I play a 2/5 game with a buy in of $800 for a living, if the table is not especially juicy is it fine to leave up $500, $700, $1200 even if it was only like a 5 or 6 hour session. Do you guys set any guidelines for this type of stuff at all? A decent amount of the time when I'm up a good amount and stay long I lose a bunch back then leave a small winner on tilt.

If you really play for a living, you should know that it's all one big session, so there's no point in "hitting and running ". I treat it as a job, and only stay/leave depending on my edge in the game, not how much I'm up or down.

If you're playing with scared money and can't play your A game when you're up because you can't bare the thought of walking away a loser that day, that's something have to work on if you really want to do this for a living long term.

Your decision to continue playing should be based exclusively on how good the table is and how well you're playing. It shouldn't matter whether you're up or down if you're properly bankrolled.

This.

Your profit/loss is irrelevant. Even if you've played for 10 mins, stolen one set of blinds and you're up $7, if the table isn't profitable enough, you should be leaving.

Sums it up.

Other posters have covered this well but one thing to consider: it is possible that you can only play optimally for a limited amount of time before the focus dips. If you're evaluating other players' splay when not in hand, paying attention, reading boards, etc, that can be draining. You may only do that with an edge for 6 hours at a time before you start to lose focus and play bad. If that's the case, monitor the duration of your sessions or take more frequent breaks or take a dinner break and come back refreshed.
It may not be possible for you to play your A game for 10 hour sessions.
If you treat it like a job, then you have planned times to play. If the game is good, you extend sessions by an hour or two, but grinding all night is what rec fish do. Pros pick their spots for max EV. They table select. They try to play when the fish play, and not when the grinder OMCs play (unless they can crush the OMC game for even more). And while they'll play long sessions in good games, they won't play super sized sessions in games that aren't particularly juicy.

I agree.

Mike Caro wrote about this a long time ago. He stated that our poker winnings are not based on our absolute skill, but our relative advantage against a table. While luck will always play some role, we will be winning at tables when we have an advantage and losing when we don't have advantage. It would seem obvious that you'd want to play longer at tables you have an advantage, but most poker players do the opposite. They want to lock in a win, so the cut their session off short when up. When down, they want to stay at the table to get back to even. So these players minimize the time they play at good tables and maximize the time playing at bad tables.

Therefore, it is a bad strategy for a pro. Almost as bad as the leak you have about tilting off money when ahead. Both of those are going to prevent you for a long term career as a player.

If you stay because people in threads like this tell you to stay longer, and if you tend to play scared when you're up, then you will have a smaller edge when you stay longer, which is actually a reason to leave IMO. Of course this is a weakness that you need to address because if you cut your sessions short, you'll play fewer hours and have less money over time.

Playing more cautiously when you're up is a form of tilt. You're not playing your best if you play even a little more cautiously only because you have a fear of losing your winnings.

Sorry but there is some terrible advice in this thread.

This is not a question about poker, bankrolls, or win-rates. It's a question of human emotion.

Understanding your emotions and working with them to maximize their value is going to yield the most +EV in the long run.

It's nice to be able to point to something and say "This is the poker mind-set, do this". But everyone's personality is different.

If you play looser and less focused when you're up, then it is absolutely right to lock up a medium sized win. If you play better after stringing together multiple winning sessions in a row....then it is absolutely right to lock up the wins.

The question you are asking cannot be answered until you tell us what your poker goal is?

Do you want to play more hours? Then maybe some of the advice in here will help you.

Do you want to make more money? Maybe some advice here will help you, but the BEST thing you can do right now is MAXIMIZE YOUR OWN POTENTIAL.

Everyone plays with the same 52 cards, but only YOU bring your own brain to the table. It's up to you to understand yourself, and realize how to minimize your weakness, and maximize your strength.

If you are playing best with small/medium stack sizes, then you should continue to do so until either

1) You go broke
2) You feel that you've reached a "peak" and need to work on something else in order to make more money.

Once the little person in your brain says "Get up", you should get up. Don't take another lap, don't play until your button, don't even look at your cards if you're dealt a hand while racking up. Why? Its your sub-conscious creeping in and you'll play sub-optimally otherwise.

It seems as if there is some tension here between logic and emotion. From a purely profit maximization standpoint, you should not leave a game where your edge is greater than it would be at a later date. But realistically, none of us are true profit maximizers, although we would like to think we are. Let's say you are absolutely crushing the game for 20bb per hour or $100 per hour because they are some real droolers at your table. Theoretically, you should stay until your edge drops lower than what it would be at a later date, even if that meant playing 24 hours straight, provided your edge didn't drop. However, that doesn't take into consideration the real world, i.e. you need to sleep, eat, exercise, etc. What if you don't need to book 2k winning sessions to be happy? What if you are frugal and a $500 profit per session is adequate for your needs? After all, whether we play poker professionally or have some other profession, I don't think income is the ONLY consideration when looking for a job. If it was we would all be taking on part-time jobs just to make a little more money, even if we were working full-time, and getting paid well. Ultimately, it's a decision that only you can make. All I can advocate is balance. As Bruce Lee said, "If we focus too much on emotion, we become a wild man. If we focus too much on logic, we become a mechanical man." (Or something like that).

It's definitely fine to rack up if you're playing deeper than you're comfortable playing (or than you are bankrolled for). Leaving to lock up a win is kind of silly though.

i agree with most above, i would add:

if you've been on a downswing for a period of time and you've played a reasonable amount of time this session, leaving with a win, even if you still have an edge at the table, may be more beneficial to your overall mindset in the long run.

Are you leaving because you want to lock up a win? Or are you leaving because after 6 hrs you realized you are not playing your best? One of these reasons is a good reason to leave the other isnt.

Absolutly. At the beginning. There are steps in players development. It takes time to get comfortable with deeper stacks. After a while you will feel comfortable playing deeper. Then you should try to win big. If you are always locking up medium sized win, you will be a loser or breakeven player at best on long run. You have to factor in the times you lose too. And of course when you are running bad or on downswing, it's ok to lock up medium win. It will help your confidence. And confidence in poker is really important.

I feel like people ITT are ignoring the "if the table is not especially juicy" part of the OP, whose post could be rephrased as "what sort of conditions justify leaving a few hours earlier than planned?"

Playing poker for a living means you can choose your hours. If I were a pro, I might be willing to leave a bit early and lock up a win if I were going through a bit of a downswing and felt that locking that up was necessary to rebuild my confidence, but my preferred method is spending a few hours proving to myself that I can still crush 3/6.

out of curiosity, what are we defining as a "medium sized win"?
is it </=100bb?
since the game has a BI of >100bb, would it be <1 BI?
would it be >0 but < hourly rate?

i honestly don't think of stopping when +240bb as "medium sized".

Staying at a table because you think you have an edge is really overrated. Players at LLSNL are plenty bad, and there will always be another fish to fry.

I don't care what anyone says about how they "don't tilt" or aren't affected by swings, they are liars. EVERYONE who plays this game loves money. More than anything else about the game, they are attracted to the money. No matter who you are, how good you are, or how much money you have, winning feels good and losing feels bad.

Suppressing the bad feelings is wrong, and hugely -EV. Cultivating the good feelings is correct, and hugely +EV.

If you are FEELING BEST when you approach the table after a streak of winning sessions, then it is absolutely right to cultivate that feeling.

^Red Flag

I don't know if everyone missed this red flag but this is a major "leak" in your thinking process which is causing you to go on tilt when you lose, then you are more afraid to lose the next day which could very much influence your play.

You first need to understand you are playing one long single session for your whole entire life. Just because we go home at night doesn't mean it comes to an end. We are only taking a break and coming back the next day to pick up where we left off.

So you should stop thinking in terms of "I won" or "I lost" at the end of the day and think more in terms of "I played that hand perfect. I don't care that he called and got his two outer to felt me. I will take that call all day."

As long as you are making all +EV plays, you don't need to worry about daily wins and losses so much. Play every hand optimally and don't worry about results.

The most successful people in poker are not results oriented at all. They think more about how good they played a hand instead of the negative results due to variance which should be expected.