When to quit?

[jfh]

I'm relatively new to holdem, fewer than 20,000 hands, both NL and FL. Now I play mostly online Poker Stars at the .25/.50 FL level. I don't win consistently yet and I'm wondering if it is because I don't quit when I'm ahead. Last night I bought in for $10 each at two tables. After about 45 minutes I was $13 ahead. I continued playing for another hour or so and remained $12-$14 ahead. Then the slide started. Playing AK,AQs,AJs,KK,QQ,JJ I lost $15. I reviewed the hands using Poker Trackers replay function, and with the exception of one hand I couldn't identify any mistakes. I just got drawn out on a lot.

When I've increased my buy in by 65%, should I just quit and call it good? I don't like to because I enjoy playing--except when I lose.

[Lethe]

This should probably be in the Micro Stakes forum.

I think quitting just because you are ahead is usually a bad reason for quitting. If the game is good and you have an edge, why quit? Would you quit a good game that you were losing in because you "don't want to lose anymore"? If so, poker probably isn't your game :P.

[TheCount212]

If your sessions usually go about the same way (you do well for a couple hours and then backslide) perhaps you're losing focus or making rash decisions based on being "up" for the session. Just something to look out for...

[KitCloudkicker]

you quit when:

1) you have another obligation
2) you are on tilt
3) the game is bad
4) you are tired
5) you are beginning to play poorly for whatever reason

that is it. quitting should have nothing to do with how much you've won or lost.

[numbnuts007]

The only reason to quit when you're ahead is if being ahead for a session causes you to play worse. Try to think of poker as being one big session, because really it is. Individual sessions are too short to draw any huge conclusions from. What others have said is correct as well.

[Bob T.]

From Tommy Angelo's website.

[ QUOTE ]

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.





[/ QUOTE ]

[KitCloudkicker]

[ QUOTE ]
From Tommy Angelo's website.
Times when everything was wrong. When I was tired. And tilted. And the game was bad.

[/ QUOTE ]

Tommy and I are kindred spirits. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]