Quitting While You’re Ahead
Poker players in general have a standard reputation of being able to stay at a table for extremely long periods of time, a potential problem not really associated with any other competitive activities like Baseball or Soccer. This ability for extended sessions has lead to the heated debate of just when it is the right time for a player to step away from the table for the night and give it a rest. Should it be when you’re losing, when you’re ahead, or just after a certain amount of pre-determined time?
The popular opinion given by many novice and amateur players is that if you can, you should quick while you’re ahead. It’s hard to argue with this line of logic as if allows you to walk out of the card room with profit in your pocket, a far better outcome than if you decided to leave while down a few hundred (or more). There is a flipside argument for this way of thinking though, as many high-end amateur and professional players feel that you should almost never quit a game while you’re ahead as long as the game is still profitable and may continue to be for the immediate future.
The reasoning behind this concept is that players who sit at a poker table to make money should always want to stick around when the conditions are prime enough for you to have the opportunity to make some good money. Why play for three hours, win $400 and then quit, when instead you can play for six hours and potentially double your profits? In order to see which situation applies to you, you’ll have to decide whether you’re winning simply because you caught the right hand at the right moment, or if because you are noticeably a better player than most of the rest of your opponents and you have been consistently in the lead for most of the match.
If you’ve been playing decent poker, winning some and losing some, and then take down a few big pots because you were dealt monster hands that you were able to capitalize on, then yes you may want to quit while you’re ahead. However, if you are dominating the table with good reads, bluffs and catching great cards, you may want to stick around until you notice that maybe the other players have tightened up or the cold has started to run a little cold for you. As soon as the profitable table conditions have started to considerably decline, now is when it would be a good time to walk away from a very profitable table.
By: Chris Iaquinta
