Thinking About Moving Up

I’m considering moving up in limits. That would put me at the $2/$4 mark. I’ve been playing $1/$2 for a few months now, and while I haven’t played a ton of hands where I can say without a doubt that I can beat the $1/$2 game, I have done pretty well, and I’m fairly confident in my abilities.

As I mentioned, I took a stab at $1/$2 a few months ago when I was frustrated with being unable to win consistently at $0.50/$1. Makes sense right? Can’t win at your current level so move up. I blamed my losing on the schooling fish phenomenon that seemed to ensure that I would get consistently beaten by worse players. I know, if I was a halfway decent player I would adjust accordingly, but where’s the fun in that? So I moved up as an experiment and did surprisingly better.

There are a number of reasons why I think I did better. First of all, I dropped back to one table at a time which allowed me to concentrate more. Since I was playing at a level a little out of my comfort zone I was forced to devote my full attention to just one table which helped me get better reads on my opponents.

I also started playing a little smarter. At the $0.50/$1 I would chase more than I should because it seemed inexpensive to do so. I know I should be looking at it in relation to the pot/blinds, not actual cash, but I didn’t. Once I moved up, I started realizing that playing speculative hands could get expensive fast so I started playing fewer hands. My VP$iP also dropped from around 24-25 to about 23. Not a huge change, but I’m guessing that I lost a lot of chips on that 1% of hands.

Finally, I respect the players at this level more, so I’m more likely to lay down a decent hand to a preflop raise that I used to be. At the $0.50/$1 level I would rarely consider a raise to be anything to worry about since people would raise with any paint, or any suited or connected cards. I’ll actually lay down decent hands in the face of a raise now, and I think that tends to save me from a lot of second best hands.

So anyway, if I’m doing well at this level, why the desire to move? Well first off, I’d like to keep challenging myself, and keep becoming a better player. Also I would hope that I will be more profitable if I move up. I’ve also noticed recently that I’m feeling much more comfortable at $1/$2. I’m back to multi-tabling, I’m not thinking of the chips as money as much, and I’m starting to make some looser plays. I’m also more likely to surf the web while playing than when I first moved up. I think going up again will get me out of that comfort level for a bit and force me to actually play good poker.

I think I have the bankroll now to try a few sessions at $2/$4. If things go poorly, I can continue at $1/$2 for a while, but if things go well, then hopefully I can make a permanent move upward. Hopefully sometime in the next few weeks I’ll find myself at a $2/$4 table. We’ll see how it goes from there.