Is it me, or does online 5 NL play more like a $10,000 game?!

Am I crazy, or does the online 5 NL game play at a MUCH higher level than one might expect given the stakes? I had thought I was a reasonable, maybe intermediate level, player based on my results playing live cash games. I never had any delusions that the quality of play at my games matched that of a professional game, but my live game win rate is >75% and my bank roll moves slowly, but steadily upward. I am rarely the guy who triples his stack in a given session, but I am almost never the guy who busts twice. Low variance, positive EV.

I recently discovered that I can play real-money poker in the U.S. (well, I have not yet tried to access my funds, but it is worth the $30 I deposited just to have the illusion of playing real poker online

I am playing 5 NL, and struggling mightily. I started off o.k., and grew my bank roll to about $40 (33% growth) over the course of probably 4 hours of play (multiple sessions). Since that time, i have lost, lost, lost and am down to $20.

I am not making big mistakes on the river, or getting them all in when i am drawing dead. It's smaller losses (over and over again). Feels like whenever i bet a marginal hand, I get raised. Whenever I raise pre-flop with something like K/J I get 2 callers and then a three bet, etc.

I do not really have a specific question in this thread. But interested to hear if others have experienced the same thing. How do i get over that hump?

It's quite well known that online games are much tougher than live games. I wouldn't go as far as to say that 5nl plays like 10knl but I will admit that playing the smallest stakes online can be like playing many a times the stakes live. Plenty of live players have come from playing 1/2 live and jumping straight into 50nl,100nl or 200nl online and finding out they get crushed and busted before they knew it.

Although it surprises me that you say you're from the u.s My impression was that 5nl on the american sites was pretty soft.

Tbh 1knl live plays like 50nl

If you think 5nl plays like 10,000nl then you have some holes in your poker game.

5nl is a very beatable game and the people who play it are by and large not good. There are some people who are okay, and are getting better and learning, but for the most part people are bad and have a lot of leaks in there game. They don't adjust well, they overbalance their game to their detriment, they don't know how different boards play out, they call too often, and they make a lot of decision making mistakes.

50nl online is pretty close to 5/10 live, and I don't know why. But 50nl is when people are starting to really put things together and play well, so it makes some sense.

1. the rake is a lot higher, so you have to have a much bigger winrate pre-rake for it to amount to anything postrake.
2. even most 5nl regs are using huds. Even though they typically aren't good at using it yet they at least have an idea of basic stats they want to emulate and have an ok preflop game, whereas live players all just play way too many hands in general because not doing so is extremely boring.
3. A good 5nl winrate is going to be insanely low, like if you're crushing you're still not going to be making anywhere close to minimum wage. On top of that to attain that kind of winrate (which still is far below minimum wage) you have to make good decisions despite the fact that most decisions are for practically no money at all. Like if you're used to playing live you've at least played $1/2 before. How can you make a good decision when you're just curious as to what the guy has and it's a 50 cent bet? That's like 25% of your live BB. If you've played higher it's even less. And if you live in the US you probably wouldn't miss 50 cents much either. But even if you are able to take these decisions super seriously, make the right decisions all the time, you still will be making like $4/hour and that's if you're good at multi-tabling.