Couple of questions about moving up from $2 spins (regular speed, Pokerstars) if I may.

1) Is there a significant difficulty jump from the $2 to $5 games? I have had 77 cEV over a small 1k sample at $1-2, mostly 3 tabling. I plan to start $5 2 tabling to get a better idea of pool tendencies.

2) I'm going to do some aggressive BRM - starting with 100 BI. If I drop 30 BI I will top up as long as cEV is > 50. If cEV is below 50, or I drop below 70 BIs again, I'll move back down and grind up again at $2. Does that sound somewhat ok? I'm not doing this for a living or anything, but am trying not to be a complete fish and have some sort of plan.

Would love to get some insight from people currently playing these games, but any thoughts welcomed! Thank you <3

I think this plan sounds completely fine. I'm sure you won't be too overwhelmed at $5 spins given that cev at $2s. At that stake spins will still be very soft.

I think 77cEV at 1 and 2usd games are rather on a low side.
almost always cEV drops while moving up stakes and with 70cEV at 5s you gonna experience some ugly variance.

I am around that CEV as well and have experienced some ugly variance. What cEV does this Lessen?

I think that up to and including 5s cEV should be around 90

Thanks.

90 cev at 5s these days? Sounds completely impossible unless you only play super prime time and 2 table. The average reg makes 55-60 cev so everything above that is already very respectable. If you make 70 cev you are crushing hard. Realistic expecations are important.

I do not agree that cEV around 90 is completely impossible at 5s, especially that should not be the case at 1s or 2s, not at all.
If one has a cEV on 55-60 playing 5s then what are you going to do at 10s and 25s? will be eaten alive.

I do agree however that probably most of reg. pool have lower end of cEV and that is seen in their game with constant small mistakes that add up over time.

I would strongly suggest to work on your game at those lower stakes and eliminate mistakes that are costly in the long run.
At these stakes yes, even average reg. is capable of making money and mistakes are forgiven but if goal is to getting better and moving up eventually then strategy have to be much more sound then just following pre charts and c-betting a lot.

There is no rush moving up.

Looking at players with decent data at 5s and 10s then huge part of avg regs make often at best same amount per game at 10s then they did at 5s but often even less.
The difference is that making same amount at two times higher stakes means that one will end up catching a lot of shorten end of the variance.

imho.

Hey, thanks for the comments everyone, I appreciate it. I have zero doubt I have some pretty big holes in my game and would fare badly at certain stakes, probably beyond the $5s. As and when I get to that stage I'm definitely going to redistribute the time spent playing vs studying (tbh I haven't done any serious study yet for these games, above fairly passive video watching). But I'm also kinda keen to "get out of the micros" as soon as possible.

Have decided to get another 1k games at $2 under my belt and take it from there. Definitely have some mental game and practical game leaks, and think grinding out some volume in games I'm comfortable beating will help there.

PS read FAQs and realised this was probably not a suitable topic for a standalone post - apologies.

This was posted here and you can see that avg cev for 663 players is 58.35 so your assumptions are way off. https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/c...a05883836d.png

Ah, that's super interesting. Where's that from?

That was not my assumption sir.
This is was my opinion directed to OPs question.

When i said that that for those stakes 70ish cEV is rather low then i did not assume that 90ish is doable. i know it is doable.

And in next post i did point out that i agree that avg pool does have lower end cEV, but should this be something id want for myself, definitely not.

want to add that 90ish cEV at 5s on 4tables

70-80 on 6 tables, no hud.

I have played a few $5 spins thanks to winning a $5 ticket on the Spins leaderboard. Some observations based on not many games
Less people seem to push 25 BB all in as an opening bet.
Games don't feel much different than the $2 except as noted above.
Post flop is more important due to people not ripping it all in pre (I need to get better here)

Trying to get my bankroll to 120 buys ins to be able to play here. Don't think 70 is enough.

Seems that Esa and evcrusher were right.
Times have moved on.
I have a hard time showing cev over 70 at 5s. allthough sample just around 3k games so not that much yet and 6tabling oftenbut i do believe that getting even close to 80 would require playing on no more than 4 tables and work on strategy and leaks.

What hourly rates do you guys get at micro stakes?

And what swings should one expect?

This month on 5$ spins 2 tabling

Why do you have to do an all or nothing approach? Why not try playing like 10% of your games at the $5 level and monitor both your general CEV and your $5 CEV. If after a month the numbers are not far off you could think about jumps to $5s or increase from 10% to 25% etc.

I am currently on the $10 level and honestly I have not seen much difference from the previous levels. There are on average less crazies going all-in with trash but you still get it especially on the weekends. Really frustrating the Jam AQs only to lose to a guy calling with J2o!

The biggest difference is in the level of aggression. As you move up players will check raise you more, and are more likely to put you in difficult spots when you show weakness. The problem is that you cannot really learn to deal with this until you experience it meaning you have to be playing at that level.

For me the biggest difference I have seen is jumping from the $10 to $20 on Party. I played a few hundred hands at 20 and got wrecked for like a -30cev. That said, a downswing like that is primarily bad luck ie always getting it in bad and losing flips. But those bad luck runs at a higher BI can really sting the bank roll.

It’s great to ask for advice but I think at a certain point you just have to dip your feet in the water and see what it’s like!