Pokerwiner.com → Within poker principles
PLAYING POKER
It all comes down to a fundamental poker theory in reality: The next hour you play is the next hour you play. You can quit now because your chips have reached some arbitrary point. Then you can play your next hour tomorrow, picking up right where you left off. Or you can play your next hour right now.
I should add that while many poker players are annoyed by those who hit and run, I frequently like seeing them do it. When a good player hits and runs it gets him out of the game, allowing for the possibility that a bad player will take his place.
(It also tells me that this guy may not be as good as I think. If he is illogical about this, so may he be about other aspects of the poker game). When a bad poker player hits and runs it slows down his losing. (This is analogous to the winning player making less over a period of time if he uses stop wins. In either case the stop wins simply slow down the inevitable).But it does help him to come back and play another day. That is usually good for the health of a game. I suppose it is only those players who play near a break even level, who I don’t like to see hitting and running.
I believe that their keeping a seat filled is probably the best thing they can do for a game. The next time you are winning and are tempted to quit to “lock it up” even though the game is still good, and even though you had originally planned to quit at a later time, ask yourself what logical reason you have for quitting early. You may find that you are thinking much like the roulette player who bets black because he has seen the ball land on red five times in a row, and so figures it is “due” to land on black. You fear that because you have been winning for a while, you are due to have a downswing. By now you can see that that is just as naïve as the roulette player’s reasoning. In fact, you are wasting your time even thinking about it.
I submit that you will earn more by thinking instead about your play, and that of your opponents. After all, the next hour you play is the next hour you play. Thinking about quitting because you’re winning is folly.
"The Best Player I' ve Ever Seen " / The Hit and Run Follies / An Illusory Winner /
On Randomness, Rushes, Hot Seats, and Bad Luck Dealers / Bad Beat? Think Again
Why Learn to Beat Tougher Games? / Practicing Game Preservation
Short-Handed Play: Don’t Miss out / How I Learned Poker: Part I
How I Learned Poker : Part II