When to Quit

Cash-game poker is a never-ending series of hands. If you stay at the table, you keep getting dealt in. One of the common questions that students ask is, “How do I know when it’s time to quit?”

This column will attempt to answer that question. But first, we have to deal with two common misconceptions about when to leave a game:
• The stop-win
• The stop-loss

Each of these ideas stems from the thought that your current results should influence your decision about when you should leave. If you are up enough, or down too much, maybe you should go. And while each has some elements of nonsense, one has much more merit than the other.

The stop-win: There are actually two schools of thought regarding the stop-win idea. The first comes from amateurs who sit down at a table and suddenly get off to a terrific start. After the first orbit or two, they are up a couple of racks. They fear that if they stay, they will probably give some back, and then will feel bad that they didn’t quit when they were at the peak of their winnings.

After all, this has happened to everyone. You accumulate a ton of chips, then fortune turns against you and you slowly (or even quickly) give some back. You look sadly at your now depleted but still winning chip stack, and decide to quit while you still have some chips. So, you cash out and kick yourself all the way home for not stopping when you had more. You resolve that next time, you will leave when you have a big stack, before losing it back.

The second school is from, believe it or not, professionals who have done the math and decided they need to win $X per day to make a living. Let’s say they need to make $100,000 per year and they plan to play 250 days. They conclude that they need to make $400 per day. So, they start playing, and as soon as they reach a $400 win, they quit. After all, they met their goal, and would rather spend the rest of the day having fun.

Each of these stop-win ideas is completely fallacious. The next hand you play is the next hand you play. Does it matter when that is? No. The fact that you are winning means that your opponents probably fear you, give you more respect, and therefore are more predictable. The poor pro may cash out several days in a row in good games, then doom himself by sitting in a bad game for hours on end because he has not met his $400 goal. You cannot generate the occasional huge win if you are afraid to stay after you have made a good one.

The stop-loss: This is the opposite concept. You quit when you have lost a certain amount.

Superficially, this seems to make more sense. You are stuck. Perhaps the game is too tough, perhaps you are not playing well, and perhaps you have a bad table image.

One of the unintended consequences of stop-loss poker is that it changes the way that some adherents play. If they must quit when they get down $500, and they are currently down $450, they suddenly play tighter, and even throw away some hands with positive expected value because they want to keep playing, and if they lose, they have to leave.

Also, just because you made a flush and an opponent hit a four-outer, it does not mean that you are “running bad” and should leave. This is especially true if the opponent was getting the wrong price. If your aces get beat by a two-outer on the river, does that mean you should automatically depart? It shouldn’t.

The key questions: I believe there are three key questions that you need to ask yourself when you are thinking of leaving, whether you are winning or losing.

1. Am I a favorite in this game?
2. Am I playing well?
3. Am I having fun?

Now, these are not easy questions to answer, because they require a certain amount of honesty that is sometimes hard to come by. Most players always believe they are a favorite. Most players cannot allow themselves to think they are not playing well. And most players are willing to overlook having fun, especially if they are stuck.

If you ask yourself if you are a favorite, don’t just take “yes” for an answer. Ask yourself how each opponent is playing, and which ones are obviously playing poorly enough for you to exploit them.

Judging if you are playing well is also tough. To me, the best assessment is: Am I playing worse now than when I started the session? Am I taking more chances because I’m stuck? Am I playing poor hands because I have been lucky or unlucky? If yes, leave.

Maybe I overstated it with my “fun” question, but there is no doubt that playing while feeling miserable, depressed, annoyed, or angry will cause you to make poor decisions and cost you money. Sure, we all have seen angry players slam chips around and book a win, but that is the exception. Mostly, they are just willingly taking the worst of it, which is no way to play poker.

Conclusion: Like all other poker decisions, deciding when to leave is an exercise in logic and EV [expected value] calculation. Contrary to the belief of a huge number of players, being ahead or behind has nothing to do with it. A good limit hold’em player will go home a loser around one-third of the time. That’s a lot, and you should be able, after a few years, to understand this and get used to it.

Refusing to quit a loser until you are buried beyond belief is just as silly as quitting a good game in which you are a favorite because you have hit a magic, self-determined, win number.

Just play poker and quit when you no longer like the game. Your session results should have nothing to do with it.

Barry Tanenbaum is the author of Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy, and collaborator on Limit Hold’em: Winning Short-Handed Strategies, both available at www.CardPlayer.com. Barry offers private lessons tailored to the individual student. Please see his website, www.barrytanenbaum.com, or write to him at [email protected].