Setting Limits: The Good & The Bad (Part I)

For everyone who has ever gambled in his or her life, I'm sure this will sound like a familiar scenario. You are playing your game of choice and having a good time (blackjack, poker, slots, whatever). You get really lucky, go on a great run, and find yourself up quite a bit of money. You briefly consider quitting while you are ahead, but you're having so much fun and the money is flowing so easily that you're not ready to leave just yet.

Then suddenly, things take a turn for the worse. You get really unlucky on a play, and after that it seems like you just can't catch a break. You slowly start to lose the money that you have built up, and maybe you even start making riskier wagers to get back to your former heights. "If I can just get back to where I was before," you tell yourself, "I will call it a day and be happy."

But you can never quite get back there, and eventually you lose it all. As you leave the gambling arena to move on to your next activity, you mentally beat yourself up for not leaving sooner. Even if you had only left with half your winnings, it would have been a great score. "Why did I have to get so greedy?" you silently wonder.

Ever happen to you?

It used to happen to me all the time at the poker table. Back when I was first starting out going to casinos, I hadn't quite learned to control my aggression at the poker table. This resulted in me taking my $50 buy-in and running it up to $250 in a very short period of time, only to lose it all back again with an ill-timed bluff or questionable value bet. Back then, $200 was all the money in the world to me, and even losing the $50 buy-in was often more than I could honestly afford. So the first lesson I had to learn was never to gamble with money that I needed for other things. That is one limit that I don't think any gambler should EVER cross.

But that isn't exactly what this post is about. For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to assume that I have a poker bankroll that is used strictly for poker, and if I lose all of it I will be all right financially. The question I would like to address is, within that bankroll of X # of buy-ins, does it make sense to have a per-session limit to how many buy-ins I allow myself to lose? Is a two or three buy-in stop-loss good for me as a poker player, considering I generally am playing against weaker opponents?

There are other types of limits that a player can set as well. I can set a limit on the amount that I win, and I can set a limit on the length of time I play in a given session. I would like to consider the pros and cons of each type of limit, and share those thoughts with you.

First, loss limits or stop-loss. Now, there are some players that have excellent discipline at the poker table. They are able to recognize when they are playing on tilt, when they are outmatched, or when the table conditions are otherwise unfavorable and they just get up and quit for the day.

I am not one of those players. In the games that I play now, I am often one of the most seasoned players in the game, and I typically have a large edge over my typical opponents. So whenever I get loser, I tend to think that I can still outplay my opponents so I should keep reloading until things begin to turn around. I even have a few huge comeback wins in cash games that could support that exact conclusion. However, there are some times when I really am outclassed in a game and refuse to admit it, or think that I have gotten over a bad beat when I really haven't. And I know that I do not play my best when I'm stuck (no one does), but I will continue to buy more chips over and over until I have no money left in my wallet. So I think for me, a stop-loss is a good thing. If I only take a few buy-ins with me, then I can be forced to go home, cool down, and attack the game again the next time. (But with the ATM's inside the casinos, I have to leave the ATM card at home too! Or at least in the car.)

In the next post, I will address win targets and time limits. Should be tomorrow, unless I get too lazy.