Quitting

This post is kind of a reminder of the importance on working in quitting (Specially cause I fked my month because I couldn't quit one session).

When should we quit?
If you are not feeling good physically or emotionally, and your game is affected, cause you are on tilt, or not seeing things clearly and playing badly because of it, that's a good time to let it go and stop playing.

But Why quit if I'm good at poker?
First, If I can quit better than my opponent then I will make more money. If I minimize my C game sessions, then it will be better in the long run, so it makes sense to work on that part of my game. For example, lets say that when I play my A game I can win like 10bb/100, when I play my B game I may win like 4bb/100 and when I play my C game I lose -8bb/100. That means that I'm losing 18bb/100 whenever I'm playing my C game instead of my A game (Of course I made up those numbers, but that's the idea). At 2/4 that's $72 every 100 hands, If I play 2 tables that's $144 (That's a lot of money to give away). In my case the difference between my A to C game is huge, its more like an F game to be honest, so I have to be careful not to play too many hours in my C game.

Ok that's one reason of why its important to be good at quitting. Another one is the psychological part. There's a point in a match that winning money lose value over losing even more. For example, lets say I'm down $3,500 in a session. And we win back $1,500 in a deep pot with 50% equity, We still loss $2k and not feel too happy about it, but if instead we lose the coin flip we are down $5,000 and even more on tilt, because we can't win a fucking coin flip. That bad feeling may even last a couple of days, so in my mind is not worth risking it.

Thinking in another perspective may help a player to quit better. Imagine we are down $2,500 in a session and lets say that we are a 6bb/100 winner in that game. If we are playing 2/4nl that's $24 per 100 hands and if we are playing 4 tables, that's less than $100 an hour in a 6max game. So staying an additional hour in that game may net us losing $2,400 on avg (How long will it take us to get all back?) Again not worth it, specially if in reality we are on tilt and our win rate is lower.

Same thing happens playing heads up, but even more so because now we can add momentum to the equation. The thing about momentum is that you lose some edge vs the opponent for a couple of reasons. First is that he is going to call you lighter, thinking that you are tilted or want to get the money back, so we lose some profitability in some spots that we could usually bluff. Also he is gaining more information on our ranges, because he have seen the bottom of our range and now know more about our game that we know about his. He also gets more confident and can stay focus with a clear head and make better decisions.

Another thing about momentum is that if we have a small edge, he can even quit us if we start getting the momentum back (and still end up losing) then later not give us anymore action, but if we quit when losing something like 3 buyins, he may think we suck and still give us action at least 2 more sessions before realizing that we are not as bad as he thought.

So How can we get better at quitting?
There are a couple of things we can do.
First we can try and use some time limit restriction. In my case I try to never play more than 2 hours in a row, even if I'm winning (Unless extreme circumstances like someone on complete tilt giving me money). Its easier to stop playing if you see that you already spend too much time playing (Its also hard to maintain focus for long period of times). Its also common to lose more in the long sessions, go ahead and try it, arrange the sessions on the database and see how much time you spent on the worst sessions.

Another thing we can try is implementing some stop loss. Lets say that in HU against a good player playing one table I will quit him if he is up 2 buyins, against a bad player 3 buyins, and against someone playing 4 tables with me, maybe something like 4-5 buyins. Of course this will depend for every player, but that is just an example.

Last thing is that we need to practice. We can practice, making a bunch of short sessions instead of just a really long one. Lets say that I want to practice quitting and this week I will take a break every hour of play. The break can be like 30min or so, but I'm training myself to quit and not feel that that's the only chance I have in the day to win money, cause I know I will be playing later again. That way I'm forcing myself to quit more often and later when we don't feel that sharp it gets easier to stop, cause we are used to stop playing because we want to.

Don't overestimate the value of practicing quitting, because its always easier to get an excuse to keep playing. Make it a goal for the session, before even sitting down. Say to yourself something like: "Today I'm gonna focus on playing my A game and quit if I feel I'm not playing it" and feel proud if you achieve it. It can also be useful to write it down and keep it close when playing, so that mid session you can read it again and retain focus on the goal for the session. If we can keep playing focus we ultimately make more money and are a step closer to become better as a poker player which is the ultimate goal.