Re-Adjusting from $200NL into $25NL,Having Issues (long)
Hi Im a first time poster but I read these forums alot and its basically where I learned to play the game. Recently I had to buy a new car due to problems with my old and it forced me to withdraw a very large portion of my bankroll. Let me give some background.
Originally I started my bankroll at $50, played $5 SNGs until I hit $150 and then I started playing $25NL (Im a multi-tabler, I always played 4 tables at a time, I have minor ADD so I think playing more tables also helped me from getting restless). My bankroll increased very fast in $25NL, I had one day alone where I had ridiculous luck and made almost $600. I ended up only spending a week at $25NL until I had over $1000 and so I decided to move up. Things went very well at $50NL after an initial few days of just breaking even and learning how to adjust my play and everything continued to go well even into $100NL and eventually $200NL. I had been at $200NL for 2 weeks (making more money on avg than playing $100NL even tho I dont think I am tottally comfortable in 200 yet) when I had to withdraw much of my bankroll, all the way back down to $250 which I figured was a good enough broll for 25NL.
My play changed alot from my days at $25NL by the time I got to 200NL obviously. Now Im having some problems readjusting to 25NL. It's been almost a week and I havent made much money there. I read alot about people moving up levels and having alot of readjustments but not down so Im wondering if any of you or anyone you know has been in a similar predicament and what advice helped to get them through.
Im asking for a general answer but if you think specific tracker info would help alot I can provide that as well. Ifhis helps when I played $100NL and $200NL my style was usually a LAG (I found this the easiest way to double through people since I observed that most players here were very tight and they expected the other players to be of a similar fashion so misrepresenting hands preflop and trying to break players who overplayed their big pairs was my main goal). Playing a similar style in 25NL is not working well,specifically almost nobody plays the players so I am not getting nearly as much action, furthermore since the amount of money in the stacks is lower it seems to be harder to get paid off enough when your misrepresented hands do hit. Also unlike at the higher limits where I found most players come in with a full-stack or near there are tons of idiots who buy in for $5 and only play premium hands, it is easy enough to avoid losing money to them but it slows down the game alot basically puts the nail in the coffin of heavy LAG because they dont have shit to pay me off so I cant call or raise drawing hands when its jsut these idiots in the pot.
Since I figured LAG would not be very profitable here I changed to a TAG style of play experimenting with different sets of starting hands for periods of time to see if one was superior. Sadly I found my most profitable TAG starting hand set to be one I would have shunned at higher limits; only playing PP (all of them since sets pretty much always pay off at this level for alot, "set-hunting") , AK and TJs. Other than those hands there was not a large enough margin between the strength you had to show preflop to fold the idiots and the amount you could get paid off. (TJs seemed odd to me at first since it doesnt really fit with the theme of the other cards but I found it played basically like a mid PP and also like them was easy to discard if you didnt hit).
This really frustrated me because the style of play, TAG and very few starting hands, was almost the same as playing with $5 like all those idiots, I was very unlikely to get payed off anymore than the small stacks on non-set hands. Yes it profits due to the stupidity of the players since they dont realize how tight your being but I am making far fewer BB/hr than I was at the higher limits. Ive seen some websites advertise this style of low-stack play so I even wondered if maybe I should give it a try, buying in with minimum and trying to double up on premium hands, but even at $50NL it just barely makes money (was about 60/40 depending alot on if there was a idiot or two at the table who would call with a marginal hand or just luck sometimes if there were too many raises behind me for everyone to fold) and I imagine at higher levels the idiots think out to the point where it actually loses money.
So in summary Id really like to know if there is a faster way to make money at 25NL than just playing the super-TAG game (id still much rather do it with a full stack tho so my sets pay off in full) and basically set-hunting or getting people to call your bigger pairs for alot pre-flop. Its been such a grind so far and im starting to actually dislike the game, which is a far cry from when I was playing $100NL and $200NL and I usually couldnt wait to get some play time in. Anyways this got pretty long, sorry about that, but thanks in advance for any advice and feel free to ask me any questions.
EDIT: also when I originally was at 25NL there was a major difference (this was awhile back since I took a couple month break due to a vacation between $50nl and 100nl) in the makeup of the tables, the majority of players were buying in for a good amount id say $15 to the full stack of $25. Only one or two usually had $5-$10 or lower, but now due to that stupid chris fergusen experiment everyone thinks they can get rich buying in for $5 and over 50% of the players at 25NL are idiots like this, even more at peak times. Finding a table with less than 5 of these guys takes awhile, and since they move around like crazy (once they double through they leave usually) its not even worth the effort since they will come to you like flies on shit. lastly im not belittling them because they are beating me, in fact with super-tag they are a big source of the income for me here, im pissed at them because they are limiting me from making more income here in a way that seems to me more of a flaw in the poker-site than in my play.
