Most poker players average a session lasting a couple of hours at least.  Mine are about 4 to 5 at a brick-and-mortar card room, and online can vary from an hour to five or six.  Sure, I’ve had the quick 10-minute session for fun over the lunch hour, but it’s rare that I’ll sit down for a short time just to get a poker fix, or quit after winning a nice pot.  Many poker players, however, have made the “hit-and-run” strategy the norm and not the exception.  While this may work for a while, using “hit-and-run” as your key to success at poker isn’t a good idea.  Here’s why.

This isn’t craps.  If you’ve ever shot craps, you know how quickly you can win a boatload of money.  Bet the pass line, take odds, have the shooter hit the point, and voila, you’ve just quadrupled your money.  Craps is the kind of game where many people will be up for a time, but as they stay longer at the table, will give their money back to the casino.  Very few players will leave after making a nice win, because they’ll want another nice win, another, and another.  However, if a player were to leave after making the nice score, and move along to the poker room or sports book armed with a good knowledge of the game, this would be a sound decision.  It’s not as if the craps game would suddenly “get good” or the magical shooter would arrive -- the odds will not change.

Poker isn’t craps.  Sure, you can make a quick score at a poker game just as you can at the craps table.  Leaving the craps table after that score makes perfect sense, but leaving the poker table after that big score isn’t a winning play.  Unlike other casino games, where you play against the house, in poker you are playing against other players.  Of course the true odds of hitting a hand will stay the same, but there are numerous intangibles that change in poker, most notably the

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Leave for the right reasons.  Never think of poker as blackjack or craps.  In these games, quitting while you are ahead is just fine.  If you find yourself uncomfortable in the game because it’s super-aggressive, or another table opens up at a game you’d rather be in, go ahead and leave.  But if you are fearful of losing money won from a nice pot, you’ll be playing scared and not maximizing your potential.  Or if your goal is to sit down and get quick money, you’ll gain no knowledge of your opponents to learn how to play against them during this and future sessions.

When the “big score” doesn’t come.  Poker is a waiting game -- waiting for the good cards, and playing the hand right when the good cards come.  But what about when the good cards don’t come your way?  Or when they do come your way a better hand comes to the player you are up against (whom you have little knowledge of because you use a hit-and-run approach to the game)?  If you feel the need to stay until what’s in your pocket or account is gone or because you feel you have to leave ahead, you will be a losing player.  A session will have many ups and downs, especially if you are a split-pot game player, and definitely if you play no-limit holdem cash games. Of course, every session won’t be a winning one, but many hit-and-run players think that it should be.  As a result they might make a few small scores, and many more big losses.  A disciplined player leaves when he or she has spent what he planned to put into a session for a given evening, or when the game has changed and they no longer feel comfortable.  Certainly one can be disciplined and employ a hit-and-run strategy, but when push comes to shove, it can be much more difficult to leave after a bad beat that costs a player $50 than it is for the same player to leave after winning $50.

Make time your friend, not your enemy.  Some players not only adopt a hit-and-run strategy, but rope themselves into playing for a certain amount of time.  Within reason, this is fine.  For instance, say you are on vacation in Vegas, and agree to meet up with a friend after 2 hours of poker.  Or you occasionally play for micro-limits over the lunch hour.  But if you find yourself sitting down when you are up against the clock too often, not allowing yourself to dedicate time to the game, many bad things can happen:  You may overplay a marginal hand to build up the pot in a limit game only to lose more than you should have.  You may start playing lousy hands in hopes to get lucky on the flop, justifying your actions based on the fact that you have to go in 10 minutes and haven’t seen a flop for seven hands in a row.  You are glancing at your watch, missing the raise from the player who paired her door card, or miss a pre-flop raise and cold call without giving it a second thought.  If you are playing when you don’t have much time to spare, as the time approaches when you must leave, many mistakes can be made.  The majority of your sessions should be during times when you aren’t up against the clock, so you’ll be focused on the game, not the time.

When using “hit-and-run,” play smaller stakes.  We’re poker players, and if you’re reading this, odds are that you like playing poker more than just once in a blue moon.  Inevitably, that can mean being bitten by the poker bug at the most inopportune of times, wanting to get poker in when we aren’t loaded with time.  The result?  Using a hit-and-run strategy more often than you’d prefer to.  When you need to get your poker fix but simply don’t have the time to devote to the game than you’d like, downshift and play smaller stakes.  This doesn’t mean you have to play stakes that are meaningless to you, such as $.25/$.50 when you are used to playing $5/$10, but try a slightly lower level, such as half the limits that you usually play at.  Your swings will be smaller, and the lower stakes will offset the other disadvantages hit-and-run play brings with it.

Some players love the hit-and-run strategy.  If you’re

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