Managing a bankroll

Bankroll management cannot turn a negative expectation positive. It decides how long a session lasts and whether it ends by your choice or the balance's.

Start from the session, not the stake

Decide the total you are content to lose, then divide it into drops. Two hundred units at one unit per drop is two hundred drops at low risk — fewer at high risk, because the swings are larger.

Risk level	Stake as share of budget	Expected drops
Low	1%	several hundred
Medium	0.5%	a hundred or more
High	0.2%	highly variable

These are not rules that improve returns. They are the stake sizes at which the variance of each setting does not end the session in the first few minutes.

Decisions made in advance

The session budget, treated as spent the moment play begins.
The stake, fixed for the session rather than adjusted after results.
A stopping point for losses and for wins. The second is harder to keep.

The pattern to avoid. Raising the stake to recover a deficit. It is the martingale without the structure, and it converts an ordinary session into a single large loss.