How to Protect a Roulette Bankroll

Total vs. Session Roulette Bankroll

It is important to understand that you need a sizable bankroll if you want to enjoy any longevity at the roulette tables. The casino has a substantial bankroll to play against you and can easily wipe you out if you approach the table with only $20 or $50 in your pocket. This would be as dangerous and futile as trying to ward off a rhinoceros with a fly swatter. We recommend growing your bankroll until you reach a respectable amount.

Your overall roulette bankroll should then be divided into smaller portions for each session. A session bankroll is the sum you bring to a single sit-down at a given roulette table, typically determined by the stakes you plan to play and the table limits.

Many experts suggest that players should have at least 40 times their biggest bet per session, while others advise that any single bet should never exceed 5% of your session bankroll.

Suppose you are a flat bettor looking to wager $5 on the even-money propositions per spin. In that case, you need at least $200 per session. If you plan on five sessions during your gambling trip, you should take $1,000 with you. In this way, you satisfy both the 5% and the 40x criteria for your session bankroll.

We recommend that you refrain from applying this approach in roulette, though. Roulette players inevitably face negative EV unless they manage to find a biased wheel, which is a rare feat these days, or use some sort of roulette computer that can accurately predict spin results. The latter practice is illegal in many jurisdictions, so we strongly advise against it.

How Much is Enough – Profit Target

Greed ultimately leads to the downfall of undisciplined roulette players who press their luck during a hot streak until they eventually lose their entire bankroll to the house. Remember, you are playing a game with a negative expected value, so the longer you stay at the table, the more likely the odds will swing against you.

An astute roulette player walks into the casino with a large enough bankroll yet is willing to settle for modest returns. We suggest you do the same by setting a profit target for each roulette session in advance.

This target should be percentage-based, meaning the exact dollar amount depends on your session bankroll. Experts recommend that the win target fall between 15% and 30% of the cash you bring to the session. Naturally, the percentage is up to you, but avoid setting it too high; otherwise, you could turn a winning session into a losing one.

When to End a Session

Knowing when to quit is essential for any roulette player – and gamblers in general. It makes no sense to keep playing until the game wipes out your entire session bankroll. You can prevent this by setting a loss limit in advance. Your roulette session should end the moment you reach this limit.

Just like a profit target, your loss limit is expressed as a percentage of your session bankroll. Loss limits are personal for each player, but the commonly recommended range for roulette is between 20% and 50% of the session bankroll.

Some players argue against using a loss limit, or “stop-loss,” claiming it is useless in random games like roulette where outcomes are determined by pure chance. They maintain that roulette players face an uphill battle that inevitably costs them money because of the house edge.

According to this view, each roulette session is linked to the previous and the next one, so ending a session at a set stop-loss makes no difference to one’s overall chances in the long run. Mathematically, they say, all your sessions combine into one long session.

Opponents of loss limits often compare the concept to a relay race in which only the first three finishers win. They claim that stopping at fourth place ensures you will never win, whereas you might have prevailed if you had kept running.

Similarly, a roulette player could have landed a huge win on the very next spin if the stop-loss had not forced them to quit. Therefore, they argue, stop-losses are for losers, not winners.

While this reasoning has a certain appeal, we remind you that no player can remain a “winner” at a fully random game of roulette (i.e., a game without bias where outcomes are unpredictable) over the long term.

We therefore advocate the use of stop-losses, especially for those who play infrequently and for entertainment. Playing until you lose every last cent makes no sense and certainly is not something “winners” do. If anything, a stop-loss protects you from tilt and the urge to chase your losses.

Understanding Variance in Roulette

Streaks are inherent in games of chance, so it is perfectly normal for a roulette player to experience long strings of wins or losses. It is crucial to realize that such runs are the result of the game’s variance, something no gambler can avoid.

The house earns the same long-term profit margin on both inside and outside bets, which levels out to 2.70% or 5.26% over time. Both types of bettors encounter winning and losing streaks in the short term, but the patterns and variance differ for each category.

Inside bettors are more likely to face high variance, especially when they bet straight up on single numbers, because the odds of any given inside number hitting are only 1 in 37 or 1 in 38.

Such players naturally endure longer losing streaks because they cover only small sectors of the wheel (between one and six numbers at a time). Of course, the reverse is also possible, where your number hits twice at the very start of your session.

Outside bettors, by contrast, tend to encounter shorter winning and losing streaks and lower variance, because their wagers cover large portions of the wheel. For instance, an outside bettor can cover up to 30 out of 37 numbers with just two chips – one on the first dozen and another on the high numbers (19-36).

Betting on inside numbers is not advisable when you are on a tight budget because variance could quickly wipe out a small bankroll. In other words, the types of bets you place should correspond to the size of the bankroll you are playing with.