When to quit the session?

[Festis]

How do you decide too quit the session? Is you the guy how sit up all night "to get even"?
OR
do you have a line "I quit if I loose 50 BB tonight"?
ok
thats for loosing... how about a winning session..?
I know the correct answer is "play as long as you feel you have an edge.." But the human brain aint logical so give me your best session leanght tips

[moondogg]

[ QUOTE ]
How do you decide too quit the session? Is you the guy how sit up all night "to get even"?
OR
do you have a line "I quit if I loose 50 BB tonight"?
ok
thats for loosing... how about a winning session..?
I know the correct answer is "play as long as you feel you have an edge.." But the human brain aint logical so give me your best session leanght tips

[/ QUOTE ]

When I sit down to play, I already know how long I'm going to play for. If I'm going to play for 4 hours, I play for 4 hours.

If I start to get distracted or feel that I can't concentrate, I stop early.

If I'm at a table that has turned to crap (gotten very tight or all the bad players left), I go looking for another table. If it's a small site and there aren't any other good tables, I stop.

I never base it on whether I'm up or down.
If I'm having a great session (i.e. lucky), that's good, but I know it will even out in the end.
If I'm having a horrible session, oh well. The very next hand dealt has nothing to do with my luck until that point.

I don't stay in a game to get back even. The game will be there tomorrow. Nothing is to be gained from this.

Granted, if I hit a horrible run of cards and start to lose focus and do stupid things, I stop. However, this is a huge weakness, and I have gotten past it for the most part. At some point, sooner rather than later, you HAVE to get past this. Many people say that tilt is inevitable when you take a series of beats, but I think that's a lack of experience. After a rough beat, or series of beats, I chuckle at it, because I just witnessed a statistically odd occurance, and appreciate it for that. In the end, none of it really matters. Setting a stoploss limit is really only helpful for raw beginners; if you can't accept that swing, you are playing to at too high a limit, or are too emotionally involved for some reason, or frankly you are still a raw beginner. Stoploss limits are good for an initial flotation device, but you have to learn how to swim very quickly. IMHO, you are not really on your path to winning until you do. Understanding and accepting the concepts of variance are critical to doing this, and they are critical to being able to make smart decisions in poker.

The human brain is inclined to be illogical. But you have to train it to be logical to win. There's not really any good tricks around it, you just have to learn to do it the hard way. Shucks, if it was easy, everyone would do it.

[4thstreetpete]

[ QUOTE ]
How do you decide too quit the session? Is you the guy how sit up all night "to get even"?
OR
do you have a line "I quit if I loose 50 BB tonight"?
ok
thats for loosing... how about a winning session..?
I know the correct answer is "play as long as you feel you have an edge.." But the human brain aint logical so give me your best session leanght tips

[/ QUOTE ]


I learned a long time ago that in order to be a good poker player, you need to be an excellent loser. You have to understand that there are days that no matter what you do, you cannot win.

It can be an emotional rollercoaster ride and when you're down a whole lot and trying to get even all night and it's not working, you won't be able to play your best game.

Some days you just have to let it go and come back another day all refocused. If you're a winning player, in the long run you will be doing just fine.

[BusterStacks]

If you lose 50 BB in a session, you are almost certainly not playing your best poker at that point. I have only lost 50bb once (so far, and while 2-tabling) in a session, and I quit for the day. I know stop-losses are incorrect, but whatever, 500bb is a good marker.

[bdk3clash]

I learned a long time ago that in order to be a good poker player, you need to be an excellent loser.

This was the first skill I mastered.

[Rudbaeck]

I usually quit a session when I lose focus, or when the real world demands my attention.

However, I quit tables often during a session. Lets say the table lost it's fish and 2 2+2'ers sat down. I'm not hanging around. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[JohnShaft]

[ QUOTE ]
I know stop-losses are incorrect, but whatever, 500bb is a good marker.

[/ QUOTE ]

Stop-losses are incorrect for those who can keep playing exactly as well, when they are (select) 50/100/200 BB's down, as they can at other times.
And for those who are both able to judge, and more importantly admit, when they actually ARE NOT +EV in their current game.

For the rest of us mortals stop-losses are fine.
I have not yet been able to acheive that degree of Zen Master detachment.

I've dropped 70BB twice in a session (only one-tabling though). Both times I've been so [censored] off I can (now) admit my game hasn't been as good, and unemotional, as it should have been.
(Though I will admit these days I don't really use stop losses. It ain't often I get 50BB's down in moderately short sessions, one-tabling anyway, so they are perhaps unnecessary.)

Perfect detachment still eludes me.

[Cleveland Guy]

In general I stop when I get too tired, or have another commitment to attend to (children, work, my wife, etc).

I also always buy in for 35 BB when I sit down at a table. I got this advice from Annie Duke - via her website. She actually mentions 30, but I give myself the extra 5 - no real rason, just my comfort level.

If I have a bad session and that 35 is gone, there is always tommorrow.

If I'm winning, if I feel I'm losing my edge I'll leave. Sometimes I'll also leave if a table kinda breaks up after I have been sitting a while, I don't wanna spend 15-20 minutes figuring out new players towards the end of a session.

[CORed]

I will admit that I sometimes play quite late when I'm stuck. This isn't really the smartest thing to do. It sometimes results in sleep deprivation the next day. It is best to simply set a time to quit, based on whatever other demands on your time there may be--sleep, job, family obligations or whatever. You should also quit if you think you are tilting. If frustration from bad beats, obnoxious chat or whatever is causing you to make less than optimum playing decisions, it's best to quit for a while until your head is clear again, whether that takes 5 minutes or a week. Also, if your opponents are good enough that you no longer have an edge, you should change tables, or quit if you can't find a good game. I don't set stop losses. I will keep playing as long as I have the time and believe that I still have an edge. However, if a losing session gets me frustrated enough that I feel I am no longer making good decisions, I will quit.