Winrate as a an indicator of when to move up

[Overseer55]

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For the recreational player - move up when you feel you can afford to lose a full buyin at the bigger game.


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Please insta-ignore this advice. This is a pre-requisite for moving up, for sure, but not the only criteria.

Here are the criteria that I (a recreational player) use when I "moved up" (which I define as making the transition to play a higher stakes game as my regular game):

1) You feel confident that you are consistently in the top 25% of players in your current game.
2) You are winning at a reasonable rate at your current game for a non-trivial sample size (200+ hours). Obviously, 200 hours isn't proof of anything, but it is good enough to have a semi-meaningful confidence interval that this is not short-term luck.
3) You believe that the rate at which your poker skill is increasing is slowing down or leveling off.
4) You have played in the higher game for least 30-50 hours and feel that you are a) comfortable to the amount of money (and swings) needed to properly play in the game and b) not in the bottom 25% of players in the game.

I used these criteria for my transition from 3/6 up to 20/40 limit (and .25/.5 up to 5/5 NL).

If you're wealthy, start a game that is just over the edge of being meaningful to you and then use the criteria I have listed as whether you should move up. Also, if you want to take a shot at a larger game, go ahead and do so whenever you feel like it provided that you won't panic about the amount of money in play.

[VegasRunner]

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At the Bellagio, the lowest game is 2/5, so there's not much reason to think the players there would be any better than a 1/2 game somewhere else.

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If you think the Belligio 2/5 has the same caliber players as the guys at the Imperial Palace's 1/2 nl across the street, you haven't been to the fine establishment that is IP lately. (Actually, no one has been to the IP lately, so I guess that's not really saying much.)

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If you have good game selection at every level, that means you will "have the best of it" at every game you play.

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Just because I take the time to search for the best 10-20 game in the casino doesn't necessarily mean that a game will exist in which I have the best of it.

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For the recreational player - move up when you feel you can afford to lose a full buyin at the bigger game.

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This sounds dangerously close to what most people would call a rampage. Of course I could afford to a buy in at the next level. Anyone playing with money they couldn't afford to lose at any level is an idiot.

What I'm asking is what kind of hourly rate would dictate that you are probably going to be getting the best of it at the next level. I understand that everyday and every table, every game will be different. Yes, there are difficult 1-2 nl games running right now. And yes, there are easy 10-20 nl games running right now. But IN GENERAL, does anyone think that roughly 5 bb per hour is enough at one level to be a good indication that it's time to move up? What about 10 bb per hour?

I'm not asking for a definitive answer. I'd just like to hear what some of you thought.

Thanks to the few people who have given an opinion.

[VegasRunner]

Thank you, Overseer.

That was the kind of answer I was looking for.

[JackInDaCrak]

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If you have good game selection at every level, that means you will "have the best of it" at every game you play.

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Just because I take the time to search for the best 10-20 game in the casino doesn't necessarily mean that a game will exist in which I have the best of it.


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Sometimes practicing good game selection means not sitting in any game at all when you wouldn't have the best of it.