Determining Poker Session
Length
Poker players like to take a
casino player's mindset to the tables. This is
one of the worst ways to play poker. If you are
going to play casino games, like roulette and
craps, you will have a negative expected return
on investment with every spin of the wheel or
roll of the dice.
Poker is not like these games
at all if you are a winning player. In contrast
to casino games, poker provides an opportunity
for profit on each and every hand. You won't be
winning huge pots in every hand, but when you
average a tiny win with every hand, the long run
will end up netting you huge profits.
That being said, would you
play poker nonstop if you were guaranteed to win
just a tiny bit with every hand you play? I know
I would. It is the fear of the uncertain that
scares players. No one likes to think that this
might be the hand where they lose their entire
stack. Most people don’t think about the
possibility doubling up either. It is odd how
human nature forces us to fear the worst and
never consider the best. This is the reason that
players like to quit when they are up just a
little bit.
When to keep playing
The optimal time to keep
playing is when you are in the middle of a
winning session. The natural temptation will
usually be to quit while you are ahead, but it
is not the correct decision. Winning play begets
winning play. In other words, once you are
winning you are more likely to be playing in a
manner that will perpetuate further winning. The
problem that players often run into is reverting
to a sort of "scared money" style of play. You
may have heard the phrase, "Scared money doesn't
make money" and it is certainly applicable to
poker. The scared players are called weak or
tight in poker, and these are the types of
players who TAGs (tight aggressive players) feed
upon. Don’t be easy money for everyone else.
Why you shouldn't quit
The reason that players quit
when they are ahead is almost always because of
an unfounded belief that they are due for some
awful run. Maybe they got lucky a few times and
are sure that their winnings are bound to be
lost back due to the mysterious forces of the
poker gods.
Both lines of thinking are
completely incorrect. Playing cards do not have
a mind of their own. Each and every hand is
completely independent of the next one. If you
got aces one hand you are just as likely to get
them on the next hand. When you complete a hand
and prepare for a new one it is essentially like
the prior hand had never even happened. What
some players think is "Well I got aces and just
won this huge pot, surely I am going to lose a
lot of it back shortly". No, you are just as
likely to win a huge pot on the next hand as you
are to lose one. While it is true that over the
long run the odds will even out, this is no
justification for quitting an individual
session. One small session is nothing more than
a tiny blip in the big picture.
