Attempting to tie up loose ends.

[bdypdx]

I'm currently playing live 4/8. Some of the games are kill games, so x-percentage of the games are 8/16. OK, no problem. Also, many of my opponents are regular 10/20 players and again, no problem. Anyhow, my earnings are good and rising, along with my win-rate.

Locally, there are no 6/12 or 8/16 games, so I'm thinking of the step to 10/20 sometime between now, and say... March.

After Clarkmeister's recent "short thought" thread in the small stakes forum, I've begun to experiment a bit. I've toyed around with some semi-funky hands with mixed results. Last night I pushed a few hands early on to see what would happen. Interesting. I try my experiments, evaluate, and then move on to my normal play.

Anyhow. I assume you all started in lower limits?

1. What happened when you moved up?
2. When a "regular" 10/20 player plays 4/8, do they really play that much differently?
3. What should I watch out for?

On the other hand, a few of those 10/20 players in my good 4/8 games seem quite dangerous.

bdy

[Clarkmeister]

When I play lower limits now I find that I play more hands with position than I do in higher stakes games. The reason is that the LL players are much more readable and play much more poorly postflop. I also am more aggressive preflop in these games because their preflop limping standards are so much more poor than found in mid limit games.

[Dante]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyhow. I assume you all started in lower limits?

1. What happened when you moved up?
2. When a "regular" 10/20 player plays 4/8, do they really play that much differently?
3. What should I watch out for?



[/ QUOTE ]

1. The games got noticibly tighter, but not tight. People started to think about what I thought, rather than just their own cards, the board, and who raised.
2. They should. As a 10/20 player who sometimes needs to play down while waiting, I've found many more calling stations in the 4/8 or 5/10 game where I play. If you raise, people will call most/all the way with anything. E.G. if I raised and the flop is J83, I wouldn't be surprised to see and 8 or 3 call all the way down. It's rare that a bluff will work also, people will just generally pay you off. Conversely, if a 10-20 player doesn't adjust, you can use that to push them off of hands.
3. You should watch out for the tough players who will put you to tough decisions on the turn, usually by (check) raising. The turn differentiates good players from bad. When I first moved up, the tougher people could smell my fear on being raised on the turn. This fear will cause you to check hands you shouldn't and pay off hands you shouldn't. But it will go away with getting comfortable at the new limit and being attentive to those opponents. Somewhere along the way, you (hopefully) go from the fearing to being feared.

I'll never forget, there was one particular day, I had been playing 10-20 (up from 4/8) for a month or so after playing 4/8 (and winning) for 6-9 months. Early in the session, we were short-handed due to some people moving tables and eating dinner, I raise UTG QJ, 1 MP caller. Flop is rags, he calls. Turn is an A, I check, he bets, I'm reaching to muck and a little voice is screaming in my head "he's got nothing, make him pay" I'm horrified to see myself cutting out $40 for the raise and he throws it away. First time my hand reading skills really coalesced into something usable.

Two months later, I sit down in MP and am going to post behind the button, so I take a quick walk around on the top of the riverboat (it's a nice summer night). I hear 2 guys I recognize around the corner talking, one guy is at my table. I finally realize what they're saying and they're talking about me! So I listen a little bit and realize that they hate it when I sit at their table because of how tough I am. (me, tough ??) These were two good players whose game I really respected and had 15+ years of experience each. needless to say, after that, I became one of the punishers..

hope you get something useful from my rambling..

Dante