When Should You Move Up The Stakes?
Alex | April 19, 2010
Being able to distinguish when you as a poker player should make the step to moving into a higher stake is key to any players success because making the move too slowly would mean that you could be passing up the opportunity to increase your bankroll at a faster rate but make the move too quickly and you will find yourself within a learning curve that could well cost you your entire bankroll.
- Please read our article Playing Above Your Limit to learn more about bankroll management.
As with a number of things within the real world, the power of a players bankroll is regarded in a number of different opinions and so with some players being more focused on the money aspect of the game rather than the experience, many feel that they need to ensure that they play prime poker at every opportunity that they have at the poker tables to be able to enjoy the game.
With that in mind, you can easily see why so many new players that take to the game of poker, choose their stakes way to high for their playing ability, lose their bankroll and then quit the game as quickly as they decided to play it.
So with so many players getting their timing wrong and funding the playing habits of other players who they come up against, what is the best general rule that you should try to exercise to ensure that you’re playing the right stakes for you?
The best thing that you could base your decision on would be the number of big blinds that you would be able to sit through comfortably, with the lowest recommended minimum been between 30 and 40.
This means that you are able to allow the lower strength hands to pass without you having to act due to your chip stack sinking as the blinds include you within the forced betting.
Obviously the best way that a player would be able to generate a life changing amount of money while playing within the real money cash tables, they would need to progress through the stake levels as quickly as possible but that greed factor seems to kick in and players feel that they can jump up through the levels just because they have had success at the lower levels.
After looking over a number of texts surrounding the subject, many of them reveal another argument for ability progression and moving through the stakes as quickly as you can, saying that it is proven that as a player grows older, their willingness to wager higher amounts of money per hand decreases and so their tendency is to either stick to the stakes that they are within or to reduce them to decrease the opportunity to lose what they have worked so hard to create in their time at the tables.
On the flip side to the argument, a number of players reach stakes that they are comfortable with but then the fear of clashing with other higher ability player scares them into retaining their current stakes level.
Moving up into a new stake level can be frightening when you are moving into an unknown level but you need to be able to make the step into where you have never been before to maximise your winning potential.
Making sure that you learn about the game and the best strategy that you should look to include into your game while you’re on the trail of a profitable time at the tables.
Learn deeply and advance quickly while still within a comfortable state and you will find that your winning amount becomes so much higher than you would have experienced if you failed to try to advance.
- Share this:
