I’ve been asked variations of this question more than one hundred times over the years. Sometimes phrased as, “If I lose $100 (or some other number), should I give up for the day?”
My answer usually was some form of the following:
- Only play when you have the advantage. If the house has the edge, don’t play. It’s fairly easy to calculate in video poker whether you have the edge or not. In general, if you don’t know if you’re the favorite or not, you’re not.
- My answer assumes you have sufficient bankroll, actual and psychological, to ride it out. How to calculate how much bankroll you need is a discussion for another day.
- Are you still playing alertly?
If the first two conditions are met, and you can answer the third question in the affirmative, there’s no reason to stop playing just because you’re behind. Scores go up and down. The amount of bankroll you had at the beginning of the day is not a particularly significant number. Whether you are ahead or behind of this insignificant number is likewise insignificant. Your daily score is just one data point on your annual or lifetime score.
Regular Bob Dancer readers have seen variations of this numerous times. Why I bring it up today is because I recently read two different Annie Duke books — “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts” (2018) and “Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away” (2022). In each book, Annie takes a somewhat different view of stopping when losing than I’ve been preaching for years.
She has another recent book — “How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices.” (2020). Reading it is on my To Do list. Perhaps she addresses this there too.
The two books I’ve read present her ideas in different ways. It’s not that she changed her mind between the two books, it’s just that she’s presenting the same phenomenon in different contexts.
In “Thinking in Bets,” she’s speaking in the context of having a group of colleagues who hold each other accountable. If she has reached her loss limit while playing poker for the day and she didn’t quit, she’d have to explain her reasoning to her group. There can be good reasons for continuing, but she’ll have to defend them afterwards to a group of others. This extra step of having the default be quitting in certain circumstances and having to defend her actions if she didn’t follow that default, made it possible for her to step back and make a more rational decision.
In “Quit,” she’s speaking of rules made in advance about when to quit in certain circumstances, possibly when you don’t have a group to which you’re accountable. Her point is that it’s better to make these rules in advance than try to make them on a case-by-case basis in the heat of the moment.
I have no stop loss rule in my discussion. Generally, I have believed them to be useless in video poker. So, have I changed my mind after reading Duke?
Before I answer that, let me argue that poker and video poker are very different games. In video poker, it’s relatively easy to calculate whether or not you’re the favorite. Conditions to the game usually don’t change incrementally. (They can change drastically all at once — when 10x points ends at midnight, or you’re playing for a progressive which somebody hits — but usually they don’t change incrementally along the way. If it was a good game before you lost your $100, it’s still a good game.)
Poker is a much more difficult game than video poker. It’s not so much your skill that matters in poker, but rather your relative skill compared to the other players in the game. If the weak players leave and are replaced by strong players, you may or may not still be a favorite.
It can be difficult to evaluate whether you’re a favorite in a poker game (and it changes over the course of a game), whereas it’s relatively easy to do this in video poker.
So, while I believe Duke’s rules make a lot of sense in poker (and many other decision areas in life), I’m sticking with my own rules in video poker — which is a much simpler game.
Still, Duke mentioned one additional factor in this decision that I need to make more explicit in my rules. She says she noticed her level of play deteriorated after six or eight hours, no matter what the competition was, so she adjusted her stop limit to include that (when she could — obviously in tournaments there are times where you need to play longer sessions than that.)
In my rules, my third rule asked if I was still playing alertly — which assumes away some of the problem. My assumption is that I can determine at the time how alertly I am playing. In many ways this is like asking someone who has had two drinks if he is okay to safely drive. This driver may well not be a competent evaluator of the situation.
A rule of thumb of “no driving after two drinks unless it is at least two hours since the last drink” is a much safer rule than “I’ll figure it out at the time.” Similarly, for me anyway, a rule of “don’t play more than six hours straight” makes a lot of sense. After six hours, if I can rest two or more hours, then it’s fine to resume.
This would be a much better rule for me to follow than “I will decide at the time whether I am playing alertly.” I’m now 75 years of age. I would have made a different rule at age 50. And at age 85, if I’m still playing, my rule may well be three hours or less.
As Duke freely admits in her books, she wasn’t always perfect at following her guidelines. And I certainly haven’t robotically followed my own rules either. Still, having these rules and following them most of the time makes for better (and more profitable) decisions compared to not having such rules.
Good comments Bob.
For me the limit has become age — a real lightweight with the comped drinks. But have always had a simple loss limit; when it’s gone it’s gone, and come back another day.
And the “no driving after two drinks …” rule: Many years ago in the Air Force, it was “24 hours between bottle and throttle”.
Asking whether you should stop after losing $100 is a meaningless question unless you indicate at what denomination you’re playing. If you are playing max-coin video poker at the 25-cent level, losing $100 will happen during most playing sessions, so you should expect it, and not make any decisions based on that occurrence as if it were an oddball result. This is even more true for the 50-cent level, and still more true for the $1 level. If you were playing a single-line machine at the nickel level, the chances of losing $100 during your session drop to under 50%, so the result would be considered rare, but still doesn’t mean that you should stop playing. To the contrary: The odds at any level are not that you will have one losing stretch after another after another, but rather that you will have one or more winning stretches in between the losing ones, and you will only receive those wins if you keep playing. If you always stop playing when you’re behind, that will tend to ensure that you will lose your sessions more often than you should; so that’s a bad strategy. If you say that you need to do that because you have a limited (small) bankroll, then it would be better to drop down in denomination so that you don’t have to stop playing and thus will get those quads, SF’s & royals that will eventually happen.
The majority of players I am watching at the 25 cents denom play (single line) are using 20 dollar bills to play. In a way it’s fascinating how far a 20 dollar bill some people can get.
I usually put in the ticket of my previous session as I usually don’t cash out before my trip is over unless I need small change or so for the drink person , at which case I would walk to the nearest cash dispenser machine.
I find it helpful to start with 100 or 200 dollars righaway, even if I play only for quarters. This way I don’t have to worry that I will run out of credits. Remember, each time you pull out cash from any pocket or wallet or bag there’s a chance somebody might be watching you and see if you are either “loaded” or rather a small time gambo person.
I usually go with a game plan. That might be for instance a 6 or 8 hour session , with short interruptions for restroom breaks or perhaps even a meal. I also disregard my current intra-game result as it’s not relevant. In fact, I only think about my entire day as it was when I am back in my hotel room. A Royal Flush can happen any time at any place. So, once this is clear it’s not even relevant if you lose your first 300 dollars quick on a game with a progressive that’s high but you couldn’t hit it. Last time I played at the 5-9 double double bonus progressive in the front near the gift shop, the bonus pay for aces/w kicker was at whopping 1100 dollars or so and still nobody would hit it. I watched my neighbors how they kept pushing their single ace on the line and I thought this was way too extreme. Some people press their luck I guess. I lost 500 dollars so fast but at least it was during the multiplayer day. Still it made me feel a bit frustrated.
Later I played on at a different casino and it gave me 2 sets of deuces so I came out almost even. That’s why I don’t think any stop-loss strategy will ever work out. Not even a stop-win strategy unless you decide to stop playing entirely. Every strategy in this regards means interrupting your playing time, future wins or losses will be delayed only.
The only reasons when to stop playing for the day are based on overall conditions , stop of promotions, fatique, other appointments, health conditions etc. Its useless to discuss this with the ignorant people that see it differently. Let them have their own stragegy. If they are happy with it, I am happy too.
From Switzerland
Boris
My daily play limit is set predominantly by how attractive a given promotion is that day and, more generally, what overall play average I seek to maintain in that casino. I prefer not to let “loss limits” enter the equation.
But I’m human and a “disproportionate” loss can take a considerable emotional toll. So, yeah, I set a loss limit on my play, but a generous one of a magnitude that I’m likely to hit it no more than 5% (or less) of the time.
I also typically “buy in” machine credits that vary between 160-240 bets ($1/$2 single line play), ensuring that i usually get a good run on the buy in. Inserting only something like 20-50 bets results in frustratingly frequent breaks to buy more credits and undesirably emphases losing streaks, which may prove discouraging and increases the odds that I’ll want to break from a session prematurely.
Time and space come into play with stop losses, and important vows you must make to protect your invaluable bank roll… Sometimes you must decide to leave a good game or good promotion, there will be others, just the fact that you ponder the possibilities means you are using that noggin, so good on you, being a pro means thinking like a pro… Brainstorm your position often, play smart, play the long game that others lack the skills to do…
Interesting discussion. And my stop-limits have changed a bit now that I have moved from a good paycheck every two weeks to living off my investments.
I play blackjack, Texas Hold ‘Em and VP 90% of my time in a casino. I have win and stop-loss limits for table games.
I can play DW and Triple Double perfectly now. I generally play $1 and use my stash of Benjamins. If I get to $150 I cash out and squirrel away the ticket. And put in another Benjamin. I do this until I lose 2 Benjamins in a row. My records show I once squirreled 8 tickets before that happened. A nice run.
I know it’s a little silly but it is psychologically satisfying. I can win a lot and don’t ever lose more than $200 a session.
Boris said:
“Remember, each time you pull out cash from any pocket or wallet or bag there’s a chance somebody might be watching you.”
Very good point.
Video Poker stop loss, do you play just one machine or several before stopping?