Lets say you are at the main game. It's been a great game for the first couple hours. All of the poor playing players leave and are replaced by solid TAGs. The game is now terrible. You planned on staying for several hours.

Do you just stick it out and realize that sometimes games aren't going to be so great? Maybe some of the TAGs will realize the game sucks and leave and be replaced by bad players. What if you look at the list and it's all solid players for the near future who will be moved into your game?

Do you just call it a day realizing games will more often be much better than this? Do you leave and come back a few hours later hoping for better game conditions?

On one hand I wanna get in some hours. On the other hand the games are usually great so why play in an awful game?

I'm curious how you approach these spots.

If I’m on a trip I quit comeback later . If I’m at home I drop down to lower game or go home depending. Full ring nitfests suck . Even if you are the best player at table . The rake is so high at 20 and 40 . Higher than that probably worth holding seat in case whale walks in but that is a judgement call mostly based on experience.

Pretty much this. I will usually just play a different game. Sometimes conditions improve. I've never left a game just to get back in to the must move.

I think the optics of quitting just to rotate back into the must move are pretty bad.

As to whether it is worth staying in a suboptimal game, I'm not sure what people can tell you because it really depends on your motivation for playing. I usually only get to play about once a week these days, so I am generally not inclined to just go home, but I am fortunate to live somewhere where the games are almost always good.

Idk. This is dependent on who is sitting in the game. If it’s total *******s that I absolutely despise, I might consider trying to sit out as much as possible to try to force someone to leave. Otherwise I would just quit. I never rotate back into the must move.

Meh I don't have contempt for that guy like I do the seat jockeys. If someone wants to sit out an hour with no guarantee of getting back in...when the Main vs MM table dynamics are always changing anyway and LHE variance is a joke to begin with...knock yourself out I guess. It makes about as much sense as the guy paying time to spend 60% of the day walking.

Rack up and go to the bar

Fortunately the games I play in are usually good. On a few occasions I've quit the game and got some dinner and reevaluated. I've gone home sometimes and I have returned sometimes. I would think the players in the bad game would be happy to have a good player leave. If I'm doing this everyday that would be bad optics.

I think staying in a horrible game when the games are normally great is like playing golf on a rainy day in Arizona.

If the must move is really that much better just sit out an hour and come back in. Nothing wrong with that and people do it all the time.

Play a different game for awhile if you can, or take a dinner break, and after an hour or whatever go back to the must move game. I doubt anyone would think much of it either way, but who cares if they do? Optics, shmoptics, what are you worried about?

Only thing I can add is that if you're starting games each morning, you should be mindful of how those other game starters view your behavior. Maybe they resent you rotating back into the mm exactly one hour after you left, playing smaller while you wait. Maybe not. Point is you want them to continue to build games with you and putting in some "bad" hours here and there might help that cause. The real remedy is to keep getting better, both in this game and the alternatives. First hand observation of good players might give you some ideas.

I can see that point a bit, but if you started out the session in the must move game, you weren't one of the people starting games each morning, right?

I always just keep playing since I usually consider myself the best player at the table and expect to have an okay winrate while I wait for the other regs to get pissed off and leave. If the must move is good, the main game will be good within an hour or two. But ya... if you consider yourself a lower or mid-tier reg, then it's obv reasonable to leave and come back. Not giving a damn what other people think of you is a key to live poker success. So just do whatever you want. Reg battles can be really fun though.

It will depend on the order of the must-move list. Are the people at the top the fun players or more regs?

It will depend on how long the list is to get into the must-move game.

It will depend on how the room organize new tables and must-move games. Are the must-move games chained? Is there just one feeding a pool of multiple main games? Does the must-move state last only an hour or two?

I only play relatively short sessions these days, six hours tops. This inclines me to not mess around with leaving in order to get back on the list after forty-five minutes or whatever, especially later in the session. In my home club I haven't played in a situation where a must-move game was involved since before I walked away in 2015.

But I have gamed the must-move/main game situation when the must-move was short-handed, because, whether true or false, I have believed that I have more of an edge against reg and fun player alike when I play short.

You should go to the management and tell them that they should never offer must-move games.

I have a chapter about the must-move rule and why it is so bad in my book Cardrooms: Everything Bad and How to Make Them Better; An Analysis of Those Areas Where Poker Rooms Need Improvement. You can read this chapter in this post:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...1&postcount=14

Mason

+1

I don't always consider myself best player at table but generally never leave main game since reg battles can be really fun.