I think I'm starting to go crazy. I can't beat 50NL on Stars, and it's driving me insane.


I've got 7k hands at 2NL, and I beat that level for 3.5PTBB/100.

I've got 13k hands at 5NL, and I beat that level for 3.2PTBB/100.

I've got 5k hands at 10NL, and I beat that level for 10PTBB/100.

I've got 15k hands at 25NL, and I beat that level for 7PTBB/100.

But after 7k hands at 50NL, I'm down -2PTBB/100.

At other levels this was the point I started thinking about moving up, but at 50NL I'm not even a break even player yet. I feel like I'm beating my head against a wall.

OK, I could totally end the thread right here. Then a mod would have to move it to BBV, and I'd get a warning for spamming the board with low content posts, and that would get me pissed and I'd go tilt off another two buy-ins. So instead of that, I'm going to post my observations about the "magic" differences between 50NL and the lower levels on Stars. Then maybe some of the long term regs can let me know if my observations are on the spot, and maybe even point me toward some correct adjustments for a somewhat tight-aggressive player.

I really only notice a few things about 50NL that are different from other levels.

First is that there are a lot more regs. I occasional see guys like diebitter & WCGRider at the tables I sit at. This doesn't bother me, since I mostly stay out of the way of the good regs unless I have a hand that warrants aggression. And most of the regs other than diebitter, WCGRider and a few others mentioned in the epic Stars Regulars mega-thread aren't good enough to warrant staying out of the way of.

So, first adjustment is to realize that a lot of the regs I see are going to be good players, and some of them are going to be very good players a la diebitter & WCGRider.

The other thing I notice is that the tables are much tighter. At 25NL & below I had no problems finding tables with % Players/Flop of 35 or higher. At 50NL I rarely see a table with a % Players/Flop of >25, and any table with a % Players/Flop >33 usually has a five player waiting list. Also, I notice that if I do find a table with a high % Players/Flop, it doesn't take long for the % Players/Flop to fall back to the low 20s or even the teens.

The second adjustment, then is to adjust to the tighter tables. Being a long time 2+2 guy, this one's easy. You make the most money playing the opposite way that the table is playing. That's why my tight-aggressive style worked so well at the lower limits, I was naturally playing the opposite way of the table full of new & bad "action junkie" players.

To play the opposite way on a tight table, I've got to open up. Now, this does not mean to play more hands from early, or even middle position. It does, however, mean that I've got to "abuse the button" as is said in the 6-max forums. And if the Button is a tighty, I can abuse the Cut Off as well. I'm raising a lot more hands in late position, not just weak speculative hands like unsuited connectors but, if the button & blinds are reasonably tight, ATC gets raised if it has been folded to me. This is a departure from my regular strategy but I believe it is a correct one.

The next thing I notice is that I'm being three bet more. Way more. I'm seeing isolation re-raises when I raise from EP or MP. I'm seeing Squeeze Plays from the blinds when I raise and get a call from a LP player. I'm seeing 3-bets from the blinds when I raise from LP.

This is one of the things I'm having the most trouble adjusting to. Frankly, this is one of the things I've tried to avoid by playing FR instead of 6-max. Previously my 3-betting pre-flop was all "for value" 3-betting with AA, KK & AK. At 25NL I added "light" 3-betting from the blinds to my game when it was folded around to the button and the Button raised. Donk bet the flop to win a small pot, fold to further aggression from the Button.

Being on the receiving end of these 3-bets, though, really has me off my game. If I believe the 3-bettor to be capable of a light bet, I'll shove pre-flop with my "for value" hands, AA, KK & AK. With my pocket pairs, for the most part I call and set mine. After that, I'm kind of lost.

If any of you have noticed any other differences between 50NL and the lower levels, add your thoughts here. And if any of you have recommendations on adjustments, please post them.

And for those of you who have been smacking around the noobies on Stars 50NL, enjoy my monies. But I'm not going away, and I'm gonna get my money back.

Too small of a sample size at any of those levels.

I've got 9k hands of NL25, at 8.4ptbb/100, and I'm not even confident that I'm a winning player yet.

Your other points may be valid, but before you say you "beat" a level, I think you should actually play a decent sample size at that level. I'm reserving judgement on my own play until I get to 50k hands, and even that isn't a large enough sample size. 7k is close to meaningless.

dude, sample size. The sample size for all the levels you posted are very small. You could easily be running bad. Play more, dont tilt.

Also, trying to adjust to getting 3bet more by doing something that is blatantly wrong (like calling) is obviously spew. If your marginal hand gets 3bet it might seem weak to fold but folding is the correct move a lot of the time.

1. Often better to not even enter the pot.

2. Hugely more better to chair select for fun and profit. Try not to have a 3Bettor in YOUR blinds. If you think that the blinds belong to BB and SB, you have lost profitability on that table.

Sample size way too small. For the last 4K hands at 50NL, I'm winning 1 PT/BB. Don't fret, keep your head together, and play solid winning poker.

My theory is that at 50NL you start to see a lot of grinders putting in many hours a day playing multiple tables. There's still a lot of fish around but there's also a lot fairly serious players too unlike the smaller tables.

Sample size is tiny. 7k will tell you very little and 50NL really isn't that different from 25NL. Just try and identify the types of players you are playing against and adjust accordingly.


I've probably played somewhere around a million hands of 50NL with a win rate of over 7PTBB but during that time i have had many many 7k hand losing stretches.

why? easier to make money in nl50 than nl100+?

Some players believe they are better then the average fish but don't think they are good enough to play 100nl+.

You get a lot of these multitabling grinders that stick with a tight ABC game.

Guys like that honestly believe that 50nl is the cutoff where players are 'bad' and above that everyone is so good.

Not really to be honest. I had to pay for uni and was sure i could do it playing 50NL but not 100NL so i played 50NL full time ish from june last year till the start of march. The swings at 100NL scared me a little bit at the time and i didn't really want all the extra stress of worrying how i was going to pay for thingd.
Add that to the hands i had played at 50 in the 2 years before that, i guess it totals to around a million.

If i could go back and do it again though i would move up a lot sooner. My winrate at 100NL hasn't dropped all that much, but i just find that i need to concentrate a bit more rather than making the same standard plays all the time.

I'll echo what everyone else has said. Sample size is a huge issue here. I have 150k hands lifetime and 35k hand BE stretch that was brutal.

Play more and stick to 25NL for awhile. Improve on your game. 50NL isn't that much harder than 25NL.

Has anyone mentioned sample size yet?

I don't mean to minimize your experiences, but, 47K hands is a couple weeks for a lot of regs so not only is your 7K hands statistically insignificant, a lot of the regs you're playing against at 50NL have more hands at 50NL than you have hands lifetime. Even if they're not very good.

Hell, I'm the guy with a 300K hand break-even stretch at 100NL. 7K hands is nothing. Neither are 15K hands at 25NL.

Or to put it another way, I think I can handle 50NL fairly well. And given how when I'm playing 50NL my name is mentioned with fear in the Stars Regulars thread it seems that most people agree (or they're sucking up to a mod, but my SN isn't really common knowledge, so I never know for sure..). Well, I can assure you I've had several 7K hand stretches of -2 ptbb/100 at 50NL.

OTOH, I also had a three week stretch not long ago where I didn't have a single losing day! And that is why 50NL is magical, because it's so much easier than 100NL. Even now - It's gotten a lot tighter in the last 6 months. It used to be easy to find 20 tables with see flop % of 30 or greater in the evenings. I think a lot of 100NL regs have either been pushed down or like me have gotten a lot more flexible about moving between levels or playing multiple levels because since the UIGEA, the expansion to 24 tables and everyone grinding to SuperNova Elite, 100NL and 200NL have really filled with regs.

As far as the things you mentioned, 3bets, playing with regs, you have to realize that these all become increasingly prevalent and increasingly important each new level. If you need to work on these skills, drop down to 25NL and focus on playing against the decent regs. You've probably been able to just avoid them to date and while you can make some decent money multi-tabling 50NL, it's really still the kiddie pool. You're not going to be able to put off learning to play against non-donks forever if you want to go anywhere in this game.

A few things
If you are calling with small PP against people who 3 bet light then a overwhelming majority of the time you are set mining improperly.

Almost always I am folding 3 bets when I raise from EP and early in MP from a regular cause they have to respect my EP raising ranges. From later MP and LP I will open raise tighter and in co/btn v blind situations you can also sucsessfully implement 4 bet bluffing but also doing that with your premium hands as well since you only need to 4 bet sucsessfully once out of four times to break even.

Truth

I read the whole post and think that you are losing value with your premiums if you play them this way. If you hold a premium and raise, then get 3bet by a suspected "light 3-better" then a value shove will certainly just force them to correctly fold. Better line may be to smooth call the light 3 bet (esp. with QQ, KK, AA), then CRAI their likely c-bet.

Thoughts?

Well yeah its nice to not lose your 3-4 BBs when you are going to fold to a 3bet, but if you're stealing blinds alot and raising a wider range of hands the later the position gets, obviously easier said than done

I just meant, say for example, when raising AJo in LP, you really arent going to be calling a 3bet with that hand OOP. Repopping is very villain dependent, and folding seems weak since your raise wasnt exactly a 'steal' attempt. However when this happens folding is certainly better than just flat calling almost every time, but when youre getting your steal attempts 3bet alot and are folding them, folding in this scenario can seem weak especially when on tilt, but its not.

That depends on several things, but both lines are pretty +EV imo.

Versus some opponents just getting it in ASAP would likely be the best play. Versus more solid TAGs this line is likely more profitable, since they will probably fire a cbet and are more likely to be 3betting light, as you said. However if you have reads on them that they are solid TAGs they probably have some reads on you and will take methods to avoid losses as much as possible. Youll probably be stacking most overpairs on a lot of flops in a 3bet pot anyways, so sometimes its just gonna get in there anyways.

I am a lifetime loser at nl 50 over 50k hands.

Just saying. (Also I havent played it since like last october? lol)

two nights ago i was on the wait list of this 50NL table with 3-4 ppl ahead of me because there was a HUGE fish with 3BIs..
I get in and he still had a little bit over 2 BIs and I got half a BI from him and then suddenly realized 7 other players were all regs..lol
I had more than 200 hands on all of them and they were all TAGs
we were obviously staying out of each other's way.
I see a lot of regs at 50NL..If you are not ready to adjust to the regs then you should move down to 25NL..of course table select well, but having 2-3 regs on your table shouldn't bother you..
represent a strong hand on a 3-bet pot and if ur bluff is shown, it could b better for ur metagame..have other stats on ur HUD such as turn AF, river AF, raise c-bet, etc..
also of course att. to steal blinds and c-bet %..
playing a typical TAG reg should be easier than playing a donk in many ways

Some random thoughts on this:

Lag is quite profitable at nl50 and nl100 if you know what you're doing, but not as a multitabler above say 4 tables.

Also you need to be merciless with the blinds in the button and CO (and sometimes even the HJ) if all those on your left don't like battling it out. I mean 10-times in a row, 'They just gotta start fighting back sometime!' merciless. This mercilessness not only gives you smallball profit, it increases your VPIP for people that use HUDs and makes you look looser than you are from EP and MP.


do some reading about changing gears and randomising your play. Use the clock or a dice or whatever you want to help you decide when to raise/limp/fold in certain situations.


Once you get to nl200 or tougher nl100 games you need to make people uncertain what cards you have in your hand preflop anyway, but it doesn't hurt to start cultivating this habit at nl50 (but it's kinda neutral EV-wise at nl50, I think). I'm talking it's possible you limp in late after limpers with AA, or you may be reraising an MP raiser with 53s on the button levels of uncertainty.

Also, I move up and down levels constantly, mainly because I brainfart now and again and stick my whole roll in on some juicy-looking PLO game, and invariably keep trying to move up till my set gets cracked by a flush or my 20-out draw doesn't land or something like that. I usually keep enough to start again at nl10, and move up. I do this all the time.



I think the hardest levels to move up on are nl25->nl50 and nl100->nl200, if that's any consolation.

that's why i said in the thread a few days ago that i love playing against the regs..

they know poker better, they understand what i am doing, i understand what they are doing and it's a war

if you keep avoiding regs and only play against the fish and donkeys, then what.. you bankroll is growing but your skill isn't .. then you move up, where there are more and more regs and you don't know what to do cause your bankroll is high enough for that level but your skill just isn't

i say.. move down to 25NL and go and beat the hard tables with a lot of regs
if you are rolled for 50NL then you have to be over rolled for 25NL and you can practice against the regs and improve your game

If you're constantly moving up and down you probably need to have a deeper bankroll. How do you expect to learn to beat a level if you only play it for a couple of hours at a time?

I made that mistake. I did the Brian Townsend 10 buy-in thing but I was moving up and down so often that I never knew exactly what stakes I really beat and at what point I was just a donator to a game too advanced for me.

People have been yelling about your sample size, but from the number of hands you played, what about the size of your roll?

Post following stats, and I will give you the nut breakdown of the things you may be doing wrong.

number of buy-ins, # of tables, VPIP, PFR, call pfr, Att to Steal, 3-bet%, Resteal %, Went to SD %, Won at SD %, AF, Flop AF, Turn AF, River AF, Fold % (all 3 streets), c-bet, fold to c-bet, turn c-bet

Your down less than 3 buy-ins yo, so you may not be doing anything wrong at all.

Also, I am in a good mood today because I undid sick swong last night, so no, this is not a tarp and I will be relatively nice.