Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
this is a marathon post and mostly morning ramblings...I have tried to separate my ideas with lines.
ok, some of these posts are kind of bothering me, so I'm going to throw in my 2 cents. I am going to be kind of a nit to all of the people talking about winrates, because in all honesty they don't mean much. Even after 100k hands at a given limit you still may be quite far from your true winrate. That being said, since not many of us have the time to play a million hands at each level, we must infer some things from short term results.
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I have spoken at great length with a couple of posters about moving up in limits, and we seemed to agree that the difficulty of moving up is almost entirely psychological. Generally speaking this means that people tend to play scared. There are 2 ways to play scared:
1. you literally let the curent money you are putting into the pot affect your play. In other words, you won't make a slightly +EV move because you don't want to see your money going into the pot.
2. you get upset about losing a 10BB pot. Then you start to lose confidence. You doubt every play you make and start playing poker well below the level you're capable of.
Either of these will cause your results to be far worse than if you are feeling comfortable and confident with your play. Anybody who has hit a 250BB downswing knows the difference between how you feel when doing well vs. doing poorly.
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The players at the different levels aren't much better. As long as you continue to develop your game you will be able to beat them. As you move up, players get a little bit tighter, and a little bit trickier. If you truly were a >1BB/100 winner at level "x" then I think that you will almost certainly be an instant winner at level "x+1". That said, you may not experience this success for several (like even 20) thousand hands because of variance. This may mean you have to take several shots to move up successfully, but the point is, if you have a significantly +EV edge in one level, then you should have at least a slightly +EV edge when you move up. This assumes that you don't let the new levels of money mess with your head.
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My suggestions for moving up:
1. Try using tiltblocker if that will help you from getting upset about losses
2. Take shots (50, 75, 100 BB's) and treat that money as if it's already completely lost. This requires some mental toughness on your part.
3. Play less tables than usual. Another option is to mix in tables. Play 3 1/2 tables and 1 2/4 table, or 2 of each. This will let you autopilot the other ones and focus on the higher stakes games.
4. Review your play. You should already be doing this anyways, but make sure you don't slack off when moving up.
5. At least when at the microlimits, try not to play without a bonus or rakeback. This will soften the blow of losses. However, once you get up to higher levels, it becomes impossible to compensate losses with bonuses, so be prepared for that.
6. Don't be afraid to move down if you know you are getting beat. As Bernie Mac says in the movie "Guess Who", "Pride ain't nothing when it comes to matters of the heart." Well, he was also right about poker it turns out. There's no shame in moving down.
7. Don't identify yourself as an "x-limit" player. If the games are good, try playing a level higher, and if they're especially bad, you may even want to move down. I sometimes play 3 different levels at a time.
8. Practice good table selection when you move up. I think this one is self explanatory.
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Here are some specific responses:
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I don't think I'll ever play more than 2 tables again because I believe anything above that and I just can't physically absorb all the information I need to.
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I know how you feel. 4 or more tables can be VERY overwhelming. However, it is certainly possible to get all the information that you need to excel at many tables. Your BB/100 may suffer a bit, but your BB/hour will increase greatly. If this is not important for you then that's fine, but be aware of it. One thing I like to do is avoid opening all 4 tables at once. Open up 1 and get good reads. Then add another and get reads on it. Continue until the desired # of tables is reached.
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There's another deception going on in my head. Whenever I try to get more aggressive, I seem to lose more (and more often).
When I think I have the best hand, I usually don't. When I think I have the worst hand and it's checked-down or I call the river, sometimes I lose, but sometimes I'm amazed that I take down the pot with such garbage.
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Sounds like you're having some confidence issues. Your problem in moving up probably has less to do with your ability than your mental state. Work on that. Also, when playing aggressive, the pots you lose will be bigger, and you will probably lose more often. But don't forget that the pots you are winning are much bigger too. Aggressive poker is high variance, and you need to be prepared to deal with the swings. This means not tilting, and constantly looking at your play objectively.
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If you read this far, thank you.
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