Moving down stakes is hard

Just getting back into 6max LHE aftr taking a break for a few weeks and I'm playing 0.5/1.0 with a new $400 bankroll.

I have played profitable poker at the $5/$10 and $10/$20 levels over a decent sample size (around 30-40k hands at 5/10 and about 10k hands at 10/20).

Now I know that I am far far FAR better than most of the players at these levels (although there are the odd few who I think could tear up 5/10 with ease if they wanted to) but I just can't show a profit in ANY session I play.

Yes I have run a little bad.. but most of the players are so awful at these levels that I do not believe just "running bad" is enough to turn me into a losing player even over a sample as small as 2,000 hands.

I think the problem lies with my instinctive descisions - ie, at 5/10+ I would never even consider folding 99 UTG, I would never consider value betting my 2nd from bottom-pair-no-kicker on the river withot a killer read, I would never expect my UTG raise to be cold-called with 25s in the CO etc etc.

These are all examples of things that are extremely basic and require absolutely no thought on my part but these kind of "instinctive plays" are all just completely wrong at 0.5/1.0. Raising mid pairs UTG leads to an absolute nightmare postflop, expecting somebody who cold called a 3-bet preflop to have some kind of a hand is a disaster etc etc.

I guess what I'm saying is that moving down stakes is even more difficult than moving up. I never had any trouble stepping up until 10/20 (which admittedly was a very difficult move which put me on monkey-tilt for a while), but I am now struggling to beat the microstakes which I was a winning player at over a year ago.

I guess this is more of a rant than a cry for help, I know all I need to do is dust off my copy of "Small Stakes Holdem" and completely forget everything I read in "Hold'em for Advanced Players" and the stox book for the time being but that's really not the route I want to take, I don't want to have to un-learn and then re-learn my instincts if yo follow me. Instead, I'm going to play MTTs / SnGs until my roll is big enough to support the more aggressive and/or tight games I'm used to, whilst still studying shorthanded/Heads up LHE at the level I was before I took the break.

Thoughts or Comments?

I remember reading your were going to give no limit a shot. Hated it?

Yeah, that was mainly due to the fact I was bonus whoring at a couple of sites with little-to-no LHE traffic, and also because I just wanted to see if I coul beat it.

My new roll is all at stars right now so traffic is no longer a problem for me.

Has anyone got any comments on my original post? Has anybody else ever had serioys difficulty adjusting when moving down stakes (not just by 1 level).

jib, i think you know i am a NL player that dabbles with LHE. so, i am in a similar boat, only reverse.

and, i agree. but, here are some things i do at NL that can punish the dipshits. granted, i get paid better because of the nature of bet sizing.

- keep all your pots small when you dont have the goods or strong draws/redraws to the goods.
- c/r, 3bet cold, do whatever you can to jam a pot when you are likely ahead. (in NL, i shove the nuts a lot instead of valuebet)
- i dont think cbetting does much for you down there. i may cut it almost completely out until you have a read that a player knows where the fold button is.
- one thing i find is that repping the big hands on rivers gets folds in LHE. for some reason these dickshits will call two streets with crap and fold on the river getting better than 10:1. WTF? punish that tendency when you find it. hands you would never bluff with because of pot odds, you NEED to down here. in some cases, the best FE you have is on the river. i know it sounds stupid, but i bet you have already seen that.
- dont get tricky. if you hit it, bet it. if you didnt, check it off. if you get raised, consider folding. and, if you get called, consider pot control..........all this w/o reads.

- MOVE BACK UP AS FAST AS YOU CAN. lol. i think that one goes w/o saying.

you are on a different planet down here. you NEED to form some bad habits to win down here. but, remember they ARE bad habits. and you need to know you have intentional leaks when you move back up.

i dont know what to tell you that you dont already know other than that i've been there and i will be there for awhile, too.

good luck.

I'm currently building a BR on UB at $.01/$.02 so I know how you're feeling. One thing I would also add to Chopper's advice is to watch out for the players who seem to know somewhat what to do. It's very easy to get caught up playing complete donks and not notice the one semi-half-decent player who'll end up slow rolling a set/boat waiting for you to try and run over him and taking you for a buyin or two. This happens more than you think simply because you get your mind into the mode of not looking for trickies.

Originally Posted by Chopper

jib, i think you know i am a NL player that dabbles
- i dont think cbetting does much for you down there. i may cut it almost completely out until you have a read that a player knows where the fold button is.

...

- one thing i find is that repping the big hands on rivers gets folds in LHE. for some reason these dickshits will call two streets with crap and fold on the river getting better than 10:1. WTF? punish that tendency when you find it. hands you would never bluff with because of pot odds, you NEED to down here. in some cases, the best FE you have is on the river. i know it sounds stupid, but i bet you have already seen that.

...

you NEED to form some bad habits to win down here. but, remember they ARE bad habits. and you need to know you have intentional leaks when you move back up.

I think you hit the nail on the head with these points.

I would most likely be fine if I wasn't 4/5 tabling the 6max games where I could pay alot of attention and really think things through but the thought of single-tabling 0.5/1 is possibly the most un-appealing thought to spring into my mind this week!

New plan - Play MTTs on autopilot with a single table of 0.5/1 6max on the side to keep my LHE game from going rusty until I either:
[a] Score big in an MTT and can move up levels
or
[b] Get to a point where I feel like I can multitable 0.5/1 on autopilot.

Update: Now ripping 0.5/1 to shreds

dont get too high, or too low. man, even keeeeeel.

nice to see, though, you have made the proper adjustments like: paying off the dealer, sliding the As up your sleeve, and generally catching some cards.

lol.