Setting up a system is a great way to approach gambling but having a system set up does not have any benefit if you do not stick to it. Laying out rules for gambling helps you to reduce the size of the role that emotion plays in your gambling. Emotion is the enemy of all gamblers because emotion impedes logic and judgment. The largest mistake that amateur gamblers make is to apply rules some of the time and not others. The problem with this is that it ends up being worse than having no system in place at all. What usually happens is that a player will use the system and they get some poor luck which results in a few losses.

After the initial losses, the player then views the system as flawed and gives up on it prematurely. With the premature abandonment of the system of rules, the player then continues to lose because the rules that were designed to create a positive return are abandoned before they can have the positive affect for which they were implemented. This usually results in even more steep losses which creates a vicious cycle of bankroll destruction. It is important to understand that even when using a rule based system, there is not a 100% positive return and there will be periods of play where negative returns occur. This is usually not an inherent flaw in the rules, but an expected statistical anomaly. If you are going to play with a set of rules, it is imperative that you stick to them during both the good and the bad.