I was at Genting, Malaysia over the weekend with my family for a getaway. Genting is famous for non other than its casinos and cool weather. Other than the good times with my family, I have got a valuable trading lesson from the casino visit. Apply some trading knowledge I learnt thus far and gained more.

I entered the casino with RM200 - my stop loss amount - I was prepared to lose this. I started with the game of dice.
I was observing the banker. He was totally emotionless. Which I thought was understandable because it was not his money at stake. Just like institutional traders who are trading on the institutions’ accounts. Bankers on a losing streak were immediately substituted. The market always has the upper hand.

I was observing the other players around the table too. Some were frantically scribbling at their pieces of paper, trying to derive knowledge and predict the next winner with past results. I passed, saying to myself this game should be fair, if it were not, then there would be this possibility to predict the next winner. I reckoned I would just stick to my money management rules. I keep my stakes at the minimum required amount of RM10 and I saw my account went on a roller coaster ride, just like in trading. But I kept to the stake of RM10, trying not to be affected by fear and greed.

With a profit of RM50 after many rounds, I was getting impatient with the slow pace of the game and switched to baccarat, which the minimum required bet was RM50. I understand from a friend that baccarat is the game with the best chances of winning. He sounded like a casino pro. My account sank to RM50 at a time, but I was lucky enough to see my account hit RM300 which was my profit target. I decided to take the profits and run! 50% profit - not too bad at all.

However, while I was exchanging my chips for cash, I was told that RM100 worth of my chips were not exchangeable for cash as the initial chips were issued as part of some tourism promotion package. I was forced to break my money management rule and I went back to the baccarat table. I lost the RM100 in 2 rounds. The money management rules were sacred!