Gambling is a favourite pastime of many people, and while most people experience more losses than profit in the long run, others do get lucky and score great payouts. The likelihood is though, that everyone will experience wins and losses throughout a gambling tenure. This is common and is only to be expected.
As long as you are gambling responsibly, then this is the main focus. However, what is the easiest way to track your gambling profits and losses, so as to stay in control of how much you are spending?
Well, really it depends upon how many platforms you are gambling with. Obviously, if you are just a member of a single online casino or sportsbook, then tracking your spend is likely to be much easier.
Many betting sites already tell you your net wins and losses as well as your net deposits and withdrawals over time. This allows you to keep track of individual accounts in an easy way, but what about gambling transactions when wagering at a number of sites? Here is a look at the different methods of tracking your gambling activity; some of which, you may not know about.
Tracking Deposits & Withdrawals With Specific Accounts
Obviously, to place bets at an online gambling site, you need to make a deposit. The ideal way to keep track of your gambling activity in this respect, would be to use one account specifically for that. For example, you could open a PayPal or Neteller account which you will specifically use for funding online casinos or sportsbooks or poker rooms, etc. This way, you can see all outgoing funds and know that they are all going to gambling websites. At the same time, you can use the same payment method for withdrawing funds when you win. Therefore, all incoming money is also from gambling sites.
E-wallets like PayPal, Skrill, Neteller and so on often provide you with monthly figures of your outgoing and incoming funds. You can also check these figures on a frequent enough basis, so if you want to know your daily outgoing and incoming money, this is possible. In doing so, if you have a limit that you want to adhere to for a daily spend, the e-wallet will provide that information to you and you’ll know that everything you have spent is for gambling purposes.
If you really want to keep control over your spending habits at your chosen online site, then an ideal way of doing so is by using prepaid cash vouchers or cards. Paysafecard and Neosurf for example, allow you to load an account up with a specific amount of money and you cannot spend more than that which is on the card. If you purchase a Paysafecard and load it with £100, then you will not be able to deposit and spend any more than this amount at a betting site.
This is why such cards have become popular with many players who want tighter control over their own spending habits. They also provide a means to gamble online with cash. It is key to note that in many cases, prepaid cards cannot be utilised for withdrawals. Therefore, while they are great for controlling your outgoing money to gambling sites, they are not usable in most instances for seeing how much you are withdrawing.
Most betting companies with a high street presence will allow you to link an online account via a card system that means you can deposit and withdraw in cash through their shops. This is particularly useful for those that want to bet and withdraw in cash but take advantage of the better deals online, while also keeping tighter control of spending.
Keeping Your Betting Results Organised
It’s one thing to track the amount of money you are both depositing and withdrawing at an online gambling site, but it is quite another to track how much profit and the amount of loss your experiencing. Generally speaking, most bettors would balk at the idea of keeping a record of their betting profit and losses – potentially because it can be a shock to realise just how much they are losing at a platform.
Of course, some people just look towards gambling as a form of simple entertainment, and tracking profit and loss is seen as being a chore that is unnecessary. However, a winning bettor always takes their gambling seriously, and will treat it in the way they would treat any type of business. As many people know, most successful businesses keep a record of their profits for the day, week, month etc. So, it is potentially a good idea to do the same with your own gambling activity.
By knowing how much money you are winning and/or losing per day, you can garner plenty of information. If you find that you are losing too much, then you may consider changing your strategy or altering the type of game(s) that you are playing. The prime goal with betting is to win money rather than lose it, so tracking your progress with profit is a good first step to undertake to try and hone your craft with this.
At the same time, if you are making a consistent enough profit from the online bets that you place, then you will likely be encouraged to continue on the same path. But you can only really do this if you know how much you are making from the bets in the first place. How do you go about tracking your profit and losses?
Use Proper Programs to Keep Everything Organised
Microsoft Excel is a great piece of software that allows you to easily note down each and every bet and its subsequent profit or loss made. Those bettors who do track their progress often use Excel spreadsheets, as it is by far the most user-friendly program to do so through. Of course, Microsoft is one of the pricier brands, thanks to its prolific name within the world of computing. To get your hands on Microsoft Office, you’ll be looking at paying a price of £70+ if you do not already own it. This gets you Excel, alongside other Microsoft products like Word, Powerpoint and so on.
A free alternative that works just as well is Open Office. Created and released by the Apache brand, Open Office does practically the same thing that Excel does. Despite the fact that it can be a little bit clunkier than its Microsoft competitor, it still gets the job done when it comes to tracking your profit and loss from gambling activity. Once you have used it a few times over for this, that clunky side of things does reduce somewhat, as it can take a short time period to understand how things operate if you are used to Microsoft products as a norm.
Some online sites provide you with downloadable spreadsheets that you can utilise as you like. Some of them are great if you make use of more than one online casino and/or bookmaker for your gambling activity. These can keep track of multiple wagers at these sites for you to easily know what your overall income and loss is from your bets.
If you have no qualms about keeping your tracking information online, then Google Docs works as another free alternative to Excel. This is once again a spreadsheet format for you to utilise and does not require you to download any software to your computer. Instead, everything remains on the Docs spreadsheet that you create, and you can open it up on your web browser when you visit your chosen online casino. This can be quite useful for those people who enjoy mobile gambling, because Open Office and Excel are not something that always translate well to various smartphones or tablets. With Google Docs, you can simply load the spreadsheet up through the same mobile web browser that you are using for your gaming.
Spreadsheets of this nature only take a couple of minutes to set up in the first place, and you can use them as you see fit whenever you gamble. You can include as much or as little information on the spreadsheet as you like, although it is recommended that you incorporate as much information as necessary. This could include the date of your gambling activity, the site(s) you are gambling at, how much you deposited, the profit and losses you made and how much, if any, you withdrew.
Five Ways to Keep Track of Gambling Success
While there are reasons behind tracking your gambling activity, what should you track more specifically?
Well, here are five ways that you can keep a track of how successful you are with your bets.
Track the Length of Your Playing Time
One way to track how successful you are is to play a set amount of time or a number of hours with a specific bankroll. For example, you may wish to access your favourite online casino for two hours with a balance of £100 and make this last for that time period.
Tracking the length of your gameplay is good for those gamblers looking to maximise the entertainment side of things. While most players lose to the casino in the long run, it is good to play for as long as possible before you run out of your funds. This, in the end, maximises your entertainment value, right?
To do this, it is recommended to access casino games with a lower house edge and utilise titles with a small minimum bet to take advantage of. Therefore, games like blackjack, video poker, baccarat and craps are always good to go for in this respect.
Break Even Gameplay
If you can figure out how to gamble at a break even pace, then the result is that you should be able to gamble for as long as you would like. Of course, this is not something that you are going to be able to do each and every time you gamble.
Sometimes you will win and sometimes you will lose, as is the case with all betting activity. Over time though, you can get close to breaking even. This is most possible when playing video poker and blackjack games, and it does not require any sort of advanced strategy, either.
Winnings Per Hour Tracking
Different players will track their results by different timeframes. However, winnings per hour is always a good way to start. The simple way to track earnings per hour is to divide what you finish up with at the end of a playing session over your starting balance by how long you played. Let’s say you begin with £500 and finish the gaming session with £650 after three hours. Simply divide your profit of £150 by three hours to obtain the result of £50 an hour.
Most gamblers will end up with a negative figure when tracking the return per hour, as they lose more than they win. Of course, if you operate as an advantage gambler, then you’ll need to learn more about it.
Long Term Profits
Any winning gambler can benefit from long term profit tracking, although it is more often utilised by tournament poker players. These gamers may participate in several tournaments without making much money, or any money at all. Then, they may place high in a tournament and have a huge financial return from such.
It is recommended that the tracking of all your gambling results by year is done. Then, results can be compared against one another year-by-year. This way, you can see if your results are improving or if there is something that you need to do to improve things. Again though, if you are not an advantage gambler, you are not going to have any long-term profit to track.
Limiting Your Losses
Should you not have the ability to track your winnings per hour or long term, and if you aren’t willing to play at a break even pace or as an advantage gambler, then the best process is to try and limit your losses.
This is best done by setting yourself a budget every time you proceed with gambling. Stick with that budget and don’t waiver from it. Keep a track on how much you lose, of course. But also track how much time you spend playing the games. If you are losing your budgeted limit too quickly, then try switching to an alternate casino game or opt for sports betting as an alternative, perhaps?