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avjul66
Enthusiast
Silver Level
For me a bad session is a combination of 2 things:
Lose Money because of bad plays .mistakes
Lose Money because bad luck run
Well after all for me a bad session is every time I lose Money but the solution is Tomorow is a new day
Lose Money because of bad plays .mistakes
Lose Money because bad luck run
Well after all for me a bad session is every time I lose Money but the solution is Tomorow is a new day
Stevepdx
Rock Star
Silver Level
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy
hashtag
Rock Star
Silver Level
Yep, the above is true. I look at my bad sessions and nearly always find mistakes (and tag them as so). I tag bad beats and unfortunate hands also. In most of these sessions, I find if I had not made mistakes, I would have made money, or broke even.
Your question, how do you know you are having a bad session? A bad session for me is a combination of two of the following:
1. Long periods (1000 hands or more) of poor starting hole cards. This is when it is very noticeable that you have not been getting many premiums, or playable hands. Usually you are folding pretty much constantly.
2. Unusual amount of missed flops. These are card dead periods lasting a few hours. I measure these using hit flop ratio statistic. Usually for unpaired hole cards this is ~32%. Last night for example I played 1500 hands in cash games and I hit the flop 16% over the whole session.
3. Greater than 5 large pots lost per 2 hours due to bad beats, unavoidable coolers and suckouts. Many times I have been playing to make back money lost early in a session. Other times I am finishing with 5BI instead of 10BI due to bad beats/crap luck toward the end of my session.
That's for me anyway, but the quantity you play will have an effect also.
Lheticus
Legend
Silver Level
For my answer to your question in a nutshell, see your text that I put in bold. Results over one session are completely immaterial. If you've been getting unlucky, but you are still playing correctly and there are people at the table you are confident you can procure chips from, it is not the best idea to walk away until you pass what is known as the "Threshhold of Pain"--you're down so much that you legitimately cannot compute losing more.
Something no one else seems to be emphasizing in their responses is the importance of having people at the table that you know you can take chips from--the proverbial "spotting the sucker". This is hugely important. If there's only sharks in the water and no fish compared to your skill level, your immediate response should be "GTFO NOW!" If you sit down at a table with fish, but people come and go and if the fish are going and sharks coming, you should probably be going.
P.S.: For anyone wanting to criticize this advice, please bear in mind when I say "sharks" and "fish" I'm speaking relative to a given player's skill level, where "sharks" are players that that given player would have to get significantly lucky to take a good amount of their chips, and "fish" are players that that given player would not have to do so to take their chips.
P.P.S: This seems to be a topic related to Cash Games--I'm curious why it's in General Poker.
ThePokerHobbyist
Rising Star
Bronze Level
Intellectually I know there's no such thing as running bad- each hand is starting again. For me the question is how I'm dealing with it- if I'm able to shake off each bad beat or a run of unplayables and just keep hunkering down, I'll play on. It's when I start to get emotional about it- trying to convince myself a hand is playable, getting annoyed at other players, things like that, and I don't feel I can right the ship in my own head that I know its time to walk away for a while.