As previously written, I said that I was going to upload a few of the older, poker related blogs that I had written for NWP. This blog was very well received, so I'll post this one again in hopes that there will be new readers, and that the older readers will enjoy it once more. I think it's good to have some poker content on the site!

When is Enough, Enough?

In a recent article that I wrote on NWP I spoke briefly about how many players possess the necessary talent to be winning players, but lack other important characteristics such as game selection, adequate bank roll management, following a schedule, focus, and discipline. No one does all of these things correctly 100% of the time, but still a player is usually able to deviate from perhaps one of these things and still be a winner. One thing I didn’t speak about was quitting. When do you quit a game? When is enough, enough?

Well, first we need to determine what the average win rate is for a given game. I’ll use Hold’em as an example since it is the most popular form of poker. In a brick and mortar setting the average win rate is most likely 1 big bet per hour. Therefore if you were playing $100-$200 Limit Hold’em you would be making $200 per hour, and that is not bad at all. This can and should easily be sustained by any average to good winning player. The win rate would be higher for a very good to excellent player. When talking about online poker the average win is displayed in terms of BB/100, which is the number of big bets per 100 hands. 1.5BB/100 is probably an accurate win rate for average to good online players. There are situations where above average to excellent players can sustain around 2.5 to 3BB/100, but those cases are usually due to games being both loose and passive.

Now that we have this information, how do we know when to quit? Let’s talk about live, brick and mortar games since that is what I mostly play. You are in the casino playing $100-$200, and you are approaching playing 8 hours. You are up $1600 but the game is good and you feel good about playing. Should you quit? I think that this depends on a lot of things. How much more do you think you can win from the current field? How much do you think that you will lose back if you continue to play? Sometimes games are so tight and/or predictable that there could be a player or two willing to give you action therefore increasing your earning potential, where as you are almost certain to never lose any real money in a pot because their play is transparent. I think this game is worth continuing. Let’s reverse the scenario. Now you are stuck $1600…should you quit? Again, there are many factors to consider.

Recently I was faced with a dilemma. I was playing in an Omaha H/L game where I was either the best, or 2nd best player, and we were both losing marginally. The game changed and became short handed, which was better for both me and that other player. We were now playing 4 handed with two people who could easily be mistaken for two of the worst Omaha H/L players to ever grace the Borgata. Now we were ready! The only thing we needed now was time. If these two players don’t quit, we feel that we both have a very good chance of getting even or winning. We continued to play not our best poker, but something very close to that, which should easily have been good enough to get the money. Well, it seems that it doesn’t always work that way, LOL! Imagine that, here I am with another good player, playing with two lesser players, and neither my friend nor me can win. As a matter of fact, we couldn’t drag a fucking chip. As my friend said several times last night, “Sad, sad days.”

I watched as the massacre slowly took place. My friend, a normally VERY solid player and good short handed player, was now playing passive and weak and had turned into a calling station on boards where I should have been able to get him to lay down hands without thought. This happened more than once. Knowing that he had changed his play I now had to change the way that I played against him, which was also costing me money and pots. After all, even though we are friends we still must play against each other if we were both to continue to play. Every pot that we played together against each other was virtually chopped, and every pot we played against the other two players we lost or got quartered. It was like someone had stabbed me in the liver and I was slowly bleeding out. God had left me to play my best game against two of the worst players, and I wasn’t winning! Now only wasn’t I winning, but I was losing more, and for that matter so was my friend. So, when is enough, enough?

I am not usually bad about quitting a game stuck. I don’t like losing, but I don’t usually “go off” when I lose. I know that the same game will be there the next weekend, and the same bad players will be playing in it. This time was different. I think that seeing my friend experience the same thing that I was experiencing, and knowing that he is also a very good, winning player, blinded me from the truth. Sometimes things are going so bad that you are just NOT going to win. I have told myself this very statement on many occasions over the past 13 years, which is part of the reason why I am not the type to typically just blow up. During this particular session though, I reached a point where my friend and I looked at each other and we both said, “Is this really happening?” I laughed that we both said the same thing at the same time, but then he said, “Seriously, how can this be happening to BOTH of us?” I said, “I know…this can’t continue, can it?” Guess what folks, it can, and it did. I got buried and when I finally did quit my friend was buried even worse. I have no idea how he ended up but I am sure that I’ll call him after I finish this article to find out.

After what was a restless, sleepless night (I had fallen asleep around 6:30am and was up at 8:00am), and now that I am thinking somewhat lucid thoughts, I can’t imagine that it got very much better for him as I am certain that the minute that the tide started to turn the two players that we were playing with would have surely quit. There it was…there was the one question that I had overlooked when thinking that I could get even. How much longer would these two play if things started to go our way? I know that they both gave enough action where I could win big pots from them, but how many of those pots would they be willing to lose before calling it a night? If one quit would the other one play 3 handed? If my friend had lost the money in front of him would he have stayed? The answers to the last two questions are “No”, and “No”. Part of being a professional is learning when “enough is enough”, and how we determine that is by asking ourselves other important questions regarding the game. It seems that in this case I overlooked some questions and didn’t know when to quit. Writing this article has helped me clear my mind and refresh my train of thought so that the next time I play, I will indeed be a better player. I hope that parts of this post will help others as well.

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