Beginner Limit Hold'em Poker Forums

This is for Live poker. I play almost every day. I know when to get up from a table when Im loseing or getting off of my A game. I lose very little. But I seem to be up about 20 big blinds. early in my sessions. and it seems to go back after a two hours of live. play. I just think I would have more winning sessions. If I was to get up while Im up 20 bb. then just playing my A game for two - four hours.

Just your thoughts. Thanks

Hi j41ullen1,
If you can play your A-game for 2-4 hours and the table is profitable then stay. simple as that.

How much you are up or down at the end of one session is irrelevant in "the long run". Your whole poker career is one long session.

Do you want to quit playing poker for good when you're up, say, 1000BB life time? I suspect not

You've said that you play your A-game but if you're mulling over how much you're up or down in a session then... are you really? There's results-oriented thinking (ROT) creeping in. I know 'cos I suffer from ROT a lot and it has nasty consequences.

It's hard enough to think about "the long run" playing online so I appreciate thinking about it at the speed of live poker is a tougher challenge but the recommendation is the same: focus on playing your best in every hand, making better decisions than your opponents. End the session when you're no longer playing better than your opponents or when you feel like you've had your fill for the day. Don't be swayed by how many chips are in front of you.

Hi j41ullen1,
If you can play your A-game for 2-4 hours and the table is profitable then stay. simple as that.

How much you are up or down at the end of one session is irrelevant in "the long run". Your whole poker career is one long session.

Do you want to quit playing poker for good when you're up, say, 1000BB life time? I suspect not

You've said that you play your A-game but if you're mulling over how much you're up or down in a session then... are you really? There's results-oriented thinking (ROT) creeping in. I know 'cos I suffer from ROT a lot and it has nasty consequences.

It's hard enough to think about "the long run" playing online so I appreciate thinking about it at the speed of live poker is a tougher challenge but the recommendation is the same: focus on playing your best in every hand, making better decisions than your opponents. End the session when you're no longer playing better than your opponents or when you feel like you've had your fill for the day. Don't be swayed by how many chips are in front of you.

Thanks Obadonke I apperciate your thoughts just hate seeing all the wins I could have in a row if I just got up from my seat. I guess I just need to quit early when I feel Im off my A game. Thanks

If you want to maximize the amount of winning sessions in a row, you should leave as soon as you're 1sb up. Just get up and leave, don't play till your blinds or anything. If you happen to lose the first hand where you have chips in the pot, just grind away till you're up 1sb or more and call it a day. Sometimes this calls for a long session but you'll usually make it.

If you want to concentrate on other goals you choose a different strategy. For example if you want to make money from your hobby, you can do what obadonke said.

Maybe you're starting to play differently when you get 20+BB ahead in a session. I've found this happens to me from time to time. I'll occasionally start to open up my game more than I should when I'm ahead a fair amount. It seems to me most plays are still +EV, but doing this makes variance go through the roof and sometimes I start giving $ back to the table.

I would definately suggest that you read Tommy Angelos elements of poker. I am re-reading it now for the second time around and its great.

Figure out how to quit when you are at your best, then you have an edge over everyone else who quits when they are at less then their best, therefore you have a reciprocal quitting advantage. (Which is the only quitting advantage you can gain)

Quitting Reciprocality

"Walking away is easy. The hard part is standing up." — me

I have always had very strict policies when it comes to quitting, even when I first started playing poker. Back then I had two main quitting rules that I never broke. I would always quit if I was out of money and nobody would lend me any, and I would always quit if everybody else did.
Eventually I quit all that stuff. I quit running out of money, and I quit being the last guy to quit. Nowadays I think of quitting as a skill set unto itself, with branching subsets of skills for each type of quitting situation. There's knowing how to quit at limit games, and there's knowing how to quit at no-limit. There's knowing how to quit when you have a curfew, and when you don't. There's being able to quit when you're ahead, and when you're stuck. There's quitting when you feel good, and for when that doesn't happen, you need to know how to quit when you feel bad. There are many ways to outquit your opponents.
One thing about tournaments is nobody ever quits. That decision is done for you, or rather, to you. The good news is, it is impossible to make a bad quitting decision in a tournament. The bad news is, your opponents can't screw it up either, which means there is no reciprocal gold to be found in tournaments by the superior quitter.
By one way of looking at it, I have made tens of thousands of terrible quitting decisions. Times when everything was wrong. When I was tired. And tilted. And the game was bad. But I'd play on. I'm talking situations where a panel of quitting experts would unanimously decree: "You are severely injured and you are bleeding all over the table. Quit. Quit now."
But I wouldn't. I'd take the next hand. And that'd be one bad quitting decision. After that hand, I'd have the option to quit, but no, I'd take another hand — I'd make another quitting mistake. That's two quitting mistakes in four minutes. And I had just begun to not quit.
In time, my blood started to clot, and I got a little bit better at quitting, and then a little more better, and then one day I realized that every session of cash-game poker I ever play will end on a quit, so I really should continue forever to work on getting better at quitting, and a few years later I realized that if I wanted to quit well every session, then I'd have to be sharp at the very end of every session, since that's always when the quitting happens, and a few years after that I realized that no action is an island, that everyone else's sessions always end on a quit too, and that the real reason there is money to be made by quitting well is because sometimes my opponents don't. Reciprocality.

source: http://tommyangelo.com/articles/reciprocality/

One thing I do is if I find I am up through playing well, I like my seat and rate myself to have a decent edge on some players sitting to my right with decent stacks etc then I'll stay as long as I'm playing well. Conversely if I luckbox into a big lead then I'll stop and book a win as soon as I think my tables not that good.

One thing I'll do when playing live and I get that feeling of "man, I could pocket that win and go have a nice dinner right now" is get up for five or ten minutes, remind myself that if I'm thinking that way, I'm by definition NOT playing my A game, go over in my head my reads on the table and what I'm trying to accomplish, and then try to sit back down with a clear mind. And if I'm still thinking about getting my chips off the table, I'll take them off the table.

It's not a good thing to lock up wins prematurely, but it's also no good trying to play through your B game and hope your A game shows up before your C game does.