Poker Stop Losses
No poker player wins every
day, and anyone who tells you they do is a liar.
It is an unfortunate reality that poker players,
even the best, will have days where they can’t
seem to buy a pot. It is standard for a player
to get overly frustrated with his inability to
win when having a bad day, and if uncontrolled
this frustration can snowball into huge losses.
This is where stop losses come into play. A stop
loss is just as it sounds, a quantifiable number
at which a player should “stop his losses.”
There are some players out there who disagree
with the concept of a stop loss altogether, but
it takes a very special player to eliminate the
need for a stop loss. Stop losses are almost
always calculated in number of buy ins. The
reason that stop losses are set in buy ins
instead of dollars is simple. If you are playing
5/10 and lose $1000 it won’t be a big deal, but
if you are playing .50/1 and lose $1000 you are
in big trouble. It is important to put stop
losses into perspective.
Who needs a stop loss?
Virtually every poker player
should have some type of stop loss in place.
There are some players who can get away without
using a stop loss, but they are far and few
between. The players who don’t need to use a
stop loss possess superior emotional control.
If you have ever tilted, even
the slightest bit, you should strongly consider
setting a stop loss for yourself. You may have a
very high tolerance for variance, but everyone
has their tipping point. Most players can endure
a few buy in downswing without going crazy, but
many will get upset over a 5 buy in loss, even
more over a 10 buy in loss, and pretty much
every player will be extremely frustrated with a
20 buy in downer. The stop loss is used to help
thwart these losses. When going through a
downswing it can start to feel natural to lose
money. The stop loss won’t make you win, but it
will stop you from losing. It is crucial that
any poker player maintains a strong bankroll,
and a stop loss will help to achieve this goal.
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Setting (and sticking to) a
stop loss
It is easy to decide that you
need a stop loss, but it can be a challenge
deciding what that stop loss should be, and even
harder to adhere to it. For cash games 10 buy
ins would be a bit of an extreme stop loss, some
would say it is useless. A more reasonable stop
loss for cash games would be 4 or 5 buy ins.
This is enough of a loss that it can easily turn
into a disaster, but small enough that the
damage can be limited with the implementation of
a stop loss. For SNG, a stop loss of 10 buy ins
would be pretty solid. SNGs are high variance by
nature, so any SNG player will have to accept
that 10 buy in downswings will happen and are
rather common.
Once you have set a stop loss
you must be willing to follow it. After all,
what use is setting a rule if you are only going
to break it anyway? This is perhaps the toughest
aspect of stop losses. When you are playing it
is much easier to convince yourself to keep
playing when you are losing than it is to
convince yourself to quit. Players are more
prone to chase their losses than to cut them.
Some of the money you save with your stop loss
will end up being profit in the long run.
