Moving Up- Tips For Success

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Hey guys, Happy Thanksgiving. Hope you all had a good evening and are planning on taking advantage of one of the best days of the year to play poker. (tomorrow)

Today I’m going to talk about what it takes to jump up stakes, and what the right mentality is in order to do so successfully.

Alright, so you’re a 200NL Heads-Up player, and over your last few thousand hands you have been beating 200NL for 6bb/100. After losing your original $500 deposit, with your second $500 you were determined to do everything right. Playing a little underrolled, 100NL went well and you jumped up to 200nl. The switch was difficult, it took a good 25K hands and $900 in lessons before you really had the bankroll and ability to stay at 200nl. After over two months of grinding, it seems like you’ve really got the hang of 200nl. You’ve got over $9400 in your account, and it seems like the right time to move up to 400NL. Right?

Wrong. What’s wrong with this picture?

When I decide to move up limits (I’m talking low to mid-stakes, for higher stakes it’s a bit different) I want to have at least 10K hands at that level of consistent, solid winnings. I’m talking better than 5bb/100. If I can’t come up with these kinds of results, then I won’t be ready for the next limit. The second-to-last thing you want to do is move up to a limit where you’re struggling to beat the rake.

The LAST thing you want to do is move up to a limit where you’re unsure whether you are beating that limit.

Got it? Again,

The LAST thing you want to do is move up to a limit where you’re unsure whether you are beating that limit.

This is the most important piece of information I will be able to give you about moving up. Because confidence is one of the most important things you can have in your HU poker arsenal. I’ll discuss more about confidence and other things in another article; I have much more to say about its importance.

People talk about “taking shots” when considering moving up. Seems like decent logic, you’re playing at one limit, and to get a taste of what the play is like at another higher limit, you jump in and play a session there. But what too many people do is decide to take a shot to a higher limit when there bankroll is barely sufficient enough for their usual stakes. It’s a recipe for disaster. They never move up because they grind it out at one limit, then play scared or different then they would at the higher game. Often players taking shots don’t notice it, but they really play differently than they would; less than optimally and this has a huge effect on how quickly and smoothly you are able to move up limits.

So here’s my suggestion:

Jump up when you’ve had a fairly large upswing, a large upwards swing in variance, anywhere from 5 buy-ins upwards in your last thousand to two thousand hands. This is very rough; any fairly big winning session is good.

Set an amount that you are willing to lose before dropping down again. For mid-stakes, it should be about 4 or 5 buy-ins, this is what has worked best for me. If your bankroll cannot weather this many buy-ins lost at the higher level, then you really shouldn’t be thinking about moving up quite yet.

So for example, you are playing 200NL with a $10400, and in the last two days you have played 1400 hands, with $1750 in winnings. Obviously ecstatic with these results, you decide that you want to try and move up to 400NL. So play 400NL, and move back down to 200NL only if you drop below $10000.

The reason I suggest that people move up when they recently have a large upswing is because they won’t be so nervous playing the higher stakes. After making a lot in a short period of time, jumping up is easier in terms of playing your game and not worrying about the money as much. Make sense?

With rules like these to follow, it becomes very easy to manage your bankroll, especially if you are someone that is prone to try crazy things that bankroll management preachers like myself would have a heart attack over.

As a side note, many rules like these go out the window or should be altered (as well as exceptions given) when talking about high stakes. 10000NL players cannot afford to pass up a 40000NL match against someone who can’t beat 600NL, for example. Surely this requires serious discipline knowing when to make an exception, but true high stakes games require much more obviously.

I remember reading Brian Townsend’s blog a while ago, where he was talking about how tempting it was during his hand challenge (where he played a set amount of hands at 10000NL and lower before moving up) to not sit in a bigger game, seeing all the good matches at higher stakes.

Obviously one can see both sides of the argument, but I believe he should have made exceptions for some of the matches he was passing up. I think that someone of his intelligence and discipline should be able to make exceptions without getting carried away. For the same reason, high stakes players and also some of the higher mid-stakes players should be able to make exceptions in terms of stop-loss limit rules. I apologize for getting off on another tangent but these are very, very important concepts and expect another article from me on some of this stuff later.

Anyways, for mid-stakes, there are almost always matches. Following strict guidelines makes it easy to play optimally and move up stakes without much of a problem. If you do go on a downswing while attempting to move up however, it can be very frustrating.

Anything else you would like me to cover on the topic of moving up, let me know and I’ll be happy to voice my opinion/advice.