honeycrush
Legend
Bronze Level
Most of my experience is also from Stars, and my description of the different limits refer to, how it was on Stars before the 4 table cap. I have mostly played on 888 poker since june 2019, but I actually think, Stars table cap have changed the online cash landscape quite a bit.
I played a short session at 10NL full ring on Stars yesterday, and most of the tables had players per flop above 20, which is absolutely incredible, compared to how it used to be. The numbers were also way higher, than they were at 888 Poker at the same time, when I checked out their lobby.
So I actually think, Stars move have gotten a lot of regs to move to other sites, and this has basically turned the situation upside down. Maybe 888 is the site hit the hardest by regs running away from Stars, since it allow HUDs.
Yesterday on Stars it was definitely true, that 10NL tables played almost like 2NL. There were crazy fish with a VPIP of 80% on several tables, and people went all in preflop with hands like AJ. It was a party, and while I did see a few of the old regulars, most of them were gone.
By contrast I can pretty much only find good 10NL games at 888 at the moment, if I play in the early european morning hours, where only a few tables are running. And presumably this is mostly because, the majority of the eastern european regulars are sleeping at this time.
Interestingly enough on Stars players per flop also tended to be higher at 10NL than 5NL lining up with, what you said about 10NL possibly appealing more to recreational players. If you have the bankroll for it, I dont see anything wrong with moving to 10NL relatively quickly.
Decided to revisit this thread as I took another shot at 25nl recently that ended horribly!
Having played quite a bit of 10nl on Stars this year there is currently a huge difference between 10nl and 25nl. Maybe it's due to the lockdowns attracting a lot of live players to online poker and they've decided to jump in at 10nl? It certainly feels as if 10nl on Stars is softer than ever.
25nl appears to be much tougher though - at least from my perspective. And another drawback is that there is virtually no rakeback on Stars now with those stupid chests just awarding useless points.
The main difference between the stakes is still the level of aggression. You can beat 10nl playing ABC poker and betting your hands for value and folding to aggression from the normally passive players. At 25nl I've encountered several bluff river raises etc that I've never seen at the lower stakes from competent players. There are also light 4bets and other tricky plays that you need to be able to navigate. You've also got to be prepared to carry out these plays too or you will just break even.
Something else I've noticed is that the composition of my results graph has changed. When beating 2nl-10nl most of my profit came from showdown winnings (blue line) with non-showdown winnings (red line) trending downwards. Since playing 25nl my red line has been neutral/slightly positive and I believe that to be a big winner it will need to be trending upwards and that most winnings will come from non showdown. Perhaps I'm wrong but that's my latest conclusion and my next challenge is to increase my non-showdown winnings to improve my chances of beating 25nl.
But first I will need to rebuild my bankroll at 10nl...
Wish me luck!