Playing poker is about maximising profits, but along with this you should always be trying to move up the stakes as quickly as possible. The reason it is your interest to move up the stakes quickly is because the additional profits you make when you move up a level is extremely disproportional to how much better you need to be. For example, moving up from $0.5/$1 to $1/$2 will yield twice as much profit but you don’t need to be “twice as good” to compete with the regulars here.
So, since we’ve established we need to move up the stakes, the next question is how do we know when we’re ready, or rather what are the steps we should take to do so.
What bb/100 do we need?
Of course, before you even consider moving up the stakes you need to be a fairly successful player at your existing level. We can measure our success in cash games by looking at our bb/hr or bb/100 win-rate. To cut a long story short, I reckon once you start averaging about 4bb+/100 whilst multi-tabling (or even 7bb/100 on one table), you can start thinking about moving up the stakes.
Building a bankroll for the next level
A lot of savvy online poker players seem to be obsessed with the conservative 40 buy-in NLH bankroll management rule i.e. that you need 40 buy-ins for your table to keep variance at bay before you can move up a level. Personally, I disagree with this rule and think that if you’re able to play with 30 or even 25 buy-ins whilst grinding decent profits then that’s just as good. As long as you move back down a level when you bust out and lose 5 buy-ins then you’re not risking your roll at all and I don’t see what the fuss is about.
Moving up slowly
It’s pretty obvious that for each level you move up the game becomes much harder and you’ll need to adjust to the changed dynamics of play. As an example, if someone wants to move up from NL50 to NL100 then they’ll need to advance their knowledge of positional 3betting/4betting pre-flop. At NL200 it also becomes important to balance your range i.e. when you’re perceived hand range is strong you should bluff more, and when you’re range is loose you need to value bet more on the river.
Anyway, a trick I’ve picked up for moving up a level without suddenly hitting a brick wall is to play between a range of levels and adjust into higher limits slowly. If you’re a regular NL25 player, then buy into an NL50 game and try it out for 500 hands or so. Slowly build this up until you’re aggressive enough to play these games profitable full stop. That’s when you’re ready, you can move up to the next limits completely (although you can still play lower limits for insurance).
Final Tips on Moving up the Stakes
Most of what I said should apply and be relevant to you and your level regardless of which stakes you’re at. It is all very general advice. But the last thing I would like to point out is that a lot of micro-stakes poker players get stuck at the NL25 and NL50 limits because the gap between NL50 and NL100 is pretty huge. This is where the pros basically play, so you might need to do a bit more reading and maybe check out one or two poker ebooks before jumping the void!
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