The Lazarus imperative

Last Wednesday night, I hit the felt at the end of a long session. Looking at the bar chart of my stack size over the course of the night, I can clearly identify where I should have called it a night. Of course, hindsight is 20/20. Nevertheless, I'm inspired to formulate another poker rule of thumb; I'm calling it the Lazarus imperative. Here it is: if at some point your stack falls below the Lazarus line, and you manage to bring it back within shouting distance of your starting stack amount, call it a night. My stack hit $4,894 on hand 48, which is well below the Lazarus line of 22 percent of the starting stack amount ($40,000 * .22 = $8,800). On hand 87, my stack had bounced back to $39,582. If it had topped $40,000, I'm sure I would have quit; I kept playing since I wanted to have another winning session. That was a mistake. It's a mistake to ignore how much luck you've had in a session, since the more luck you've had, the less luck you're likely to have. Bouncing back from Lazarus territory means you've had a ton of luck.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 115 hands and saw flop:
- 16 out of 24 times while in big blind (66%)
- 15 out of 24 times while in small blind (62%)
- 32 out of 67 times in other positions (47%)
- a total of 63 out of 115 (54%)
Pots won at showdown - 11 of 16 (68%)
Pots won without showdown - 5

delta: $-40,000
balance: $3,178,030