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So, how big should your playing bankroll be? If you are a recreational player, playing a few times a year, ask yourself, "How much can I afford to lose this weekend, painlessly?" That's the size of your bankroll for the weekend. How big of a unit can you afford to play with? Divide your weekend bankroll by 120—that's your safe betting unit. If you intend to play longer than one weekend, and especially if you are serious about card counting for profit, you must use more sophisticated methods of bet-sizing. But even if you do not go on to become a serious card counter, you should understand the basics of normal fluctuation if you ever gamble in casino games, even for fun.

When you first start to play blackjack in a casino, regardless of whether you are playing basic strategy only or attempting to count cards, your first sessions must be viewed as practice. There are a number of betting guidelines you can follow when initially practicing in casinos that will prepare you for the more difficult techniques of bet-sizing once you start counting cards and playing seriously. These guidelines do not comprise a winning system, but merely amount to a practice exercise that will train you to size your bets in proportion to your bankroll. Later, when you count cards, you will use these same techniques in conjunction with other methods.

Your bankroll, in units, must be able to withstand the short run fluctuations. If you have a total of about $500 "play money," you would be courting disaster if you started making $25 bets. $500 would represent only 20 units of $25 each, and you could easily lose your whole stake in less than an hour. Making $10 bets would be safer, since you would have 50 units to play with, but this could also be lost in a relatively short run of hands just due to fluctuation. With $5 bets, or 100 units, you'd be unlikely to lose your whole bankroll in a single weekend of play, although it's certainly not unheard of.

The first step to proportional bet-sizing is to constantly reassess the size of your bankroll and to systematically change the size of your betting unit. Here's how to do it:

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