At www.gamblingwithanedge.com , in the comments section for a recent blog post of mine, a poker player said he had two stop limits–one for being ahead and on for being behind. (It’s possible he uses the same amount for each. He didn’t say.) He wanted to know if winning video poker players use this system as well.
In all gambling, money management is important. One of the key elements is being able to stay in the game. If you go broke, you’re out of the action.
With that said, poker and video poker are considerably different. In video poker, it’s possible to know whether you have an advantage or not. The return on games is usually available, as is information about the slot club and promotions. In this environment, successful bankroll management consists of:
- Only betting when you have the advantage.
- Betting within your bankroll.
- Other than that, playing as long or as short as you want.
The second rule, “Betting within your bankroll,” can be somewhat tricky to figure out. There are bankroll calculators on both the Video Poker for Winners and Dunbar’s Video Poker Risk Analyzer software. Today, though, we’re going to leave that topic for another time.
Now I’m going to address live poker. Keep in mind that while I know something about the game, I’m not a winning poker player. I cannot address this game with a high level of expertise. I’m not a novice, however, in discussing how the game is different from video poker.
Live poker has so many other things to consider, including figuring out whether or not you are the favorite. There are some home games where the same eight guys have been playing together weekly for years. In that case, if you keep records, you can have a pretty good idea whether you’re a favorite, and by how much. But even then, sometimes “Henry” will go on tilt which greatly skews the distribution.
In most games, you’ll have one or more players who are unfamiliar to you. Even then, if you see one or more “live ones” in the game, you can determine you’re probably the favorite, if not by how much.
The variance of live poker is a lot higher than the variance of video poker. In video poker, all your bets are the same size, and you play hundreds or thousands of them in a session. At the no limit versions of poker, there are a relatively few hands that become the biggest ones of the night. If you’re a winner on the big hands, you’ll likely be a winner that night. If you’re a loser on the big hands, you’ll likely be a loser today, no matter how well you’ve done on the smaller hands.
Also in live poker, playing conditions change frequently as various players react to being ahead or behind. And as the alcohol kicks in. And various other factors.
Having stop limits for wins and/or losses makes sense for losing video poker players or for players playing over-their-heads bankroll-wise. Being able to stay in the game long-term is important, and as either a losing or under-bankrolled player, you want to avoid blowing out completely in one session.
I suspect these same types of live poker players are the ones who find these stop limits useful. But I’m not sure. That’s not my expertise. The only poker I’ve played in the past 20 years has been the limit version of low stakes games. For that game, even though I’m a breakeven player at best, my bankroll is infinite.
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You know your craft well, and your intuitions about live poker are spot on. My local card club seats nine players, some Las Vegas casinos seat ten. If the other eight players play like I do, any advantage I have is diluted, but predicting my opponents ranges of hands becomes more stable. I look for crazy action, guys that ignorantly think machismo is part of poker, give me a seat in an action game, I only give action when I have the advantage, so its not the kind of action fellow advanced players appreciate. Being retired, time is on my side, I have been known to go to the card club and not play because the games look bad to me. Thanks for the post, it greatly interests me, your game is more pure than my game, more static. My poker bankroll has steadily grown since I became more disciplined about quitting when I hit my win number, I use it as kind of a backstop, it helps prevent me from going on tilt. I wont beat myself up for losing my designated loss number, but I will beat myself up for getting ahead then giving it all back. And I over tip the dealers like a drunken sailor, they are working people, I am not. Its like buying some immortality, dealers remember me, appreciate me, and miss me when I’m not there…
I never stop when I am losing. I play for pleasure but like to be a winner. If I come for 7-10 days and have a winning streak do I stop? No. In my opinion if you quit during losing streak you may miss the periods where the machines are dealing quads etc. I know vpoker payback is known for each game but payback is not spread out evenly. Vpoker machines do go thru cycles anywhere you play. I just keep playing. Last visit I was playing at Fremont and down 3k or so. Got it back during a 30 minute period where machines were in the hit mode. They went cold 30 minutes later. It is complicated. If you are winning and keep playing statistics will catch up with you eventually if you live there your method may be different
I’ve played video poker in some special situations where having a preset stopping point for both wins and losses made sense. I’ve known some casinos to base their initial bounceback offers almost solely on the amount won or lost on my first play, rather than the size of that play. There’s no point in my losing more than whatever amount I think is the threshold for their best offers, so I’ll stop when I hit that loss limit. On the flip side, if I’ve won a certain amount, there comes a point where it’s no longer positive EV for me to lose what I’ve won PLUS the amount I need to lose to get the good bounceback. So I’ll quit when I hit that win goal, too. That doesn’t contradict anything Bob wrote. It all falls under Bob’s #1, “Only betting when you have the advantage.”
(PS–thanks for mentioning my software, Bob. Much appreciated!)
We have a saying in poker: if you can’t spot the fish at your table, you’re it. 😉
The notion of “cycles” is nonsense.
Mike Caro had an idea ,, “the threshold of misery”. What he meant was, some people, if they loose XXX
number of dollars in a session, become completely numb to further losses, and that can be bankroll
disaster. In any form of gambling, if this description fits, make sure to never play beyond a XX loss.