Session length and focus

In my attempt to move to cash games, i am finding that after a while, i am losing concentration. It seems that trying to grind up at 2NL, i sometimes loose concentration. I am trying to insure that i have a proper playing environment but i tend to start surfing net or reading message boards or whatever. So my question is, do you monitor your session length based on time, hands, winnings or loosings?? How do you maintain proper focus? I tried multi tabling (2)for a 50 hand per table session and that seemed to help me maintain focus but i don't know that my game is ready for that. Thoughts, ideas, helps??

I used to have this problem as well and found that after folding, trying to determine the hands of those who are still in is a good way to stay focused. I start with hand ranges and then eliminate possibilities based on VPIP, PFR, bet sizing/ strategy for each street, etc. After a while I can get pretty close and then when I do have a playable hand I can better determine what they have.

agree with fatguy, concentrate on your opponents take notes of what cards they are playing, if you have a HUD running see if the hands that they are showing down with correlate with their stats.if you still have time on your hands open another table but dont sit in , just watch and observe it as well, see if you can put a player typr to each player by watching them , then try and put them on a typical range for their position, modify the ranges for each street and see if the actual cards they showdown mean that your read of them was good or not .when you are coping doing that with the extra table then you can start playing that table .eventually you can start adding extra tables as you get more experienced and better at putting players on ranges.

I don't know if it's a very good lesson, but my discipline to tighten up my game from just opening up 4 2nl tables. Later that day i tried 6, then 8. By the next day i was 12 tabling and didn't really have time to think about anything else. I don't usually run that many tables anymore but I think doing it for a few sessions helped me get used to playing nitty and folding margional hands in margional situations.

Play for one hour max until you start being consistent. I found that doing that made me focus more. Also, implement a stop loss i.e. one buyin or 3 dollars or something, whatever really.

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Walking away is easy. The hard part is standing up.

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Quality > Quantity.

Never be afraid of making a good quit - it's really helpful to your winrate.

Usually I stop when my focus is poor - however sometimes I don't stop all the tables but keep 1/2 up that have good fish on them.

There are things you can do to try and help maintain focus longer. It's kind of a personal thing what will fit your personality. But you can't completely avoid the necessity to train yourself to pass on surfing and other distractions. One thing I did for a while that helped me was to set poker-only periods (i.e. no surfing, emailing, TV or anything else). I started with just 30 minutes and increased the duration over time.

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Originally Posted by OhioRounder

Quality > Quantity.

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Quantity helped with my quality when I had the attention span of a kindergardener

IMO

Play one less table than you are confortable playing.

Boredome is your enemy. Before you add another tables, have notes on at least half of the table you're currently playing, even when using a HUD.

If you quit ahead and before you get tired then you won't be forced to quit behind and tilted.

Leave a table when you lose 3 big pots. Make it two if it's the same villian. When you lose 3 pots or 2 to the same villian you may have tendancy to "get my money back from that donk"

Again, IMO

Adderall

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Originally Posted by OhioRounder

Quality > Quantity.

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In my opinion, Quality*Quantity such that profit is maximized is optimal...
I see this often stated, but for each player, this is different..
Ie. if your profit per table per hour is something like:
Tables - Profit per hour
1 - $10
2 - $ 7
3 - $ 6
4 - $ 5
5 - $ 4
6 - $ 3
7 - $ 2
8 - $ 1.50
9 - $ 1
10- $ 0.50
11- $ 0.25
12- $ 0

the total profit would be maximized at either 4 or 5 tabling, and I would say in the long run, you will improve your game more by playing 4 tables over 5, so based on this I would 4 table. Of course this is just a hypothetical example, but the underlying principle is obvious; if your goal is profit, everything you do should be to maximize long-run profit. If you are planning on moving up stakes, it may be worth your while to lower the number of tables you play before you move up stakes, to get used to making reads, and observe some higher stakes simultaneously to note the differences in playing styles between your stake and the next.

Simple economics, but I fear it may be overlooked. If your goal is profit, which is generally my assumption, that should be what you base your playing on. It isn't this easy in practice, but the concepts are the same.

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Originally Posted by sven00100

In my opinion, Quality*Quantity such that profit is maximized is optimal...
I see this often stated, but for each player, this is different..
Ie. if your profit per table per hour is something like:
Tables - Profit per hour
1 - $10
2 - $ 7
3 - $ 6
4 - $ 5
5 - $ 4
6 - $ 3
7 - $ 2
8 - $ 1.50
9 - $ 1
10- $ 0.50
11- $ 0.25
12- $ 0

the total profit would be maximized at either 4 or 5 tabling, and I would say in the long run, you will improve your game more by playing 4 tables over 5, so based on this I would 4 table. Of course this is just a hypothetical example, but the underlying principle is obvious; if your goal is profit, everything you do should be to maximize long-run profit. If you are planning on moving up stakes, it may be worth your while to lower the number of tables you play before you move up stakes, to get used to making reads, and observe some higher stakes simultaneously to note the differences in playing styles between your stake and the next.

Simple economics, but I fear it may be overlooked. If your goal is profit, which is generally my assumption, that should be what you base your playing on. It isn't this easy in practice, but the concepts are the same.

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Solid poast imo