Poll, should I continue taking this shot?

First off, I don't want this to come off as a brag post. I am looking for advice from people who have taken shots at limits they are not necesarily bankrolled for.

I recently ran well in my regular games of 3/6 6max and 5/10 6max. I decided I'd take a 25BB shot at 10/20 6max. If I lost that 25BB, I check it off as a learning experience for moving up in the future.

So far I'm 800 hands in and am up to 75BB for that level. I just ran some 'risk of ruin' calculations and came up with the following:

Assuming a standard deviation of 16.5BB / 100, my risk of ruin (ruin = losing my 10/20 winnings and initial 25BB investment) for different hypothetical winrates are as follows:

Winrate = 2.0, ROR = 33%
Winrate = 1.5, ROR = 44%
Winrate = 1.0, ROR = 58%

I feel like I am probably between 1.0 and 1.5 BB / 100 winner in this game (if one can even estimate such a thing).

How should I proceed from here? If I continue taking this shot, am I effectively flipping a coin for 75BB ($1,500)? When I look at it that way it makes me want to discontinue taking the shot. Perhaps I can remove my initial 25BB investment so that if I lose my winnings I will have gained 'free' experience at 10/20.

What do you think?

I don't understand, if you have 550BB for 10/20, that's not taking a shot anymore. You're bankrolled for it. If you slip down towards 300BB, then move down to 5/10 again.

[WhiteWolf]

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I don't understand, if you have 550BB for 10/20, that's not taking a shot anymore. You're bankrolled for it. If you slip down towards 300BB, then move down to 5/10 again.

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I agree. Your bankroll is your bankroll. It makes no sense to have one "bankroll" for 5/10 and another "bankroll" for 10/20.

I'm fairly risk averse when it comes to my entire roll, so I really don't feel comfortable using it (or even a lot of it) in a game where I'm not experienced. I will not use that option even if people vote for it. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

~efficacy

I don't think you're flipping a coin for 75bb. Coin flipping infers the same payoff, win or lose. If you win your coin flip you have a massive upside, well over 75 bb. Definately risk your 75bb if you think you can beat this level.

[TomBrooks]

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I don't understand, if you have 550BB for 10/20, that's not taking a shot anymore. You're bankrolled for it. If you slip down towards 300BB, then move down to 5/10 again.

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I don't understand the theory of moving up just because you have an adequate bankroll, and dropping back if the bankroll dwindles. This formula doesn't consider the greater difficulty of the higher limit game. When your winning at one limit and have the bankroll, is that an automatic sign to move up?

[Pog0]

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When your winning at one limit and have the bankroll, is that an automatic sign to move up?

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+ psychologically ready.

Do we just call it a shot when we're not bankrolled for it (but not risking too much of our bankroll so that we don't increase our ROR?), or should we always call moving up taking a shot until we're fairly certain we're a winner at that game?

Although not everyone's goal, many of us are trying to find the highest $ winrate we can playing poker. There will come a level where we peak out, where the decrease in BB/100 is not compensated for by the increase in stakes anymore (and sometimes that drop happens to put us into the $ negatives). Once we've hit that peak and we know we've hit that peak, 'moving up' in stakes is never a good idea until we've improved our game and believe that we are better off at the higher level and take another shot at it.

But we can never know that we've peaked out without at least trying the next level. Being bankrolled + winning at one limit + psychologically ready is a good time to try out a higher limit. If for whatever reason it isn't working out, we know that the option of moving back down to the winrate we know we can sustain at the lower limit is there. Some people are too risk averse to try a higher level, but being risk averse isn't the way to go with poker most of the time. We just need to take smart risks. The potential return from moving up in limits is often huge. On one site, the 5/10 game was actually BETTER than the 1/2 game most of the time, there's a winrate increase of >5x.

It takes time to get used to the new, larger $ amounts that you can potentially lose in a night, but I think we're all capable of getting used to this. I used to get shaken up when losing x$ in a night and now I can lose 8x$ and be okay.