Don’t Chase Bad Night of Poker

I devoted a few hours to play poker and that is almost up. Got to work tomorrow but I am down, maybe I can play a little longer just to get even then quit. Sound familiar? It’s called chasing your losses and as a poker strategy, probably the worst one you can follow.

Anyone who has ever sat at a poker table either live or online will come to realize that in this game, you win and you lose. Sometimes big, sometimes small, long streaks and short bursts, it is however inevitable. It is interesting that you will see players quite while ahead or even have some sort of strategy for leaving up but when they are down money; all logic goes out the window.

There are some general guidelines to follow though. Have enough money in your account to play at the level you are playing. Most poker books and pros will tell you 300 times the big blind. If you are playing a $1/$2 table, you should have $600 in your account. What I do personally is keep just that amount in the poker site. I have a limit of 30% losses total. So if I lose 30% of what I have sat down with for the night I leave (if I sit at a table with $100, when I lose to $70 I leave for the night). Not really my idea though, got it from an article from Howard Lederer. If I have run into a bad stretch, when I lose 30% of the $600 total I top it back off to $600. Every week I withdraw everything over $600 and start fresh.

For me having this stop lose in place keeps me from chasing my loses, but it still takes discipline to follow it. Having a bad night, bad beats, unbelievable draws hitting against you makes it hard to not sit there and tell yourself it has to change just wait it out. I found though that implementing this strategy for me had me withdrawing more consistently than I was depositing; always a good sign when gambling. I have had some very short nights and at first it was hard but I have had some VERY good weeks also and realize that I actually gained money by leaving those games early. Money not lost is money gained also.