It's been quite the journey post Black Friday for this leg of the trip which took place at $10NL on Carbon part of the Merge Network. Honestly, when they got rid of rakeback, it really killed my motivation to play. When you're used to something good, losing it can have a negative affect on you. It happened on Black Friday with just playing poker in general and then again with no rakeback at Merge. But, inevitably after some time away, I get that itch to play and just have to scratch it.
The rake on Merge is bad even with rakeback. It's really tough without it. The rake is siphoning off about 10bb/100. So, before you take a seat or get dealt a card, you're down that much. Plus, it's post Black Friday, so there aren't as many games, there are more nits and players who know what they are doing, and there are less fish. This is a challenge, too. Plus, to get from $10NL to $25NL, you have to earn extra buy-ins because $25NL is 2.5 times more than $10NL instead of the usual 2 times more. The end result is that it took me more hands than I had hoped to play to traverse this level and my winnrate was much lower than I would have preferred - 98k hands @ 4.23bb/100 winrate. But, I did make it and there's a saying that I use at work often and is apt for this situation, too: "Alls well that ends well".
I'm late in posing this. I started around 01/15/2013 took a break from MayISH through all of November. I started back December 1st and finished 12/26/2013. I started $25NL 12/27/2013 and have been playing at that level ever since.
There's not much insight to convey other than the games are tougher but there are thankfully at least games there to play and they are beatable and there are fish. And, if you can get by $10NL, you can start playing at $25NL where the money starts to look half-way meaningful in terms of how you could use it in the real world. The main enemy is the rake and trying to move up as fast as you can so the rake has less of an impact. The real killer as far as rake goes is the CAP. They take out a penny for every 18 cents which equates to 5.55% but they don't CAP it until $4.00. So, the rake does not CAP until the pot reaches $72. That basically never happens at $10NL or $4NL and even at $25NL it's not particularly common either. There's enough fish at $4NL so it's not as noticeable but at $10NL, it's noticeable imo.
My $10NL HEM graph:
Summary
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