Moving Up in Limits - Continuity and Inflection Points

[PokrLikeItsProse]

(With apologies to Dan Harrington. I've been thinking about this since the end of last year and just now decided to share to gather some info, so the terminology was independently arrived at.)

In moving up in limits, whatever the game, each new limit has potential pitfalls and new challenges that one must negotiate. This is evident to any player who has a brick-like pattern of welts in his face after marching easily up the limits until crashing at some point head-long into a wall.

For any limit (x) where one has the option of playing at a table that is lower in limit (x-1)and at a table that is higher in limit (x+1). Table x can be said to be either more similar to table x-1 or table x+1. This perhaps could be quantified by comparing the statistical tendencies of players at each limit, or you could see if players at limit x are more likely to also play limit x-1 or limit x+1. Another way to think of this is if someone wrote a book specifically intended to help a player at limit x-1 and another book for limit x+1, which would be more useful to a player at limit x.

In many cases, a given limit is not appreciably closer to either the higher or lower limit such that it can be said in continuity with both as part of a smooth line or curve in some hypothetical plot of limit vs. game difficulty. In other cases, a given limit becomes more similar to a limit one step high than to a limit one step lower. Borrowing from mathematics, we could call this an inflection point (used to refer the point at which a curve changes concavity). One example would be moving up after starting out playing low-limit hold em until you find that limit where so-called "no fold em hold em" is no longer the rule.

When moving up limits, given that you have to learn how to adjust to any differences at your new limit, you should have more than the minimum necessary bankroll for your new limit, a cushion that you can think of as tuition for your lessons. You need to save up more "tuition" before you can "graduate" to an inflection point limit.

Of course, an inflection point in moving up limits is not set in stone. It can shift for a given location based on a change in players. And it might be more correct to think of an inflection nexus of several limits that run together.

The question I want to toss out is where you have noticed an inflection point moving up limits? What game, what limit, live or online and if so where?