If losing, when and why do you stop?

[tautomer]

Do as he says, not as he does.

[verte500]

At his new "100K hand challenge" sbrugby quits when he lost three BI's, not two...

[cwar]

I have a list of conditions that I must meet to allow myself to continue playing.
-I have to be at 100% focused
-Be playing my A game
-Be playing a bad villain (this encompasses most people)

I dont have a stop loss but I rarely will meet any of these conditions after losing 4 buyins, I never have trouble quitting, in fact most of my HU cash sessions are like 30 minutes maximum unless I find a very good villain. I know its not ideal but you have to sacrifice sometimes to make sure you dont tilt and you are happy with your game.

[spacebetween]

I'll play until I find a better table or start to tilt. I'd rather play a good player than noone. And if I tilt I will always leave even if I play the most retarded person on heart (depends on my level of tiltness and the stupidity of my opponent ldo)

[shipurstack]

i feel like this really depends on your tilt issues? Me personally don't feel like i tilt that bad. If the player is good, which you can usually tell pretty quickly, then i don't play him anymore. I'm constantly changing tables and opponents looking for the donkalonks. But in hu cash the swings can be pretty [censored] crazy and i usually play until i'm unstuck, which i feel is terrible and usually gets me in a pretty nasty hole. Do any of you hu cash guys actually practice a stoploss, i just can't seem to stop when i'm losing

[Jiganti]

If I know my opponent is solid, I quit. Honestly, I'm an extremely good HU cash game player and have the confidence that almost nobody at the limits I play can beat me, but why play anyone decent? I've always said that ironically the two most important aspects of heads up poker don't even have to do with actually playing. Bankroll management and game selection are in my opinion more important than actually learning the game. (obviously you have to be good to win, but you get the point)

if I feel that my opponent isn't making blatant mistakes, I'll quit. If I feel tired or tilted, I'll quit. I don't have a stop-loss limit because I quit when I feel my game is deteriorating, and I am very good at telling when I am at this point. I watched a friend of mine lose about 13 buyins once, ten another time, when he insisted he was playing his A game. Stop-loss limits are a very good idea, but if you're capable of telling when you aren't playing well anymore, then I don't believe you need one.

[Marlow]

Hi Jiganti. While I have no reason to doubt your talent, I think that your point really applies to everyone who takes HU seriously. If you play HU a lot, then you need to have confidence to spare. I know that when I play HU, I have an overwhelming sense of self-confidence. For me at least, I need it to play HU effectively.

But this can create interesting problems, too. If things aren't going my way (for whatever reason), I have often had trouble stopping because I feel like I have an edge in any situation. Basically, I've never given myself a reasonable set of guidelines for when I should and should not stop. Hence the OP.

What you say makes sense, and I'm going to give it a shot. In the meantime, I'll probably also institute a stop-loss of 2BI.

[laser16]

Honestly I usually play a long session when im stuck/tilted and when I win a few buyins I usually quit and "lock up the win." This is obviously not a good strategy and leads me to play my A game only 20% of the time. IMO playing while not in a good frame of mind has probably cut my profits in half over the past 12 months so for anyone who thinks game selection/steam control is not critical you need to stop lying to yourself.

[daveT]

I think it is very easy to quit when I am playing sng's. After two losing matches, I have to be honest with myself. Did I lose because I played bad or did I do everything within my ability to win?

Usually a good hour break is good enough for me to regather and play okay.

Seriously though. If you have any ability at all at this game, you have smacked your-self in the head for doing something dumb. Those are two advantages to playing sng's. Usually, the calmest player is going to win. The player that gets mad quicker will lose. I also appreciate the fact that the bad player is stuck playing with me, and I don't have to play against a good player for too long.

I will admit that I tend to play when I am tired, or have a head-ache, but stop when I have a break-even or losing stretch of six games.

[The Yugoslavian]

"3 buyin loss" stopgap aba's using sounds good to me. But I haven't been following it, lol.

Yugoslav