Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Should I make a big move up?

The poker bankroll currently sits at $4,000. This is quite comfortable for 3-6 ring games or $55 sit-n-gos. I have won back all the money I lost in the last Vegas debacle. Here's the dilemna. I am making close to six figures off of a real estate deal and it will hit my bank account on Friday. After paying off a second mortgage and buying my country club membership, I will still have plenty left over.

I am thinking of adding $6,000 to the bankroll and taking a stab at the higher games. Maybe the $109 sit-n-go's and the 10-20 or 15-30 ring games. I think there will never be another time in my life when there is so much easy money in high limit poker games. This poker boom cannot last forever and the losers cannot lose money forever. There may definitely come a time when all that is left at the high levels are the sharks who have eaten all the fish.

I am sure there is a difference in ability and level of play at the higher games. My question is how much? Is it so much that I could not adapt to it after a few thousand hands? I have averaged 2.36 BB/100 at 2-4 and 3-6 over the 18,000 hands I have in Poker Tracker. I can average 1 BB/100 at 10-20 and make substantially more money. My breakeven point is 0.7 BB/100.

The conservative route is to move up slowly and win my way up to 10,000. The problem is I play 10-15 hours a week. At that rate it will take me 2 years to make it to that level. All the fish may be gone by then. I have no desire to play poker full time and quit my job, but it would be nice to make 10-20k a year as a second income.

The other question is would I be able to take the losses mentally? Right now I look at it like I am playing with house money. All of the money in my poker accounts are winnings. If I add to my account and I lose the add on, how will I feel? If I lose 20 BB in a session at 10-20, that is $400. How pissed off will I get? Plus every time in the past I have taken a stab at a much higher game, I have been crushed. I never felt like I was outplayed but just unlucky. Who knows, I could be wrong.

Does anybody out there think I can do it?

6 comments:

Ignatious said...

give it a whirl - you've got a big cushion to take some shots.

Anonymous said...

One thing I would recommend: not sure how often you play down at Gila River, but start playing the 8/16 game there to get more comfortable playing at the higher limits. Since it is the biggest game they spread in that room, I was nervous moving up to it thinking I would run into much better players. Believe me, they aren't any better than the 3/6 and 4/8 players... they just have more money. You will definitely have bigger swings seeing how it is a higher limit (with a full kill), but you certainly can beat the game and it will give you the confidence you need to handle the swings of the higher limits.

I play regularly in that game. Drop me a line at trickypoker@cox.net if you want to chat about it.

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