High-stakes variance, quitting

I've been playing a bunch of 5/10 recently when the games are good. It's been going well so far and is very +ev however the variance is a lot higher than I'm used to.

Yesterday I played a session in the morning and had to quit after around 45mins down around $2k. I knew I wouldn't be on my game after taking such a quit beasting so went for a run, grabbed a shower and some food and came back refreshed to play another session. There were good 5/10 games running again so I jumped in and instantly lost around another $1.5k in 20 or so mins. I felt pretty tilted so quit out again and took a longer break and came back to play an evening session after dinner. I felt that my mindset just wasn't right, I could feel a little "win it back" mindset, and didn't want to grind the mix of 1/2 and 2/4 that was available.

While I'm pretty happy with my quitting decisions it's pretty frustrating only getting 400 hands played in a working day, when my target is 2,500. Losing $3-4k is usually where I need to stop for a day as I know it'll put me off my game and this is a lot more common when playing 5/10 than 1/2-3/6. Shit, it's only 3-4 buyins.

I don't want to quit playing those games because they're really good, also I expect them to toughen up my skin to be able to take higher amount of variance.

So what I'm going to do is minimise the amount of high variance spots I take. I played these 2 hands yesterday...



Stacks:

Hero (UTG)		($1035.00)
CO		($7241.50) --- He's a nit
BTN		($1800.50)
SB		($335.00)
BB		($817.72)

Pre-flop: ($15, 5 players) Hero is UTG

Hero raises to $35, CO raises to $120, 3 folds, Hero raises to $290, CO raises to $3,850, Hero goes all-in $745




Stacks:

CO		($493.00)
Hero (BTN)		($1264.00)
SB		($598.75)
BB		($3330.00)

Pre-flop: ($15, 4 players) Hero is BTN

1 fold, Hero raises to $30, SB calls $25, BB raises to $120, Hero calls $90, SB calls $90

Flop: ($360, 3 players)
SB goes all-in $478.75, BB folds, Hero calls $478.75

I'm not gonna bust out the math on you but both of those spots are roughly neutral EV. Meaning that at best I'll win or lose $50 in EV in the long run.

Now if my objective from sitting in a high stakes game is to get involved in very profitable situations because there are soft players playing, not to be flip for $2k pots. At 1/2 or 2/4 I wouldn't care, but if a couple of flips push me over the edge for having to quit for the day then they're not really worth losing 3-4 hours work for a small amount of EV.

Gonna cook up some steaks then here's hoping for a monster 4k hand night tonight!