The perils of profit-taking

Poker rewards intuition, yet many poker truths are counter-intuitive. I've just run up against another such truth. Last night, I joined a cash game table which had a maximum starting stack amount of $200,000, and bought in for the max. On the very first hand, I won a pot worth $105,850, $52,930 of which was o.p.m. (other people's money). Eventually, that profit all melted away, and when I left the table after playing 121 hands, I was $46,140 in the hole. This got me to thinking. I formulated the hypothesis that if I somehow had the discipline to quit all cash games after making at least 25% of my starting stack amount in profit, I'd come out way ahead. Tonight I wrote a utility to test out this theory, and it's dead wrong. If I'd followed this strategy in my cash game career, I would have won $705,437 less than I actually have done. That's good to know :-)

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 121 hands and saw flop:
 - 8 out of 14 times while in big blind (57%)
 - 4 out of 15 times while in small blind (26%)
 - 27 out of 92 times in other positions (29%)
 - a total of 39 out of 121 (32%)
 Pots won at showdown - 6 of 10 (60%)
 Pots won without showdown - 6

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    43500  6500       9     2      82   18     -        0
MTT   NLHE    18000  2000       9    31     308   81    93        0
MTT   NLHE     8700  1300       9    18     750  153   272        0

delta: $-126,140
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $5,698,087
balance: $10,572,080