Casino Bankroll Strategy
The simple truth that "it takes some to make some" probably applies to gambling more than any other human endeavour. Not only must you bring money to the table before those hosting the games will let you play at all, but how much you bring, and when and how you use it is critical to your money being fruitful and multiplying.
But there's a more sobering dimension lurking in the background. Bringing too little, and when and how you misuse it can have painful and even disastrous consequences.
A wise, carefully honed bankroll strategy that fits your monetary resources, game playing style, and personality is without question your greatest friend and asset when navigating the sometimes treacherous, bad-luck infested waters of the gambling sea. If anything will bring you into port with all shirts accounted for - if not a bountiful boat of booty - it's The Good Ship Bankroll Strategy!
The Right Bankroll for the Job
You wouldn't have a friend lift a corner of your car to change a tire, and wouldn't swat a fly with a bazooka. While there are many opinions on how to arrive at the ideal initial bankroll for a session, important factors include table minimum bet, how much you're willing to risk at any one time (e.g. how many numbers to cover per spin in roulette, how many bets to place per shoot in craps), how much extra reserve you'll need to properly respond when special opportunities arise (e.g. doubling in blackjack, placing odds bets in craps), and how much you'll need to sustain repeated losses under worst case conditions. And of course all of these factors must fit within what you're comfortably willing to lose should the wheels fall off your session.
Don't forget to take advantage of any and all welcome bonuses when you're new to an online casino; after all, the only thing better than a free lunch is a free bankroll.
Stick to Bets With Low House Edge
While a casino won't come right out and say it, all bets are not created equally. Educate yourself on which games offer bets with the lowest house edge. The house edge is the difference between how much the house pays for a win versus how much the bet is actually worth in terms of true odds of it winning.
The craps table, for example, offers an incredible number of bets that run the gamut of house edge desirability. The simple one-roll "proposition bets" in the middle of the table are known to have a significantly higher house edge than the pass line bet. "Hopping the hard 10" (i.e. betting that the next roll is a five and a five, which is harder to roll than a six and a four) pays 30:1. However, the true chance rolling a hard 10 is 1/36. The casino makes its money by paying out 30:1 instead of 36:1 when a hard 10 is rolled. It's the house edge that eventually "grinds" down players sticking to a particular bet.
Calculating the house edge of a pass line bet is more mathematically involved because there are several ways for it to win. But it's considerably lower than for any of the proposition bets. The house edges for specific bets of specific casino games are well documented at sites such as "The Wizard of Odds". See http://wizardofodds.com/ for details.
Never forget that you cannot beat the house edge in the long run. The best you can do is stick to bets with low house edge so that you're losing minimally when statistically normal outcomes are occurring, thus keeping you in the running for when statistically atypical streaks occur. You're essentially "hanging in there" until it's time to pounce by betting hard at the right times.
Play Within Your Limits
It's extremely important to not over-extend a session by adding more money to your bankroll. You did the math upfront, taking your playing style into account, including funds needed to answer when opportunity knocks. Above all, you factored in what you can lose comfortably, which implies that the important things in your life will remain unaffected by a session loss.
You're confident in knowing that you prepared to give it your best shot, and that your entire world doesn't revolve around a single session. Should the session not go well, stopping when your bankroll is exhausted means that at least the session will not be going horribly wrong. Rather, it'll be merely disappointing. When you walk away from it feeling the normal psychological responses to losing, you'll remember that you planned for this. You weren't taken by surprise. Your life is still intact.
Regroup, do some other things you enjoy, learn from what happened, and plan accordingly the next time.
Don't Chase Losses
Avoiding chasing losses is a moot point if you planned your session bankroll without kidding yourself about how you play and what you were willing to lose. You run out of bankroll, and that's that. Your planning saves you from the desperation and despair of attempting to gain it all back through wagers bigger than you can emotionally handle, or higher risk bets with house edges designed for suckers. Congratulations! Though you didn't win, you're not a loser. And you will win again the way the pros do - by encoding your strategy in an appropriate bankroll, and sticking with it through thick and thin.