Moving from 2NL to 5NL....

How do you know when to move from 2NL to 5NL? How many buy-ins would I need to make the move. I mean I'm still very raw playing cash games. But I didn't know if I need more experience to move or just the money. Thanks!

I beleive some sites do have mininmum BB's ...but those numbers changed recently! I THINK it's 40 big blind min. Sorry could not be of more help....GOOD LUCK

For proper bankroll management you will probably want to wait until you have about $100 in your account to play 5NL

Bankroll management only applies if you're a winning player, other wise its just delaying the inevitable. If you are beating 2nl then move up to 5nl. If you are a break even player with rakeback move up. The games are the same and should be played the same. Table selection FTW.

Take a shot...and move up...You will know if you feel comfortable or not. Good luck

$100 is fine, but only if you are a constant winning player on NL2

Are you winning player at 2NL? Do you think you have a grasp of the game? Do you have about $100 in your BR? If the answer to all three of these questions is "yes" then it's time to move up. 2Nl and 5NL are played essentially the same. There's not much of a skill difference and if you are winning at 2nl and have the BR to move up then I'd highly recommend doing it.

5nl is slightly more aggressive than 2nl. I have around 40k hands at both levels and 2nl is definitely a little softer.

As far as BRM goes everyone has a different risk threshold. My BR is $ 113 (57 BI) for 2nl. On Oct 7 it was $ 18 after I had lost $ 158 playing 5nl, which thankfully included $95 in bonuses from Full Tilt. Over the past month I built it back up and now I am frankly scared to move back up. I tried several hundred hands last night but felt tense and nervous and worried about the money, even though I ended up losing only 20bb for the session I just don't feel ready to move back up so this morning I went back to 2nl and beat the game for 13BB/ 100 ($ 11.14) today. I just don't ever think about the money when I am playing 2nl.

As far as a grasp of the game I still lack much confidence. I just don't think I make the best decisions postflop. Some decisions like pot odds to draw to a flush are pretty easy but reading the two pair, straight & full house boards sometimes has me lost, especially when I have 2nd Full House or 2nd nut straight or top and bottom pair. I also struggle with hands like 99 on a JT board where the turn gives me a gutshot, I just feel paralyzed.

Anyway, I do want to move up eventually I just want a little more experience and a slightly larger bankroll.

100 Buy ins Imo

I agree with most of the others. If you have at least 100 in your account and you're beating 2nl over a good sample size, take a shot at 5nl and see how you feel. If you want you can send me your HH from 5nl and I can take a look at it for you and give you my input

100 buy ins definitely. you can feel comfortable playing, and you have some padding for bad runs.

Are you serious?

Start taking shots at 20BI (mix tables into your 2NL tables or play just 1 or 2 tables of 5NL), move up at 25BI.

The difference between 2NL and 5NL is very very little. There are still tons of fish and no good regulars (well, maybe 1 or 2 at most, but they are crazy like chip-star was). Sounds like you have an issue with your confidence - work on your game more by reading guides and watching videos.

Don't get stuck at microstakes - the rake is too big. Learn the game, improve, make sure you are comfortable and beating it over a reasonable sample, make sure you're rolled; then move up

Yes, i would say no difference in the game between .02 and .05 but if you get stuck in a session for 4 buy-ins thats $20.00 if you get stuck in a .02 session thats $8.00 . Stuck 20 buy-ins in a few sessons does that happen to good players?/ Hell yes it happens...

As a general rule of proper br management, you should always have at least 20x the buy in for a tournament in your br. For example, if you want to play in the 5nl you should have at least 100 in your bankroll

Pascal i meant 100 dollars. I'm strongly against this 100BI suggestion as you can see on fx's dropping down to 2nl thread. Building 500 dollars from just 2nl is dumb IMO

Hey guess what at 10nl that's $40 and at 100nl that's $400! SFW? If you can't separate your BR from actual money you're going to have a very hard time moving up ever.

yes. And I still maintain that there is a difference in aggression between 2nl & 5nl. Perhaps if you play 10 or 25nl you might not see the difference but having split 90k hands about equally I can tell you that 3betting and re-raising c-bets is a little more prevalent at 5 than at 2.

As far as regs go, there are several who show up at the tables here that I have a thousand or more hands on.


Your point is valid, the actual dollar amount in play is small but I kind of feel that my BR has a ton of sweat equity in it and when I look at it I know how much I deposited and where I am at now. By taking a bigger risk and potentially needing to re-deposit I would feel like I was a bit of a failure. I know this sounds overly nitty but for me, the actual deposit amount I have put on Full Tilt this time around is $ 150 and my BR is now $ 118 so the way I look at it, I spent $ 32 for a 90k hand education in poker, a pretty good deal in my estimation. (I don't count Full Tilt bonuses in my wins or losses-maybe some think I should but that money didn't come from by bank account so I don't count it). I can be break even in a month, hopefully and then I would start 2011 with a chance to be a winning poker player with 100k hands of training and then I could say, time to move up. My confidence is defintely an issue and as you can see my by HA posts I still need a lot of work in my postflop play. The fact that I have been beating 2nl for 4BB/100 doesn't change that as in the valley of the blind people the one eyed man is King. I want to get more automatic in my mental algorithims when I get called or raised on the flop and really be better at putting villains on a range of hands and then knowing my equity against that range and then making the best possible decision. As always,WV I value your opinion very highly.

I played 25k hands of each when moving up and saw very little difference

There's a difference between good regs and bad regs - bad regs play micros because they aren't good enough to move up and make profit. They are the majority of the regs at low stkakes

[/quote]

The whole idea of BRM is to move down - you don't move up and then never move back down again. You set a stop limit so if you dropped to say 15BI for 5NL you go back to 2NL and grind it back up so you can take another shot.

Thanks for the info guys. I do think 100 BI would be too much. If I can grind at 2NL till i'm at $500 then I'm probably losing money(since I could be at 5NL instead) I'll probably wait till about 25 BI or so. Thanks. One last ?....should I keep my BR seperate for tourney/SnG/Cash play or what? Just curious what others do. Thanks

Do you have a game you focus primarily on or not?

anywhere from 30-100 buy-ins is good so 150 is good

I think there is a misconception about proper Bankroll management that equates a certain number of buy-ins as the only variable in the equation. Whether you have 10,20,50,100 or 200 buy-ins the overlooked questions are; how easily could I replace this money? How would I feel about losing it all? For a single person making great money who played live 1/2 NLHE at the local casino the idea of needing several thousand dollars in a BR would seem absurd. To a professional poker player playing 5/10 at the same casino having a roll under $ 10,000 might make him or her squeamish, especially if he was trying to support a family doing it.

There are those who say that once you have a nice winrate over a decent sample that the logical thing to do is to move up. However ask several players the two questions above; how easily could you replace the money and how would you feel about losing it,and you will probably get several different responses.

For me personally, a $ 100 bankroll is significant. I have two school aged kids, Holidays are coming,etc. If I were to lose it all I would probably not replace it until sometime in January (iPod touch for my son, laptop for my daughter under the tree). When I play 5nl I think about my bankroll with every hand. When I play 2nl I don't think about it at all. With 2nl I have a track record of 4+BB/ 100 in a sample around 50k hands. With 5nl I have lost double that dollar amount and an equally negative BB/100 rate. I tried 2500 hands at 5nl this week and and lost a little over 3 buy-ins with a BB/100 of -6.42/100. Until this morning I had 8400 hands at 2nl at 2.19 BB/100 which is actually my worst week in the past month but still winning.

When I decided to move up this week, I felt like I had something to prove. I was impatient and I wanted to win. I had a few bad beats in there and I was playing scared as I thought, if I go down 2 BI for the session that's 8-10% of my bankroll. This lethal cocktail put me on tilt. When I hit my saturation point I got off the tables. I was very disappointed in myself for playing poorly and not having faith in EV. I should have taken the rest of the day off but I figured I could make it up easily on home turf. Instead I spazzed off 3 1/2 Bi at 2nl in an hour.

I am done with the soap opera of moving up for now. 20 BI is just not enough for me and I know All In Clubs shares this view. The truth is; I still suck at Poker. I win at 2nl because the average player there sucks even worse. Fortunately the wrecking ball only smashed % 15 of my bankroll and I am still a little over a hundred dollars.

I know that I will not be playing 2nl forever. I want to move up, I want to succeed. I'm just not ready yet. At this point, regardless of my winrate I won't move up until the New Year at the earliest.

Then you'll all get a postcard from fx that says: "Weather's great at 5nl. Come and join me".

until then I will be sliding on my belly with my tail between my legs.

All this is fine as long as you realize you're just delaying your development / advancement and not solving the problem.

grunch: the more you glorify moving up, the harder it will be for you to do so comfortably

this might be a dumb question but if you have KK in 5 nl and someone raises all in preflop should you pretty much always call with it? it seems like i always run into aces with my kings but when i have aces i can never run into lower pkts and when i do they seem to hit a set its pretty frustrating and i lose most of my br this way

Why would anyone just shove all in preflop? would'nt they want to get value from there AA or KK ??

Some people are really bad at poker, I guess.

Fish on, i knew you would bite LOl

protip, never fold kings preflop in 100bb games

Yes, I'm aware. I have some anxieties to work out and would prefer to not be stressed about this before the Holidays. Now, if by some chance I went on a sick heater and my BR doubled I would then take a shot.

And I really do think I suck at Poker. Aside from memorizing EV charts and knowing some percentages I'm pretty bad. But CC has improved me alot.

Ok, so I slept on it and woke up thinking that I am an uber nit. I realized that playing 4 tables of 5NL was putting a little less in play than my usual 12X2NL tables so I took deep breaths and said, I am going to play my game, wait for situations and be patient. So I played a 44 minute session.
Just one session but it did build some confidence.

One of the tables featured a Hyper Aggro Maniac. His session stats were 81/45/ 4 with an aggression freq of 66.67 and who went to showdown 34% of the time. Two orbits in I played this hand with him.

Full Tilt - $0.05 NL - Holdem - 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3
CO: $5.00
BTN: $5.00
SB: $1.76
BB: $5.78
UTG: $5.07
Hero (UTG+1): $5.20
MP: $3.12
MP+1: $5.00
LP: $11.19
SB posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05
Pre Flop: ($0.07) Hero has K♠ K♣
fold, Hero raises to $0.20, fold, fold, LP calls $0.20, fold, fold, SB calls $0.18, BB calls $0.15
Flop: ($0.80, 4 players) 2♠ 2♥ A♦
SB checks, BB bets $0.80, Hero calls $0.80, fold, fold
Turn: ($2.40, 2 players) 6♣
BB bets $2.40, Hero calls $2.40
River: ($7.20, 2 players) 8♠
BB bets $2.38 and is all-in, Hero calls $1.80 and is all-in
BB shows 2♦ 5♦ (Three of a Kind, Twos)
Hero mucks K♠ K♣ (Two Pair, Kings and Twos)
BB wins $10.08

With his PFR I thought that having an Ace was such a small part of his range that I could call him all the way down. Boy was I surprised by his hand. This hand kind of tilted me and I wanted to nail him. 3 hands later I got my chance:

Full Tilt - $0.05 NL - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3
MP: $5.00
MP+1: $1.56
CO: $8.88
BTN: $5.00
Hero (SB): $5.00
BB: $5.00
UTG: $5.00
UTG+1: $15.47
Hero posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05
Pre Flop: ($0.07) Hero has T♦ T♥
fold, fold, fold, fold, CO raises to $0.10, fold, Hero raises to $0.55, fold, CO calls $0.45
Flop: ($1.15, 2 players) 3♠ 7♦ 8♦
Hero bets $1.15, CO raises to $2.30, Hero raises to $4.45 and is all-in, CO calls $2.15
Turn: ($10.05, 2 players) 7♠
River: ($10.05, 2 players) T♠
CO shows 4♦ 3♦ (Two Pair, Sevens and Threes)
Hero shows T♦ T♥ (Full House, Tens full of Sevens)
Hero wins $9.38

He sat out after that one for a few hands. Then he and I played this:

Full Tilt - $0.05 NL - Holdem - 7 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3
MP: $5.49
CO: $5.00
BTN: $2.62
SB: $3.35
BB: $5.38
Hero (UTG): $9.38
UTG+1: $5.00
SB posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05
Pre Flop: ($0.07) Hero has J♥ A♥
Hero raises to $0.17, fold, fold, fold, fold, SB calls $0.15, fold
Flop: ($0.39, 2 players) 6♠ K♦ 2♥
SB checks, Hero checks
Turn: ($0.39, 2 players) A♦
SB checks, Hero bets $0.39, SB calls $0.39
River: ($1.17, 2 players) 6♦
SB bets $0.25, Hero raises to $1.92, fold
Hero wins $1.56

He was starting to limp and fold after that. Then came his final hand. I opened UTG with AQ and got 3bet by an unknown in MP. Predictably maniac 4bet. I 5bet to isolate and actually thought I shoved preflop and was a little surprised that MP called:

Full Tilt - $0.05 NL - Holdem - 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3
LP: $5.17
CO: $6.09
BTN: $2.05
SB: $1.76
BB: $5.31
Hero (UTG): $10.18
UTG+1: $5.00
MP: $5.00
MP+1: $5.56
SB posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05
Pre Flop: ($0.07) Hero has A♦ Q♠
Hero raises to $0.17, fold, MP raises to $0.45, fold, fold, fold, fold, SB raises to $1.76 and is all-in, fold, Hero raises to $3.07, MP calls $2.62
Flop: ($7.95, 3 players) A♠ 6♦ 9♣
Hero bets $7.11 and is all-in, fold
Turn: ($7.95, 2 players) 8♦
River: ($7.95, 2 players) 2♦
SB shows K♥ Q♥ (High Card, Ace)
Hero shows A♦ Q♠ (One Pair, Aces)
Hero wins $7.42

So, I think I am going to go from 12 x 2NL to 3x5NL+5X2NL and see how it goes. The worst that can happen is I go back to being a shark in the fishbowl.

Anyway, sorry for annoying everyone with my psychodrama, so here's a little reward:

Attached Images

5.jpg (96.9 KB, 134 views)

spoiler tags around pics pls

I see from the hands you posted that you play on Full Tilt. I don't know if they have anything similar or not since I only play on Pokerstars, but when I first move up to a new level I usually start at the short buy-in tables. For example, right now I'm playing .05-.10, but only on the short buy-in tables. So, at each table I'm only buying-in for $5, which is the table maximum. Although I am a bankroll nit and am comfortably rolled for this level, it still puts me a little more at ease when I move up to only play half-stack poker. I'm risking less of my BR on each table, yet still get to move up to the next higher level.

Before I get flamed, let me make it clear... I am NOT playing short-stack poker. I am buying in for the MAX, just playing at the short-stack tables. This may be crazy, but it works for me. Eventually I do move to the full-stack tables after I get comfortable at the new stakes. There does seem to be a difference in player ability between the full and short-stack tables too. Right now I'm at about 2.5BB/100 over 45K hands at the short buy-in tables and have just begun to move up to the full stack tables. Unfortunately, between a mix of poor play, tilt, and coolers plus a very small sample size, I'm actually currently a losing player at the full-stack .05-.10 tables and am running about -5BB/100 over 15K hands. So be aware if you use my strategy, don't get too comfortable beating-up on the short-stackers, because you'll likely have to twaek your play a little as you move to the full-stack tables.

thanks. Not sure what the short stack tables look like. Is it 60BB/ 40???

It's good that you are aware of some of the reasons why you are losing. I tried to play some 5nl last week but lost 3+ buy-ins so am back down to 2nl. Sadly I have lost some of my equillibrium and am tilting a little. It doesn't help that I lost AA to AK (you know your running bad when you lose as a 93% favorite)and ran into sets with AA & KK several times in the past two days. I am really trying to be patient and keep my cool and not get any further in the hole. Like a mantra I keep telling myself, it's only my bad plays that should upset me. If I get my money in correctly the outcome of any individual hand doesn't matter. I know that intellectually and I am pretty far along emotionally but losing does put me on tilt a little which for me means I go a little shovetard at times. Fortunately I had been running really well so my BR is still at 55 BI for 2nl. Until I resolve some more issues with my game I don't really want to go anywhere. It looks like if I do become successful at Poker it will be a long road.

I read this so much, and beleive I play accordingly, I played 9.5k hands and made KK 49 times and was still down $8.
QQ was killing me after 48 hands although now is $2.02+.
I had lost $9 over this whole period and realise im still a little too loose.

Frustrated by the play sometimes and catching the wrong end of my 58%ers too often i was still kind of happy that I had made it to 9.5k hands without losing too much. Hopefully there are some fine tunings that can be made to get myself above break even.

The kings eh, well after just a few hundred more hands and a decision to play 02./04 instead I got the correct math probabilitis in my favour and they now profit by $7.72 so theyve not only swung back but helped move my $24 2nl roll to $47.

I made it to 10k hands a winning player yay! ( yes yes too small a sample) but yay!

I am still dubious now as to whether aiming to get it all in preflop should be our biggest aim if we are a player who does not have a large bankroll, lets say $50. We raise and Ax calls. We 3x and 4x with the kings and then end up in a large pot where it seems, there will be an ace good deal. Especially if you got it all in preflop. After reading the spoof check call/ limit losses strategy, this advice seemd to ring in my ears about KK.
At the lowest limits, many hands call KK, and beat it their share too.

Im still out to lunch on kings, if my current trend continues and I keep winning then I'll carry on stuffing the lot in preflop, should we ever just flat call the 4bet or just jam anyway, after all who is folding if the betting goes 8, 24, 72, is anybody folding for 1.28 more after betting 72c.

KK such a great hand but can we get our money in in better spots over the next 1k hands with 45h on the big blind or when we get our flop 2pr or straight/flush draw hands, or simply nice made hands instead of going for a $2 risk with one pair.

Im not so poker articulate yet sorry.