{"id":124453,"date":"2022-10-25T13:02:49","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T20:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=124453"},"modified":"2022-10-25T13:02:57","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T20:02:57","slug":"how-much-should-i-lose-before-i-quit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/how-much-should-i-lose-before-i-quit\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Should I Lose Before I Quit?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve been asked variations of this question more than one hundred times over the years. Sometimes phrased as, \u201cIf I lose $100 (or some other number), should I give up for the day?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My answer usually was some form of the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Only play when you have the advantage. If the house has the edge, don\u2019t play. It\u2019s fairly easy to calculate in video poker whether you have the edge or not. In general, if you don\u2019t know if you\u2019re the favorite or not, you\u2019re not.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    1. 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.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
      1. Are you still playing alertly?<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

        If the first two conditions are met, and you can answer the third question in the affirmative, there\u2019s no reason to stop playing just because you\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        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 — \u201cThinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts\u201d (2018)  and \u201cQuit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away\u201d (2022). In each book, Annie takes a somewhat different view of stopping when losing than I\u2019ve been preaching for years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

        She has another recent book — \u201cHow to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices.\u201d (2020). Reading it is on my To Do list. Perhaps she addresses this there too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        The two books I\u2019ve read present her ideas in different ways. It\u2019s not that she changed her mind between the two books, it\u2019s just that she\u2019s presenting the same phenomenon in different contexts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        In \u201cThinking in Bets,\u201d she\u2019s 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\u2019t quit, she\u2019d have to explain her reasoning to her group. There can be good reasons for continuing, but she\u2019ll 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\u2019t follow that default, made it possible for her to step back and make a more rational decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        In \u201cQuit,\u201d she\u2019s speaking of rules made in advance about when to quit in certain circumstances, possibly when you don\u2019t have a group to which you\u2019re accountable. Her point is that it\u2019s better to make these rules in advance than try to make them on a case-by-case basis in the heat of the moment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

        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? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Before I answer that, let me argue that poker and video poker are very different games. In video poker, it\u2019s relatively easy to calculate whether or not you\u2019re the favorite. Conditions to the game usually don\u2019t change incrementally. (They can change drastically all at once — when 10x points ends at midnight, or you\u2019re playing for a progressive which somebody hits — but usually they don\u2019t change incrementally along the way. If it was a good game before you lost your $100, it\u2019s still a good game.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Poker is a much more difficult game than video poker. It\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

        It can be difficult to evaluate whether you\u2019re a favorite in a poker game (and it changes over the course of a game), whereas it\u2019s relatively easy to do this in video poker.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

        So, while I believe Duke\u2019s rules make a lot of sense in poker (and many other decision areas in life), I\u2019m sticking with my own rules in video poker — which is a much simpler game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        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.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        A rule of thumb of \u201cno driving after two drinks unless it is at least two hours since the last drink\u201d is a much safer rule than \u201cI\u2019ll figure it out at the time.\u201d Similarly, for me anyway, a rule of \u201cdon\u2019t play more than six hours straight\u201d makes a lot of sense. After six hours, if I can rest two or more hours, then it\u2019s fine to resume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        This would be a much better rule for me to follow than \u201cI will decide at the time whether I am playing alertly.\u201d I\u2019m now 75 years of age. I would have made a different rule at age 50. And at age 85, if I\u2019m still playing, my rule may well be three hours or less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        As Duke freely admits in her books, she wasn\u2019t always perfect at following her guidelines. And I certainly haven\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        I\u2019ve been asked variations of this question more than one hundred times over the years. Sometimes phrased as, \u201cIf I lose $100 (or some other number), should I give up for the day?\u201d My answer usually was some form of the following: Only play when you have the advantage. If the house has the edge, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"How Much Should I Lose Before I Quit? by Bob Dancer","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[29,2,3],"tags":[428,2162,196],"yoast_head":"\nHow Much Should I Lose Before I Quit? - Gambling With An Edge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/how-much-should-i-lose-before-i-quit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Much Should I Lose Before I Quit? - Gambling With An Edge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019ve been asked variations of this question more than one hundred times over the years. 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