For live cash game winning players/pros/grinders etc.. , what do you think would be an average amount of time that they play during each session?

im currently at 3.5hrs, and on good pace to be a legit five hour avg for the next year. i also usually have a 1buyin stop loss which sometimes causes me to play shorter sessions , and sometimes i also quite early when ive won a lot in the first feew hours.

I peak at four hours.
Then I re-peak at 10 hours.
I don't know why that is, but it's a DEFINITE and consistent performance line.

My longest session was 16 hrs, 8am to 12am, but I think regularly I sit for about 4-5 hours. After that I start to gamble too much, and less than that I feel annoyed that I even bothered to show up.

On weekdays when I was playing a lot, it'd usually be about 4-5 hours, but that followed an 8-10 hour work day already.

On weekends, I'd routinely sit and play for 10+ hours depending on how good the game is.

My longest session was 22 straight hours, followed by a 4 hour break/nap and then another 18 hours of playing after that.

OP: A 1-buyin stop loss seems to be a very bad idea. What if you take a bad beat in a good game? Your stop loss should be a number to prevent tilting. Honestly, people who implement stop-losses seem to be risk averse or lacking good self-analysis skills. If you're sitting in a good game and you're playing well and have an edge, you should stay as long as you feel like playing. If there's a super donk at the table who's outdrawn me 5x for stacks, I'm not going anywhere as long as I'm still playing my A game and feel that I can still win money there. However, if there's a super donk and he hasn't outdrawn me yet and I'm like dead even but I feel like I'm not playing well, then it's time to get up and go home.

So true.

A couple months ago, I went $900 deep into a $1/$2 game in ... about an hour or so? Anyway, I busted the table 2 hours later and cashed out $2K ahead.

It all depends.

my current bankroll dictates the 1 stop-loss. however, even if i had plenty of money available, i would likely only move the stop-loss up to 2buyin max. im kind of a lazy person that doesnt mind taking the rest of the day off after losing a buyin in 20mins if it so happens. i also think it is much healthier on my mental state to have the small stop loss. my current avg win is only 1.3x my avg loss, so i think i need to keep my stop losses short until i play much longer sessions w more bigger wins.

I tend to play too long when I'm stuck. I don't inherently play poorly when I behind, but I play poorly when I'm tired. So I think a reasonable stop-loss for me is 18 hours of being awake. At a certain point, 44567 looks a lot like a straight. Oh, and the robbers come late at night.

ever stop & think the reason your avg win is only 1.3x your avg loss is BECAUSE you only have a 1 BI stop loss?




idk, i can't handle having anything less than 3-4 in my pocket, even if i usually only use one...




*edit*
i guess what i mean to say is if you dont play more, you can't win more...


just not sure if that came across properly...

yeah i understand this. but im walking away a winner 78% of the time and making 14bb/hr, so im not sure i need to be changing up my current style

You talk as if you play for a living, yet many of the habits you are describing are awful habits to be in if you actually do play for a living.

Your bankroll should allow you to comfortably lose several buyins in any game that you are properly rolled for.

Playing for 20 mins and losing a buyin is just dumb. If you're doing this for a living, you should play hours, not results.

It's all one long session whether or not you play for a living. You didn't come to see how long you could make one buyin last, you came to play poker.

I usually play until all my money's gone. That ranges from 20 minutes to 20 hours, but believe you me, my money will be gone by the end of the session.

i mean how often are we talking about going there and losing more than 2 buyins?

if u play like 200 sessions a calendar year and only have to pull out your third buyin maybe 1-5 times a year, i'd say cool no prob. any more times than that and i gotta question how winning of a player we really are.

I usually bring 3-4 buyins and usually have a buyin worth of borrowing power if it got to that point. Also, I don't usually play if for some reason I have anything to do within that 12 hours. I don't always play that long but I want to have the option to be able to play that long. I'd say my average session is 7-9 hours.

It has nothing to do with how good of a player you are and everything to do with your style. If you sit there and are a nit and wait for AA and KK and stuff, yeah, you shouldn't lose much. You shoudn't win much either if people are paying attention. Your style and how it interacts with the styles of your opponents will dictate your variance.

You're far too focused on buyins for some reason. Focus on playing well. If I get my money in AIPF with AA vs KK and lose, I'm gonna rebuy. If it happens 7 times in a row and the game is good, I'm gonna rebuy again becuase I'm making good decisions. If you make a stupid play and donk off a buyin, maybe it's time to go if you were tilting. Really, how many times you buy in should not have any bearing on anything.

Play within your bankroll. Find games where you have an edge. Stay until that edge is gone or until you no longer feel like playing. If you do these things, then you won't have to worry about how many buyins you lost last Tuesday and how many you won the next Thursday, since it's all about your winrate.

For me, i can't afford to lose more than a buy-in or two at 1-2 NL because i have a family to take care of and poker is not my sole income, i only play it 3-4 x a month live, so if the OP just plays part time and does not have much income i can relate with the 1 buy-in stop period. But, if OP has a decent bankroll then it definitely does not make any sense to implement this stop/loss method.

When i play i usually only bring a little over a buy-in and a half, mainly because 1) i play pretty tight until i'm ahead a little which isn't that difficult to do at 1-2 NL 2) my bankroll is not big as my wins go towards expenses and 3) i usually can only play around 4-5 hours at once anyways because after this time period i start to loosen up and lose money when i get card dead for a couple hours.

The only time i brought more than 4 buy-ins with me was when i had my worst session ever at live 1-2 (-400). I made some bad decisions and compounded them by thinking, "Oh i have the cash with me, I can play loose" but instead of playing loose i played just awful.

Huh? How about total net profit!! My goal is to win as often as possible (W-L) and also as much as possible (profit). I dont see how having multiple sessions where u lose more than 2 buyins at your current level is good for these results.

Now, maybe if your average winning session was like 3-4 buyins, then i could be cool with losing a few buyins at a time. Does anybody even average as high as 3-4buyins per winning session tho? That seems like a sick figure to me. I mean i guess if u averaged like 12hrs per session maybe you could win that much. Im only at 3.5hrs creeping towards the goal of 5hours next year

I don't wanna LOL, but LOL!

-$400? WOW! I played 1/2 at MGM Grand ($200 max buyin) here before and Lost $900 in 90 minutes. I did run KK into AA 3 times, which was amazing, but anyway.

I just can't believe that your biggest loss is 2 buyins. Maybe you just play really tight. I dunno.

Please explain this further. What limits do you play and why do you stay until your money is gone? Or am i missing some type of sarcasm here?

i think he means he runs bad

Well, i just started playing live 1-2 NL at the B&M's within the past two months. Before that i played alot online, micro NL. I used to play 3-6 / 4-8 limit until last year though. I've probably played only 13-19 sessions of NL my entire life and also most of that has been within this past month and a half, the most i've made has been about $1600, and the most i've lost is $400. I usually end up averaging around +$350/session playing a TAG game for the first couple hours until I've made some money (then I'll loosen up considerably). If i'm card dead for hours, i'll continue to play TAG/ weak tight even (which is probably not optimal poker but given my liquid bankroll options i dont have much choice) and then just walk away after 5 hours or so.

are you gonna sit there & tell us you honestly leave immediately if the very first hand you play, you get it all in w/ AcAd against KcKd & the Kh hits the river?????


idk... nobody's telling you to go loose 3-4 buy ins a night... but bring them incase gay cooler situations happen, because like has already been said, you shouldn't leave a good game cause you got unlucky once... ooooooooo you lost a hundred dollars to the guy check calling his gut shot all the way down... sack up, reload, & stack him in under 50 hands... getting sucked out on once seems like a silly reason to leave if you ask me...


oh yeah, and going there hoping to win one buy in seems pretty stupid as well...


just my opinion...

Ok, the limited sample size makes it more reasonable. I wasn't laughing at the $ amount, but the 2 buyin loss as "largest loss ever" just made me laugh

You don't measure wins and losses in terms of buyins, you measure it in your hourly rate. If you're a winning player, more hours = more money. You keep talking about how your average win is 1.3x your avg loss, but you're looking at it wrong. It's about hours.

Your goal in poker is TO MAKE AS MANY CORRECT (+EV) DECISIONS AS POSSIBLE! Winning money is a byproduct of that.

Also, nowhere did I say that just becuase I get down 2 buyins, I leave a 2 buyin loser. Sometimes I do, but that's not the goal. The goal is to continue to play in a profitable game. If I keep losing buyins, the only way to continue to play is to buy in again. What you're missing is that you should be more focused on playing good poker and block out the other stuff. So what if you're getting the money in good and losing? You could be playing the best poker of your life and be down 5 buyins in a game where you have a HUGE positive expectation. If you're too focused on buyins and stuff, you're gonna leave. If you're focused on playing well where you have an edge, then you realize that this is a good situation for you and that if you continue to play, things should work out for you.

You shouldn't talk about "sessions" so much becuase you're playing one big session. Today and tomorrow and yesterday and last week don't matter. Buyins and sessions don't matter. Only the long run is important. Only your hourly rate judges whether or not you're a winning player.

Can you grasp this concept at all?

Oh yea, i know man. Actually, i feel pretty fortunate that i haven't run into any serious coolers yet like KK v. AA AIPF or something like that yet Like this hand, where i should have lost $900.

First thing is that losing 2 buy-ins is easy even if you're playing well. Second, it should be pretty rare that you lose a buy-in that early -- like AA v KK AIPF. Honestly, I like to spend an hour getting to know the cast of characters before I start sticking money in.



Depends on how I got stuck, but yeah ... and you should know people are going to swipe at this ...



You have to give action to get it. There's a couple guys who play locally who sit and wait for the nuts and see if someone will pay them. Every once in a while they find someone who will, but most generally they literally get blinded down. Yeah, in a $1/$2 NL game.



LOL



This is pretty solid.

Also, in 70 hours of live play, let's say you average 25 hands an hour, so you've played 1750 hands, which is an INCREDIBLY small sample size. I don't even play a huge volume of hands online, but when i'm 4-tabling, I see about 350-400 hands per hour and this month I've played about 13,000 hands.

Basically, you ain't seen nothing yet!

I wish i could play longer sessions and more hours, and i'm slowly building to that, but it's mentally tough man, not to mention the physical aspects.

Im just not sure if optimally my mental game is still where i want it to be 7hrs after i start a session. So for me, i guess only going to the casino with Xamt of buyins and having the small stop-loss helps me play smaller sessions in general, which leads to me being in better mental state for the hours that I am playing.

We are talking about poker right? It's still just sitting in a chair I think.

My advice doesn't require you to play more or less hours. Just look at things differently. If you only want to play 4 hours a day, then only play 4 hours. Just bring 10 buyins if you need them so that if the game is good, you can continue to play for those 4 hours. Got it?

goddamnit -- now where's the link to ESPN's The Nuts where they debate whether or not poker is a sport?

I was joking. I play 2-5nl $400 max when I play live. I bring between $1200-$1600 when I go. I think having a set amount of time to play at the table is very stupid. I get up when I'm tired, when I have won a lot and the table isn't as good, or when I'm out of money.



Not really, that makes me sound like a whiny bitch. Was just a joke. I have a pretty successful live poker career. It's a lot easier.

So lets just say i am one of those people that plays a bit below my normal A game while being stuck a buyin due to poor play or bad luck(125-75bb). And by the way, i think a lot of people fit into that category.
Since poker is about the long run then on my poker timeline, after losing the buyin i will not have a few more hours of less-than-acceptable perfomance. My timeline would then start back up on a new day, hopefully a clean outlook , and not playing from behind thus now playing a more optimal game.

I guess in a way its like being a basketball coach, and being able to call timeouts as things go downhill. Since poker is one long session its just like I'm calling a timeout to keep my A team out on the floor.

food, shelter(clothing,comfort), rest, etc.
any physical thing that can affect your mental game

Do you do this for a living?

i play live part time with hopes of increasing that at my own pace. rarely play online anymore