Money Management is based on the timeless adage, "Quit while you're ahead." In a nutshell, it says: Once you've won some predetermined amount, leave the table - you're done for the day. You may have played only half a round or the games might be the best you've seen in a dozen moons, with half a dozen suckers clicking away their stacks on full tilt. No matter - you're out of there. That is, if you follow this line of thinking.

From the same school of thought, there's a flip side telling you to set stop-loss limits. Quit once you've lost a certain amount in one session say the money management gurus. Fifty dollars might do it for some people, five hundred for others. A five thousand or even a fifty thousand dollar loss might be the trigger point for a high.-rolling few.

Does any of this make sense? Should you quit while you're ahead, or once you've lost some predetermined amount of money? After all, if you quit when you're ahead as well as when you're losing, you'll only play when your results are sandwiched between arbitrarily established stop loss and stop-win limits. If you set them tightly enough, you won't be playing very much!

Even money management adherents acknowledge that, over any poker career, "It's all one long games." So, unless you quit playing permanently, it makes no difference whether you play four hours today and four hours tomorrow, or just play eight hours today. If that's the case, what is the logic behind money management theories? Our answer: There isn't any. As one writer put it, "The next hour you play is the next hour you play."

• Does "Quitting Ahead" Online - or Offline - Make Any Sense at All?
• Should You Set Stop-Loss Limits?
• What You Really Need To Know About Money Management
• Keeping Records
• The Standard Deviation
• Life on the Edge: What's My Risk Tolerance?
• How Should You Balance Your Win Rate Against The Standard Deviation?
• Keeping up with Record Keeping