[Harv72b]

Welcome to the forums. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Without trying to offend, your comments here make it sound very much like you're a gambler, versus a poker player. Yeah, yeah, poker is still gambling, but it is in fact a game of skill. And you need to recognize that first of all, and then take the necessary steps required to turn yourself into a good player (reading these forums is a great first step).

One of the first things you need to do is divorce yourself from your results. Sure, it's great to turn in a huge winning session, but it's also very possible to play absolutely perfect poker and still end up a loser during the session. It won't happen often, but it will happen. So your primary (in a perfect world only) concern should be playing your best game--not winning X amount of dollars or quitting because you've run up some chips. Remember...a "session" is in itself something of an illusion. You should be striving to maximize your profits in the near-mythical "long term", which is done solely by making as few mistakes as possible during each session.

The easiest way to achieve this is to play your sessions for a set amount of hours or hands, and as much as possible to ignore how much you are up or down during that period. You can obviously cut your session short for a variety of reasons...maybe the game(s) just aren't very good, maybe you take some bad beats & feel yourself tilting, maybe your gf is getting sick of waiting to go out.

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If you go up a few BB—other than at the very start of a session—do you get more conservative in your hand selection, attempt to ensure that you finish as a winner?

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If you find yourself doing this, then yes, you need to end your session. Not in order to "maximize your win", but rather because you're just not playing good poker anymore. In an ideal world where we don't need sleep or social interaction or anything like that, you would "maximize your win" by playing for as long as you possibly can while still maintaining your edge against your opponents (making fewer mistakes on average than they are).