Hypothetical Questions Regarding Limit Selection

[JohnnyHumongous]

For a long time, I have been intrigued by the tradeoffs between risk and reward that are inherently woven in to the game of poker. And by risk vs. reward, I mean both at the micro- level and the macro- level.

Take a hypothetical situation. You are playing X tables simultaneously at limit Y. You have played let's say 200K hands X-tabling at limit Y and thus you are pretty strongly confident in your winrate. You calculate that at this limit you are making $200/hour (or more) with 90% certainty (and the other 10% of the time it's like only $170 or something). You have been playing limit Y for a long time, and you feel very confident in your success there; furthermore, you feel very safe there. The downswings don't bother you, you don't scratch your head and wonder, "Maybe I'm not as good as I thought." You win fairly consistently week after week and your poker-related stress is relatively low.

To move up in limit would require a lot of attention and so you would have to 1-table (maybe 2-table at most) and thus your earn would be slashed, perhaps by 75%. And of course you don't even know how much you are likely to win at the next level, if you even win at all. But you know that to ever reach the "upper echelons" of the game, say 100/200 and above, you would need to attempt those higher limits. You would need to take on a ton of risk and, ironically, MUCH LESS reward (at least temporarily). And because those higher limits are tougher and require much more attention, it may not be possible to play X tables ever again. So you might have to jump up in limit a great deal before you ever match your earn that you are making NOW, with very low risk and low stress. And that's if you can EVER make that earn at the higher limits.

Do people think it's worth it to move up in this situation and give up all the comforts? If no, why not? If yes, how much would you have to be making to stay in the current situation? $300/hour? How about $400? Feel free to take this topic in any direction, I feel it's quite interesting, and practical too, as we do our best to "manage" our poker careers.