For those who have built these 1000bb+ stacks, what motivates you too keep playing once you are up so much? I have a hard time staying once I'm up over 2 buy ins because I love to book a win and get tired after 4+ hours at the table.


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Why limit your wins?

If you are tired that is a fine reason to quit but being ahead is not one of them.

You should always play for as long as you can when you are running well/playing well. If you are seriously playing and looking at it as one big session you have to capitalize on these situations. "Booking wins" is nice for a casual player or maybe someone who has been running ****ty but serious players aren't looking to book wins..they aren't worried about not losing that $ on the table because that is what they are up for the night.

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I only get to play on weekends, Fri or Sat night depending on family schedules. So I want to maximize my time while there. I'm not going to drive an hour only to play an hour to lock-in a single double-up. If I had left after being up 1000 BB, then I would have missed out on my nut straight vs top set vs 2nd set hand winning 700 more BB. Played 4 more hours donking off 250 BB tho. I wish I had a magic 8 ball telling me when my stack will max out on any particular night. But if I had one I bet it would say what I want to hear: "Okay, just one more round...".

Nice run there!
My personal record is a 3400bb stack,was in for like 4/500,can't remember exactly.
The sick thing is,I only played for like 2-3 hours,and after the whale left I insta quit.

I think it's fine to leave if you are up 2-3 buyins as well.I often do that myself.
The two main factors which i consider when deciding when to quit is the quality of the game/lineup,and whether im still on my A game,or am tired/distracted etc.

I agree.. I bought in for $200 in a 1-2 game and got up to 800bb in 3 hours and was satisfied.

If I'm feeling it, I'll keep playing. I usually set marks along the way.. buy in for 100bb in 1-2.. if I hit 300bb I'll feel the table out.. if I hit to take me up to almost 350bb I'll stay until either I hit 300bb again or reevaluate if I hit 400bb..

I've heard legends of drunk whales who would go all-in blind every single hand, and rebuy every time they lost. Once you're up a few buy-ins, you call with every top 10-20% hand and you're just going to keep winning and winning and winning. I'd stay as long as the whale kept playing.

I'm going to grunch from the title and say "winning even more money".

Especially at a table which seems predisposed to giving you money (obviously how you won matters but the first level evidence is good).

Why? It's all one big session.

This.

If you're up big, you're likely at a great table.

Otherwise you're telling me that you want to leave your great table so that you can come back another day to a worse table?..

This is a common fallacy among non-robots.

Ideally, your robot-like discipline allows you to make choices independently of the past, and you never tilt (rungood tilt or runbad tilt).

Realistically, people are not robots and they make a lot of choices dependent on history and they tilt. So it's not one big session.

- If you've lost the past 25 sessions, and fight to a small victory on the 26th, I absolutely advocate stop-winning and breaking the losing streak psychologically.

- If having a bunch of money in front of you turns you into an *******, 3-betting 72o because you're invincible, or if having a bunch of money turns you into a wimp, unwilling to 3-bet KK out of fear of losing your stack, I advocate stop-winning and returning when you're not tilted.

These are leaks that should be fixed.

With online poker not widely available, the ability of people to intentionally encounter 2-sigma and 3-sigma deviations is pretty small.

How many B&M players have played enough hands by the time they encounter a 25 session losing streak that they are (a) still solvent, and (b) still confident about their win rate?

If you have a 25 session losing streak, you have some massive leaks or you are not good enough to be playing whatever stakes you are playing

Alternatively, people who don't think it's possible just haven't played enough.

I'll admit that 25 is a bit of a hyperbole (much like 72o and KK were hyperbole) but it's still much more likely that you'll have a 25 session losing streak than people recognize.

The general underestimation of how easy it is to have an N session losing streak is for 2 major reasons, both related to survivorship bias.

1. Most peoples' long term win rates are lower than their actual win rates because they ran good when they started.

2. Most people who experienced a significant losing streak early in their careers went busto so they disappear.

People who think it's impossible for them to have an N session losing streak will definitely change their minds when it happens to them - both because their win rate drops precipitously and because when it happens they will tell their tale of woe over and over again.

To that end, my record is 21, but I play really short sessions (sometimes less than an hour) so it's not as surprising as if someone who plays 4-hour sessions.

Overall, the main point is that when it does happen, most poker players become despondent. They have a hard time believing they can run that bad, and start altering their game because clearly it can't be variance. Sessions during losing streaks become non-independent, each loss fueling a further belief that something is wrong and that something needs to be changed.

Take whatever number of losses in a row you think is reasonable for someone of your skill. Now consider what happens if you lose more than that. Do you start questioning your play? Making changes? If not, I'd like you to take the Turing test.

I think sometimes we look for "one size fits all" types of answers on questions like these. I don't even like to apply rules to my own play as it pertains to this issue. It depends on the day. If I'm up big, its not unusual for me to talk myself into "booking my win" and leaving. Because if I do, then I've got a bunch more time for other things that I want to do with my day. On the other hand, if I've got nothing else to do, then I'm fine with staying.

I see many players who run up big stacks only to stay and lose their profit plus their buyin. Happens all the time. I don't want to be that guy. You can run it up, and then take a beating, and there are few things as disappointing. Big win and walk = no regrets.

I like the "robot" reply. I just think that overly mathematical rote answers are unrealistic, like maybe the great ideal is to act like a computer at the table or something. I don't believe it is. Lots of human elements come in inevitably, including once you've played four hours and have a big win there is a legit point that most don't play near their peak for much longer than that anyway. Especially if you have highway time involved. By being conservative on this you can greatly increase win %, which is a big factor in "job quality," attitude, mood, etc.

it is simply, play when you are playing good and the game is good. either of those two things should make you want to quit not matter how you are presently doing.

some quit as they want the good feeling of going home a winner at their high point. so be it.

In 123 sessions tracked on my poker app, the most Ive lost in a row is 3. Bad players obviously lose long term but they outdraw people now and then and have a good day which is what keeps them coming back. I find it hard to believe even a really bad player would lose 25 times in a row without quitting and giving up.

I don't disagree with the psychological aspects and you are right to point them out. But I would say the reason for cutting your session short so you can "book a win" in this case would be that because of your situation you can no longer play your best.

One of the big steps forward I took was when I started to recognize how I was playing. I think my A game is really good. But I probably only play it about 20% of the time. My B game is still pretty good and that's another 50% or so of the time. The remainder is my C game which isn't very good at all. Minus any other time constraints, I stop when I feel I can no longer stay in the A/B range. I might realize this 15 minutes after I sit down. Or I could be playing great for several hours when something happens and changes everything. It might be that I know I haven't won much lately and it sure would be nice to go home ahead.

For the OP, once he gets a big stack he obviously stops playing good poker and should stop to "book his win".

It's still only one big session.

maybe a person should each hour say to themselves--" what is my EV for the next hour"--

if they dont have good self control over their game.

Some of us live in No Casino States. We mostly attend or host home games or sometimes end up at underground rooms that vary from decent to very unwholesome. When we take a casino trip out of state it becomes something special. I am not one of those "I came to play, not to fold" folks. I play a decent rec game. So I often do build up a nice stack for a while. Instead of quitting if I am ahead , I tend to stay too long and often spew off a lot of what I won either to bad/tired play or just to inevitable bad variance. So I stay while I am up mainly because I might not get back to the casino very soon. I envy folks who can go several times a week and sit for 2 to 4 hours and do well over the long term.

Not super surprising given the low number of sessions.

That's exactly my point. Because most live players have a really small sample size, they have no appreciation for variance.

When you lose 5 in a row, rearrange your history so that the 5-in-a-row loss happened early in your career. Would you have kept playing? 10 losses? 20?

Most surviving players ran extremely well initially, and those who ran poorly initially (whether they played well or poorly) quit early on.

I don't think we disagree on any of the issues, but the wording.

Saying its "one big session" still implies an independence of sessions, that if you had 1,000 hours divided into 1 hour chunks or 10 hour chunks, it wouldn't matter. And if you offset the 10 hour chunks by starting with a 5 hour session and ending with a 5 hour session, the results would be exactly the same. But this is only true for robots. For people, their winrate fluxuates depending on the past 10 sessions or so. It's not ideal, but it's realistic.

People are also horrible self-evaluators, especially under stressful situations. When you're getting viciously sucked out on, the game appears better than if you weren't getting sucked out on, because when they make a mistake and whiff, it doesn't FEEL as bad as when they make a mistake and hit. People also tend to overlook their own mistakes when there's something else to focus on - you bet 1/2 pot, they call with a gutshot, and it's natural to assume because they made a mistake by calling, you didn't make a mistake by betting too little or too much. Again, ideally, you're a robot and you have a separate self-evaluation subroutine, constantly and independently checking your play. But for most people, the capability to detect they're tilted decreases with tilt.

You combat these flaws in human nature by being self-critical away from the table and by setting (admittedly arbitrary) rules to adhere to.

- If I'm up a buyin, I'm going to leave to lock in a win.
- If I lose two buyins, I'm going to leave even though I have a third buyin on me.
- I will leave on the first big blind after 9:30 so I can go home and get some decent sleep.
- I will leave as soon as I catch two non-betsizing mistakes I make.

And of course, as you get more and more experienced (and desensitized to wins and losses), you need fewer of these rules. But for most players, even multiyear pros, I think it's better to admit that it's NOT one big session.

I get your point, but these are 123 live sessions Ive played since mid Dec 2015 when I found out there was a poker app. Ive played more sessions that I can count both live and online in the prior 10 years. I dont know how many sessions Ive lost in a row before I started using the app. Its surely more than 3 but definitely less than 25. I'd guess its 7-10