Leveling Up and Leveling Down

I've had some brutal up-and-down swings lately, and so I stepped back down to .10/.20 games this afternoon. No question, they are a lot easier than .25/.50; I tripled my money in almost no time, while I was holding steady at the .25/.50 table at the same time.

The main difference with the lower limit is the extreme passivity of the players and the willingness to give free cards. If you hold:

J ♣ 8♦

And the flop is:

T ♠ 7♣ 2♦

You can almost always get a free card here if you want it, where calling a bet or two wouldn't be worth it. If you make your hand, you will get paid off by people holding any pair, ace high, a smaller draw, or maybe even two overcards. The calling inclination is so strong that draws are almost the only hands worth playing at that level, and I've found extremely marginal hands like 96s, 74s, and J8o are worth a call.

At the .25/.50 level, almost no flops are checked all the way around; in fact, almost no flops have only one bet. Drawing gets tricky, even with a draw to the nuts, when you're calling two bets cold in a small pot. It gets even worse if you're drawing to a straight and there's a two-flush on the board; it's likely that either the bet or the raise came from two suited cards, so you're wondering if your straight will be good even if you make it.

This is probably wrong, but I swear I see more paired boards at the higher levels; possibly because people are playing higher quality cards (more face cards) you see way more 992 flops. When you've raised with KQ, that's uncomfortable; someone is liable to call you down with A high, or else they already have T9 or something like that. Also more incredibly uncoordinated boards that can't possibly make a draw, like Q73 unsuited. Perhaps it's because people are playing suited cards more that the board appears "drier."