4/8 - B&M...what's your typical/average win

[Durs522]

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Would you consider winning 150+ in a few hours a good session. Maybe I should stop being greedy [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] and leave and do other things.

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With this comment I feel like you are still missing the underlying concept here. Whether you leave +150 or continue playing doesn't really matter. I used to have the same problem. You need to stop looking at poker as an individual session and start seeing it as one continuous game broken up into many sessions. Whether you leave when you are ahead or not will not affect your total bb/hr. It is more of a psychological thing to leave when you are up, however if the game is good there is no reason for you to leave. If you find yourself getting tired, not paying attention, playing too many hands, or playing against opponents that are not optimal i.e. you aren't seeing +4 players to the flop, then by all means you should leave. However if none of these are true I feel it is incorrect to leave just because you are ahead.

I would venture a guess that you're playing on a limited bankroll. You seem to not be able to handle the swings. If you're afraid to lose the money you have won you are not thinking about the game correctly. The only reason to leave a game is because it isn't optimal, not based on your +/-BB. Realize that there are times when your overall +/-BB can cause the game to become bad because of the way it affects you. If you're playing with a large enough bankroll it will become easier to understand that eventually it will even out and you will make your 1-2bb/hr.

I hope this helps some. This concept really helped me to understand the game more. It allowed me to free my mind from the misconceptions I had about when to stay/leave a game.

Durs

[steamboatin]

Okay, I'll jump in and I won't berate because this is a subject that I have spent a lot of time and effort trying to master.

How much you win or lose is not the proper criteria for making the decision when to leave the game. You win and get $100-200 up and then you give it back. You need to learn why you give it back. Is it normal variance? Do you have trouble handling prosperity? (Many players game deteriorate when they are ahead.) Do better players enter the game? Do you get tired?

Could be any or all of these reasons. So as soon as you learn what and why you give back some or all of your profit, then you can make an intelligent decision.

Most of the posters on this forum are against using stop loss or limits on how much you should win. They are correct but I believe an exception can be made for a new player. If you are relatively new, I don't believe it is a big mistake to hit and run. It is a terrible idea for an experienced player but I believe it is a bigger mistake for a new player to play too long.

The first thing you must do is indentify why you give back your profit and then fix those leaks or get up and leave when you see it coming.

[TomBrooks]

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Do you have trouble handling prosperity? (Many players game deteriorate when they are ahead.)

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How can one improve their ability to accept prosperity?

[steamboatin]

I used to loosen up when I was ahead. I had the same problem when I used to shoot pool and my friends all said, I couldn't handle prosperity.

Turns out that it is a common problem, changing your game when you are in the lead.

[Prelude008]

Luvit, Steam and other posters,

Those are some valid and well-taken points. I'll admit (as if it wasn't obvious) [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] that I tend to focus on session results. I did briefly mentioned in my OP knowing poker is suppose to be a long session but knowing and actually believing aren't always the same.

Steam, I'm glad to know I am not the only one with this struggle. I think awareness and wanting to are the first step to fixing and improving. Thanks.

[Evan]

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The average B&M win is 1 BB/hour over a long period of hundreds of thousands of hands.

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Woah, average of who?

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The best players may slightly exceed 2 BB

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WTF? Work this out in terms of BB/100 hands and then see if you can convince a mod to edit your post so you don't look silly.

[steamboatin]

Check this thread a little more than halfway down, they are talking about this issue.

Okay Gentlemen in Pyschology forum.

[AKQJ10]

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How much you win or lose is not the proper criteria for making the decision when to leave the game.

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Theoretically, of course, this is right. In practice as much as it may be ideal to play like robots, we're still human. If I can beat both 2/4 and 4/8, but losing 40 big bets at 4/8 is going to make me feel like [censored] driving back because I wasted the weekend (but NOT tilt or even play any differently!) then setting a loss-limit in the higher game might be +EV -- not in terms of $, but in terms of emotional result or what economists call "utility".

That said, I need to work my bankroll up to the point where a few hundred bucks don't make me feel like [censored], and I'm getting there. I'm still pretty new to this.

[dabluebery]

Don't switch to tables with fewer chasers, unless you have bankroll concerns or if playing in such a loose game bothers you to the point where you are basically on tilt and playing differently because of it.

More chasers = better results in the long term. With those better results comes higher variance. Period. There are going to be days where you play great and everything goes well, and you'll walk out of there up 6 bets an hour. This has happened to me. There will also be days where you lose 2 bets an hour, because everything goes wrong, and the difference, over the long haul, is your win rate.

Playing a higher limit or a table with better players will minimize your variance, at the expense of cutting into your winrate.

Rob

[BoogerFace]

I think it was Howard Lederer who said he averaged 1 BB/hr at the higher limits. I think the problem is that no one in their right mind is willing to log 10k hands at 4/8 B+M. At 30 hands an hour, that would be about 40 sessions at 8 hours a session. If you treated 4/8 as a full time job with weekends off, that's almost two months of your life playing low limit poker.

Assuming 30 hands an hour, that would work out to 3.3 BB/100 which sounds doable assuming good reads on your opponents.

$10 an hour at 4/8 sounds about right. Even if you do the math with 25 or 35 hands an hour, you are still in the ballpark.

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The average B&M win is 1 BB/hour over a long period of hundreds of thousands of hands.

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Woah, average of who?

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The best players may slightly exceed 2 BB

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WTF? Work this out in terms of BB/100 hands and then see if you can convince a mod to edit your post so you don't look silly.

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