When to Quit Play

29 August 2024

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: Frank Scoblete posted an interesting article on the August 27th about the overused saying that players should quit when they are ahead.

ABBY: We’ve all heard that one – over and over again.

CINDY: Like a cold sooner or later you are going to have to accept the fact that sooner of later you will get the disease even if you don’t know it. It is seemingly inevitable.

ABBY: Scoblete makes a good point that if a person believed that idea he or she would quit playing after a first win – and maybe never play again. That would be quitting when ahead. But no one plays like that.

CINDY: That would be nuts. People play to play and they want to last some time in order to satisfy their urge to play the games. I really don’t know anyone who would quit after a single first win and never play again.

ABBY: I think in reality we players, maybe those of us who play regularly like monthly or so, will find ourselves behind and not able to dig ourselves out. I think we all understand that reality. The games favor the casino, that is a fact. We will win some, lose some more, win some and so on. We aren’t surprised by that if we understand the nature of the games.

CINDY: I think the way to look at the question of when to quit a game is to understand that you are playing for the long run – terrible though that will be for almost all of us. We are in one big, long-lasting game. Our bankroll is not just for tonight or a few nights, but it must last us for all of our play against the house edge.

ABBY: We are actually playing one game against the house. Now, if we play multiple games against the house we can consider all of them to be a single game in terms of winning and losing money. Given time, be it tonight, tomorrow, whenever, we will (maybe) all be ahead. We try to buck the house edge but ultimately none of us can actually do that. Some of us can be short-range winners but none of us, we regular players, will win in the long run. If we could there would be no casinos.

CINDY: We understand the true nature of the casino games and why the casino makes money from them. The casinos have built and decorated their businesses in a pleasant way to make us enjoy the act of playing their games.

ABBY: Oh, sure, we get comps based on the casinos’ assumption that we are expected to lose a certain amount of money based on how we play and we understand that.

CINDY: At least we should.

ABBY: I think just asking the question of when to leave a game opens us up to many thoughts. Should I give myself a certain amount of money to wager and quit when that is depleted? That would be an appropriate time to call it a session.

CINDY: I am guessing that most players have some form of money management or they would be hammered ultimately and have to quit playing.

ABBY: Quitting play would have to be imposed on them by the nature of their foolish play.

CINDY: So, quit while you’re ahead? Sounds good but it isn’t really in the cards for almost all of us. We are winners even though we are losers.