I agree with you meale, it's all dependent and isn't as simple as "stop playing after dropping x number of BI". However, I'm not against setting hard limits for yourself when starting out because it's extremely difficult to be objective about your own play. I know a few people who have gone on downswings that they attribute purely to variance but after reviewing hands with them, they had major leaks that were being compounded by tilt.


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Lot of good discussion on stop losses going on here.

Some points that I hope will help:

Ideally-stop when you're playing poorly or opponents are too good
-continue when you have the advantage (skill, image, alertness)

BUT it's simple but not so easy

Almost always us LLSNL players aren't aware of the "stop" conditions until it's too late. We don't realize our tilt level/poor play until the drive home, or we fool ourselves and never realize it at all.

Have you ever wondered how our play would look like to ourselves if there was a secret camera filming our play and we watched it played back? Each and every one of us would detect countless mistakes in our play. So many times we would say "what the frck was I trying to do there?"

So I dropped the old concept long ago of "play as long as I felt I was playing well" regardless of loss. I started keeping track (roughly) of my overall session results after certain buyin loss levels (2BI, 3BI). I found for the vast majority of time once I reached these levels in a session I would not recover, and I highly recommend people who wonder when to stop do this exercise. It's a bit of work but if you want to be serious about poker you've got to be disciplined enough to do these kind of things.
The stop loss level you come up with will vary on your style, skill, competition etc. But come up with a level and stick with it. You have to remember: there's always another day, another "great game", another session. My stop loss level is 2BI. While this may seem low to most, triggering it always made me critique my play in more depth and really helped me with my discipline and drive to succeed. Last year I played ~800 hrs and reached my session stop loss 7 times.

a lot of stuff in poker is about comfort levels. if you only have 2 BIs, you might not be comfortable calling something off as a 55/45 favorite. If you're not comfortable losing $1000 in 1 hand, you probably aren't going to jump into a 10/20 game. each person needs to find whatever their stopping point(s) is/are and go from there. it's great that people have so many different idea's about when to stop but there isn't a "this is the correct answer" to this type of situation.

Well after that period of losing I kept my roll in one place and never used it for anything other than poker so I could see it growing without records. But I am glad I'm back to recording my progress because I can see everything in that much more detail and have a better idea of what's going on. I moved up because I grew my bankroll to between 20 - 30 buy ins (@ 1/3) and didn't need the money for anything else and I have a regular income I live off separately.

I agree with the discipline factor in general. I always thought the main reason why people lost was down to discipline rather than not having the required skills to beat the game. I see a lot of regs who can beat fish but will set money on fire when on tilt. After tilting enough myself you have to either accept that losing is part of the game and not let it affect you or suffer big losses, which is obviously a huge leak which should be avoided.

I'm not naturally inclined to be disciplined but I think understanding why it's so important and following the routine of recording after every session will train myself to follow this kind of discipline effortlessly.

Just started to have time for Poker again, and decided to track my live records as I try to take it more seriously. Playing 1/2 NL, hoping to move to 2/5 by the end of the year.

First 100 hours:

Profit- $2,893

Hourly- $28.92

BB/H- 14.5

Running well above expectations, have had most big hands hold up, etc. Also, 1/2 NL players are still really bad.

Nice Start!

I am not going to beat a dead horse regarding the argument abainst having 2Bi or 3BI stop losses.

On a subject like stop losses, I think that people should consult the opinions of poker players who have won $500k+ over their last 10k hours. Then you would see that all the respectable players don't have such arbitrarily low stop loss limits.

I can see a little merit for a 5BI or 6BI stop loss, but 3BI stop losses are way too low.

With that said, it is important to recognize when fatigue is kicking in. There are a lot of poker players who keep playing in non-spectacular games when they are tired, and that is a recipe for disaster.

Thanks Mike.

I agree with the caveat that if a player is emotionally fragile to the point of tilt after a 2BI loss, they should keep at 2. That should be just a temporary fix though. Working out your losers tilt is paramount.

Stop losses are perfect for anyone who thinks they might need a stop loss.
And possibly good for people who do not think they need a stop loss.

People that have won $500k playing poker don't play the same as us regular people. 400-500bbs has always worked great for me as a stop loss

To echo what spike said...I generally agree with David but if someone is able to recognize that they have tilt issues then getting up after 2-3 BI is probably a good idea FOR THEM.

However, they should address the tilt issue as it is a huge hole in their game and will limit their ability to play successfully long term.

Davids point is that you will never achieve that level of skill until you fix issues such as emotional intelligence.

We all say its a fix "for now", but in reality how many actually end up working on their tilt issues?

I agree that most would probably benefit from a stop loss because they dont have that emotional intelligence needed -- but thats just putting a bandaid on the issue.

In my non $500k winning expierence, tilt has more to do with BRM and losing when one isn't rolled to lose than the amount of buyins it is. So in reality, it's a BRM issue

Not necessarily. I'm ludicrously overrolled for my main game, as it's the biggest game that goes in my area, and I still "seethe tilt" after several bad beats in a row, even if they aren't for stacks. I'm not proud of it, but I know that I start to play a bit weak/tight after that happens. For me, it's less an issue of how much I am down than how I lost it. I can happily keep playing my A game down several buy-ins if I lost them on flips or coolers, but if I lost them due to bad play on my part or getting sucked out on... not so good.

Yeah pretty standard. For me this bad play doesn't lead to tilt but rather frustration. I just note the action and analyse it later so I can get over it and not have it affect my play.

I think this is an interesting distinction and I am similar. I was in for three bullets within 45 minutes last night due to getting coolered (my KK into AA, my top full house into quads, my middle set into a flopped straight) and I was still in great spirits. But, I paid a fish off on what should have been a fold and I berated myself for like 10 minutes about how I should have gotten away. I guess that's my competitive nature but it's definitely something I'm working on. It's nice to know that it's hard to lose much money in 10 minutes though because we just don't see many hands live.


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Yeah paying people off when it should have been a fold is the most tilting for me as well. Also getting caught bluffing is annoying when they've been folding all day.

This also depends on whether you are playing to pay the bills or not, I mean ideally you don't need a stop loss at all but if you play as a profitable hobby, then there's probably a lot of technical poker skills to dial in before your 3 buy in stop loss is the biggest thing holding back your win rate.

Want to mess around, with some calculations. The 1 thing my tracking app, doesn't track is Standard deviation.

Can few guys post what there is per/hr. So I can play a little today.

Just looking for rough estimates to work with

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Search function is worthless on taptalk

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$267/hr at $2/$5.

$197/hr @ 1/2

Mine is $150/hr at 1/3