I'm currently a winning 50nl FR player, and I'm at the moment taking a shot at 100nl. So far, I've played about 1000 hands of the said limit, and I know I've played incredibly poor by my standard. The thing is, I've never played my A game when moving up because of reasons I should be able to control. Even when I moved from 10NL to 25NL, it took me like 3 tries to get a hold of the game and start being a winner. I have consistently lost 10 buy ins at the higher limit by mostly being a moron and playing like a huge fish when taking shots.
I've always been wondering about why I play bad, why is it that people tell me to play the same game and I'm not capable of doing so. "There is not much of a difference in play" is a phrase I always get when I ask for advice about moving up. The thing is, there is a difference. The difference is however embedded into my head, and after having thought and hoped of getting to that limit during my "career", it makes it a big deal to be there. Last year when I was a break even 2NL player, I looked up at people playing 100NL and think they're playing with so much money that they just have to be that good, and now I reach this point and the perception hasn't changed much and I'm subconsciously thinking that the regs are great players who are pretty hard to beat and will cause me to play them in a different way than I usually would.
Another even more important issue that is probably the biggest mistake a poker player can do, is have a big ego and think that since they've beaten their current limits fairly easily (otherwise they wouldn't be moving up, but that's another issue also related to BR management and I won't get into this in here) they must be able to at least win some money at the higher limit. I know I also have this problem kind of subconsciously too. While this holds true if you approach it with the correct mindset, it probably is wrong in general because you want to be able to book a positive result as soon as possible at the current limits to be able to say you made it, and fail to take the time to do so. In my case, this translates to getting much more aggressive than I used to play, and it also translates in me playing back much more at the regulars to assert my presence and be able to say I've beaten the regulars, then I must be good for this limit too, although at my previous level I just tried to avoid the regulars. Trying to book an early win over the level can cause a lot of foul thinking, for instance no earlier than yesterday, I check-raised a 35bb shortstack all in with second pair on the sole basis that he's a shortstacker, and needless to say I had the worse hand by a longshot.
When moving up, take the time to learn about the regulars, to get used to the amount of money you're playing with, to the general tendencies of the players. On pokerstars we don't have the opportunity to datamine like on fulltilt, so consider the first few thousand hands like an investment because it will pay off to learn all these things about the level. But if you drop 5 buy ins in less than 1000 hands, you've "invested" money in the drain and you haven't learned anything except that you played like a moron and that now you have to win twice as many buy ins at the lower level to be able to take another shot.
These are the ideas that just rushed to my head this morning as I was about to play at those limits again, and I hope this post is useful to anyone out there who has similar issues trying to move up. I know that writing all this down will definitely help me, and I hope we all take it to the next level. gl at the tables.
- KA
