wtf?? ok, the idea about limiting your loss to a certain dollar amount and quitting is fine. Setting up your goal for winning before you pick out a table is nuts.. your profits come from playing the best you can under the circumstances, whether it be half ur "goal" on a tight-passive table or 3-4 times that goal on a loose-aggressive table (keeping in mind in this case it can go the other way FAST) you really need to play a few hundred hands and find out ur tendancies and playing ability before you can set any kind of standard of winnings for yourself.

Not really the best method 9. Poker is a game where if your skills are good, the longer you play the better off you do.

Setting a dollar limit to win is bad for a few reasons. For example, what if you are in a juicy easy game? You may be able to easily win $50, so why stop at $20?

If you are looking for "when to stop", try setting a time limit or a hand limit. I know that I generally consider a session 100 hands online. So if I play 1 table, I don't mind stopping after 100 hands played. If I'm playing 4 tables at once, I don't usually stop until I've played 400 hands, etc.

Setting a loss limit may not be a bad idea though. However, in general it sounds like you need to tighten up your game. What limit do you play and what is your % of flops seen?

Setting a floor at which you're going to cut your losses for the day is fine, especially early on when you might not have the discipline to recognize when you are/aren't on your A-game.

Setting a ceiling for the maximum you're going to win in any given day though is the same as taking money out of your pocket. Like Kliph said -- what if you could have made $50 at that table but settled for only $20? That's the same as a day and a half of losses...not good.

When you find yourself at a table that's making you money -- keep riding that horse for as long as its profitable. Instead of cutting yourself off at a dollar figure, raise your floor. If you told yourself you'd stop when you lost 20 bucks and you find yourself up 50...then change your plan and tell yourself that if you ever get down to where you're ahead 30, then you'll stop. As long as you're pulling in cash though, you want to keep playing.

yea, just put urself at a winning maximum of $20 per night... just give me the extra winnings, and then ur all set

Originally Posted by Shade

Setting a ceiling for the maximum you're going to win in any given day though is the same as taking money out of your pocket.

So is setting a stop loss if you're a winning player who can recognize when the game is too tough for him.

Originally Posted by bonchkid

So is setting a stop loss if you're a winning player who can recognize when the game is too tough for him.

Agreed, which is why I said it was a good idea EARLY ON.

As a player gains experience, they become more attuned to what might be poor/unprofitable table conditions vs. what might be an early loss of money at an otherwise good table due to variance/bad run of cards. When you start out, you don't have that wealth of experience to fall back on to make a sound decision like that. That little voice that taunts you into staying at the table because 'you know you can get it back' isn't as correct as it gets later in your playing career.

The poster identified his/her self as fairly new with a history of break-even play and the tendency to play too long and/or play 'til the profit's gone. The idea of employing a stop loss in this position is a good one to tide the player over until they've developed the self-discipline to realize when they're not playing at their A-game or when table conditions aren't favorable to pulling down a profit.

OK, glanced thropugh the other posts, and got the idea that Stop losses are frowned upon.

Now heres my 2 cents:

Stop losses/wins are only useful for weaker players who can't read game conditions. They are best used when a player has a high standard deviation and can very easily lose back everything hes just made in a short period of time.

Everything Shade just said I was going to say... so I'm done.