[mr1303]

Just sat down for my first ever go at money bridge using real money. Only a 25 cent game, so nothing that would break the bank.

First hand they bid a cold vulnerable game.
Second hand they bid a cold grand slam.

I then get kicked out for not having enough money left in my account.

I suppose this is just bad luck, but when despite having just under half my initial deposit in my account I can't continue to get some cards it leaves me a little cheesed off...

[uday]

One needs to have enough to cover the maximum loss on each hand.

That is about 2500 points (I know one could lose more in real life but this is the max win/loss on any hand in Money Bridge).

So at 1-penny-a-point you'd need about 25$. At a quarter, you'd need about 6.25, and at a tenth about 2.5

[hrothgar]

Anyone whose done a serious study of blackjack has run across a concept called gambler's ruin.

Lets assume that you are playing a casino game that you expect to win. For example, you're playing Blackjack and you can count cards perfectly. Alternatively, you're playing poker against a much weaker field. Perhaps you're silly enough to believe that you have a "system" for roulette or some such... Your cash on hand can be modeled as a random walk with a drift. The expected cash should be ramping up over time, however, there is a lot of random fluctations arround the expected mean.

Gambler's ruin refers to the phenomena that players that run into string of exceptionally bad luck might burn through their entire stake and not have any money left to gamble later on. A lot of the science of Blackjack revolves arround managing the ration between your total available pool of funds and your average bet size. You want to be betting a large enough amount of money that you are maximizing the growth of your funds, without risking that you burn through your entire stake.

From the sounds of things, you were playing in much too expensive a game for the funds that you had available.

[MickyB]

Wish I'd read Justin's post more carefully before...I started playing a 2 cents too soon, won $160 then lost $180 of it Just had another reminder to stay low for now, in a 53 board set my side averaged just over 17 HCP per deal, that was 80 points gone.