The Cash Out Curse

By Greg Walker

What is the cash-out curse?

The cash out curse is a superstitious belief that after you make a significant withdrawal from your bankroll from an online poker room, you will then go on to experience an extended period of bad luck (a big downswing basically).

The bout of bad luck will continue until you lose a significant amount or all of the remaining amount of money left in your bankroll. I'm not sure if making a deposit is meant to stop the curse though, but probably not.

Either way, the cash out curse suggests that you’re going to lose money after cashing out.

The logic behind the cash out curse.

There are two ways to look at the reasoning behind the dreaded cash out curse.

1. The run of bad luck after cashing out is purely coincidental, and it really is just a bad run of luck. It doesn’t happen all the time but you still jokingly thank the cash-out curse for any unfortunate and coincidental losses after making a withdrawal. It's just variance.
2. The run of bad luck isn’t actually bad luck at all. The poker room is punishing you for having the nerve to actually withdraw your hard earned winnings (or what remains of your losses). The poker room is intentionally rigging the cards so that they can teach you a lesson for cashing out.

As you can see, reasoning #1 is just giving a light-hearted name to an unfortunate coincidence.

Reasoning #2 is much more serious, but infinitely more comical from a logical point of view.

Is the cash out curse real?

No.

The cash out curse is a total myth.

I’m sure my IQ is going to decrease with every argument I make to highlight how ridiculous the cash out curse myth is, but this wouldn’t be much of a thorough article if I neglected to show a few misguided players the error of their ways.

Here are 4 reasons why the cash out curse is a myth:

1. Poker rooms don’t make money from your losses. I’m guessing that you think the poker room wants to teach you a lesson for cashing out. But why? Poker rooms don’t directly profit from your losses, they profit from the rake you generate when you play lots of poker for real money. Helping you to lose your money is counter-productive.
2. Poker rooms don’t care about you as much as you think. Don’t get me wrong, poker rooms care when you need help or support, but they’re not feeling personally betrayed after you cash out $30 from your $50 bankroll. I’m all for vengeance, but you need to pick your spots.
3. It’s more effort than it’s worth to try and attempt to rig a whole system against you. If a homeless person stole a lollipop out of my pocket and had a 20 yard head start on me, it wouldn't be worth my while to chase that sugar-loving felon down. I’d rather save my energy and buy another one. The same thing applies to online poker. If they enforced a cash-out curse, the juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze.
4. Every poker hand would be a mess. Thousands of poker players cash out every day - that’s a hell of a lot of payback that needs to be dished out. Get a few of these cash out curse victims waiting for their just desserts at one table and every poker hand would be pure madness.

Myth: busted.

Do many players believe in the cash out curse?

Any player with some common sense will know that the “cash out curse” is just a bit of a joke. However, I’m sure that there are a few that actually do believe in it. Hopefully there may be one less believer after you have finished reading this article.

Players that genuinely believe in the cash out curse either need to take 5 minutes to think about it logically, or they need to stop blaming the poker rooms for their losses.

If you believe in the cash out curse myth, by default you believe that online poker is rigged. Have you ever considered that you need to work on your own game to improve? Better yet, have you ever wondered why you continue to play online poker if you are adamant that it is rigged?

In a nutshell, you're better off spending your time learning good poker strategy, rather than trying to chase down non-existent proof that the cash out curse exists.

How to avoid the cash out curse.

You don’t. It doesn’t exist.

Cash out as much as you like.

Go back to the interesting Texas Hold'em Articles.

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