making the jump

[bigmac366]

i made the jump from .50/1.00 to 1/2 a few days ago. i'm not doing so well here. i was hugely successful at .50/1.00 plaining against the mostly brain dead people at that level, but i'm struggling against people who dont think a4o is a hand to call 3 cold with. anyway, anyone who made the jump successfully is welcome to post any advice. thanks in advance

[jzpiano14]

You will do fine with practice and disipline, if you want to move up, you can with time though. Make sure your sufficently bankrolled 300BB at least. I made the jump from .5/1 and my winrate dropped almost half so it is much harder to beat the game, but not impossible. If it helps, I started at .5/1 about 4 months ago, and now am playing 3/6. Good Luck and if you don't make it the first time, don't give up.

[KingOtter]

This kind of thing scares the bejesus out of me. I mean, I consider myself a decent player, and .5/1 on Party is absolutely owning me, it seems.

This weekend I worked for about 14 hours to bring my record up to -60BB and then I had a bad run of cards that dropped me 43BB off a single table, so now I'm -100BB again overall on Party. Going through that drop I could only find one hand to post that I wouldn't be accused of posting bad-beats.

This is driving me nuts, lol!

Congrats on the move upwards.

KO

[IsaacW]

One thing I noticed about $1/2 is that you need to know when to value bet... making money off your good hands is as important as losing little on your bad ones. I wasn't playing nearly aggressive enough and missing bets when I first moved up to $1/2 and got killed over my first 5k hands. At 12k now and doing much better, $2/4 is on the horizon. Keep posting hands.

[jmgurgeh]

I'm in the same boat as you bigmac, for some reason I just haven't done well at 1-2 yet. My question to those more experienced is this: What adjustments generally need to be made when moving up in limit? I've tightened up to about 15% VP$IP from about 17%, but I'm more concerned with postflop play. Should I semibluff more/less? Should I ride out more aggressive play with more hands, or tighten up? Should I play a more deceptive game? $.50-$1 seems so easy now, while $1-$2 seems very different.

[DeathDonkey]

I didn't tighten up moving from 0.50/1 to 1/2 just focused the energy in different places. You will find more spots to steal raise and isolate raise, and you need to defend your blinds a bit more from the few thinking opponents.

Other than that its the same game. I suspect its the stakes more than anything that get you all thinking its such a different game. Every time I sit 1/2 I think its more like 0.50/1 than I used to.

-DeathDonkey

[DocMartin]

There's a lot of people who take a bit of a beating when they first move up(I've had early -150BB swings at .5/1, 1/2, and 2/4 so far).

A good idea is to phase the new level in slowly. I usually play a few tables at a time and when I have moved up I play one at the higher level and phase out the old level over time. Having a bonus to play off is a nice way to ease the potential sting.

Many have also found that their win rate drops a significant amount from .5/1 to 1/2 (mine went from 6.5 to 3+) so you are not alone. It is certainly beatable so stick with it.

[JapaneseSandman]

Just switched my self 2 weeks ago.
1st week 15.37 hrs 1052 hands +$189.37 +6.16 BB/Hr +9 BB/100
2nd week 23.82 hrs 1671 hands -$176.88 -3.71 BB/Hr -5.29/100
.....today 4.43 hrs 295 hands +$97.75 +11.02 BB/Hr +16.57/100

It is ruff but people have done it. I try to not think about the money while I play and there was some thing that Howard Lederer told his sister that I forgot last week which cost me big time. Never loose more than 30BB in a day. If you can't make money with in that amount of swing your doing something wrong.

I also find that there are fewer tables to choose from and more aggressive players

also, here's a question I have not heard before when do your drop back a level? If I have just 300BB for a level and I have a big down turn when I start then I don't have enought to play at that level any more. What to do?

[Shillx]

I got $20 bucks saying that you are somewhat scared of the new stakes and you are probably folding too much after the flop. The whole micro forum has seem to been getting fold happy these days. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Brad

[tiltaholic]

hi-
this isn't meant to sound mean or anything...but you've been around enough to know this has been discussed a billion times and you could find many threads that discuss this already. i always seem to chime in on this topic, so i figure i might as well post some thoughts too, in no paticular order. some of these you may find helpful, or not. and some may already be posted by others in this thread (sorry - too lazy to read all the replies). these are some observations, some strategy changes, and possible advices...as they pertained to my experience going .5/1 to 1/2.

-The Party 1/2 is beatable for 3+ BB/100 over tens of k hands. My sample is 20k.
-Pay attention to position: pay attention to the number of limpers ahead of you, the number of people yet to act behind you, and what they will likely do in response to your action.
-Keep track of table dynamics. Leaving crappy tables is good.
-WRT the above 2 points. I cut out numerous hands that were blindly profitable at .5/1, including things like Kxs.
-Attack and isolate weaker players.
-Be honest with yourself about whether the doubling of stakes is affecting your play. A habit I fell into at .50/1 was that the size of the pot in dollars was the number of BB. (duh). Force yourself to evaluate bets and pots in terms of bets and NOT dollars. It sounds trivial but it is not.
-If you want a fishy 1/2, play Pacific. It helped me enormously, both because I was forced to play 1 table and because the players are SO bad. This is the only time online I have ever experiened multiple orbits or 7+ to the flop. Good times.
-see ajax's link

Personally, I think I played about 1000 hands at Party, went down about 100 bb. Went back to .5/1. Then played about 5k hands at Pacific. Got confidence. Went back to 1/2 elsewhere...

This is what happens when I procrastinate at work. I ramble. Feel free to question me if you found anything helpful.
-t