Party $.50/1.00 vs. $1.00/2.00

[scotnt73]

you are only ahead 150 BB after several months of .5/1. while this is very good it does not mean you are ready for 1/2. i suggest waiting until you get to at least 450-500$ before you start taking shots at 1/2.

i have won and lost 150BB in a few VERY good/bad sessions. so at 1/2 that would be a 300$ loss/win

[Nottom]

The general opinion about the 1/2 game is that is it significantly tougher than the .5/1 game and possibly tougher than the 2/4 game.

I think this is likely the case with the major reason being the presence of 6-max tables at the 1/2 level.

[runa]

I've just moved up to 1/2 after logging 10,000+ hands and being up over 500BB at .50/1 and I must say the difference is very drastic. Instead of seeing 5-6 people to the flop I often run into tables where it is constantly heads-up or only 3 to the flop. This cuts down on your drawing odds for certain kinds of hands and requires a slight variation on pre-flop hand selection. People do tend to respect your raises more often which means you can protect your larger hands and win more with overpairs and the like, but as someone mentioned before expect to see stronger hands in general and take good notes on players at this level.

I hit 550BB at .50/1 after 6,000 hands or so and tried to move up to 1/2 and immediately dropped 100BB on a bad run and had to drop back to .50/1 to rebuild. It was a great learning experience nonetheless so I recommend trying it if you're willing to drop down if you take a hit to your BR.

[Quercus]

Strange, the only time I see a significant difference between 1/2 and 0.5/1.00 is in the mornings, when 1/2 is usually fairly tight. Late night and weekends haven't been that much different than what I was used to.

[Felipe]

Man! You guys are doing well at the micro tables including .5/1. I have been getting chewed there, unfortunately. I've been following HoldemAdvPlayrs and I think its convinced me that all poker players have read that book, and follow poker to a "T". well, I've been playing alittle looser, less unsuited overcards, and more suited connectors, and mid-big pairs, because of the pot odds.

What specific strategies (or suggestions) wuld you recommend to improve my game at the .5/1 table. I'm not a stinky player, surprisingly i do well at the 10/20, but the .5/1 players seem to call all the way to the river on a dime!

Thanks. Felipe.

[prayformojo]

Felipe, you've been told this before. Read Small Stakes Hold'em. If you are really already a winning player, this book will help you adapt strategies for low/micro limits. If you're not really a winning player, it will help you become one at low limits.

You have also been told before that you shouldn't consider a few winning sessions at 10/20 enough to call yourself a winning player at that level. Other posts of yours have suggested that you got lucky at some point. That doesn't make you a winning player. But perhaps you did play well. That doesn't necessarily make you a winning player either, until you've played well, and succeeded, for several tens of thousands of hands.

Assuming that you are a winning player, but you're just getting bad beats from worse players, is a very dangerous way to approach this game.

Edit: Post some hands. You have several times asked for "advice" as if someone can give general advice that will fix your problems. If you post hands, people can tell you what you did wrong. It's the best way to learn here.

[Jimbobobb]

I used to live for Airpoenman posts - now it's Felipe

[The_Tracker]

After some thought and the response to my thread I think I will stay where I am at for awhile, and see if I can work it up to $500-600 before moving up.

I should be able to grind it out in another month or so. "Several months" in my original post really only meant one. I was shocked to see that my buy-in was only Aug. 24th! It seemed like it was longer than that.

I have logged over 3,000 hands in that time and am beating the game currently for almost 9bb/100. But, I agree that I am not ready for the move up yet. I will just continue to build.

Thanks for the insight everyone.

[Cerril]

175BB is not 'well' short and I wouldn't say 'easily' go broke. But without those qualifiers I'd definitely call it that. And if you do go broke it might be far more demoralizing than it should because instead of a nasty but normal downturn it's the end of your bankroll.

But if you aren't a very solid winning player then the chances are much better that you're going to sweep down -175BB at some point. And if you don't know if you're a very solid winning player...

But the general thrust of your post is dead on, that's just nitpicking.

[SomethingClever]

If you're beating .5/1 for 9 BB/100, why move up? Do you think you'll win more than 4.5 BB/100 at 1/2?

Seriously though, 9 BB/100 is a pipe dream, and 3,000 hands is a drop in the bucket.

Do you only play one table? One thing you can do to challenge yourself without moving up is to add another table of .5/1 to the mix.

You'll win more (if you're a winning player), and you'll sharpen your skills all around (calculating pot odds, outs, etc...) when you have to do it in a flash.