May 26 2009
Let It Ride Money Management: My Personal Strategy
A disclaimer before I begin. This is not necessarily mathematically a winning strategy, in fact I can almost guarantee you it’s not. Yet, with casino gambling, no strategy is a mathematical winner. This is a great way to have a little fun, and, using self control, hopefully win the big bucks.
My betting strategy when I play Let it Ride focuses on the bonus bet, even though it is statistically a very bad bet. The great thing about Let It Ride is the great earning potential if you have a winning hand and the ability to minimize your losses if you don’t. Let’s use a $5 table as an example. You start with $16 out (3 $5 bets on the spots, and a $1 bet on the bonus). If you have a pair or better right off the bat (to use one extreme), and wind up with a bonus winning hand, you can win on the full $15, plus the $1 bonus. If, on the other hand, you have a losing hand, you can reduce your losses to $6. This allows you to buy time waiting for a big hand.
My personal strategy is to do just that. Play the table minimum according to the strategies I give in my other posts, plus the $1 bonus bet. The key here is this: once you hit a flush or better, color up and walk away from the table. You are unlikely to get another bank-breaking hand. And you just more than made up for your losses. Even if you played very conservatively, you make 8:1 on $5, plus a bonus $50. That’s $90. If you pulled back one bet, that’s $130. If you left all three out, that’s $170.
Again, playing the bonus is not a long-run mathematic winner. BUT, the key to “beating the odds” in all but a few casino games lies in knowing when to walk away.
