I did 100k hands at 2nl zoom 6 max and had a 7.5bb/100.

then I moved up to 5nl zoom 6 max and played the exact same way and Im break even in actual results and EV after 100k hands.

Is it variance or is the skill gap that big?

In general, 2nl and 5nl play the same. 10 nl, there are a couple somewhat competent players.

25nl is where you start to see more regular players.

50nl is a lot more thinking players.

But without more information from you, we have no idea if it is normal variance or if you are doing something sloppy.

starts with a v

Variance is likely the culprit. 100K hands is far from the true long-run in poker.

Assuming that your winrate standard deviation is roughly the average (80bb/100), a 100K sample with a winrate of 7.5bb/100 still leaves a lot of guesswork in regards to your "true" winrate. Via Bayesian analysis with a prior of 0bb/100, the 95% credible interval of your winrate would be approximately 2.5 to 12.4 bb/100. In other words, you might be slightly beating your stakes at a 2.5bb/100 and just running good over this sample, or you might be a superstar NL2 player at 12.4bb/100 and just running bad over this sample. There's only a 5% chance that your true winrate is outside of this range.

At NL5, your true winrate is somewhere between -5 and +5 bb/100 using the same analysis as above.

In all likelihood, you're probably something like a 5bb/100 player at NL2 and a 3.5bb/100 player at NL5 and just running good at NL2 and bad at NL5. Bayesian credible intervals don't start getting narrow until you've played millions of hands.

Only way to know is to play more. A solid preflop game will bag you more random spew at 2NL, which can sometimes flatter your winrate. Equally as others are saying you could well be running bad at 5nl plus the stronger player pool.

Essentially what feels like a major discrepency is probably just variance and inflated/deflated winrate approximations. If you had said you were crushing 2NL for 20bb/100, for example, then not winning at 5nl yet would make much less sense.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Work on your game and it'll converge eventually. 5NLZ isn't easy by any stretch. People run good, whizz through a limit and fool themselves. You only really ever know how good you are in a limit when you get through some tough downswings.

Variance is a hell of a drug

Bravo, this is very well written imo. #nohomo

100k hands in 2NL and 5NL worries me - check your actual $win vs $rake
I suspect you have paid more rake than you have ever won

5z is a rake trap cause there’s less fish there than 2z or 10z. Personally I’d not play 5z altogether and move straight up to 10z.

Hey, mate.

I think I can help you, because I went through this in the last year.

When I started to play poker online (August/2018), I had no problem to learn a little bit about the game (and the basic theory) and win at nl2z with 11b/100 (80k hands). I was crushing this first limit, winning a lot and getting confident. But every time I tried to move up, I got something around -2bb/100 at nl5z. Then I started to get confused, frusted, etc, because I just couldn't win at nl5z and I didn't know why.

After long months of hard (hard!) study and work, I became a much better player and managed to win the nl5z with a good winrate. Now I'm playing nl16z...

What I can tell you from my own experience is: nl5z and nl2z are very different games. At nl2z you can do anything and still win. At nl5z the game is considerably more difficult (although it is still easy), and you can't just do so much mistakes.

There is no other way to win there: you need to be better. 7bb/100 on nl2z is not much, to be honest... You need to study and learn more about the basic game theory and apply it. If you do it, you will win.

If you have a 7bb/100 on nl2z, or if you have 12bb/100 on nl2z, it will not mean that you'll win at nl5z. Trust me.

The good news is that nl5z is a fine limit to learn the game better. If you managed to at least have something around 2bb/100 there, you'll have a good oportunity to get a lot better. Don't try to jump the nl5z and go to nl10z, because nl10z is harder!

+1

What I faced in NL5 was good regs from 2NL moving up and losing regs from 10NL infesting the place

I changed my style focussing on getting the $ to move up to 10NL - no CTO, GTO bs

It's not true that nl5z is easier than nl10z. On the long run, if you're good enough to beat nl10z with Xbb/100, you'll beat nl5z with something bigger than Xbb/100.

(I'm sorry everyone, I lost the edit's time. I meant: "It's not true that nl10z is easier than nl5z [...]")

I didnt know 5nlz and 2nlz are that different, because from the playing itself it just feels so similar, fish are still spazzing off stacks left and right and I didnt feel anything different was happening.

What kind of changes to your game did you make at 5nlz to start winning?

variance

Russian bots?

Between banginPAWGS, boobsandlubes, and this guy, I have to ask wtf is going on around here?

I mean, at least that's my opinion/experience. Moving up from nl2z to nl5z was way harder than moving up from nl5z to nl10z or from nl10z to nl16z (proportionally speaking). That's only for zoom, of course. Regular tables nl2 and nl5 are pretty similar.

I didn't make adjustments from the exploitive point of view. I just studied the theory more and more, got a lot better and played my game without adjust and/or use a HUD. People make mistakes (nl5z players make a lot of them) and you collect EV from these mistakes. I think nl5z is a good "school", as you can't make so many mistakes (but still can make a lot) as you can make at nl2z.

IMO the difference between NL2 and NL5 is the biggest between the limits I know.
Limits NL5/NL10, NL10/NL25 and NL25/50 play only slightly different.

At NL2 you find all sort of fishes - starting with NL5 the fish/reg ratio changes to much more regs and the games are much tighter and more aggressive...

This is what I experienced...

There is no meaningful difference between microstake limits. Like 25NL might be scary coming from 2NL, but it's still only a $25 buy in. See the bigger picture of things. No great players are sitting around fighting for 25 cent blinds lol. You could do a population frequency analysis on your database. You'll see frequencies in common spots are basically the same. Most like you are either leveling yourself into doing spewy things, or your game has regressed. After 200k hands it's easy to start autopiloting decisions.

sorry to break it down to you, but 100,000 hands is nothing. You most likely ran good at 2z (combined with softer fields) and now experience somehwat normal variance