[Cooker]

First a history of my poker career. I started playing about a year and 3 months ago learning from Play Poker Like the Pros by Phil Hellmuth (I know it stinks). I was up and down (usually down) and ended up blowing through about $300 dollars at the low limit tables (a bit more than that when you consider bonuses and such but that much of my money). I finally found Sklansky's book and started turning things around after a couple of months. (I am a fairly poor Graduate Student in physics with a wife and 2 kids by the way). Last February, I finally broke totally even in poker and cashed out feeling quite good about myself (and never having to come clean to my wife). I dipped back in with $50 after a few weeks off, and turned that into a few thousand dollars. I paid back all my poker book purchases to the family account (and the original $50 to get back in), paid for a weekend family trip, paid for my parking, and fees for the summer and fall out of my poker money and am right now at about $1000 bucks in my BR. I have played mostly .5/1 LHE with a fair amount of $25 and $50 NL HE, $25 and $50 PLO, $25 and $50 PLO8, 1/2 LHE, 2/4 LHE, .5/1 LO8, 1/2 stud, and vairous SnGs and MTTs ranging from $5 to $25 buy-ins (I have even played micro limit triple draw and crazy pineapple little). Thats me in a nutshell.

I am coming off a brutal losing streak at limit holdem (my success at PLO and PLO8 still have me pretty nicely in the green over the past month, but it is frustrating), so I think now is a good time to take some time off from poker and reflect on my future as a player (I do think I will reread SSH to see if I have developed any bad habits too during the break). Here is my basic dilemma as I see it. I want to move up, because I have been a consistent winner for well over 10,000 hands at the low limits and I believe I can make more money playing at higher limits. I feel like $1000 is plenty of bankroll to play more regularly at limits more like 2/4 and 3/6 if I will move down when I hit a losing streak or the $50-$100 buy in big bet games (maybe the $100 is a bit high, but I should take some shots from time to time). So what is the problem? $1000 is a lot of money to my family right now. If I did go bust (although I have taken out more than $2000 already in profits) I would feel like I should have just taken the money. However, by not moving up, I feel like I am not growing as a poker player and losing the chance to make significant money which could ease our money situation even more. I will probably quit being such a nit and move up, because I figure to have a nice paying job when I get my Ph. D. (I am working on a concurrent master's in finance and figure to get a job as a quantative analyst in the near future, so $1000 shouldn't be too big a deal).

I am posting this here, because I figure others might be or have already gone through similar situations. Any advice or comments would be appreciated.