Stop win?

[pfapfap]

I'm still too green and am learning and improving too quickly to have any sort of accurate sense of hourly rate or how good I am. But so far, so good.

I know the old line is that you shouldn't leave a good table, regardless of how you're doing. And ok, every hour I'm not playing I'm not making $x/hr. But I still don't see why any of it matters. There will always be another good table. I'll always have another hour to play.

Perhaps my way of thinking is from studio in college, when I was given the advice very early on that I should set task rather than time goals for myself. That is, I need to get such-and-such done on the project each day, no matter how long it takes. This was mostly to prevent myself from saying, "well, it's 2am, guess it's time to stop," if I wasn't done, but it also occasionally translated to, "hey, finished early, yay free time."

Another approach I think of is back when I had a real job, if my boss had come up and said, "hey, here's a week's pay bonus, feel free not to work this week, but you can if you want to," I'd be inclined not to work that week. Why the heck should I? Okay, so I'd have even more money. Who cares? If I'm living comfortably, isn't my quality of life improved by taking that extra time for myself?

So I have these ways of thinking, but I also don't want to be playing scared or artifically inflating my winrate. But I think of my session yesterday, I played three tables for a couple of hours. I went through my standard routines, and got lucky a couple of times with some good runs. Mostly just slight movement until a couple of big hands, then more slight movement then another big hand, etc.

If my pattern is win a buyin then two hours of nothing, win another buyin then two hours of nothing, etc... what's wrong with stopping right after one of those spikes, since chances are I'll just float around again until another good opportunity presents itself?

Am I missing something here? I don't want to stunt my growth as a player, so please help me out.

Note that I don't currently do any sort of stop win. I play two weekly home games and play until the games are over, always one of the last people standing and almost always with a decent stack. I'm always willing to rebuy as needed. (But is this itself a sort of artificial stop win? I can keep going into my pocket while others eventually give up.) And yesterday I stopped playing online because a friend came over. I probably would have turned him away had I been stuck. But again, there's that results-oriented thinking. I want to be up for the day, and I won't stop playing until I feel my play is off (then I'll just shut it off, even if I'm down).

Whether it takes an hour or five, my goal is more money at the end of the day. I'll keep playing if I'm enjoying myself and don't have anything else I feel like doing, but I'm inclined to find something else to do if I had a good run and feel it's over for the time being. Maybe it's because I have other sources of income and am currently growing my bankroll for the potential future of living off of it, so I don't need to offset the downswings. Or maybe this is just an extension of leaving when the game isn't good, but my own interpretation of how my mind and body are picking up on it.

I know this is long and rambly, but I'm curious on others' thoughts.

[Gene Fish]

one point that nobody mentioned - the other thing you need to consider is that there is a totally different skill set to playing a big stack and if you're not used to being up a few buy-ins, you might lose that money.

I have been terrible at playing big stack, so lately when I'm up a few buy-ins, I will try to practice it and get better.

The reason you might have lost your money might not have been variance but rather inexperience with big stack...just something to consider.

[Sevenfold]

The moment you start thinking about protecting your win you should quit.

[Rek]

[ QUOTE ]
If my pattern is win a buyin then two hours of nothing, win another buyin then two hours of nothing, etc... what's wrong with stopping right after one of those spikes, since chances are I'll just float around again until another good opportunity presents itself?

Am I missing something here? I don't want to stunt my growth as a player, so please help me out.

[/ QUOTE ]

If it was possible to do this, yeah great, but it isn’t.

What happens when you lose a buy-in, then another buy-in and this goes on for lets say a week (which is going to happen, regardless of ability). So now you are down lets say 15 buy-ins over the past week.

Next day, you have a good start and win a buy-in. Are you going to say “ok, won a buy-in now 2 hours of nothing”. You are still down 14 buy-ins.

That’s why poker must be seen on a long term basis if you are serious. Variance IS going to get you. This can go on for weeks and sometimes months. If you are good, disciplined and properly bankrolled you can work through it. But you will only see results by putting in the hours.

That’s why knowing your $rate/hr is so important. As long as you put in the hours you will get back that rate after numerous hours.

[holdem2000]

Glad to hear you don't use a stop-win yourself, but here are my comments about the alternative ways of thinking you mention:

[ QUOTE ]
There will always be another good table. I'll always have another hour to play.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, this is true. If you don't feel like continuing to play at this good table, don't. The fact that you're up ideally doesn't change how you feel about playing right now. You don't have to always stay in a good game, but if you feel like staying don't leave just because you're up.

[ QUOTE ]
I was given the advice very early on that I should set task rather than time goals for myself. That is, I need to get such-and-such done on the project each day, no matter how long it takes. This was mostly to prevent myself from saying, "well, it's 2am, guess it's time to stop," if I wasn't done, but it also occasionally translated to, "hey, finished early, yay free time."

[/ QUOTE ]

This is good advice for poker too, but you're thinking about progress and getting work done the wrong way. Playing one hand, getting allin with 72o preflop vs AA and winning a buyin doesn't count as making any progress. Here is advice analogous to yours in poker terms:
You can set a benchmark of you're going to play X number of hands each day, no matter how much you win or lose along the way. This is mostly to prevent you from stopping because you're up a certain amount of money, and ensuring that on average you are making as much money as you want to be.

[ QUOTE ]
Another approach I think of is back when I had a real job, if my boss had come up and said, "hey, here's a week's pay bonus, feel free to take some unpaid time off" I'd be inclined not to work that week. Why the heck should I? Okay, so I'd have even more money. Who cares? If I'm living comfortably, isn't my quality of life improved by taking that extra time for myself?

[/ QUOTE ]

That just sounds silly to me. Are your savings so low that having a week's worth of income on hand enough to change your motivations that working isn't worth your time? Why is having an extra week's worth of money in your bank account going to affect your decision making?

[ QUOTE ]
I also don't want to be playing scared or artifically inflating my winrate.

[/ QUOTE ]

Saying that quitting while you're ahead is going to artificially increase your winrate is
exactly the same as the people who say that's their "system" for beating roulette. It doesn't work.

[Lego05]

IMO stop wins and stop losses are both stupid as hell.....unless it's an individual thing that you can't handle swings in one direction or the other or both and it causes you to tilt.


But if you're a big winner at a level and you lose 3 buyins at it in 2 hours and there's 2 huge fish sittin at all your tables, why stop? (BTW I have had 10 BI downswing and then 14 buy-in upswing all in one day ---- everything in poker is based on number of hands played, days or w/e else don't matter and you'd do best to ignore them assuming you are a winning player) YOU are so plus ev in those games. I'd keep playing especially since I dunno when those fish will be back online.


Only stop playing when you no longer have an edge....whether it's cause you're hungry, upset, titlted, tired, more better players joined, w/e. IMO stop/losses are only good if you know you tilt after losing a certain amount. And stop/wins....very very very occasionally I do find myself making slightly more reckless callls than I would otherwise make except that at the time I'd be running really good ad perhaps it would affet my thinking.





The more you can control this the more hours you can play your best poker....and therefore assuming you're a winner the more winning hours of poker you can play and so the more money you can win.





This was very stream of conscience....sort it out yourself....PM if you want to ask me anything. (I'm a ~5PTBB/100hands winner over my past 100,000 hands at 50NL). A lot of it is due to this forum and I want to improve still, hopefully using this forum so I will answer some questions from it to give back as I can, if you think me deserving enough to be listened to.




P.S. Do what's good for you. But as long as you are +ev at a table I feel you should keep playing and what happened in the past shhouldn't affect whether you keep playing or not.



And forum means 2+2 in general.......I've barely ever posted in the beginner's forum. It wasn't around when I started and as far as I'm concerned is still pretty new. And like wise I haven't looked much in the poker theory forum.

[Lego05]

[ QUOTE ]
"hey, here's a week's pay bonus, feel free not to work this week, but you can if you want to," I'd be inclined not to work that week. Why the heck should I? Okay, so I'd have even more money. Who cares? If I'm living comfortably, isn't my quality of life improved by taking that extra time for myself?

[/ QUOTE ]


Poker doesn't work like that. He ain'tgivin you that choice the wekk that you lose a pay bonus or w/e. Poker works based on # of hands not hours played. And even playing 100,000 hands and breaking even is possible for someone who played erfectly....pretty unlikely for someone at micro levels but possible. That's why if you make a bunch the first 2 weeks of a month you can't take the second off....it ain't a steady paycheck.....it's an average based on your number of hands and if you play fewer hands your money will decrease even if you had made lot of money earlier...the average wo't hold up...it will hold up to a more normal win rate. If poker's a job you're gonna need to play a full job's worth of hours....and that's at many more than 1 table if you want to have at all consisent monthly results.

[RobNottsUk]

I've used "Stop Win" in 2 situations.

1) As a beginner. If I got more than 40bb up, I'd be too happy and my play would deteriate. So I'd leave table, and take a break, then come back and play at another soft table, when my head was less spacey.

This was really, leaving due to edge reduction. With more experience, I stay at the table as my opponents would tend to play worse against me, so my win rate might actually be higher than on another table.


2) PLO - using Rolf Slotboom's shortish & medium stack idea

As playing tight, becomes less correct, then on a loose table, after building my stack to standard buy in or higher, then I'd leave the table (because opponents would respect me more and fold).

There they played poorly calling short money too much, but tightening up against larger stack, so effectively they were playing sounder. As their tendency was too call too much, I'd do all I could to encourage greater looseness, anything that tightened them up made them play better.

So again, banking the profits was for edge reasons.


Funnily enough, I've tended to play quite well when behind (most often), so I'd tend to play myself out of a hole, but leave if I won the same amount.


Really both situations were similar, I'd feign loose-aggression, but actually play tight-aggressive. When I was gaining "respect" I'd start looking for another table, once I'd made 1 or 2 steals in good spots.