a living, it is tax free after all and you have no boss.

Back to the gear changing. You drop £100, to recover that, "chip up" £25 units, your goal is 4 of them, hey win 4 chips and you're back to even,. The more money you have, allows you to move up and down in unit playing levels.

Let's say for example, you have chipped up to £25 and the pain hasn't stopped, by all means you can get angry, curse etc, but never let that anger transfers itself to your left mouse button. This is the biggest risk when playing online, you are not handling real chips, IMO it is more easy to lose control playing online than in a B&M casino. Anyway you've built up a decent BR and the next 'called for' £25 bet is say £200, sod it. "Gear up" to £100 units. So for example you're £500 down, you need to win 5 units @ £100 (I would use a Labby for this, first bet would be 1u).

Say you have cleared 3 units @£100 (2 more to go), but as you can't see around corners, if you start losing at this level you are going to be wiped out pretty quick. So you have 2 x £100 outstanding, be safe, gear down back to £25 units, your goal is 8 units. While I may have set a goal of 5 x £100 units, I do not have to win the entire 5. You could also step down to £50 units, use your head. Protect, protect, protect.

Then buy yourself a second monitor, so they are in your face while playing, I have my MM excel spreadsheet open, my calculator, snipping tool. You have approx 12 seconds which to figure out, determine bet size, which side to bet, takes a lot of concentration, you are going to become wired pretty fast. If you have a lot of strategies and are not sure which way to go, personally I deviate when I see any particular bet option "would have lose" 8 ~ 12 times already or after it has broken. Basically I'm placing virtual losses in front of a bet option I'm not currently using, but will do for a few bets. So as an example DBL, I'm playing something else, there are 6 x repeating two's, 12 losses in a row if I was playing DBL. You could move in now, or wait until the current sequence of 2's has ended and now start betting DBL. Some may subscribe to "follow them", I rarely play that way, because more often they won't run than will run and I'm in this for the long haul, not for just this session.

Of course, but you need to be ultra cautious if you have performed a "gear change".

Nar, if you have 1k BR and your loss limit is 20%, then just go to the casino with 200 and blow it all, same thing. Go the go casino with 1k, stop at -200 go home, come back the next day with 800 stop at minus 160, what's the difference, if you have money at your disposable, then bring it into play and use it wisely. JP was just a clever conman peddling gambling nonsense to earn his living, a few here have been indoctrinated by this crap.

In any gambling session, wins and losses come in waves, you don't know in advance if it will be a Tsunami.

I'd second this if $800 was your goal, all dpends on the session is going and more importantly how you are feeling.

Extremely unlikely.

Absolutely 100%

 

Just want to add to the post above, assuming you have the capital, posses MM smarts, have a decent bet selection, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to pull in 30 units per day @ £5 per unit, less than £150. Do that 7 days per week and you're in the top tax bracket for UK workers. Hold up, you aren't exactly paying tax are you. So compare to those that have to work for a living, you are pretty well off.

There are people working in this country with a take home packet of £300 per week, people surviving on £75 weekly benefits. Even grinding out £70 daily is a very decent income for most. Like I said in another thread, it's not so much the losing decisions that will cause the damage, rather what those losing decisions might cost you during losing jags. However you're playing, you can't keep losing forever, right?

Ask yourself, "how bad do you want this?". I have a post it sticker on my monitor, with the word PATIENCE written on it. It helps when I'm sick of losing 9-8 and it feels only you are being targetted.

As a fellow online player, it is much hard than playing in a B&M casino, time, you have literally seconds to think, react and calculate (this is where they will get ya). No chips to handle that represent real cash, you get separated from the real world value of the left mouse button. No feed back, you can moan curse all you like, nobody is listening. You will end up wired a lot faster playing online than in any B&M joint.

Awareness is a great teacher, if you're in the dark, you will stumble. Once you become aware, you will tread more carefully. Know the pitfalls, realise and appreciate those aspects that the online casino's don't want you to. They promote fun, they want you to have a good time while they rinse you of your cash. We can be better than that.

 

Some insightful advice there J, first class.

 

Amen! Sure, we can all have dreams of jetting around the world to Vegas or Macao betting 1k a hand or whatever but just making a tax free income with no ogre breathing down your neck is worth it as long as you can stay focussed and disciplined. Really, it's just another form of self-employment and of course, should the SHTF, well then, tough luck and back to a '9-5' type existence and learn from the experience. For relaxation and to completely get away from it all, it's easy nowadays to book a last minute 7/10 day cruise fairly cheap. That's what I have been doing and it's easy not to get tempted by those Casinos on board with the double zero roulette and robbing slot machines.

 

A cruise, that sounds great, where have you been?? Heard the Gulf of Oman can be quite exciting this time of year.

Any of these ships offer Baccarat? It would have the potential to be a self funding trip

 

I agree that you should bring a bankroll that you can afford to lose all of. You know that I use 7 net losses. My gear change is to keep making bet selections but not to fund them. I would like to hear more about how you do it.

I decided that John Patrick's "up and pull" is not as effective as a grinding method of just win or lose per bet. I just fund bets or I don't.

And this, you guys that don't have to pay taxes are so lucky. If I travel to state that does not have state income tax then I must still declare earnings in my home state for that income from a tax free state. I don't have to pay for both states if a state does have an income tax though. I must file an out of state tax return for every state that has an income tax and then my home state gives me an exemption if I can show that I payed the tax for that state. Then there is federal income tax everywhere. If I declare that I'm a pro gambler and pro gambler status then I must also pay 17% more for Social Security Tax. It all adds up to about 47% tax. But if I do run my taxes as a pro I also get to write off travel expenses to each out of area casino I earn money at. If I travel to a tax free country where they don't tax gambling income I still have to pay income on it for federal and state taxes here. The casino might have an edge but the America Government has the best seat in the house. This is how we pay for NATO, and threats to the peace of the entire world. So SOB's of the world are a tax on us all too. It just seems that every 40 years or so somebody decides to kill people so that they can take something. And now we have socialists that want to tax everything to the point of self destruction in America. That generation will take over in less than 30 years. So America will go bust and so will its military. That will end up being a tax on the entire world. As you can see, I'm really thrilled at the long run aspects of taxes. Other people's money will not be enough. So watch out world. We have a tooled up generation that hates capitalism and anyone that would stop them. I know that Canada is tax free for gambling earnings. But fall out tends to cross borders. I see a huge losing streak coming.

After what I just wrote some of you must think that American gamblers are crazy. It's just not worth it. But as some people say in the movies, "Money won is twice as sweat as money earned."

 

The last one was to Vigo, Lisbon and Cherbourg (7 days) on one of the P+O Ships.

I had a quick wander through the Casino and all it was really was like a sports bar lounge with the big TV screens for the PL Football. A couple of Roulette wheels and a few Blackjack tables plus a few rows of slots. No Baccarat to be seen. I would say the cruise clientele in general were mostly middle to elderly aged white folk and not so many Asian people. No doubt that would be different I would imagine if the Cruise was sailing out from Down Under and then I would be surprised if they didn't have a few Baccarat tables.

You can't fault them really. Everything is pretty much laid out and you get a few interesting ports of call. Cost wise, it would average out at around £100 a day which you would easily spend abroad on a hotel and meals. They did away with the automatic gratuities this year on the P+O as well, so you can now tip what you like to who you like which I think is better.