Advice on moving up

[Troll_Inc]

So, I've made over 20* buyins at PLO25 since I started keeping track with pokertracker and I'm looking for some advice on strategies for moving up to PLO50 from people that have successfully moved up levels. I'm looking for a fairly conservative strategy and a couple of ideas jump out at me.

1. Continue to play PLO25. As soon as I get 1-2 full PLO50 buyins, play PLO50 with ONLY that "extra" money. If I drop below $500 (20 buyins for PLO25), then go back to playing PLO25.

2. Play PLO25 for 3 positive sessions, then play one PLO50 session. After one losing PLO50 session, drop back down to PLO25. Repeat until I have 40 buyins for PLO50.

3???

*With the number of hands played and my winrate, I'm confident that I am beating PLO25 and that 20 buyins is a big enough bankroll at this level. I plan on increasing bankroll reqs for higher levels if I eventually play there.

[Chimichonga]

How many buy-ins do you have for PLO50?

I would just mix in an occasional 50 game. If you usually play 3 tables of 25, just play 1 25 and 1 50. It is pretty much the same game.

You want to make sure that when you do take shots at bigger games that you are playing with confidence and without scared money.

If I were starting at PLO25 and working up and wanting to do it with minimal risk of going broke, I guess it would look something like this:

$0-$500: All PLO25
$500-$1500: Mostly PLO25 with some PLO50
$1500-$3000: All PLO50
$3000-$5000: Mostly PLO50 with some PLO100
$5k - $8k: All PLO100
$8k - $10k: Mostly PLO100 with some PLO200

After that, I would really start looking at my winrate in those games and standard dev to figure out my next moves.

Basically, those inbetween times I would use to take shots and get a feel for the higher levels. While you can take a shot for a single buy-in, one good or bad session isn't going to tell really tell you whether you stand a chance at beating the game in the long run.

Obviously, as with all bankroll management schemes, game selection, play style (i.e. standard dev), skill, etc will need to be considered. The above numbers are really just estimates (and already assume that you are a winning player).

[Troll_Inc]

I'm just over 20 buyins for PLO25 (between 20-25), which was my goal, now just thinking about the next step.

Your game-selection-based-on-bankroll scheme looks good to me, thanks for the advice.

[TheRempel]

Chimi, your bankroll management style is very conservative which is fine, but I have never exactly been conservative in life or poker.

Here's what I recommend for someone a little less risk adverse:

$500-$1250: $25 PLO. I think it's important to establish that you're a winning player grinding it out this low. Winning 10BB/100, it should take you about 10K hands to hit $1000. For me, that'd be 3 or 4 days at most. For an average 20 hour a week player it'd take a couple weeks.

$1250-$1500: Assuming you typically play four tables, I'd change one $25 table out for a $50 table everytime I increase my BR by 10 Buy-ins for the previous level. In this case, every time you win $250, change out a $25 for a $50.

$1500-$1750: 2x $25, 2x$50
$1750-$2000: 1x$25, 3x$50
$2000-$2500: 4x$50
$2500-$3000: 3x$50, 1x$100
$3000-$3500: 2x$50, 2x$100
$3500-$4000: 1x$50, 3x$100
$4000-$5000: 4x$100
$5000-$6000:3x$100, 1x$200
$6000-$7000: 2x$100, 2x$200
$7000-$8000: 1x$100, 3x$200
$8000-$1000: 4x$200

and so on. Of course, you should follow the same rules if you start running bad and dropping down your table counts accordingly. If you play more or less tables adjust as you see fit.

[BluffTHIS!]

Rempel,

Your figures are still conservative, but not overly so as chimi's seems to be. We have had threads here in the past on this, and Big Dave and I generally put forth 30-50 buyins, and 100 for superconservative and never drop down. For NL, I personally think 20 buyins is adequate if you don't play very LAG all the time, especially shorthanded (although many of my fellow 10/20 NL players in the HSNL forum think that is way too little and regularly experience 10 buyin downswings which I don't).

Also, that is good advice about slowly adding tables when moving up, which allows a player to become acclimated slowly to the new level without risking blowing a lot to see what now works and what doesn't.

[Troll_Inc]

[ QUOTE ]

Here's what I recommend for someone a little less risk adverse:

$500-$1250: $25 PLO. I think it's important to establish that you're a winning player grinding it out this low. Winning 10BB/100, it should take you about 10K hands to hit $1000. For me, that'd be 3 or 4 days at most. For an average 20 hour a week player it'd take a couple weeks.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good advice too, thank you. I printed out whole thread and pasted to my computer.

A related question might be how many tables do people play? For most of my PLO25 run, I've been at only one and sometimes two Party tables at a time, so my 15-20bb/100 stats are from that. I just rediscovered UB PLO cash games which are much easier to multitable, so I've started with 3-4 tables.

It seems like advice points to better and more experienced players multitabling, so perhaps I should stay at PLO25 longer and develop multitabling skills. I would imagine the "standard" plays/decisions for experienced players still take me time to think through. Then, I can see if my winrate drops when I play 3-4 tables at a time.

[BluffTHIS!]

Troll,

If your system is good enough where you don't have memory problems, then you can also play 3-4 by playing a couple on 2 different sites. I play only 3 tables but often that is a mix between 2 sites at the same time. There is no reason to sit on bad tables just to have all of them on the same site.

When you first start to play more tables, try to use the prefold options a lot to concentrate on the tables you are playing a hand on. Also it pays to be more deliberate and not act too quickly so you can think each situation out.

[TheRempel]

I play 6-10 tables at a time, but it's dependant on how many good tables I can find and on what sites. The multitabling software I use for party interferes with playing on stars, so that's why you won't often see me playing on stars anymore.

Without pokertracker I'd be able to play a max of 4 tables at a time. If you can condition yourself to multitable (and PLO is the easiest game for it since the decisions are rarely really hard to make and the player base is small, making reads easier) you should be able to move up much faster.

I mostly play lots of tables because I have the attention span of a crack addict.

[cmyr]

OT... rempel, how many hours a week do you play on average? how many hands a month?

[TheRempel]

Depends on how I'm feeling, but an average month would be 40-50,000 hands, at about 50-60 hours a week. I've been lazy the last little while though.