Following on from my last post regarding certain levels based on PokerTracker big bets per hundred hands then I want to enhance on that here by looking at the question of moving up or staying at your current level. It is not a straight forward process of simply playing at a higher level and increasing your $/hour. There are clear differences between ptbb/100….bb/hour and $/hour.
Let us say that you are playing NL50 and you have a crushing earn rate of 10ptbb/100 and you are playing full-ring and so you are seeing 60 hands per hour per table. Let us also say that you are able to play eight tables successfully and are being dealt near as damn it 500 hands per hour. So here our hero is making 10ptbb/100 which is $10/100 and so is making $50/hour.
Now let us also say that this player was very successful at NL50 just by being technically better than his opponents and generally playing in good games. His edge per table is so strong that this allows him to play eight tables at once without it seriously affecting his ptbb/100. But let us also say that he is advised to move up to NL100 where the players are much better.
Now you would expect a player who is crushing NL50 to make money at NL100 and in this instance our hero makes a long term earn rate of 6ptbb/100 at the higher level. This is still very good except for the fact that at this tougher level then he can no longer play eight tables because he needs to watch his opponents more carefully to maintain an edge.
He also needs to be mindful of his own game as his opponents are watching him more intently. He finds that he can only manage four tables at NL100 where previously he was playing eight. So now he is only seeing 250 hands per hour instead of 500 hands. With his earn rate of 6ptbb/100 then this means that he is making $12/100 which means $30/hour at this higher level. Even though the $/100 is higher, the $/hour is substantially lower.
So now we have a situation where a player who was crushing NL50 has moved up to NL100 very successfully but is making $20/hour less at the higher level…….despite doing very well. This is an underlying problem with moving up and one that you need to be very cognisant of when looking at ptbb/100 at different levels.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson plays poker at www.pokerloco.com and you can come and play and recieve great bonuses using the bonus code DEAN600
