Now I know I'm nowhere near being a good player myself, and I have looots to learn for sure, but I moved up to NL10 recently after building up my BR through NL2 and NL5 and moving up accordingly. I was a bit scared because the pots are so much bigger than I was used to (I was at NL5 for a pretty long time). But in my short experience, there seems to be so much fishy play here! I thought skill levels would be higher but just this morning I've had people

limping UTG then calling 5xBB with K8s
4betting with ATo
Min-bet donking the flop after calling a 3bet pre
etc.

These people must be losing money, so why are they playing NL10 and not NL2? Are there so many rich people playing online poker who can just burn money like this?

When does that kind of fishy play actually stop? I want to know when to be really scared.

Don't have to be exactly rich to play 10nl. These people probably aren't regular players. Maybe play a few times a week or month. But yes, 10nl is quite fishy.

Fishy play doesn't stop at any limit, it just becomes rarer. And I don't think you should become scared at any limit. Just follow basic bankroll management and keep working on your skills. If at some point you can't beat a limit and lose a significant amount, just move down. No biggie.

I'd say for beginners 25nl can become quite challenging, but still easily beatable for anyone who is willing to study.

In theory you should always be comfortable at the level you'r playing at. If you'v worked your way up and have the br for that limit you won't be anyway fearful.
In my experience the standard at 25nl on Stars is actually worse than 10nl. Not sure what this can be attributed to. Maybe there's a cross section of bad rec players who aren't prepared to play as low as 10nl. 25nl is sort of the lowest buy in where you can get half decent pots i.e the occasionally £50+ pot.

sample size

Well of course but even so, I'm surprised there's even a single person at NL10 who is min-bet donking the flop after calling a 3bet pre.

Site? Time of day? FT or 6-Max?

And as Spew said, sample size?

disclaimer. Talking stars here folks

10 nlz is hugely fishy...has been for ages and it has nothing to do with sample size. It's waayyy fishier than 5nlz, because that is where all the eastern european nitregtagbots spend their days. 10nlz has a far wider global population and waaaayyyyy more recreational players and its not even close.

As the population plays today (these things can change quickly) if you can beat 5nlz (over a 100K sample) you can move up the ladder several rungs (assuming you are rolled).

That's one reason why 5nlz is a great place to train.

You look at it the wrong way. I’ll try to explain it a little more detailed because it’s something pretty important in my opinion.

You spent a lot of time and energy to move up to NL10 and take this poker thing seriously. What you see at NL10 is your hard earned bankroll and stacksizes that are twice as big as the ones on NL5. Therefore “one stack” might have a meaning to you far beyond what it might mean to other people from first world countries.

The guy who raise/calls preflop to mindonk the flop doesn’t see what the stack means to you. He sees $10 to donk off to have some fun. He didn’t get that stack by playing 2000 hands of NL5 at 5BB/100 but by pressing the deposit button on the PokerStars app.

So you basically approach those $10 from very different directions and both approaches aren’t ideal. You “worked” multiple hours to get there so $10 in your bankroll mean way more to you than what they would mean if you worked 30 minutes for them in a regular job and then deposited on Stars. Your opponent doesn’t see 30 minutes of potentially hard/annoying work in his day job, he just sees that he’s bored, likes to gamble and has some money he can afford to spend for that.

There wouldn’t even be a game without that second type of player who doesn’t care about the money. Not on NL2, not on NL2000. You can see that easily by the fact that there is no NL2000 game unless a bad player sits down. The regulars are just not interested to move money around each other even though rake is very low up there compared to what you are used to.

Now when you move up to NL100+, there’s a point where you start to wonder if money really means so little to those bad players because they are just rich or if you are taking advantage of a problem they developed. For me, that often was a problem in live poker, because there you often have it pretty easy to see that it’s highly unlikely that it didn’t financially hurt that guy to donk off a couple thousand. Today, you can think “maybe he’s a crypto millionaire you still dresses poor”.

^^ first class post sir.

Yeah very interesting, thanks madlex, and spot on regarding how I see my bankroll.

4 betting AT is fairly standard in late position versus a villain with a high 3bet from blinds percentage imo.. maybe something to look out for and exploit..

That's a pretty specific circumstance, tbf.


I got it all in with AA vs. a guy with K4o this morning on a 6K9 rainbow flop. He flatted my 3bet preflop after limping UTG.

Is NL25 as good as this?

Apparently the nl16z pool is truly atrocious. No experience of it myself.

You said was, so I'm curious how you think about that now. It's not the same thing, of course, but perhaps similar in terms of how much it "hurts" (not the dollar amount), but I've struggled sometimes with this exact problem. I think anyone with a conscience who plays poker has to deal with it.

At the casino I was playing in this past summer, during the day there were a lot of old people. At least half in the room. The vast majority of these players were there to socialize, get away from their wives - or just get out of the house. They were always there, and over time I got to know them, too. They were easy to read (chasing straights and flushes) and not rich. Many were on social security or a small pension as primary income. So I always went easy on them if I knew I had them beat. Unless they had a bad attitude or were clearly bankrolled of course.

I remember playing with one such player. He had wide eyes with loose skin, mouth that didn't close, and one hand shook. I was next to a reg who seemed to live at the casino. Must have been independently rich. Not a great player, but competent enough. Anyway, the reg ended up turning two pair against this older gentleman who clearly had an overpair. The reg bet the pot and won 3/4 of the older gentleman's stack. The older gentleman sat there staring, hand shaking, in mild shock, while the reg casually talked about how he could have got the rest of his stack on the river.

I know people who say, if you sit down - whoever you are - your stack is up for grabs. But I've made exceptions in cases like this.

I usually don't play higher stakes anymore where people could lose those amounts of money. And if I do, it's mostly in home games where most players are doing very well financially or in casinos that feature mostly older, rich players.

But the reason for that is mainly that I want to avoid playing with people who are really good.