Essay

How can I climb up the limits as fast as possible? This question is very decisive for every poker player because it is his nature to try the best to get the maximum.

I play poker for about 1,5 years now. During this time I climbed up the limits from $0,02/0,04 fixed limit to NL200. Sometimes I also play NL400. All in all I am satisfied with my poker career although I hope that I will play on the highest limit sometime in the future. But I think that I could have been faster in climbing up the limits if I would have sticked to some rules from the beginning on. In this article I would like to give you four tips which should allow you to climb up the limits faster.

1. No Cashouts

Most of us play poker because it is fun. It is a nice side effect that you win money if you play well. What a great feeling when the bankroll is over $100, $500 or $1,000 for the first time! Many players cash out to indulge in something.
The players who want to move up fast shouldn't do that. If you keep the money as part of your bankroll you are investing in your abilities. With a bigger bankroll you can move up earlier to higher limits. If you are at a higher limit the amount you wanted to cash out on the lower limit is only a fractional amount of your current bankroll. In addition you can win this amount of money faster on higher limits than on lower limits.

Example: You play NL25 and you have a bankroll of $1,000. If you would cash out $500 that would mean that you would have to win 20 stacks to get back to your old bankroll. With a good winrate of 4PTBB/100 you would need to play 25,000 hands. If you decide not to cash out and move up to NL200 $500 are only 2,5 stacks. Even with a small winrate of 2,5 PTBB/100 you only have to play 5,000 hands to get this amount back. For this reason it is profitable not to cash out until you reached higher limits.

2. Play well - everything else is irrelevant!

When I started playing I always had sessions with a good winrate. Nevertheless it took a while until I could move up from NL25 to NL50. The reason for it was that I had some sessions where I played really bad and lost a lot of money. Often one or two suckouts happened during such a session and I startet to tilt. Bad calls and stupid all-ins were the consequence - I was far away from reasonable play. I recognized that I was playing bad but I couldn't stop because my session was a losing session and I wanted to finish it as a winning session. That's definitely the wrong attitude. The only thing which is decisive is that you play well - losing or winning don't matter. Try to play well, not to win big.

3. Be careful if you deviate from the standard play

Poker is a very complex game with a lot of possible situations. Pokerstrategy.com offers a lot of simple mechanisms for beginners so that they can learn the basics of the game and play profitably. They don't learn to exploit the smallest advantage. Examples are the starting hands chart and the call15 rule. As an advanced player you don't look at the starting hands chart or act strictly according to the call15 rule because you know the particular factors which influence a decision and can decide better according to the special situation. The problem is that you need a lot of experience to recognize such situations where you can deviate from the standard play. If you are thinking of the game and try to find profitable situations outside the standard play we are recommending at Pokerstrategy.com this is a good thing! But before you implement these deviations into your game discuss the new strategical points in our discussion boards with other members and/or with a coach. Experienced players can give you a hint or advice and often recognize whether such a style of play is +EV or -EV.

4. Learning does not only mean reading articles and playing

I have read a lot of articles and some poker books as well. I think it's interesting to read how others think about the game. But I think it's more important to think independently about the game. Consuming some rules doesn't improve your game. From my point of view the players who are thinking about the game and are discussing with others about their hands and their play will move up much faster than the players who are only sitting at the tables and reading some articles. At the beginning I was only playing, too. But then I realized that coachings and sample hand boards are much more important than just playing.
That doesn't mean that you shouldn't have fun at the tables but don't forget to talk about your game and work on it. This way you will climb up the limits much faster.

 

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