When to go to bed

This, I believe, is as important, or more so, than knowing how to play low pocket pairs.

I would be very surprised if I were the only one to have dealt with this problem. Say, you played five or six hours during the day (assuming you are home sick or unemployed or it's Saturday and your wife is at her mom's for the weekend - whatever) and hadn't been doing very well, then you get into a couple of freerolls around 8 or 9 pm. You start doing well in one of them and let the other two go, eventually. You play your heart out and there are five really good players at the final table, one of whom is you. It goes on forever and is after two when you take first place. Say it's around fifty bucks, or just less.
You know the minimum to withdraw is fifty bucks and, anyway, you want to have a few bucks to get into a few tournies with better odds than 2K or better players. So you play in a cash game with half your winnings.
Your luck is still holding and next thing you know you have $75 - enough to withdraw $50 and still have $25 to play with.
The perfect time to go to bed.
But you are still energized from the WIN. You ignore the voice in your head saying GO TO BED!
The worse case scenario is you lose every penny of the $75 after awhile on a bad beat. You name it, you flop a nut flush and are beat by a boat. Whatever.
The real question I am asking is - HOW do you learn to listen to that inner voice that knows when it is time to quit. How do you know you aren't on a winning streak that might go on until dawn.
Damn, it's a hard question!!
Leftylou wants to know what you think.

if you ever learn the answer...please let me know...was up to $107 on tilt earlier this week and lost it in 3 days...lol thank goodness it was money from a freeroll win...but still sucked....teach me the trick of knowing when to quit and i will be a millionaire in a year lol

it is hard to say really when it is time to get up. cuz if you are playin good i would say for you to stay. but online it can be fickle cuz of the variance that happens so quickly. in a live game i would always tell youto sit there until you were asleep. but online if i get up around 4 to 5 times my buy in i will always get up then and move to another table if i feel i need to keep playing. that is just my opinion. this way you save your winnings but keep playing. gl and play on.

It's a matter of bankroll managment. There are a ton of blogs out there, and many chapters in good books, but no one but yourself can tell you when to quit. Try setting time limits...a set number of hours and win or lose you are done at the end. You can even set a timer. I am guilty of it to...you just have to try and capture self control.

A good poker player is a player who knows his limits and knows stop during periods of bad luck.

It's time to go to bed when:

a) You're tired and not playing your best
b) You're exercising poor bankroll management (i.e. putting half your bankroll on a table at once)
c) The game isn't good (no bad players in your cash game handing out chips)

Although winning and losing streaks are real, they don't predict immediate or future results unless they're affecting your state of mind. It's smarter to base your decision to play or not to play on practical considerations rather than how you feel your luck might be going.

When your tired.. playing tired means you aren't playing your best poker.

you go to bed when your head tell you so. because at that very moment you are not thinking about the hand you are in. So you have all ready lost. Then you are down and you start to say to yourself, I'll go to bed when i get back up to 75. that doesn't happen so then you say to yourself, well just one more big hand then i will go to bed. Next thing you know, thats right your busted.

Then after all that you are going to play crappy cards for about 2 days because you are so mad at your self that you didn't go to bed when you first thought of it. THE END

Its hard for me to answer this question, seeing as I play poker till 3-5 am sometimes.

good question lol im get my money through freerolls than when i get money i will blow it the nxt night after playn 4hours straight. only playn because ive got money

This is a question that I obviously don't have the answer to. Its 3:40 here. I also have a problem of doing a late tournament and its like the damn thing never ends. I think the best way is just to set reasonable guidelines ahead of time and stick to them no matter what.

I set my limit to midnight during the week.

I must get up at 6 at the latest.

No limit on the weekends.


Go to bed if you're tired.

When you win a tourney or a big pot go to bed or take a break then you'll come back refreshed and still able to make good decisions.

I dont really value sleep as much as I use to. With that being said...it's not wonder I play better during the day after I wake up than at nite time.

Better to tilt in your dreams than in real life with real money on the line...

the answer ive learned to just suck it up and take the winnings..when u win one tourny and ur up for the night just go to bed and sleep knowing your ahead..even if its not that much its more than you started with..cuz the worst feeling in the world is knowin you were up about 4 hrs ago and now u dont ahve anything and even more worse is you have nothing to do on the site the nxt day except freerolls..the sooner you can just suck it up and quit with whatever winnings you have, the longer youll have ur money on the site, the more chances you have to win money, and the more sleep youll get

i dont know the best time for you to quit but when you are playing and your almost asleep can you look me up and play a few games with me as i could always use some extra xash

If I start to feel tired, I stop entering new tournaments for the night and concentrate on the one(s) I'm already in, so I'm not overloading my brain. Whenever I bust out of those - whether it's 30 minutes or 2 hours later - I go do something not related to poker for a little bit, to help myself wind down. It could be watching TV, reading, whatever, just to take my mind off of things. After half an hour or so the adrenaline has worn off and I'm ready to actually go to bed and get some sleep. It's worked pretty well for me so far.

very nice answer

Going to bed is an added luxury of winning a long tourney . So its not a problem for me. Just set rules for yourself an follow through . Just like correct bankroll management.

I play bad sometimes during the day when I'm wide awake, but play terribleeeeeeeee at night when I am tired. During the week it's no problem because I need to get up early for work. The weekends however are a different story. I have been known to fall asleep at the computer in the middle of a tourney, wake up , and actually go on and win the thing!! Seriously though I would reccomend hitting the sack at the first sign of you dozing off.....

You snooze, you DONT lose!

Why would you want to withdraw 50 bucks when you only have 75 ????.
Three words of advice ......Bank Roll Management.

Its important not to add excess stress to your body. know your limits, both on the table and off.

I'll sleep enough when I'm dead. Besides, we all know there's no getting back lost time.

im not one to say since i will play until 4am sometimes, but the best for is to set a time limit on how long your going to play for a session. and if i happen to roll real good il keep going...and hopefully stop before i lose anything. but once you realize how many times youv passed your time limit (regardless of your hot/cold streak), youl kinda get this voice that says, enough is enough lol.

Sleep is very important. Once time I won 100$ at nigh tourney(5pm morning), and tomorrow I woke up with pain in head. I turned on poker and I coundnt think normaly, so I lost everything

fi the cards are coming and u don't have morning committments, keep playing. You only get on a real streak every now and again. When the cards go south, get out.

always a tuff one. I get really upset withmyself when i let the love of poker defeat what my body is telling me. I can tell you so many cases where i have put in my 6 hours for the day and it `12:30 at night im exhausted yet i decide to do more tournamnets. ALWAYS a mistake. My brain is exhausted and my greed just got the best of me. So listein to your body.... Dont depict it on luck because good players dont live by luck . Just hours of effective poker playing.

When you're tired enough that you don't feel like your playing your A-game, or if all the fishes leave then get up. When I'm playing I try not to think about the money, just tell yourself they are chips. If you use proper bankroll management you'll be fine.

I think you all may be missing something, especially if your married. You go to bed, directly to bed, whenever your wife, or in my case, directs me to go. I'm probably not winning online anyway and maybe, just maybe, I may get lucky...well I can alway play again once she goes to sleep.

when u fill thats enought... you need fill it ;]

i have the same problem, i have played 4-5 hour freerolls, cashed, and then go on and lose the money in a matter of hands.

i have the same problem i never know when to quit... especially when i have a descent amount of money to play with... ill play like 3 or 4 sit n go's at a time and if i lose i dont care cause i got more to play with, but they add up quick and after a few hours of playing im down $50-$60 and its like 4 in the morning lol... this week was a bad week for me with bad beats ive lost over $200, yet i continue to play WTF??? (im not addicted lol)