My experiment this week.

I have been playing poker for a couple years now. I am experienced at 2/4 and 3/6 limit. I have a fairly big bankroll and i decided to try an experiment. I took $160 dollars (4 $40 buy-ins) on pokerstars and sat down at a 2/4 limit table with $40. My plan was to see how far I could get switching to the next limit as soon as I had double the minimum. I decided that I would either stay at the table until it was all gone or keep moving up until i reached $1000.

With my first $40 I worked my way up to 5/10 and hit $160 at one point before a bad run of cards caused me to lose it all. So i took my next $40 and was able to make it up to 15/30 (which i decided to stay at) and i sat down at with $320. It took me two hours of good cards and smart play to break $1000. I left the table.

I was wondering if this theory is profitable in the long run. Once $1000 has been made once, there are now 25 more buyins of $40 that can be used to attempt this again. It seems that a good player could easily do this more than once in 25 attempts.

I could be wrong, but the experiment was fun and Im interested in hearing your opinions.

[Xhad]

Search the Micro-Limit forums for "Open Internet Challenge", it's close to the same thing you're talking about.

[bpb]

I think it's a fantastic idea. Keep on doing it and see how it goes.

that seems like a legit strategy..i dont know about sitting down at a 15/30 game with only 300 dollars is a good idea but it seemed to have worked for you. you might as well go ahead and go for 3 grand and play some 30/60 with that grand which is still a low buy in for that amount of blinds, 16 big bets seems like a method for disaster

[The Goober]

It depends what your goal is. If you are doing it for fun and to get some experience at the higher limits, then I think its fine.

If your goal is to make money, then its a horrible idea. You are basically insuring that you will lose your entire buy-in by moving up limits until you are completely outclassed by the other players. If you find a really soft game that you can beat the crap out of, then you will leave after only winning a small amount of money, but when you end up in a tough game you can't beat, you'll stay there until you are broke. Your bankroll is your bankroll - when you take $X and sit down at a game, you either have a positive expectation or not. It doesn't matter whether you ran $40 up to $1000 and then sit down at a 30-60 game with it, or you take $1000 out of your BR and sit in the game - either way its a bad decision unless you think you can beat the game and have enough bankroll for it.

Plus sitting down at any game with only 10BB is really silly.