My goal with this post is to enable you to understand the psychology of gambling well enough that you can start taking control of your gambling hobby. The idea is to become a winner, and that starts in the mind. Im convinced that almost everyone has a winner inside, and the trick is to find the code to unlock that winner.

And my hope is that this post will set you off down the road to awakening the winner within.

Consistency is everything.

Ive written before about the differences between gambling with a positive expectation versus gambling with a negative expectation, but heres the deal:

If you gamble with a positive expectation some of the time and a negative expectation some of the time, you might as well be gambling with a negative expectation all the time.

This means if youre an expert poker player, and you need a change of pace, dont go blowing your money at the roulette table. If you need a change of pace, learn to count cards and go win money at the blackjack table instead.

It does you no good to book five small winning sessions if you just blow it on your 6th gambling session.

Im not as big a believer in trying to manage your state of mind as some success gurus like Tony Robbins are. Robbins seems to think you should try to control your mental state all the time, learning to associate painful emotions with stuff you dont want to do and feel-good emotions with stuff you do want to do.

Ive also done a lot of work with a therapist who says theres no such thing as a negative emotion. I know what she means, but I still dont enjoy grief.

Cognitive behavioral therapy works from the supposition that if you change your thoughts, your behaviors will change, too. After all, before you do anything, you have some kind of thought that leads you to that decision.

How does all this apply to gambling?

Mostly it just means you should pay attention to your state of mind when youre embarking on a gambling session. If youre feeling depressed or tired, maybe you shouldnt be at the blackjack table. Its easier to make a bad decision when youre in a bad state of mind.

You might be able to psyche yourself up occasionally, but it might also be good to just feel your feelings and avoid gambling when youre feeling bad.

I dont mean you get to make up the rules to blackjack as you go along.

Instead, Im suggesting that you have your own rules for your behavior in gambling situations.

Heres an example:

My friend Drunk Gary has a rule when hes playing blackjack for real money. When he has a hunch, he listens to it. A lot of gamblers have that rule.

I have a different rule when I play blackjack. I ignore all my hunches and stick with basic strategy.

You might have a rule that you only play blackjack when a single-deck version is available, and you deviate from basic strategy whenever the count says that its appropriate. (Im not talking about Count Dracula, here Im talking about people who count cards. The count is just a measure of how many high cards are left in the deck.)

Other people have rules they follow for how much money theyre willing to lose before calling it a day, while others have win goals that signal that its time to quit. I know some gamblers who stay in a game as long as the math is positive expectation for them. They only quit when theyre too tired to continue to win money.

Its easy to have low standards as a gambler. For example, you might think its no big deal to put $100 into a slot machine once in a while.

Thats not a winning decision, though.

Real gambling winners only make positive expectation bets, and you cant get a positive expectation on a slot machine no matter what youve read on the internet.

That little $100 losing session is the kind of leak you need to plug if youre really going to win at gambling consistently.

You also want to raise your standards for what kinds of bets youre willing to make. If you insists on only gambling when the odds are in your favor, youll eventually become a winner just because of the math behind the games.

Heres an example:

Drunk Gary loves to play blackjack, and he visits a casino in Las Vegas that offers $5 blackjack. But this game has a 6/5 payout for a natural. Gary doesnt care. He just wants to stay in action.

On the other hand, I refuse to play ANY blackjack game with a 6/5 payout. My standards are higher than that. Id rather not play than play such an inferior game.

Changing that payout adds 1.5% to the house edge, which makes any edge you might get counting cards null and void.

Losers just like being in action. They dont associate losing with pain or winning with pleasure.

Thats an important distinction to make. Youll see slot zombies losing money hand over fist enjoying (if you can call it that) a day in front of the one-armed bandits.

But I have a more important distinction for you:

You should be so focused on making good decisions that winning and losing just arent as important anymore.

If you get all your chips in the middle of the table before the flop when you have pocket aces, youve done great even if you lose the hand.

Thats because youve made a good decision that will result in long-term winnings.

You just have to stay in the game long enough.

Imagine never playing real money slots again.

Does that sound like a big commitment?

Now imagine spending 40 hours a month reading poker books for the next year.

Thats a big commitment, too, right?

These are the kinds of commitments winning gamblers make as a matter of course throughout the year.

You must become committed to learning how to make sensible decisions consistently.

Then you have to become so dedicated to doing so that you never make bad decisions when gambling.

Thats a commitment that makes marriage pale in comparison.

When casinos that are part of a publicly-traded company discuss earnings, they dont have the option of explaining that they just had a run of bad luck during the last quarter. They must justify their earnings based on how theyve managed the business.

Gambling is, at its core, an exercise in math and execution. Get the math wrong, and youll lose. Ignore the math and do something that isnt mathematically optimal, and youll lose.

Casinos are consistently profitable for two reasons:

Being a winning gambler at least doing so consistently means finding a way to flip that mathematical edge in your favor.

Getting lucky just isnt good enough unless you get lucky once early in your gambling career and quit forever.

Einstein said that compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe, but when it comes to gambling, expectation is the most powerful force in the universe.

The two are closely related, anyway.

If you can remember that luck happens but isnt what makes you a winner, you stand a chance at winning in the casino.

How do you awaken the winner within?

You need to examine your belief systems about gambling and change them.

When those belief systems change, your behavior will change, too.

Winners take different actions from losers, and you want to learn how to take those actions and do so consistently.

Read more:

How to Win More at the Casinos - Psychology of Winning Gamblers - BestUSCasinos.org