Question of when to quit

[Superfoot]

There's an excellent article by Mark Blade on this very topic in this month's 2+2 issue. it helped me put my downswings in perspective.

[tinhat]

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It seems when I start the downtrend, it is an indication on how the night will go.

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If I had quit early, I would have saved myself some money. So, is there a rule/suggestion as to how many BB's you go down in a session before you quit? Thanks for the advice.

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$0.02 on

Hope this doesn't come out wrong but I think you seriously underestimate what is at the heart of playing cards - random events. What that means in the short-term is, you NEVER have control and there are NO strategies to avoid the unpredictability. It is therefore IMPOSSIBLE to "quit early and save money" with the lone exception being to wait until you're up a little then quit playing for the rest of your life.

Cards aren't just random sometimes - they are random every single time you're dealt a hand. Only in the long term does the randomness reach an equilibrium, a.k.a., averaging out. No random event is any more likely than another and by definition are therefore not specified and not ordered. So don't fool yourself into thinking you must endure X sessions of solid crap awaiting your X sessions of solid glory. Maybe the two are mixed together in the same session; maybe they aren't.

The point is, you (nor anyone else) can prepare for or plan on "quitting early to save money" or even say "this will be a shitty night from what I've seen so far". It may very well end up that way but you certainly did not correctly predict it. IMM it is defeatist thinking to believe otherwise. You must instead accept the reality of what games of chance are based on.

As to when to quit, quit whenever you feel like it. (IMO it makes absolutely no difference if you accept the reality of random events). Sometimes you have to make yourself feel like quitting. A trick for me is to "flip a switch" - immediately start thinking of something other than cards and get up that instant. IMM using a stop-limit (except for outside financial considerations) is the WORST way to decide because that forces you to focus on short-term results in a game of chance which by definition cannot be results-oriented in the short-term.

Because you accept the reality of random events, your reason to quit should not be because you get mad, get steamed, or make desperate decisions, etc. To do so IMM means you still don't understand what is at the heart of a game of chance.

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Hope that didn't sound too preachy.

Mike