Why play $10NL?

[rong]

I've been experiencing a very similar pattern since hitting 10nl at stars, but I have a slightly different perspective.

I've been playing online poker for just over a year, and I have done well at $2NL (35 bb/100 over 16k hands) and $5NL (12 bb/100 over 32k hands) levels.

Now let me just get this out of the way: I am getting crushed at $10NL. Now, I started out okay, then had a massive tilt day, then slowly and steadily climbed my way back to even from -$85. Then, over the last month, I have experience my first terrible, horrible, no good very bad run, and I've lose almost $100 in 4000 hands. I feel like I am playing solid poker, but everything that can possibly go wrong for me over the last month — at this level only, mind you — has, so this post is borne for the most part out of that frustration.

So my basic question is, apart from noble "If you can't play at X level you can't play at the next level" sentiments, why would I play at $10NL when (I play on Poker Stars):

-At $5NL, you can buy in for $10. At $10NL, you can also buy in for $10.

That one is kinda irrelevent.

-$10NL is far, far tighter across all table types than both $5NL and $25NL, which seems odd.

This is true compared to 5nl, don't know about higher. But so what?

-In $5NL, you can bet in .01 cent increments, whereas at $10NL you can only bet at .05 cent increments. I know that think might seem like a small thing, but I just like being able to size my bets precisely, and I also think that villains tend to respect bets that you have to type in, rather than just moving the slider.

Couldn't give a crap about this one, seriously, I can't see your perforance being effected dramatically by this.

-$10NL seems to be positively overrun with $2 nit pushers, who screw you coming and going: coming when they make you lay down everything that's not in the top top range unless love coin flips; going when they knock out all your action on the top top range, so your AA and KK wind up winning you $2.15 instead of, you know, more.

This is true, but I just shove at them all the time with anything half decent / any pair (read dependent). No way I'm letting a small stack manipulate me. There's a great post on 2+2 about dealing with the shorties.

-The wait for a table with a +30% pip and a sub-60 hph is generally 2-3 times as long at $10NL

This annoys the fuck out of me, but all the more reason to beat the damn limit and get out of here.

I would think that, considering the max buy-ins are the same, a player could build their bankroll just as fast at $5NL as they could at $10NL, and skip to $25NL.

Maybe true, but I don't think it isw, and either way you're missing the point here.

So what is the point??????

$5nl is a piece of piss to beat. And you seem to be beating it, so well done to you. But what you've proven here (assuming variance isn't your sole problem) is that you don't know how to adjust to different players/table conditions. As you move up the stakes, better players will exploit your $5nl optimum play, and you need to be able to mix it up, improve your reads and not be sooooo obvious in what you're doing.

That is the main point in moving up one step at a time, you gradually learn to adjust your play.

At the moment you can beat the players at 5nl, and you have a set oif skills to take with you to the next stage. Before you move up to 25nl, wouldn't you like to have a whole new buch of skills from 10nl to take with you too?

I'm not trying to give you shit here, cos I'm in the same boat. Lost 3 buyins in 5 mins on Thursday (see tilt forum) and lost 3 buyins last night too. Sometimes it happens, and sometimes you have done nothing wrong, but I can't help thinking in my case I could have reduced some of theose losses. 5nl mentality will not beat 10nl.