Posted by Junelli 1:10 PM
When to get up and leave.

Saturday night I played $1-$2 Pot-limit for about 7 hours. I lost $600, and just couldn't get anything going all night. It wasn't that I didn't get any good hands, it was that my good hands consistently ran into better hands (top two pair against flush, flush against full house, two pair against sets, etc.). I won my share of pots but they were usually small. The ones I lost however, were much larger.

Driving home I started thinking about why I should've quit earlier in the night. All signs indicated that I wasn't going to win, but I ignored them all. I should've paid attention to the following "get up and leave signals":

1. I couldn't get any action on my big hands. I was dealt AA 3 times. Two of those times I won the pot pre-flop and picked up about $7. The other time I lost $125 to a flush. Slowplaying didn't help (or it ended up hurting me), and value betting resulted in an immediate but small win.

2. I got all the action I could handle with my second best hands. I'm not going to tell any bad beat stories (because I hate hearing them myself). However I should've recognized the clear trend: my strong hands consistently weren't good enough.

3. The table tightened up when I was down. At the beginning of the night the table was loose and agressive, and I was sure it was going to be a winning night. About 3 hours later, some of the money left the table, but more importantly, the wild betting stopped. It seemed like hours would pass between each sizable pot. In a $1-$2 Pot-limit game, it's very difficult to win your money back in this situation. I guess I had hopes of doubling-up once or twice, but that was extremely unlikely given the posture of the game. I would first have to get a good hand, hit the flop, have my opponent also hit the flop (but with a slightly worse hand), and get action on all my money. Sometimes it's just too much to hope for.

4. I was tired (after having watched the Horns embarass themselves), and probably not as focused as I should've been. I'm not saying that this caused me to play poorly, but I really just didn't have my heart into it. The best analogy I can make is when you're playing blackjack, losing, tired and pissed off. You don't get excited about the hands you win, and you get extra angry at the ones you lose. That was me on Saturday. Confidence and energy plays a big part in poker, and when you leave them at home, you might as well get your checkbook out.

5. I started "chipping off" at the end of the night. You know you're dead when you start rationalizing, "Just let me lose these last chips so I can leave and go to bed." At about 12:30am, I was stuck $350, but still had approx $250 in front of me. Instead of leaving I was hoping to double-up. "Screw the $25 pots! I want to double up or go broke!" I played marginal hands into raises, got caught trying to steal some pots, and generally just gave away my chips little by little. At 2:30am I had $100 left, and was anxiously awaiting the chance to put it all in play. On the last hand I had 88 against a flop of 567. Open ended with an overpair. When the most aggressive guy at the table bet the pot ($30), I raised all-in. He called me with 89 (the nuts). Whoops!

I don't know why players (myself included) believe that you must lose all your chips before you're allowed to get up and leave. It's like we're desparately trying to make miracles happen. If you're not winning, not enjoying it, and not likely to turn things around, just go home! If I had left at 12:30 I still would've been down for the night, but I'd be $250 richer. I guess that's why they call it "stuck".

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