Assessing Your Comfort Level

Are you ready to move up to higher stakes? How can you know when you are?
These questions are on the minds of most serious players at least some of the time. Conquering your current game and moving on to bigger and better things is the goal of most players.

Most discussions about moving up that I see cover two topics: win rate and bankroll. If you’ve achieved such and such a win rate over so many hands and have at least X number of buy-ins in your bankroll, go for it!

Win rate and bankroll are obviously important factors, but others are important, as well. In this column and my next two columns, I’ll discuss some of these other factors; here, it’s assessing your comfort level.

Money Comfort
Before you move up, you should be very comfortable in the game you’re currently playing. The first key to being comfortable is that the stakes don’t bother you. You can have a horrible day and it won’t really faze you. While you’re playing, you literally never have the thought, “Gee, that’s a lot of money.”

I don’t mean that running bad doesn’t bother you. Running bad bothers nearly everyone at least a little bit. I mean that the money doesn’t scare you. When you’re running bad, you’re frustrated because losing is frustrating from a competitive or gaming standpoint, not because it’s a lot of money to you.

I think this is critical, because every time you say to yourself, “Wow, that’s a lot of money,” you risk making a bad decision as a result. Furthermore, once you do move up, you’re virtually guaranteed, for a while after you take that first shot, to say to yourself, “Wow, that’s a lot of money.” In other words, you’re going to make some bad decisions when you move up because the money is bigger. You can’t remove that factor, but if you move up to a bigger game when you aren’t even comfortable at your current stakes yet, you’re just asking for trouble. The game will feel huge, and you will make poor plays as a result. You won’t pull the trigger on some good bluffs, you will get pushed out of pots too much, you’ll be less willing to flip when you should, and so forth.

Playing Comfort
Being comfortable with the money is obviously important, but that’s not the only aspect of comfort that I think is important. You should be comfortable in a gaming sense, also.

When you switch from one game to another, your opponents will change. A typical player in the $1-$2 no-limit hold’em game at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas will play very differently than the typical player in the $1-$2 game on PokerStars. Also, the typical $5-$10 player on PokerStars will play very differently than the $1-$2 player.

When you switch games, your opponents will play differently than what you are used to, and that will cause discomfort. Your hand reading will be off. For instance, if you’re used to the $1-$2 game at the MGM Grand, you might be used to seeing preflop three-bets once or twice an hour, and only from premium hands. If you jump into a $1-$2 game on PokerStars, you’ll see far more preflop three-bets. You’ll presumably figure out that people are three-betting with more hands, but you won’t know right off the bat what their ranges are. You won’t understand the dynamics; do your opponents three-bet wildly in all circumstances, or do they try to pick their spots? You have to play a game for a while before you can begin to nail down hand ranges again and get comfortable with reading hands.

Before you move up, in my opinion, you should be extremely comfortable in your regular game. Your hand reading should be sharp. You should rarely feel lost at sea. If someone starts three-betting you every other hand, you should know what’s going on. Is he picking up hands, is he picking on you, or is he on tilt? Why did he shift gears, and what should you do about it? How will he react to you if you play back at him?

If you play with competent players, you won’t know exactly what they are up to all the time. But you should feel comfortable in the game. You should understand their general approach to the game, and you should have a good feel for how to counter it.

When you move up, you’ll probably feel out of your depth at least sometimes. You’ll get caught by aggression that you weren’t expecting. That’s normal; you’re moving up to challenge yourself and conquer this new game. But if you still get that out-of-your-depth feeling at your normal stakes, you likely aren’t quite ready to move up.

Comfort Without Win Rate
Your recent win rate can be a particularly poor measure of whether you’re ready to move up or not. Just because you’ve won a lot recently, it doesn’t mean that you’re ready to tangle with the big boys. You easily could just be running very hot. And even if your recent win rate has been mediocre, you still might be ready to take the plunge at a higher level.

In my playing career, the first time that I moved up was from my local $4-$8 limit hold’em game to the $10-$20 game. I had been playing in the $4-$8 game for six months and actually had a small loss to show for it. Yet, I moved up anyway. I felt extremely comfortable in the $4-$8 game. I was totally comfortable with the money involved, and I never felt out of my depth when I played. I understood my opponents’ strategies and I knew how to counter them. I was playing with a significant edge, and I knew it. I also had saved up enough money from my job that I would be well-bankrolled for the bigger game right off the bat. So, I decided it was time to move up.

It worked out. In the first month, I erased my entire loss for the previous six months, and the next month, I officially launched my professional poker career.

On the other hand, there’s so much variance in poker that you can’t say you’re ready to move up just because your recent results have been off the charts. For instance, it’s reasonably common for a strong player at 50¢-$1 or $1-$2 online no-limit hold’em to go on a 50,000-hand, or more, break-even streak. Therefore, it’s just as common for a break-even player at these levels to go on a 50,000-hand, or more, winning streak. It happens all the time — a weak player has a good run and moves up from a game that’s just slightly over his head to one that’s way, way over his head.

Don’t let that be you. Don’t base your decision to move up solely on a few numbers. First, assess your comfort level. If you’re completely comfortable with your current game, you might be ready to take a shot at a bigger one.

Ed’s brand-new book, Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em, is available for purchase at smallstakesnolimitholdem.com. He is a featured coach at stoxpoker.com, and you can also check out his online poker advice column, notedpokerauthority.com.