So I've been playing recreationally since 2005, but took a massive break after BF. I mainly played MTTs and SNGs online and live cash. I recently got back in and want to hone my cash skills. Been reading The Grinders Manual and studying where I can.

I can afford higher stakes, but wanted to practice discipline so I deposited $33 and started playing a mixture of 2NL, $2 SNGs, $0.25spins and $3 and below MTTs. Ran up to $60 in a week, plunged to $45, and just won an MTT for about $94 yesterday, so up to $140ish.

I want to legitimately beat 2NL but want to know if it would be better to move up to 5NL purely due to cost of rake, or if I should continue to grind 2NL until I beat it.

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sounds like you are ready for $5 action

I'm just a little cautious because my MTT/SNG game is far superior to my cash game, yet I also don't want to get murdered by rake. May take me a while to beat 2NL when I would be better off at 5NL and starting there.

How about MTT/SNG? Should I move to 5NL but continue with $3 and below games for tourneys?

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If you are playing on stars (although I think it applies to most sites) the rake gets worse if you move up from 2nl. Also rake is not an excuse as to why you are losing, the pool gets more difficult as you move up and your win rate in bb will almost definitely drop.

2nl is funnily about the only limit I feel like it's important to prove you beat as a new/returning player. Everything above that who cares move up as quickly as possible.

Playing on Party, and AFAIK, is second only to 888 for highest rake percentage at 2NL; actually goes down when you move up (as a proportion, not dollar value).

https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comme...of_pokerstars/

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Looking at their site the % stays the same up to and including 10nl the only thing that changes is that 10nl you may very rarely hit the cap which I imagine is a minute consideration and definitely not a reason to need to move up quickly.

bro don't play online. its rigged.
only play live mtts. that's where the money is.

The cap at 2NL is huge. Would that not greatly influence my overall profit?

Are you sure you're looking at the NLHE section? - The cap at 2NL is $1 or 50bb. The cap is the same at 5NL and 10NL, but the overall rake is massively different. 50% vs 20% vs 10% of 100bb's.

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They take 5% of the pot. For it to cap out the pot needs to be $20 in total. This basically never happens at 2nl or 5nl and at 10nl it's going to happen more often but it's pretty minor as I said.

Your $5 pot is raked as much at 2nl, 5nl and 10nl. The only minor difference is if you play for a $22 pot you get $2 which is unraked so you are getting a grand total of 5c saved on the very rare occasion you're playing for pots that big.

Okay I gotchya. Thanks for the explanation. I feel better sticking it out at 2NL now.

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One more like this, and you'll be getting banned.