Moving from Micro Stakes to Small Stakes The micro stakes and the small stakes might seem distinctive, but the truth is that they are one of, if not the most immense jumps in online poker. Next to going from mid stakes to high stakes games, this is the. Re: Poker & Advice for moving up in stakes Keep building where you have good results and when you are over-rolled for those buy-in levels then mix in a few of the next level. Many potentially great players never move up in stakes because they never build a poker bankroll—and despite knowing how to manage a bankroll, they lack the discipline to follow through. The bottom line is, improper bankroll management can prevent even the most talented player from moving up in stakes.

• Poker Moving Up Stakes Track
• Moving Up Stakes Betonline Poker
• High Stakes Poker Youtube
• Poker Moving Up Stakes Game
• Poker Moving Up Stakes Odds

1. To move from low to mid stakes your going to need a strong understanding of the fundamentals. A strong understanding of the fundamentals will generally get you a pretty good ROI in mid stakes MTTs. By fundamentals I mean push/fold ranges, reshove and call reshove ranges, cbetting, and preflop and postflop bet sizing.
2. Microstakes players dream of moving up to higher levels online, where serious money can be made. But how do you rise from 25NL to 200NL? Mike Gano has done it, and he’s on the podcast this week giving specific strategies for moving up in online poker. We asked Gano what microstakes players should be.

Most poker players can’t wait to move up in stakes. And can you blame them? For one thing, there’s a feeling of accomplishment when you move up — it means your game is improving. Then there is the money. You have the ability to make more of it, and you don’t have to put in as much volume to get it.

Now, the thing is with moving up is that players either don’t wait long enough, or they wait too long. Both can be expensive mistakes.

If you move up too fast, you might not be good enough to play at higher stakes. You’ll lose money because you suck. This can lead to busting your entire roll.

You can also lose money if you wait too long to move up. If you moved up sooner (when you were ready), you’d be playing higher stakes, therefore earning more big blinds per hand or more dollars per game.

So in short, moving up in stakes is a balancing act. Lose your balance and you’ll lose your money.

But there is a method that I used when I was playing/coaching that helped me with this balancing act. I want to share that method with you today, in hopes that it’ll help you move up faster too.

The method that I used to move up in limits faster is to blend the games I played.

By blending, I mean to mix two different buy-ins. For example, if you play $3 SNGs, and the next level up is the $6 games, then you would load up a set of tables consisting of both. The ratio will depend on you, your bankroll and skill level. If you’re just barely beating your current stake, I’d do something like 80/20 or 60/40 in favor of your current stakes. As you improve, increase the number of tables at the higher stakes until you’ve reached the point where you can load up 100%.

I like this method because instead of needing a full 40 or 50 buy-ins to move up, you can take a shot at 25 or 30. For example, if you play $3 SNGs the rule of thumb would state that you need like $240 or $300 to move up to the $6 games (minimum). However, if you blend stakes, there’s no harm in having $180 and taking a shot.

With all of this said, I do want to point out a few things:

You need to be able to stop blending stakes and/or move down entirely if your shot doesn’t go well. I suggest moving down entirely if you lose around 25% of your roll. The great thing is that it won’t take long to regain that 25% back so that you can take the shot again.

It’s important to still put in enough volume at your current stakes before trying to move up. This is so that you can be sure you’re good enough. Just because you have enough money to play higher stakes, it doesn’t mean that you should.

I would also avoid blending different types of games. In other words, don’t load up 45s and 18s together (at least when you’re first starting out). While much of the early game is the same, the late game strategies are not.

Another Method to Move Up in Stakes Faster — Mass Tabling

Another method you might try to move up in stakes faster is to mass table. Meaning, you load up as many tables as you can handle. (I don’t recommend this method for a few reasons, which I’ll get to in a second.)

To make this method work, you will need to have a heads up display and a hot key program like Table Ninja or AHK. These programs will help you keep track of tables, bring tables that need your attention to the front and allow you to program things like betting amounts. This is in addition to having hot keys set up.

Something else you will need to do is adjust your strategy. You won’t be able to play poker — you’ll have to play using a push/fold strategy. There just isn’t enough time to think and make a logical decision with so many tables up.

Now, the upside to this strategy is that if you play $3 games and you’re averaging $.75 a game, you can play 40 tables and average a little over $30 an hour. This will add up quick, allowing you to move up faster.

The downside, in my opinion, is that you don’t learn anything by doing this. There is very little thinking in push/fold poker besides when to shove, and when not to. You also take thinner spots, which increases the amount of variance you see.

Put simply, I don’t recommend using this method to move up fast because you don’t grow as a poker player. You stunt the education needed to truly excel at the higher levels; at the very least you make this education harder to obtain.

So I’d only use this method if my blending method above doesn’t work for you.

How quickly can you move up the stakes in poker?

There is no one-answer-fits-all for how quickly you can move from one limit to another in no limit Texas Hold’em cash games, but you can gauge a fairly accurate estimate based on the following factors:

1. Your winrate.
2. How many hours you play a day on average.
3. The number of tables you multi-table.

Using these 3 variables it’s actually pretty straightforward to work out a time frame between moving up the stakes in NL cash games.

Throughout this article I will be assuming that you stick to the basic bankroll management guidelines of having at least 20 buy-ins (BIs) for the stakes you want to play (e.g. a $200 bankroll would be needed for $10NL).

Time frames for different players types.

Here are a few examples of the time it will take for the most common players types to move up the stakes based on the 3 variables listed above.

Hardcore grinder - 2 to 3 weeks.

• 6bb/hour winrate (on 1 table).
• Playing 4 hours a day.
• Playing at 6 tables at a time.

Sounds very speedy indeed, but it’s very possible if you put the effort in.

Poker Moving Up Stakes Track

Regular player - 1 to 2 months.

• 6bb/hour.
• 2 hours a day.
• 4 tables at a time.

Casual player - about a year.

• 6bb/hour.
• 0.5 hours a day.
• 2 tables at a time.

Days until you can move up limits calculator.

Moving Up Stakes Calculator

Find out how many days it will take before you can move up to the next level.

• Winrate - Your winrate in bb/hour. Just enter the number on its own.
• Hours - How many hours you play poker in a day on average.
• Tables - How many table you multi-table during your sessions on average.
• Surplus Buy Ins - How many buy ins you have over your current limit. For example, if you play $10NL and you have a $250 bankroll you have 5 'surplus buy ins'. Leave it as 0 if you only just about bankrolled for your current limit.

How it works.

To be be able to safely move up, you need to have 20 buy-ins for the level above you. This is basic bankroll management. If you have 20 buy-ins exactly for your current limit, you are exactly another 20 buy-ins away from having enough money to move up (in most cases).

You basically need to win another 20 buy-ins worth of money at your current limit to safely move up a level. So if you’re playing $100NL with $2,000 behind you, which the minimum bankroll required to play at these stakes, you need to win a further $2,000 to move up to $200NL (which requires a roll of $4,000).

This calculator works out how many days it will take you to win 20 buy-ins and be able to move up based on; your winrate, the hours you spend playing a day on average and the number of tables you play at during your sessions.

The equation used for the calculator.

This is the equation used to work how many days it will take before you have enough money to move up limits.

Important points about the time between moving up stakes.

These are average time frames.

These time frames are just generalizations. We’re assuming everything remains constant, which it never does.

If you’re a regular player you can’t expect to move from one level to the next every 2 months like clockwork. Thanks to variance, you may only spend 2 weeks at one level, but then 4 or more months at another.

However, if your winrate, play time and the amount of tables you play at is consistent, the time you spend moving from one limit to the next should average out over time.

Your winrate won’t stay the same from one limit to the next.

As mentioned above, it’s very likely that your winrate will move up and down across the limits.

Just because you’ve got a winrate of 6bb at $25NL, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be able to maintain that winrate when you move up to $50NL. In fact, it’s very likely that your winrate will drop until you become accustomed to those stakes (i.e. you improve you game).

You’ll need to account for a “breaking in” period where you try to achieve a similar (or possibly even higher) winrate to what you had achieved at the previous stakes. Again, this time frame depends on a whole new bunch of variables, but I’m not going to go in to those right now (this article is long enough as it is).

Bankroll management and table limits.

Your bankroll management methods may be more risky or more conservative than the 20 BI minimum that I’m using in this article, so you would have to factor that in to the outlined time frames used above.

In addition to this, if you’re playing in deep stacked games of 200bb buy-ins as opposed to the standard 100bb buy-ins that I assume you're playing in, that will also affect the time it takes for you to move from one limit to the next in no limit Texas Hold’em cash games.

Example - moving from $2NL to $200NL.

Despite all the variables, let’s try and use some mathematics to work out a decent time frame for moving from $2NL up to $200NL. I’ll break the progression down in to steps from one limit to the next.

For the record, in this example we are starting with a $40 bankroll and will need to achieve a bankroll of $4,000 to be rolled for $200NL. I’ll also assume that we’re a serious grinder determined to make it to $200NL as quickly as reasonably possible.

In addition, let’s assume we’re an accomplished player that can already beat $200NL, but we’re starting from $2NL for fun.

$2NL to $5NL - around 2 weeks.

• 10bb/hour.
• 3 hours a day.
• 8 tables at a time.

$5NL to $10NL - around 2 weeks.

• 9bb/hour.
• 3 hours a day.
• 8 tables at a time.

$10NL to $25NL - around 3 weeks.

• 8bb/hour.
• 3 hours a day.
• 6 tables at a time.

$25NL to $50NL - around 4 weeks.

Moving Up Stakes Betonline Poker

• 7bb/hour.
• 3 hours a day.
• 4 tables at a time.

$50NL to $100NL - around 5 weeks.

• 5bb/hour.
• 3 hours a day.
• 4 tables at a time.

$100NL to $200NL - around 9 weeks.

High Stakes Poker Youtube

• 4bb/hour.
• 3 hours a day.
• 3 tables at a time.
  

Poker Moving Up Stakes Game

TOTAL TIME = 25 weeks (roughly 6 months).

For what it’s worth, I took the high-end estimate of how long it would take to move up the stakes at each level. Therefore, moving from $2NL to $200NL in 6 months is entirely achievable if you’re already an accomplished player.

Moving up stakes conclusion.

Poker Moving Up Stakes Odds

If you’re a regular winning NL Texas Hold’em cash game player, anywhere between 1 to 12 months at each level before moving up sounds about right. It all depends on your winrate, time spent playing and the number of tables you play at during your sessions.

I’m sure a lot of people will disagree with these time frames, but I don’t care. You’re not going to find tangible figures as accurate as these elsewhere that answer the most common question of “how long does it take to move up limits in Texas Hold’em”. Take ‘em as rough guidelines and don’t put too much stock in to them.

In fairness, “it depends” is a better answer, but then that’s not very thorough now is it.

Go back to the interesting Texas Hold'em Articles.

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