Chasing a Loss

Winning poker players have learned how to deal with the psychology of losing. They understand that it's all one big session, and that if they are continually introspective, analyzing and improving their game, the short-term losses will be offset by long-term gains. They avoid tilt in all of its various forms, and they minimize their emotional investment in the game, even when the bad beats do come. Winning players understand that poker is a game of processing information through logical filters and detach their emotional feelings from that process as much as possible; they also understand that sometimes, you can play a hand perfectly and still lose.

--F-Train, July 28, 2004

Here's the situation. You're stuck. It probably doesn't matter how much you're stuck, but if you're a limit player, let's say you're stuck 35 big bets, and if you're a no-limit or pot-limit player, let's peg it at 2 buy-ins. You know that you're better than these donkeys, dammit, and there's no way you're going to end your session stuck to the likes of them.

News flash, hotshot. Any time you start chasing a loss, you are subtly tilting. The bigger the loss you're chasing, the more each individual hands starts to mean to you emotionally, and the more you tilt. Taking a bad beat as you are scraping the bottom of this barrel is like throwing a live grenade into a munitions depot.

Does this mean you should get up as soon as you're stuck? Of course not. It takes money to make money, and sometimes you're going to take those proverbial two steps backward before you get moving forward. However, the longer the session goes without improvement, the more weight you have to give to the notion that maybe today just isn't your day.

This should be a fairly obvious concept, but I have to continually remind myself of it. I like green numbers in PokerTracker. I despise red numbers. I will play sessions longer than intended solely to turn a red session number into a green one. Today's session brought a particularly egregious example. I sat down at a 6-max table and posted in the big blind. Within 3 hands, I knew that I was at a very dangerous table at which the variance would be very high. There were plenty of other games going at my limit, so getting on a different, lower variance table would not be a problem. I knew that the most +EV play, for my style and against these particular opponents, was to immediately switch tables.

But, the red number. I was already stuck 1.5 small bets. 1.5 small bets! Not even a full big bet. But I abhored that red number. So what did I do? I chased the loss, trying to just win that "one pot" that would get me back to even. Then I missed a few flops, and played a hand poorly. Mix in some variance and what happened? Within 50 hands, I found myself stuck 18 big bets and the tilt was creeping in, full on.

At that point, I decided I would play the last 7 big bets in my stack and if I lost them, I was done for the evening. I'm happy to say that I caught a bit of a rush and after another 50 hands, I was up 2 big bets for the session. As soon as my big blind came, I was off the table. But the donkey play had already been made 97 hands prior, by staying at a table I knew I shouldn't stay at, solely to chase a 1.5 small bet loss.

In these situations, when you know you are chasing a loss, I think the best way of dealing with the tilt is setting a cap point for your loss and a time limit to turn it around, and STICKING TO BOTH OF THEM.

Another example. I have a friend who, for anonymity's sake, we will call Shauna Dumbers. Shauna, like me, doesn't like red numbers (or at least, she wouldn't if she played online). Shauna will drive around Atlantic City at all hours of the night looking for "a good game" of 1/2 60/300 NLHE solely to get unstuck $100 or $200. Not even a full buy-in. In the process of doing this, Shauna often loses even more money, because the discipline that she normally uses to make money goes out the window. The longer she plays, and the more tables she switches to/from, the more tired she becomes, leading to worse decisions and, inevitably, more losses. Steam builds.

Shauna doesn't know how to stop at that point. She will chase the loss past the points of hunger and exhaustion until someone bodily drags her from the table. What she needs are effective loss caps and time limits. Yes, she may go to bed with a red number showing an ugly loss, but tomorrow is always another day. It's all one big session, after all.

All of this is easier said than done. I think that right now, chasing losses is one of the biggest leaks in my game. After two decades of playing poker, I still hate to lose. I deal with it much, much better than I used to, but I still haven't developed the emotional discipline to just close up shop whenever and wherever I need to.

But I'm getting there. Shauna, on the other hand, has a long uphill climb.

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Random personal poker update: despite the freakish nature of today's session, I'm still running riDONKulously good and find myself up 140 big bets over my last 1,500 hands. Would that it were always this easy.