It's Me Versus Me, not my Opponents

[MoreGentilythanU]

You have hit upon the fundamental truth in poker, you are the biggest factor, it is easy enough to find fish. What is hard is controlling your own play, poker is about self-mastery defense and attack. u can do it

[Erik Blazynski]

It's not right and it's not wrong, for you it's not right, for others it is. I cashed out of all the online sites about 2 months ago, I was up a few hundred. About 2 weeks ago I borrowed 5.50 to play in a limit MTT. I finished 4th. Then I played in another and finished 7th. Now I am not risking more than 5% of my BR at any one time. I have worked the $5 into $104, and so I build my BR, all along the way never risking more than 5% of the total.

-Blazman

[nawhead]

The problem with trying to grind up from the nanos is that your game stays at a fairly basic level unless you try to consciously think at a higher level (assuming you understand how to think at that higher level) as you progress up. I found when I took my shots that I wasn't thinking at the level of those at the higher tables and ended up reverting to a weak tight game or becoming a donk that never gets paid off due to predictability in my game that never affected me at lower levels.

The thing about getting confidence through nanos is that you mostly get rewarded for just shoving your money in the middle a lot of times with any good hand. Whether you think you're playing TAG or LAG, you're basically being a nit that just wants to get made hands paid off. Once thinking players catch on, they just feed off you.

If you must play at the nanos, you have to expand your game to the point where you are making those "bad bets" or "beat calls" to mainly sharpen your hand read reading skills but also to move your image beyond the nit that you've learned to be through watching other "successful" nano players. You have to adopt a suboptimal strategy for the level where you're at in order to prepare yourself for the higher level. It's counter-intuitive for bankroll building purposes, but ultimately necessary in order to move up to where significant sums of money are being staked.

The short and sweet is this: if you play a game that only beats idiots and beginners, you'll only be able to profit at levels where idiots and beginners play.

I think players who have moved up from the nanos assume this type of logic should be intuitive for any player who has a shot of making it. But just knowing this isn't the key, for as with many things in life, there is a vast gulf between knowing and doing.

And don't play with scared money. If you're taking a shot at a level where it will decimate your bankroll if you lose one session, that's scared money. You really should be bankrolled with 10 buy-ins at the higher level you're going for. This is with cash games mind you. A better way to move up in levels is enroll weekly or bi-weekly into small MTT's. If you happen to run hot (which is what you're hoping for anyway when taking a shot at higher levels), there's a much better payoff this way.

[Disclaimer: I only play as high as NL100 and played for nothing but play money until a year ago, so I may be a complete blathering idiot. But I have built $20 into over $500 twice in NL10 and NL25 cash games.]

[Erik Blazynski]

The idea is to manage your BR in such a manner that when you move up you are able to learn the proper adjustments without running out of money. I suggest never risking more than 5% of your bankroll in any one session. This keeps your risk of ruin low.

A level of a game is what it is. Of course you need to make adjustments. Are you suggesting that someone that plays a micro limit game can't move up and make adjustments without decimating his BR? This assertion is absurd. Then later in the post you say that you have done what can't be done, and you did it twice.

[nawhead]

[ QUOTE ]
The idea is to manage your BR in such a manner that when you move up you are able to learn the proper adjustments without running out of money. I suggest never risking more than 5% of your bankroll in any one session. This keeps your risk of ruin low.

A level of a game is what it is. Of course you need to make adjustments. Are you suggesting that someone that plays a micro limit game can't move up and make adjustments without decimating his BR? This assertion is absurd. Then later in the post you say that you have done what can't be done, and you did it twice.

[/ QUOTE ]

The OP said he's playing the first three levels on Stars and has hit a brick wall. I think it's a given that he's not adjusting his play or is playing with scared money and dropping down way too soon and not actually understanding why he's getting beat. I don't know where you got that I said micro limit players can't adjust. I only said a lot of new players fail to adjust.

But if you wait til you only risk 5% of your roll at a higher level, you're moving up way too slow. You're suggesting playing til you reach 40 buy-ins at nano limits before trying to move up. This is bad advice. The variance isn't as high at nano's and you're not supporting yourself at these stakes. A 40+ buy-in bankroll is only necessary for professionals who have to make rent every month regardless of being up or down for the month.

This obsession with highly conservative bankroll management and being over-rolled at microlimits holds a lot of new players back. The OP has to take a step back and think about what he's actually trying to achieve at these stakes: Learn the game, first and foremost, and second, move up. You talk about risk of ruin, which is a nice concept to know, but there is no risk of ruin playing at nano's. Nobody is getting kicked out of their home if they lose a $300 poker bankroll. If scrounging up $100 to get back in the micro games is an unreasonable demand for someone, they need to take a step back because they're not psychologically and/or financially ready to play for money.

Once a beginning player understands how to follow bankroll management requirements for a few months, he's learned that particular lesson and needs to move on to what's really important for the stakes he's playing at. In fact, I think once a guy's learned not to tilt away 10 buy-ins in one session chasing flush draws and making tilt calls, he's learned all the bankroll discipline he needs to for a while.

Just taking shots isn't an end unto itself. It isn't like if you take enough shots a player just automatically moves up. This isn't a videogame where you just accumulate experience points and all of a sudden you reach a new level. Moving up takes a concerted effort on a person's part. It's work, and damn hard work at that. Most people can't wrap their heads around this fact because the game itself is so simple to play. That's why new players need to hear again and again that they need to adjust. Read these forums, play outside your regular strategy, get crazy, do unreasonable things at the table, be aggressive, learn when to hit the brakes, test the boundaries of other players. Simply, learn the game.

[keith123]

I wouldn't look at the 30 dollars as a bankroll or a budget. Do you have a job? Are you in a position where you have any spare cash to blow? Count all the future spending cash you expect to acquire as part of your bankroll. So if you are working and find yourself with about 50 bucks a week to goof off with, then that 50 and next weeks, and the week after that should be your bankroll. if you lose all your money, you just don't go out drinking or whatever you normally do with your money. If you break even after 3 weeks then you have 150 bucks in the bank that you wouldn't normally have had, and now you have something you can at least pretend is a bankroll...but even that you can blow! So pretend you have a $500 bankroll right now (if you have 50 a week that you spend on going out/having fun whatever...remember if you win, you can still go out and have fun with the original investment). Lets say you want 20 buy-ins or so, you should be playing 25NL. If you lose, who cares? Your reload rate will be lower than if you really had 500 to blow, but so what?

When that 50 bucks a week start to look like chump change next to the amount of money in your account, you have a real bankroll and you can start paying attention to bankroll management.

[Poker Plan]

Thanks guys for all the replies.

What I find REALLY fascinating is that my post is about the mental block that I have, but the replies really seem to debate the level I am playing at.

What I find hard to comprehend is that:
I obviously have a lot to learn about poker, BUT
(some) people are recommending I move to a HIGHER level, where my opponents will be better and my mistakes will cost me more???

Obviously the nanos are a waste of time to "make money"- but that's not why I'm there. I would have thought they are ideal to LEARN the game?

Ian

[nawhead]

I've played a lot at microlimits, and you can get decent play at the NL25 (.10-.25 blinds) level and up. But NL2, NL5, or NL10 (as well as all fixed limits at these blind levels) are a card-catching contest and you won't learn anything worth learning other than what hands beat what. In other words, optimal strategy gets punished more often at NL2 to NL10 due to multiway limpers who can't fold to preflop raises.

For example, pocket aces have only a 50% winning percentage against 4 random hole cards. This is the herding effect of many bad hands combining individually weak odds to beat one good hand. Beginning players see this enough and start thinking getting into a raised pot with J4 offsuit in early position is actually not so bad when in fact it's horrible poker (not talking about you specifically, just talking in general).

And this is just one situation. There any many other situations pre and postflop that you learn to do a certain way at nanolimits to grind a profit that doesn't translate well when you move up. People who are trying to learn poker at these levels tend to compensate to cope with the bad beats (usually becoming more passive preflop and nut peddling postflop as well as never bluffing), so while they think they're "learning poker," they're actually retarding their poker progress and are predictably blindsided when they move up.

Some high rollers may disagree about NL25, but even kids realize 25 dollars can buy you a pretty nice dinner. I play a fairly LAG game and I got plenty of folds at NL25. Some people still won't fold junk at this level, but the number of people who do this is less so it's not a crapshoot.

Good luck moving up.