When Have You Had Enough?

[TylerD]

hmmm...you don't track where your bankroll is? That's not good.

[krishanleong]

Some notes on people setting goals for themselves (tangentially related)

Setting money goals is really stupid. You can't control the cards. Some nights you will win and some you will lose. You should play as long as you have an edge on the table. If your image sucks and you don't think you can adjust, leave the table.

Setting hand goals is better. That way you play regardless of whether you are up or down until you fill your quota of hands. The only problem is you might feel pressure to play more tables than optimal to reach your goal (or reach your goal faster)

Setting hour goals is the best. This is what I do. I have goals for each day, goals for the week, and goals for the month. I know that on average I'll make X dollars each month if I play the hours.

Playing for hours or hands instead of money makes me feel better when I'm on a downswing.

Krishan

[RunDownHouse]

Oh, at any given time I know how much my total bankroll is, within a couple hundred probably. But its much more work to check what size deposits I made to Abso and when, and then what size withdrawals I made and when, and then do the math to see I'm up 3BBs on the session or whatever, than it is to just click on the cashier at Party and see that the total is 3BBs above $X.

So far I've been making 6+ cashier transactions a week at Abso. The point is that at Abso its much harder to just click on the cashier and see, "OMG right now I'm stuck 15BBs this session!" and that has helped me not worry about it nearly as much.

[krishanleong]

What limits at absolute?

Krishan

[chezlaw]

Setting a stop limit forces you to worry about how your doing which probably has a detrimental affect on your play.

Concentrate on how we are playing not how are doing. Stop playing when we start playing nearly as badly as the opposition.

This sounds right to me, now I just need to learn how to do it regularly.

chez

[stir]

Why almost exclusively Abso?

The reason I ask is that I would think a player of your caliber (based on solid advice in your posts) could make $$ at several different sites.

[mindflayer]

P317 Weighing the odds
When is it time to leave?
" I have a friend named Dean.."

King Yao and most other authors will tell you the same.
Keep playing when your winning and end when you start losing.

But lets say you start losing right off the mark, then what?
If your getting sucked out, keep playing.
If you are getting dominated (agression wise)..Change tables.

I usually set a flexible finish time, but with a minimum session time such as 2h and will only finish earlier if I feel tired.
Another time i usually finish is right after the donkfish has just busted out and left the table.

[fyodor]

yao and krishan have both stated pretty much how I feel on the subject. That's the standard advice you will get from most any winning player. Recently though I found myself in a situation that I felt waranted going against that advice.

I had be owning the 5/10 for quite awhile. I was feeling invincible at that limit as it had been so long since I had posted anything remotely aproaching a significant loss. Then I went off for about 100 big bets one night. Not even close to a big deal. Check my history, I've had a slide 5 times that in the past.

Anyhow it was very depressing even though I knew how tiny that blip was. The next day though I started in the hole again. Now I was wondering wtf had happened. Was I really just running that well for that long and now a few suckouts and I couldn't post a win?

Well I turned it around that day and got up about $250 on the day. I could have played a few hundred more hands easily but instead booked the win and went to bed. Psychologically I felt much the better for it. Next day I went back to my winning ways.

I did ask a cpl people whose opinions I very much respect how they felt about the subject. Consensus was that although yao and krishan are for the most part right, sometimes psychological circumstances can outweight the math.

Take care of your head and it will take care of your bankroll.

[Grisgra]

[ QUOTE ]
Well I turned it around that day and got up about $250 on the day. I could have played a few hundred more hands easily but instead booked the win and went to bed. Psychologically I felt much the better for it. Next day I went back to my winning ways.

I did ask a cpl people whose opinions I very much respect how they felt about the subject. Consensus was that although yao and krishan are for the most part right, sometimes psychological circumstances can outweight the math.

Take care of your head and it will take care of your bankroll.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep . . . been there, done that.

My stop-loss used to be 75BB, but I've noted that after 50BB my play tends to deteriorate massively, so I changed my stop-loss a couple weeks ago to 40BB. Lucky me, I haven't had to use it yet [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

As far as when I quit . . . if I'm winning, I quit when I'm getting tired. If I think I'm winning because I've been running well, but that my opponents aren't completely horrible, I'll be more inclined to get up than if my opponents are a big-ass collective fish tank, in which case I have no choice but to prop open my eyelids with toothpicks and keep going.

I think I'm similar to a lot of players, in that the swings affect my play a lot more than they should, esp. once you get into the -40BB+ range. So, f'ck it, from now on I'm stopping once I hit -40BB. Which can happen pretty quickly if you get a bad run of cards, admittedly, but it ain't like the poker tables are going anywhere. They'll be there tomorrow.

I'm still getting used to 10/20, and that includes the $$ amounts . . . I imagine that in a month or two I'll go back to the -75BB stop-loss.

[krishanleong]

[ QUOTE ]
sometimes psychological circumstances can outweight the math.

[/ QUOTE ]

I definitely agree with this, especially for downswings. Even if you think you are playing your A game, small things change when you drop 100 BB in a day. Nearly all the time you are better off learning how to destroy low limit omaha 8.

I think if you are regularly letting the psychological game make you stop playing when you are ahead, you are in bad shape. Fyodor's scenerio is the first, quit when you are ahead scenerio I have seen that might be warrented.

Krishan