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How Long Would You Wait To Move Up To The 1/2?


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This is my situation : I've been consistently playing(and beating)micro stakes on and off for several years now. I have two years left in the marine corps and I want to build a 5/10 br to help supplement my income once I'm out. My br is at $300 and I've been playing .25/.50 and .50/1 Now I've been and going to continue to pad my br with extra income but I want to be sure I'm playing profitably before I move up in limits. How many hands should I see minimum at a limit before considering moving up? I was thinking at least ten k hands each before I move up to one two and then move up after every ten k or more hands as long as my br can handle it.

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It's not a matter of how many hands you play....it's more are you consistently making a steady profit at your current limit. You could play 100k hands but if you haven't made a profit or lost profit, moving up in limits is disastrous. I would set a certain BR requirement to shoot for. To play 1/2 you need like 200 (more comfortably 400-500) to sit in 1 buy in. So you probably want 2k min, in your BR before moving to that limit. So I would set your BR goal to 2k. Once you have that much move up. If you drop below a certain amount....move back down again and start over.

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It's not a matter of how many hands you play....it's more are you consistently making a steady profit at your current limit. You could play 100k hands but if you haven't made a profit or lost profit, moving up in limits is disastrous. I would set a certain BR requirement to shoot for. To play 1/2 you need like 200 (more comfortably 400-500) to sit in 1 buy in. So you probably want 2k min, in your BR before moving to that limit. So I would set your BR goal to 2k. Once you have that much move up. If you drop below a certain amount....move back down again and start over.
This is the Limit Hold Em forum.
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So does anyone actually have some limit advice? I understand bank roll management 300xbb minimum and all that. But since I'm going to be padding my roll with extra income I would like to know what a sizeable hand sample is?

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So does anyone actually have some limit advice? I understand bank roll management 300xbb minimum and all that. But since I'm going to be padding my roll with extra income I would like to know what a sizeable hand sample is?

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I wouldn't worry about a magic number of hands to hit. Before moving up just make sure that you are confident you can beat the next level, comfortable with the monetary swings, willing to move back down if necessary, and willing to learn about and adjust to the play at your new stakes. If you reaaalllllly want a number, I'd say play 10-15k hands at a certain level and objectively make sure that you're playing well enough to soundly beat that game. However, unless you're willing to play a huuuuge (multiple hundreds of thousands of hands) sample to get an idea what ballpark your win-rate is in, you'll have to do it more by feel. This means that you'll have to observe the other players, be honest with yourself about your own game, measure yourself against the competition, and make a decision about your future.Post in the strat section a lot, study the game (there's a lot of great information in the original LHE challenge thread here if you don't want to look far), and don't ever stop working to learn.

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also remember that most people experience some trouble moving up limits, even if the competition isn't that much better. Some people imagine it is, some people try to do too much and outplay themselves, etc. adjusting to different styles at different limits can be tough. just dont get discouraged. drop back down if you need to and reevaluate your game. 300 BB is the general rule, but you can get away with 250 or so if you drop down when you need to.

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You mentioned you wanted to pad your BR with extra income. Does this mean you're depositing more money to stay afloat at your current levels?One really good way to ensure that you're at least good enough to beat your current level is to simply stop depositing, if that's indeed the case.Playing .25/.50 and .5/1 with $300 is perfect, you can definitely drop .25/.50 if you wanted, and stick with .5/1 with 300 BBs (I'd recommend 500 BBs for 6-handed poker, and 1000 BBs for heads-up), then that's fine, if you're comfortable.What I'd do, is I'd stop depositing, I wouldn't cash out, etc, and I would wait until I ran my bankroll up to $600 before starting 1/2 full ring. That way you know you can know that you can at least beat .5/1. For the most part, it'll take enough hands to win 300 BB to know with a relatively decent confidence level that you can beat the game. It's possible to just run hot enough to win 300 BB by pure luck, but it's not super likely.

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It's possible to just run hot enough to win 300 BB by pure luck, but it's not super likely.
unless you're Actuary. not that he was bad, i enjoyed lots of the debates we had, but man did he seem to run super lucky sometimes.
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There is one thing to consider when deciding when to move up in limits, which has not yet been discussed. Whatever you establish your winrate to be at your current level probably isn't what it's going to be while playing a level up. With that in mind, you want to have a bigger roll, proportionally, for the limit you're moving up to. Personally, I apply Kelly criterion when figuring out when to move up in limits. This is the most efficient way to expand a given br as fast as possible given a wr and standard deviation, using a utility function. The utility function given is BR= X+Y+(sd1-sd2)/(Y-X) where br=bankroll X=smaller limit winratey=upper limit (I normally am conservative with this number in that I lower it at least .5 of a bb) winrate sd1= standard deviation of upper limit sd2=standard deviation of lower limit. This gives you the threshold that shows when you should play at the upper or lower limits. So, once you have gotten that number, decided how many bets you think is sufficient for taking a shot (lets say 50bb) and play that limit until you either burn through the 50 bets or run it up to the next limit. The most critical part of the this whole process is moving up and down at the appropriate times.

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There is one thing to consider when deciding when to move up in limits, which has not yet been discussed. Whatever you establish your winrate to be at your current level probably isn't what it's going to be while playing a level up. With that in mind, you want to have a bigger roll, proportionally, for the limit you're moving up to. Personally, I apply Kelly criterion when figuring out when to move up in limits. This is the most efficient way to expand a given br as fast as possible given a wr and standard deviation, using a utility function. The utility function given is BR= X+Y+(sd1-sd2)/(Y-X) where br=bankroll X=smaller limit winratey=upper limit (I normally am conservative with this number in that I lower it at least .5 of a bb) winrate sd1= standard deviation of upper limit sd2=standard deviation of lower limit. This gives you the threshold that shows when you should play at the upper or lower limits. So, once you have gotten that number, decided how many bets you think is sufficient for taking a shot (lets say 50bb) and play that limit until you either burn through the 50 bets or run it up to the next limit. The most critical part of the this whole process is moving up and down at the appropriate times.
Depends. Sometimes the effect of the rake being smaller in terms of BB/100 is enough, and sometimes more, to counteract slightly better overall play.
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Whatever you establish your winrate to be at your current level probably isn't what it's going to be while playing a level up.
that's not necessarily true a year ago (when i played the most, build my biggest roll) i was beating 2/4 on FT for about 4BB/100, while barely making 2BB/100 at 1/2. as long as you use good table selection you shouldnt experience a big drop in winrate unless the competition is much much better, which i dont think happens much until you get to 5/10 or probably higher. if you have the option of playing a couple tables at 3/6 that are 20-25% pf and some 2/4 tables that are more like 33-38% take the 2/4 tables even if you're rolled for 3/6. you'll make more in the long run and they're way more fun (good metagame stuff)you are right in that not moving down when you should can be a huge bankroll killer. if you're sticking to 300BB then once you hit like 200-250BB drop back down until you get back to 300. some big equation isn't really needed (though it doesnt really hurt). i'd also advise to move up slowly. if i'm moving from say 2/4 to 3/6 ill add one or two good 3/6 tables while im still playing good 2/4 tables until i feel comfortable at 3/6. just jumping straight into the next level can make a lot of players play badly and out of their comfort zone.
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  • 2 weeks later...
that's not necessarily true a year ago (when i played the most, build my biggest roll) i was beating 2/4 on FT for about 4BB/100, while barely making 2BB/100 at 1/2. as long as you use good table selection you shouldnt experience a big drop in winrate unless the competition is much much better, which i dont think happens much until you get to 5/10 or probably higher. if you have the option of playing a couple tables at 3/6 that are 20-25% pf and some 2/4 tables that are more like 33-38% take the 2/4 tables even if you're rolled for 3/6. you'll make more in the long run and they're way more fun (good metagame stuff)you are right in that not moving down when you should can be a huge bankroll killer. if you're sticking to 300BB then once you hit like 200-250BB drop back down until you get back to 300. some big equation isn't really needed (though it doesnt really hurt). i'd also advise to move up slowly. if i'm moving from say 2/4 to 3/6 ill add one or two good 3/6 tables while im still playing good 2/4 tables until i feel comfortable at 3/6. just jumping straight into the next level can make a lot of players play badly and out of their comfort zone.
This is excellent advice, you should read it at least twice.I'll repeat a couple of really important points: If you have 300 BB ($600 for 1/2) at the higher level it's time to start looking at games. Cherry pick the easy games first (I start w/ over 38% seeing the flop on Stars). Stick to the lower level if you can't find a live game or two at the higher level.If you're trying to prove to yourself you can beat a certain level... I think once you've beaten a level for 500BB and played more than 10K hands, you've proven you can beat that level indefinitely.
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This is excellent advice, you should read it at least twice.I'll repeat a couple of really important points: If you have 300 BB ($600 for 1/2) at the higher level it's time to start looking at games. Cherry pick the easy games first (I start w/ over 38% seeing the flop on Stars). Stick to the lower level if you can't find a live game or two at the higher level.If you're trying to prove to yourself you can beat a certain level... I think once you've beaten a level for 500BB and played more than 10K hands, you've proven you can beat that level indefinitely.
How much, if at all, different is online BR theory from live? The low limit live games are SUPER soft, a bit swingy but not too bad. Anyone make a good profit live?
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