Before computers, it was pretty easy to control your gambling budget. You went to Las Vegas or Atlantic City with an envelope holding all the money you could afford to risk in the noble pursuit of outrageous fortune. When it was gone, you used your free buffet coupons, asked your host for show tickets and shuffled down the strip hunting down 99-cent shrimp cocktails.

Of course, you could apply for casino credit and take out a marker. But this at least caused you to pause, talk to the floor person, go up to your room, freshen up and get your checkbook. Then came the ATM. A stone’s throw in any direction and you could reload your tattered envelope up to your bank’s daily limit fairly instantaneously, less a fee of course.

But if you are an online player, things can be easy, a little too easy. Online sites already have your account information. So unless you have broken every one of your fingers in a bizarre remote control accident, you can click, click, click yourself into the poorhouse. This isn’t good for anybody. You want your gambling budget to last and your enjoyment to stretch. Online casinos want you to gamble responsibly, so that you come back again and again. We all know the American Proverb made famous in the poker movie “Rounders”—“you can shear a sheep many times but you can skin him only once.”

With that in mind, it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3 to keep yourself in check, and in “cheques” for maximum enjoyment of online casinos.

1. Have a Separate Account

IT professionals know the importance of the partition on computers. All the same, gamblers should keep a virtual brick wall between their recreational gaming budget and their life savings. If you don’t want two bank accounts, look into a prepaid credit card that your wins go onto and that your loses draw from. This way you know exactly how well you are doing, you don’t have to surrender bank information to online casinos and you have a hard limit.

2. Take Breaks

Ever hear that old Dinah Washington song “What a Difference a Day Makes?” Use the fact that online gambling is available to you always as an advantage. When things are not going well, take a breather. Pay a bill (while you still can)! Check email. Walk the dog. Surf the web for gambling tips and plug up the holes in your poker game or roulette strategy. Eat. Sleep. Get everything you needed to get done finished and then reward yourself with a little play the following morning. There were days that I got killed at a 12-hour session of poker only to get it back plus more in a half hour the following day. Only play when things are going good and you’re enjoying yourself.

3. Play When Happy. Period.

Trust me. Online gaming is not a cure for a headache, a fight with a spouse, or something to do while in the waiting room of the vet’s office when you are putting your dog to sleep. If you do this, it will rarely end well. Approach online gambling like any other hobby. You don’t go to your bowling league when you have the flu, do you? Don’t gamble then either. If you only go online when conditions are optimal in the “real world,” you mitigate your chances of playing badly, betting beyond your limits, or losing control in the virtual universe.