Here are some tips I have found that will help protect you from yourself when gambling in an online casino or land based casino.

Game Clock:
In football the game is timed and when the time runs out the game is over. This method works well in gambling. Make plans to only gamble until a certain time, and when that time arrives, go do something else. As in football you can have breaks. Every half hour you can get up and leave the casino for 15 minutes and have a drink before coming back in, then after 4 hours you can leave and not come back for 4 more hours. By limiting the time you spend in the casino you can control the amount of money you can lose thus helping you to stay in control.

Cap Your Spending:
This method gives you a little more control over the amount you can lose in any given gambling session. You pick an amount of money you are prepared to lose. If and when that limit is reached you cash out from your game. By capping your time you can still lose lots of money before the limit is reached but with this method you can play for an hour of 12 hours as long as you do not reach the predetermined limit. To help make sure that you do not spend over your limit you can only bring the amount you want to gamble with to the casino and leave the rest in the car, the hotel room or with a friend to help guarantee that you stick to the limit.

Voice of Reason:
When you are gambling alone if you should start to lose the only one who is going to tell you to leave the casino is your conscious, but then you will get the other voice in your head telling you that if you just risk more the reward will be even better when you win. If you are gambling with a friend they can tell you when you are getting out of control and can physically drag you from the casino if that is necessary. Of all the different safety nets you can use this one is the best, just make sure that your friend is a responsible gambler and that he is not a 95 pound weakling so that if needed he really can drag you from the casino.

Public Internet Terminals:
By using a public internet terminal that can be found all over the place in most urban areas can be a great way to gamble in an online casino and limit the amount of time you can spend gambling. These terminals are all pay machines, so you just pay for the amount of time you want to gamble and when if shuts down you are done, and because you are in public you will have self control then you would if you were alone at your house or in a real casino surrounded by other gamblers.

Gambling from Your Cell Phone:
This type of gambling is becoming more and more popular. Especially with people who have long commutes on busses and trains to get back and forth to work. What better way to kill some time then with a few hands of blackjack. To stop yourself from losing all track or time and reality I suggest that you use a cell hone with prepaid talk time. This is so when the phone runs out of credits it will disconnect from the casino and without another card you can not get back online, and the time it will take you to get another card and reactivate the phone the casinos spell over you will be broken.

A Guide to help you to prevent losing control in the casinos or online poker rooms.

Ashton Jenkins is a public accountant. When he is not busy he plays online backgammon in online casinos and on his cell phone. He loves to play in tournaments, but has not yet won one.