Can I get some advice . . .

[cold_cash]

[ QUOTE ]
But perhaps the winning player move is to get up and go to another table when the game starts getting out of control.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is good. There's no shame in leaving a game you're not comfortable playing in. Remember though, that the risk you take by playing in a maniacal game is often times more than made up for by the huge potential reward.

Just my two cents. Good luck.

[Billman]

Now then, the real question you have to ask yourself is whether you're comfortable risking that many bets (even in a profitable situation), or whether you're not. If you're not, find a game that's not as wild where you're swings will be smaller. It's pretty much that simple.

You know, something about the way you phrased that helps me put that into perspective. Whenever I play home games that I arrange, somewhere near the end of the night the solid players are usually sitting with a nice stack of chips in front of them and the gamblers are drunk and have already re-bought 2 or 3 times. At that point, they always suggest raising (triple or quadruple the current blind) the blinds and then they go on a rush and end up cleaning out the profits of the more solid players. I just fold every hand and make excuses to get up from the table because it's just too crazy. I worked 6 hours to make that stack and I'll be damned if I'm going to give it back in the last hour to some guy so drunk you have to tell him he won the pot because he doesn't even recognize his straight flush.

I guess that's what makes me adverse to risking those huge swings. When I see a guy take me for 5 or 10 BB the whole time I'm thinking about how long that took me to grind out that profit in the first place. I'm thinking that's a 6 or 8 hour session that guy just took off of me in a single hand. And if, like you mentioned, the game is so loose and aggressive that I'm only playing one or two hands an hour the psychological sting is even that much more because you're itching to make it back and fighting with yourself not to do something stupid like loosen up and expose yourself even more losses.

I really appreciate all of this advice. I'm starting to see that a lot of this is a psychological block and not a skill thing. For now, I'm just going to walk away from these games because there are easier fish to fry and I can't play my best game under those conditions.