How long should a poker session be?

For cash game players, session length varies a lot — from a quick 30 minutes online to several days at a live table. It usually depends on a delicate and unpredictable mix of enjoyment, profitability and schedule. And once making money over the long run becomes the priority, it gets genuinely hard to know when to stop.

So why does it matter?

After 7 hours at a live table and a decent profit, it's not always obvious whether an extra hour is worth it. You might be a bit tired, you might be running card dead, maybe you feel like playing a hand or two for fun. But it might be a good moment to stop, and maybe you should have done so an hour ago.

When you get tired you're prone to make more mistakes, simply because you're not in a position to follow all the action. You can miss some action, miss a tell, or just take a sub-optimal decision that costs you right away.

What one tired mistake actually costs

A single mistake from inattention, or an unconscious loosening of your game, can have a surprisingly big impact on your hourly. Here's the arithmetic:

Cash games are forgiving, because you can quit as soon as you're not playing your best game. Doing the same at the end of a tournament is another story — a bad move there can send you to the rail early and make you miss the big payouts of the final table.

The slower costs

Mistakes will also increase your risk of tilting, and you want to avoid tilt at any cost. A single tilt session is never good for your results or your mental health, and for some players it builds up over time and ends up with a pretty disastrous impact on the bankroll.

Over the long run, especially if poker is your main source of income, there's also a lack of motivation and burnout waiting for you. Those take a real toll on you and on your bankroll, so it's worth being cautious about it.

More often than not it's a good thing to stop even if you still want to play. You'll be extra motivated for the following session.

And limiting a session gives you time back. Time to:

• Work on your game and get better;
• Get in a better condition for the next sessions, with whatever works for you: working out, getting more sleep, meditating;
• Enjoy your time doing something else entirely.

When should you stop, then?

There are a lot of signs telling you it's time to leave the table. If you recognize a few of these, it's probably worth asking yourself whether this is a good moment to go.

Some of them are about you:

• Plain fatigue. You start to yawn, you feel uncomfortable on your chair, you just want to sleep.
• You're constantly distracted by what's happening around the table and you're having trouble following all the action.
• You've just lost a big pot and you can feel the next twenty minutes won't be your best poker.

And some are about the game:

• The whale at the table went bust or left.
• The field got tough and the game won't be very profitable anymore.
• You've played a significant amount of time, made a decent profit, and you're happy to leave with that result.

One more, if you have a heavy schedule of 8-hour sessions five or more days a week: try playing one hour less every day and see how it goes for you. You can set an alarm to remind you to leave the table.

Finding your own number

Poker Analytics estimates your optimal cash game duration for live and online separately. The optimal duration report takes your own sessions and shows where your results stop improving with time played. The hourly efficiency report does the same thing by time of day. There's also a stop notification: once the app knows your optimal duration, it simply tells you when you've played enough — nothing to set up, you just get notified when the time has come.

Keep in mind too that poker results are subject to variance, and so is your optimal duration. Take it as a reminder that playing as long as you can every time you sit at a table is probably never a great idea.

Decide before you sit down

Before starting fix yourself a time limit, and set an alarm to be reminded. It will be much easier to be accountable.

And treat it as a reminder rather than a law. If you're two hours in and playing badly, nothing forces you to stay. Leaving early is always fine if you don't feel like playing: if you're tired or don't feel excited to play, it's probably a good idea to stop.

So take your time management seriously, it has a real impact both short and long term. There's always a point where playing more won't produce a positive effect, and there's probably a better way to allocate those hours so you get better results when you do play. Think about what you want to achieve in poker, and go get those chips!

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