When's enough enough?

Just wondering what you guys do in a session play a certain amount of hands before you jump of or set a win/loss mark before ending the session?i normally play 1k hands for a session do you think I should be setting a win/loss mark as well?

I normally decide how many hours/minutes I'm going to play beforehand. The clock seems easier to keep track of than the number of hands.
You can set a win/loss mark if you feel that winning a lot or losing a lot affects your play. But the goal should be not to let this affect your play.

Ok ill take that on board thanks for the advice

I would say enough is enough around the beginning of day 3 of no sleep hedonism, when the uppers cause more shaking than alertness, the downers can't stop my mind racing or my hand shaking so aggressively I can no longer roll and even hard liquor just goes down like water. Other signs to look out for include looking for the phone that's in your hand for more than 15 minutes, hearing colours and/or realising you're alone but having no idea how long ago you had company not who that company was. At this point in time, enough is enough and an nap of at least 40 minutes is in order. No more than an hour mind, or you risk slipping into a sleep so deep that you won't wake up in time for the school run in a couple of hours.

lol hearing colours. Troll of the day right there.

Synesthesia is a real thing, luco. Why you gotta be such a fish?

Per OP: I try to set the goal to play a certain amount of time, but I'm constantly reassessing that goal. As has been pointed out, making good decisions is the way to winning. If I'm playing poorly, then playing more hands is only going to hurt me in the long run. If I'm playing well, then stopping at a given time is also going to hurt me in the long run.

Never set monetary goals in poker... benchmarks, sure, but not goals. You can only control whether or not you make good decisions, and good decisions do not immediately translate into monetary winnings. Likewise, bad decisions do not immediately translate into losses. If you attach goals to things you can't control, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

I always recommend this to people who are wanting to play for a certain amount of time because it's so simple: Online Stopwatch

it's never enough

1 - if you set a time/# of hands plan and start tilting then you shouldn't be continuing to play just because you have a pre-determined plan
2 - if you are playing soul-read a-game and crushing and feel absolutely on top of things then it doesn't really make sense to stop just because you've been playing for 90 minutes and that was your planned session duration
3 - don't ever use $$ won or lost as a determinant of when to stop - you shouldn't even know (beyond a gut feel) this during your play

+ what rong said

Originally Posted by daven

it's never enough

1 - if you set a time/# of hands plan and start tilting then you shouldn't be continuing to play just because you have a pre-determined plan
2 - if you are playing soul-read a-game and crushing and feel absolutely on top of things then it doesn't really make sense to stop just because you've been playing for 90 minutes and that was your planned session duration
3 - don't ever use $$ won or lost as a determinant of when to stop - you shouldn't even know (beyond a gut feel) this during your play

+ what rong said

I mostly agree with #2 and #3, but I mostly disagree with #1. I think that these are great opportunities to work on getting back to normal, and I think that avoiding them for the sake of immediate EV hurts the EV of players in the long run.

I also think that with something like #2, it should be a very deliberate and well-defined thing if a player chooses to continue. Something like "okay, I'm playing really well and I'm very focused, so I'm going to play for another 30 minutes before I take a break."

I wouldn't blame people for skipping out on #2 if they had a scheduled break and planned to get back to the games later in the day or to do something else they enjoy.

when your speed dealer won't answer the phone

In FLHE I do it like this:
If I win 40 big bets in 20 minutes, I quit (supernova is not my concern, I play for profit, if I won enough, why pay rake?); If it's less than that I play for 1.5k hands. If I'm losing I can play for hours: can't win money? Ok, lets play for RB

So... When you're playing well (or at least winning), you play for as short a time as possible.... but when you're playing not so well (or at least losing), you stretch that out for as long as you can?

Do you think this is the best strategy to maximize your opportunities for good decisions at the tables?

I don't understand how "not paying rake" is a reason to stop playing when you're winning, or how "paying rake" is an incentive to keep playing when you're losing.

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

I mostly agree with #2 and #3, but I mostly disagree with #1. I think that these are great opportunities to work on getting back to normal, and I think that avoiding them for the sake of immediate EV hurts the EV of players in the long run.

i agree in principle with the merits of training ourselves to move out of tilt and back to a-game. I feel like the cost of continuing sometimes outweighs the longterm benefit, but obviously i can't quantify this. An approach that can work for some people is to simply drop half of the tables (sticking to the best, leaving the worst) and continue, consciously taking longer and more care with each decision. And not playing any looser.

Originally Posted by ISillyDurrrAK

In FLHE I do it like this:
If I win 40 big bets in 20 minutes, I quit (supernova is not my concern, I play for profit, if I won enough, why pay rake?); If it's less than that I play for 1.5k hands. If I'm losing I can play for hours: can't win money? Ok, lets play for RB

pretty bad/stupid approach. If you don't look at your cashier balance during your session then you will almost certainly play better poker.

re 'i play for profit, if i won enough, why play rake?' - i also play for profit. I don't look at this profit as a short-term thing, i look at it over a monthly or longer basis. So, i guess i could justify stopping a session if i had won what i wanted to for the month during that session - but if that happened then the games must be crazy good so i'll play them until they break...

I play as long as I'm enjoying myself. This can depend on various factors, combinations and weights, so my decision making is pretty fluid as opposed to using pre-set criteria. The main one of those I use is simply not staying at cash tables if / when I don't feel I'm +EV.

I play until I am tired. If I am on a winning streak I continue to play even if my arse is tired. I do not start playing poker until all my responsibilities have been done for the day that needed to get done.

If I have an early game, if anything important needs doing, I get it done the previous day or know it will have to wait until 3 hours after the poker game.

Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

Synesthesia is a real thing, luco. Why you gotta be such a fish?

Wow I only just noticed this. I know a fair bit about synesthesia, but suggesting extended periods of poker can induce it is fucking funny. Also, hearing colours would be exceptionally rare. Far more common is that certain sounds would evoke colours, not colours evoke sounds. Finally, rong was clearly trolling and was doing bloody good at it.

For the record, the fish suffix predates my interest in poker by several years.