To Move Up, or Not

I logged a good 2 hours at the higher limit tables (.25/.50) and the results were... nothing. I finished ahead exactly 2 cents! At one point I was down about 15 dollars, and clawed my way back to even thanks to the arrival of a serious calling station at our table.

Are the players better at the higher limits? Absolutely not. I'd almost say they are worse! However, they are far more aggressive and that can be difficult to deal with. You're in the small blind with KT offsuit. As a wise and worldly hold' em player, you know this is a "trouble hand" because it's dominated by raising hands like KQ. There's a raise, a re-raise, and you automatically fold.

Sounds like smart play, until you factor in these three elements. First, the flop comes QJ4. A massive betting frenzy breaks out. Second, you would have made your straight with a 9 on the turn. Third, the initial raiser turns over Q9 to win the hand. You had him dominated all along. The pot is huge, probably at least 30 big blinds. That's half your buy-in right there.

As soon as I stepped back down, I was winning with ease again. I added about 50% to my buy-in over 10 minutes at the low stakes tables.

Whether or not to move up is a complicated calculation. A .25/.50 game is 2.5x as big as the one I'm currently playing in. At .10/.20, I can reliably beat the game to the tune of 100 big blinds every couple of hours. A great rate to be sure, but it still doesn't come out to much more than 5 bucks an hour.

If I could replicate this at the next level, I'd be making 12.50. Now we're talking. But of course you can't - the game changes at each level. I need some math to help me figure out how much of an edge I can give up and still make more with pots 250% larger on average. The simple answer is: if I can win 40% as much as I did at the lower stakes, I'll be doing the same. Even 50% and I'll be ahead of where I was in a per-hour money basis.

But this assumes a one-to-one translation between the levels - just multiply everything by 2.5. In reality the pots are far bigger, far more likely to be 3- and 4-bet pre-flop, and far more likely to go to a multi-way showdown. This is the irony of the higher levels; they aren't tighter at all, they're looser and it makes them far more difficult to win at because top pair becomes a shaky hand.

I'll try again in the next few days and see how I do...