Beginner Limit Hold'em Poker Forums

Hello fellow DC members. I really need help with this.

I am haveing trouble getting up from sessions. I can quit win Im losing or tired or running bad. Its when I have winning sessions I have the most trouble. I feel that I sometimes leave money on the table. I have sessions where Im up 20bb and give it all back towards the end of a session. I never really know when to leave. I feel that I always am playing my A game but due to varaince it will go back I feel that I leave alot of money on the table. I need some adivce I feel that I have a sound limit holdem game just having trouble when to leave my session when Im a winner. Thanks in advance for all of your adivce.
This is something I am having alot of trouble with. Just can't figure it out......

Hi,

First, you need to identify why you loose all your profits. There can be many reasons for this. Do you play worse after a certain amount of hours played? Are you playing during your normal meal times, when you should probably be eating? Do you stop caring about the money when you reach a certain profit? Say you are up a buyin. Do you start making loose calls, and playing too passively, or making bad bluffs because you can "afford" to make those types of plays?

alot of it is understanding when u no longer feel comfortable with loing your profits...if your a long term winner the more u play more u will win in theory ,problem is that in real life things come into play such as tilt fatigue and risk tolorance...devise a stop win and stop loss that fit your risk tolarance and other factors metioned....if u need more dicussions let me know

I am haveing trouble getting up from sessions...I never really know when to leave. I feel that I always am playing my A game but due to varaince it will go back I feel that I leave alot of money on the table...This is something I am having alot of trouble with. Just can't figure it out......

Bottom line you're tilting. As soon as you think it (losing BB's) will upset you, then you just need to get up from the table. That may or may not entail quitting the session, but take a walk outside at the very least.

If the embarrassment of getting up immediately after losing a pot is an issue (hey, it happens to the best of us), then fold your cards until your big blind and then get up. Hell, if folding your cards is difficult, then don't actually look at them (I don't know, pull out your cell phone and play with it or something) and blindly muck them--you playing a few hands in UTG or UTG+1 while on tilt is going to cost you more money anyway.

If you are still thinking/worrying about how much $ you are up or down after the break, then quit.

Listen, the people playing with you have ego's, reputation's, and whatever's that go through their minds while they are sitting at the table. It prevents them from making good decisions, from posting hands and learning, and all the other things that you are going to do. Don't be one of those people. Get up.

Schedule something at the end of your sessions that "forces" you to leave. Dinner w/ a friend, an exercise class, movie, ect.....

I have had this problem in many sessions and its about setting fixed session times for me. Too often playing live I let the state of my stack determine when I will leave or how I will play. I think the biggest realisation for me was that it is irrelevant. If we lose 1/2 our stack on the last hand of the night in terms of our scheduled time, so be it. Get up and walk away, the game will still be there tomorrow or next week or whatever. If we quadruple up in the first 10 minutes, forget it. Aim to stick to the game plan and focus on playing as you would normally. Its a marathon not a sprint. I know its hell of a difficult but I think the time restriction is the key to getting the right discipline in place in this instance. I realise its probably not the best immediate EV result e.g. huge fish at the table and he stacks you in the last 10 minutes but in the interests of longer-term EV, rather get the disciplines in place now. Later on when these things become bedded down, you can do things like pin back your eye-lids and extend to a marathon session versus the fish. But I'd rather get into the right mental state before going down that path.

I could speak for hours on this topic (and maybe I will in the future) but for now here are some random thoughts...

- in Barry Greenstein's book Ace on the River he discusses that pros nearly always quit a game at less than their peak stack, and this is a good thing. If you often quit at your peak you are probably quitting at the precise time when your edge is largest. Also, by losing a little back and then quitting fish will enjoy playing with you more (this is more relevant when you often play with the same people).

- I have played many long sessions in my life, and often in them I was winning a lot, then winning small or even losing, and then winning a lot again - if you play a really long session chances are better that you will have results that sort of mimic our mental idea of "the long run", ups and downs, swingy, etc. If you play shorter sessions you will only have usually one iteration of this (maybe you get up a lot and then back near even, or you lose a bunch and then win most of it back) and you might ascribe too much meaning to what happened. Also realize that the mid-session swings you are experiencing are all relative, to someone that routinely plays 20 hour sessions a 50 bet swing in any direction would most likely not be very noteworthy. To someone who plays 2 hour sessions, that would be a large swing.

- Like in competitive sports, the best poker pros I have observed seem to have a "step on their throat" attitude. When they are winning a little bit their primary thought is "I can win a lot today", when they are winning a lot they think "I will bust them all". In my experience I have found my personal happiness with results is best achieved when I take this attitude BUT I also allow myself to quit and 'lock up a win' if I lose some back and start to think about my current session results in any way. Sometimes the game is very good and I am focused and I can continue playing because I never really even think about the fact that I was winning X and now I'm only winning X-Y.

- An excellent time to ask yourself "should I quit this game" is when a noteworthy player (good player or bad) enters or leaves the game, OR when a noteworthy player changes seats and it has some effect on you. There might be small reasons you are doing well that you don't realize and then they go away when somebody moves seats, it might subconsciously affect your level of play as well.

- When I am winning and don't have somewhere else to be, the reasons I will quit a game are as follows, and they are in descending order of importance:
- if I ever have a thought similar to "hmm I could quit right now", I force myself to quit immediately, this is so important I can't even tell you how much happiness this has generated for me.
- if I start losing some back and become consciously aware of it, this usually directly leads to the previous point anyway.
- if game conditions change adversely, note that this is the third most important to me, not the first (as I bet some would think), when you are winning these things don't hurt you as bad as when you are losing, you are playing your best, people are playing worse against you, etc. You can often play in crappier lineups, less comfortable situations, etc. when you are winning and play them well.