Moving up in Stakes
When to move up?
I am a huge fan of going on a heater. It’s a great feeling, and sometimes it feels like i can’t lose. However, there have been times whenI’ve been riding the wave of an amazing session, and have literally doubled my bankroll. And what did i do right away? I moved up to the next level of stakes. Was this incorrect? Mathematically , absolutely not. I went from $450 or so to around $1200 in a single session, easily giving me the 20-25 buy ins that i comfortably need to move up a level. But when i started playing on the higher stakes tables, i started losing. Badly. Missing big pots, chasing stupid hands, and letting the other players get under my skin enough so that i didn’t notice when i was making a bad call, or until well afterI’d priced myself into the pot.
Get Conservative!
What i forgot to do, in this example, was to make sure that my game was good enough for the higher levels. I had the bankroll, that much i knew. I also knew that if kept winning the way i was winning, i would win a lot more at the higher level. But i didn’t think about the fact that players who play regularly at the higher levels either have more money to give away (the gamblers), or are much more experienced than the $25 no limit table players. After i lost all the moneyI’d won to get myself up to the higher level (it was not a great evening session that day…) i started doing research about how to gauge when to move up in levels, and how to measure yourgame play.
Poker Tracker and ptbb/100
Up until this point i wasn’t using a tracking software to compare what i was winning to what i was putting out. I was a recreational player, and was quite content with reloading my bankroll every 6 months or so. I set up pokertracker, and played at my old level for a few weeks to get a good handle on my game play. The conservative approach is take a sampling of 100,000 hands before moving up, but this is akin to needing 60 buy in’s to play NLHE at any level (overkill.) I went with 25,000 or so hands and I realized that my winrate was 3 ptbb/100 (based on this at .50/1.00 nl i was making $6 / 100 hands..click here for a more in depth forum post on the topic..), and so that was good enough for me to move up. 4 ptbb/100 is better, but i felt confident. My bankroll supported my move (again), and this time i knew where i had gone wrong in moving up in stakes the last time. I did much better and am now thinking about moving up again.
So, in short, ensure that you have the bankroll for a higher level and make sure that you’re game is up for the challenge of the new level. If you feel like moving up, do it, but remember…keep a close watch on your win rate and adjust accordingly.
