Moving Up: Beyond Winrate And Bankroll - Part 1: Comfort Level

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Are you ready to move up to higher stakes? How can you know when you are?

These questions are on the minds of most serious players at least some of the time. Conquering your current game and moving on to bigger and better things is the goal of most players.

Most discussion about moving up I see covers two topics: winrate and bankroll. If you’ve achieved such-and-such a winrate over so many hands and you have at least this number of buyins in your bankroll, go for it!

I have a small quarrel with the way people use winrate and bankroll metrics for moving up. While obviously both winrate and bankroll are relevant to your moving up decision, they aren’t the only two relevant factors. Sometimes other factors are important as well, and sometimes I think these other factors can be very important.

My thoughts on this, to some extent, stem from my own experience. When I was learning to play, I played the smallest game regularly offered at my cardroom, $4-$8 limit hold’em. In the beginning I racked up an impressive record of losing month after losing month. And yet, after my sixth straight losing month, I decided it was time to move up to $10-$20 and $15-$30!

I did it, and it worked out great. I won more that first month than I had lost in my previous six, and I never had another losing month for all the time I played live limit hold’em.

Why did I decide it was time to move up when I hadn’t registered even one winning month up to that point? A few factors convinced me that I was ready, and these articles will talk about some of those factors that I think can make or break a move up.

Money Comfort

Before you move up, I think it’s critical that you be very comfortable in the game you’re currently playing. The first key to being comfortable is that the stakes don’t bother you. You can have a horrible day and it won’t really faze you. While you’re playing, you literally never have the thought, “Gee, that’s a lot of money.”

Now I don’t mean that running bad doesn’t bother you. Running bad bothers nearly everyone at least a little bit at some point. I mean that the money doesn’t scare you. When you’re running bad, you’re frustrated because losing is frustrating from a competitive or gaming standpoint, not because it’s a ton of money to you.

I think this is critical because every time you say to yourself, “Wow, that’s a lot of money,” you risk making a bad decision as a result. Furthermore, once you do move up, you’re virtually guaranteed to say, “Wow, that’s a lot of money,” to yourself for a while after you take that first shot. In other words, you’re going to make some bad decisions when you move up because the money is bigger. You can’t remove that factor, but if you move up to a bigger game when you aren’t even comfortable at your current stakes yet, you’re just asking for trouble. The game will feel huge, and you will make poor plays as a result. You won’t pull the trigger on some good bluffs, you will get pushed out of pots too much, you’ll be less willing to flip when you should, and so forth.

Playing Comfort

Being comfortable with the money is obviously important, but that’s not the only aspect of comfort that I think is important. You should be comfortable in a gaming sense also.

When you switch from one game to another, your opponents will change. A typical player in the $1-$3 no-limit game at the Wynn in Las Vegas will play very differently than the typical player in the $1-$2 game on PokerStars. And the typical $5-$10 player on PokerStars will also play very differently than the $1-$2 player.

When you switch games, your opponents will play differently than you are used to, and that will cause discomfort. Your hand ranges will be off. For instance, if you’re used to the $1-$3 game at the Wynn, you might be used to seeing preflop 3-bets once or twice an hour and made only on premium hands. If you jump into a $1-$2 game on PokerStars, you’ll see way more preflop 3-bets. You’ll presumably figure out that people are 3-betting with more hands, but you won’t know right off the bat what their ranges are. You won’t understand the dynamics – do your opponents 3-bet wildly in all circumstances, or do they try to pick their spots? You have to play a game for a while before you can begin to nail down hand ranges again and get comfortable reading hands.

Before you move up, in my opinion, you should be extremely comfortable in your regular game. Your hand reading should be sharp. You should rarely feel lost at sea. If someone starts 3-betting you every other hand, you should know what’s going on. Is this player just picking up hands, is he picking on you, or is he on tilt? Why did he shift gears, and what should you do about it? How will he react to you if you play back at him?

Now, if you play with competent players, you won’t know exactly what they are up to all the time. But you should feel comfortable in the game. You should understand their general approach to the game, and you should have a good feel for how to counter it.

When you move up, you’ll probably feel out of your depth at least sometimes. You’ll get caught by aggression you weren’t expecting. That’s normal; you’re moving up to challenge yourself and conquer this new game. But if you still get that out-of-your-depth feeling at your normal stakes, you likely aren’t quite ready yet to move up.

Comfort Without Winrate

As I said above, I moved up even though my winrate in my normal game was negative. I moved up because I felt extremely comfortable in the $4-$8 game. I was totally comfortable with the money involved, and I never, ever felt out of my depth when I played. I understood my opponents’ strategies and I knew how to counter them. I was playing with a significant edge, and I knew it. I also had saved up enough money at my job that I would be well-bankrolled for the bigger games right off the bat. So I decided it was time to move up.

Poker has so much inherent variance that I am a bit queasy about trying to use winrates to judge skill. Even though I had lost for six straight months at $4-$8, six months on the schedule I had been playing worked out to only about 4,000 hands or so. It’s likely I was indeed a losing player for the first few months, but by the time I moved up I had an edge and had just run a little bad.

In online poker, the edges are much smaller than they were in my $4-$8 game, and winrates mean even less, even over much larger samples. It’s reasonably common for a strong player at $0.50-$1 or $1-$2 no-limit to go on a 50,000 hand or more break-even streak. And therefore it’s just as common for a break-even player at those levels to go on a 50,000 hand or more strongly winning streak. It happens all the time – a weak player has a good run and moves up from a game that’s just slightly over his head to one that’s way, way over his head.

If you’re completely comfortable at your current level, consider moving up. Don’t allow your winrate to comfort you. If you’re saying, “Well, I won 5ptbb/100 over the last 50,000 hands, so I must be doing something right,” you’re not ready to move up. You should feel comfortable and in control almost all the time in your regular game. Your moments of confusion and feelings of being outplayed should come rarely.

You should have control over your opponents. You should be able to manipulate them into situations where they make mistakes. You should read their hand ranges accurately. And you should be able to anticipate how they will react to some situations. In a recent Stoxpoker video, James Davis was tangling with a poor player at $1-$2 on Full Tilt. He c-bet a dry flop, and he said on the commentary, “Here’s what’s going to happen. He’s going to raise, I’m going to 3-bet, he’s going to fold, and I’m going to show.” And it happened just like that. If you’re ready to move up, you should occasionally have these moments of anticipation also. It means you understand your game and likely you have the edge you think you do.

The next parts will cover some more specific examples of playing comfort and how they relate to moving up.

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9 Responses to “Moving Up: Beyond Winrate And Bankroll - Part 1: Comfort Level”

Nico
@ Mon Aug 25, 2008 11:56:57 AM
1

Does this apply to tournaments as well?

DrillBill
@ Mon Aug 25, 2008 12:04:06 PM
2

Ed, this article is exactly what I need at the moment. I’ve been taking some shots at higher limits lately. I’m comfortable with both the stakes and my game at the moment. I’ve unfortuantely run bad the first 10k hands or so, losing more flips than my share and running KK into AA, etc.

I struggle more with the loss of income at my regular stakes. My wife lost her job a few months ago and I told her she could stay home with our daughter since my part time poker income had finally equaled her income. She never complains about how much I play anymore, by the way.

I want to move up and make more but I find myself asking why I’m taking shots, losing a few buyins, and having to grind a few days to get even.

I have a good winrate at my current limit and an adequate bankroll for the higher limit. That said ,taking a shot so far has meant breaking even for 4 days, instead of winning my usual 8 buyins over the same time period. Then my income for the week is a bit short of what I expect.

I’m not trying to turn a long term game into a short term one, but as someone who depends on x dollars per month from poker, I hope you can touch on this subject in future articles.

Lorin
@ Mon Aug 25, 2008 09:22:30 PM
3

Nico, in my opinion the most important thing about tournaments and bankroll considerations is that you’re buy-in should mean nothing to you when it comes down to making the correct decision. If a situation calls for an all-in bluff that you are almost certain is right, you should never have second thoughts because you are telling yourself that this tournament cost you X amount of dollars to buy into.

mynameiskarl
@ Tue Aug 26, 2008 06:31:36 AM
4

The “Here’s what’s going to happen. He’s going to raise, I’m going to 3-bet, he’s going to fold, and I’m going to show.” left me in awe when I saw it in the video.

Todd
@ Wed Aug 27, 2008 07:19:39 AM
5

…snip…
he first key to being comfortable is that the stakes don’t bother you.
…snip…

That is so huge. It is very hard to learn and make mistakes if the money bothers you. Another one of the coaches over at stox, Hunter, made a very nice case for playing over rolled so that you could use every tool in the bag without worrying about it’s immediate impact.

Oh, and James Davis’ reads are just ridiculous.

Lorin
@ Thu Aug 28, 2008 05:38:35 PM
6

There is a caveat to that, though. I strongly believe that the losses should be capable of stinging (though not devastating) and the wins should be capable of being satisfying. We all have learned through experience that if the stakes are meaningless, your play will soon become sloppy. I think that the term “over-rolled” is somewhat misleading. I think they should have opted to say “comfortably-rolled.”

Lorin
@ Thu Aug 28, 2008 05:40:54 PM
7

By the way, here is my companion site to this one (if you will) that I would suggest some of you look at. While I will never be as theoretically sound as Ed, I can offer personal experience and anecdote to supplement his writings.

Lorin
@ Thu Aug 28, 2008 05:41:11 PM
8
Rob Wilco
@ Fri Aug 29, 2008 12:29:23 AM
9

Ed,

This is really a great article (among many of yours, of course). I think that this is a tricky subject, because of the subjective nature of “comfort”. I play primarily limit hold ‘em, and I started playing at a limit where I could comfortably afford to put 300 big bets worth of money into my ‘roll. And I decided I would play at a limit until I earned enough so that I had 300 big bets at the next higher level. When I reached that amount, I would make a decision as to whether or not to move up, or to hang back a little longer.

Every time up to this point, I have decided to move up. Why? Because, by the time I played thousands of hands at one level, I had that “comfort” Ed talked about. I had a good sense of the skill level of my opponents, I good sense of what hands I could get away with playing, what tricks to use on what opponents, etc. And I had those crystal clear, “I know my hand’s better than Player A right now, but I’m behind player B” moments.

And, yes, every time I’ve moved up so far, when I’ve started I’ve had a “wow, these players are better/tighter/more aggressive” moment or two. And I usually start out losing a little bit at my new level. But then I learn how to counterattack and I’m able to get over those “bigger bet” jitters.

Sorry for the filibuster, just wanted to share my thoughts. Thanks for the great blog, Ed!

Rob Wilco
$0.50/$1.00 and $1.00/$2.00 limit player on Pokerstars

Lorin
@ Fri Aug 29, 2008 05:07:38 PM
10

Hey Mr. Wilco,

While I have no idea what your ultimate aspirations are, I will assume for the sake of this article that you are either a semi-pro or have aspirations of being a professional. I agree that the comfort issue is perhaps the most important, but there are certain other X-factors that are equally important.

The first one is rakeback. If you are an older player at Stars, you are probably not getting this. To me, getting the right rakeback deal is the #1 facet of being an online pro. While purportedly Pokerstars has the best VIP program, this is subsidized by all of the rake that they grab from you; rake that totals $1,000 or more depending on the volume and stakes that you play or plan on playing. If you plan on moving up to $2/4, the rakeback that you make (or that is denied to you) actually becomes a hugely significant part of your bottom-line or bankroll. I would suggest http://raketherake.com.

Furthermore, if you make that jump, now many of your games will be highly populated by full-time professionals, many of whom will be playing 8 or more tables at once and using heads-up displays and advanced data-mining methods to evaluate your play and the play of others, even while they are away from the table or sleeping. The result? Smaller pots, more aggressive foes, and less opportunities to exploit you opponents. You should be doing these things as well, particularly to track who the fish are as they are fewer and fewer in between. Don’t be like some of these meatheads who sit down at a table where there is one unknown player and 7 others who are rock-tight regulars.

Even better, opt for some of the smaller sites that have fewer active games at your stakes, yet significantly better games and rakeback deals. And if you play tournaments, you can find better overlays at these sites, often times week after week.

So back to the bankroll situation- don’t worry yourself to death with the 300 big bet theory. If you are un-egoinvolved and can immediately step down if you find yourself either uncomfortable or the victim of a bad downswing, feel free to take a 50 big bet shot or so at that larger game. Best of luck!

http://smallstakeshero.blogspot.com

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