Moving up to $25NL

Hey - I'm moving up again - have gone through $10NL and and am now rolled for $25NL.

Any advice about this level from anyone currently playing here greatly appreciated!

This FR btw.

Best of luck to you. Will look forward to the day you tell us you are moving up to $1000NL

Good luck and congrats.

Many thanks mate.

Which site is this grind taking place on?

Best of luck regardless!

$25nl - is that 2c/5c ?

Good luck, hope i can get myself out of 10nl in a few months!

25nl = 10c/25c

As an aside, how do you guys decide which level you want to play, is it purely based on what you can afford, or do you factor in how good you estimate you are etc?

It's player dependant. If you're a casual recreational player then some will play higher, some won't. If you're grinding your way up, like most are on here then they start "usually" at 2nl. I say usually, again it depends on what you can afford to play with and how good you are.

2nl is easier obviously but I don't think 25 is to much more difficult. If you think you can beat 25nl and are a competent and HAVE the BR then go for it.

Obviously if you're new to the game then start at 2nl, as you will only be throwing your money away quicker and a lot higher at 25nl.

IMO there's not that much difference between 2NL and 5NL so starting at 5NL is what I'd recommend - if you haven't played much online before I'd definitley recommend starting at 5 to 10NL even if it's only for a few weeks to get some experience, however good you think you are

Thank you - FTP. Started at $2NL about 12 months ago.

Thanks mate

I agree 100% that 2NL and 5NL are pretty much exactly the same, but the big thing here is the bankroll. Many people playing(not all, I know) at 2NL are there because they have a tiny bankroll or are just starting out. If you're not wanting to risk a lot while in the beginning stages of learning, then I would say go to 2NL, because your mistakes are going to cost you less than half the amount it would at 5NL. If you are competent(be honest with yourself and are willing to put a little bit more $$$ in to invest in poker, then I would say go ahead and play 5NL. The big thing is to be honest with yourself. If you can't beat 2NL, YOU WILL NOT be able to beat 5NL, or 10NL, or 25NL, etc...

I know a lot of that was off topic, so congrats on moving up pokerman, none of the above was directed at your move-up. Good luck at 25NL!

This is very true. I played $2NL for two reasons:

1) Because I only deposited $10!
2) because as absoluthamm says my mistakes were cheap (and very, very frequent)

There isn't much difference between the two, but as stated, be honest with yourself and admit you can't beat a level (like I did here: Volunteers Required) and be prepared to learn. I'm by no means a great player (far from it) but I have studied like a demon, hassled the hell out of people here, posted hands, commented on hands and generally just been prepared to learn and listen.

Thanks for the congrats absoluthamm.

Now this is encouraging. Well done mate, keep us posted on your progress.

Thats great man, I would say that in general people stack off less, so you have to find edges in other ways then just getting stacks in (im sure you already do) people are generally 3betting wider as well, the average i see is about 7-9, so you will have to figure out how to cope with that.. GL man

congrats on moving up to $25nl!!!
i'm currently playing at $10 nl and was wondering what did you build your bankroll up to before transitioning to $25nl.
also, were you multi-tabling? and any other random bits of information that you can think of would be greatly appreciated.

thanks!

Congrats indeed, and good luck!

Goodluck on nl25
I hope you beat that level as well as you beated the nl 10!!

Thanks mate. I've always moved up when I hit 30 buyins for that level - so $150 for $5NL, $300 for 10NL and $750 for $25NL.

I multitable. I have played as many as 12 but have found my sweet spot is around 6 tables so rarely play more than that - sometimes 9. What level are you at? More than happy to help you in anyway that I can. I wouldn't be here now were not for the help of this forum so happy to give back.

Just read your other two threads. Can't believe you've gone from 2NL to 25NL so quick! Good job.

What would you say the main way you've improved your game is? Books, HH analysis or something else?

Also, I suggest as a momento you re-watch your 2NL video back and see how far you've come

damn i miss the days wen i used to play 25nl on Pokerstars...twas the best of times and the worst of times lol...best of luck to you man, hope the cards treat you well

i'm currently at $10nl. sometimes i would try $25nl but would more often than not end up a losing player. i'm slowly but steadily building up my bankroll. i can manage playing 3 tables at the moment and sometimes struggle if i move up to 4 tables.
did you ever play tables with antes and 250 big blind max buy-in or just stick to the normal 100 big blind max buy-in?
finally, when you moved up to $25nl, did you reduce the amount of tables or stuck with 6?

sorry if there's too many questions!

thanks!

Mozzla, is it just me or do you think the 10nl tables at pokerstars have got worse since black friday? Was gonna play before but the only tables i can get on have 15% vpip and average stacks of 6 dollars.

although i'm from london, i'm currently in the U.S so i can't play until i get back into the U.K (3 days) so i'm afraid i wouldn't be able to tell you!
i'm itching to get back at the tables though.

do you mean worse as in harder to make money because 15% VPIP isn't too out of the ordinary in my opinion. correct me if i'm wrong though, not 100% on that statement

but if the average stack is 6 dollars then it does tend to indicate a high amount of donks out there.

Erm sorry i meant 15% of players seeing the flop, i think this is pretty low, certainly could get on looser tables before the shutdown. I dunno i just notice a hell of a lot more short stacks and theyre often the tight/nitty ones playing 12+ tables, I'll see how this month goes but peak times used to have a lot more juicy tables but now everything a bit meh. This is full ring tables im talking about, dunno how 6max has been affected

congratulations on moving up, i currently play $25 rush and standard cash. i really dont think there is all that much difference between $10 and $25, a few less nutters, but the skill level is not a huge difference, just make sure your fully rolled for it so as not to be playing with scared money

good luck at the tables

oh and hello all, my first post

oh and as regards to the poker since black friday

its got alot worse, especially in tounaments, the ratio of crazy russians and other random countries that play like nutters has gone up

What tournaments have you been playing? I've noticed very little difference in tournaments $2 to $22 buyins, apart from the late night tournaments getting way fewer runners

Really Pascal? Maybe I've just been running good cos I've found I'm going deeper with much more regularity!

Probably because they are smaller? :P

well done op. Nice to see the progression.

Well done and good luck man

Hey OP, just found this thread and curious how things are going. I took a shot at 25nl on the first of May with a $600 roll, coinciding with my decision to try to clear as much of my $300 added bonus as possible. I put a stop loss at 8 buyins, so if my roll went down to $400 I would have to drop back down to 10nl. I figured with effective 40% rakeback or so it would probably be a good time to attempt such a shot.

Things went decently well, from an EV perspective. In about 15,000 hands with the bonus, I estimated my street for street EV was about 8-10 buyins up.

As for actual results, I had to drop back to 10nl when my bankroll went down to $400 due to an unbelievable string of suckouts, coolers, and monsters going unpaid. It was by far the worst downswing I've suffered in over 200,000 hands, and the timing for it was just terrible.

I was mostly playing 6-max Rush, I'm not sure what your favored game is. At 6-max Rush, I would echo what was said before -- generally people don't spew stacks as easily as at 10nl and the 3bet aggression is perhaps slightly higher on average. There's also more SPR planning going on, and people tend to be more aware of different betting lines.

Care to share your experiences? I'm currently rebuilding my roll and may take another stab before my bonus period runs out if I can get my roll to at least $500 with another stop loss at $400.

Sorry for the delay in replying everyone.


Good question - have read a lot of books but none that I would individually recommend. Basically I took a lot of advice from a number of books and articles and applied it to my game (and limit).

The hand analysis thread on here is priceless too. Get stuck in and articulate your thoughts. Don't read the whole thread until you have analysed the hand and have decided exactly what you would do in that spot and why and then post your thoughts. It's all too easy to read a HA thread and think you understand it when you are just reading someone's particular angle. This is true of books too.

I did have coaching at $10NL as well which seriously overhauled my game.

My favoured game is full ring. $25NL started off pretty awful losing some monster pots early to the usual coolers. Every move up in limits I have had as always started with a lovely heater allowing me to get well and truly 'bedded' in to that limit BR wise except this one! I don't know if you saw my other thread (http://www.cardschat.com/f4/fml-197359/ (http://www.cardschat.com/f4/fml-197359/)) but this caused me to tilt off a few buyins playing pretty shitty poker in the couple days after before I got away for a bit. Since then I have stopped, reviewed some hands and made a few (minor) adjustments to my game. Although the differences between $2NL, $5NL, $10NL and $25NL are negligible (certainly at the lower end) the exploitable edges IMHO become a lot thinner with each step up, but this is a good thing, this is how we become better. By narrowing these edges we force ourselves to gain new skill-sets to exploit these edges making us better players...that's the idea anyway.

Let me know how you're getting on.

Wow, I just read through the other thread -- I'm glad you are OK and I'm sorry you had to endure something like that. I've been strong-arm robbed before as well, group of four large 18 yr old kids came up from behind and tried to knock me out with punches to the head. I'm a pretty sturdy guy and used to play American football, so didn't really get affected by the physicality of it and I only lost about $25 or so, but the psychological aspect took a while to get over. I wish you the best and a speedy recovery from both the physical and mental/emotional damage.

Back on poker, recently I've run into a lot of poor play at 25nl 6-max rush which has made me think the level really isn't that much more difficult to beat than 10nl. I do agree the edges are smaller though, and I think there are probably about half the amount of spewy players at 25nl vs 10nl, but it's still not too hard to beat with a mostly similar playing style I had been utilizing at 10nl.

I was able to get my roll back up to $560 from $400, which allowed me to take another crack at 25nl with another 3 days left on my added bonus. The poker gods did not smile upon me. I continue to consistently have my 70%+ hands cracked and ran into set over set twice, and the last two sessions brought me back down to $475 or so despite playing excellent poker. I think I will continue with 25nl for a little bit with a stop loss drop down to 10nl at $425. I need just 200 or so FTP to have cleared $200 of my added bonus and that would give me an additional $20 ring game ticket. Once the $200 bonus is cleared, I will likely stay stay at 10nl until I hit $750 to take another shot at 25nl so I can be more properly rolled as I won't have 50% rakeback to fall back on.

Reviewing my sessions, I feel pretty positive about my game even though I'm getting smacked down in the monetary results. Just gotta keep that chin up and look for ways to increase my edge even more to help with these inevitable periods of negative variance. There's nothing I can do about constantly losing to two-outters, but what I CAN do is improve my game to make it sting a little less.