The psychology of moving up

[Kevin]

Hey all,

I hope this is the appropriate place for this post.

As you can see, I was a day one guy (Member #155) and have been here since the old format (cira 2000, I believe). I posted a lot in the early years, but since the format change, I lurk some, read up on some stuff, but generally keep to myself.

Anyway, Since I got PT in early 2004, I have logged nearly 600,000 hands (a bad month for some of you, I know, but I have a full time job and 3 kids so 9 till midnight plus weekends 6 tableing gets me about 30,000 hands a month).

Here is my issue/question.

Of the 600,000 hands, over 500,000 of those hands are in 3/6. I am winning at a rate of about 1.5/100. When all rebates, bonuses, etc. are included, I have booked a winning month for all the 25 months in PT. One month in '04 was slightly red, but with rakeback taken into consideration, it was black. All other months have been black with with poker only, the rebates and bonuses were gravy. It works out to about 2000 a month in poker with 1000 of the other stuff on the side. It has turned out to be a nice side income as I have just passed the $75,000 mark in total winnings since getting PT (Rakeback and bonuses included).

So this doesn't get put into BBV, this is not a brag post by any stretch, quite the contrary. I find myself with about $20,000 between actual on account and Neteller/Slush Fund, etc. - however, I cannot seem to ever take the plunge into the bigger game.

I have played around 60,000 hands of 5/10 full over this time and won at about the same clip, but it seems that when I am ready to take the plunge and attempt to make this my full time game, a downswing will come, I will not be sure if it is just a cold deck, or I am not ready for the bigger game. I have put my toe in the 10/20 a few times and a couple of sessions of 15/30, but I never felt comfortable in the game and wanted to get out before I lost an entire month's winnings in one night.

I am around 17/10/2.2 over those 600,000 hands. I had a stretch from around hands 200,000 to hands 400,000 where I turned into a 14/7/2 guy. i read Nate's post last year on being a nutpeddler and took it to heart. I opened my game up and am consistently in the 17/10/2.2 range.

I don't steal enough (mid 20's), I don't defend enough, and I have a real issue getting value bets in at the right time - it seems that I check when it would have been an easy value bet and get checkraised when I throw one out. I continually work on this and am getting better but nowhere near where I want to be.

My feeling is that in a bigger game where much of the money is made on proper stealing/defending and value bets become an absolute necessity to beating the game, being weak in those two areas could turn me into a losing player in a hurry. I keep working on it and waiting for the magic bullet, but I don't ever feel that I will be comfortable.

Much more alarming was that I was about 1.9/100 in 2004 (started 2.5 but was playing a lot of 2/4), about 1.6/100 in 2005 and have started 2006 at about 1.1 - but am playing 6 tables now instead of 5 with the new software so that is making up for the revenue.

In a world where I feel that I am 5x the player that I was just a year ago and exponentially better than 2 years ago (not to mention my paradise $.50/$1.00 days in '01 and '02), i cannot understand fundamentally what I am doing wrong that causes my earn to continue to gradually sink. The games are a little tougher, a few more TAGs at the table, and many of the loose passives have been replaced by loose aggressives - but in my early days, I hated playing against LAGs, now I find 3 or 4 lags in a game a dream come true.

So, those of you who have taken the plunge, I would love some feedback. Maybe the right thing to do is take some of the roll and invest in a coach to get my leaks corrected and it will pay for itself in spades if and when I finally move up. Every once in a while, I open up the bigger games just to see who I have exported notes on and it never fails that all of the games up to the 100/200 usually have 1 to 2 players who I played against as they graduated and moved up while I stayed in the 3rd grade.

Thanks for the feedback - hope that I didn't come off whining - just looking for some advice - especially on the psychological end of it.

Kevin