When to move up
Jan. 12th, 2006 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksBluff wrote in a message here a couple of weeks ago about the Ray Zee principle that you should move up in stakes when things are going well and move back down when they are not. I was instinctively uncomfortable with this theory, but it took me until now to formulate my thoughts coherently.
There is an understandable reason for moving up when things are going well — you have the bankroll to do it. And so for many of the players at the highest stakes, the path to those levels has normally been "do well, move up, get spanked, move back down, do well, move up, get spanked, move back down" and so on, until you get a "do well, move up, do well" sequence.
The other understandable reason for moving up when things are going well is that you are full of confidence. And, if you go into a game thinking that you are going to lose, you are probably doomed. So it makes sense to go into a new game thinking that you can beat it.
However, just because the people who have reached the top have done it that way, that doesn't make it the best way.
The problem with moving up when things have been going well is that it is too results-oriented. You are likely to have been going well when you have been lucky. So, you move up, the regression to the mean kicks in, and your win rate falls dramatically, the confidence that you had vanishes, and you start losing.
Ideally, I think, you should move up to a higher level when the following facts are in place:
1) You anticipate that your expected win is greater at the higher level than at the level you are currently playing.
2) You are confident that you can beat the higher level.
3) You have sufficient bankroll to play the higher level.
4) You are not on a kind of "winner's tilt" (or, even worse, on a loser's tilt) which will affect your rational attitude to the game
This would seem to dictate against moving up when you are running well and would seem to be some explanation for the problems that nearly all the top-flight players had in moving up through the levels.
Far better, I suspect, to move up a level after a period of stasis, when you have been winning not at an exceptional and probably unsustainable rate, but at a nice rate. You need to have suffered a few bad beats and still be recording winning sessions. Your confidence comes not from good results, but from a rational assessment of your own skills compared to the average player's skills at the lower level. You don't need to be just beating the losers at this level, You need to be beating the winners.
Then, perhaps after a quiet month when not much has happened, you have a long think about things and say to yourself "right, I am ready".
What you definitely don't do is hit a hot streak on a Friday night, punp up your bankroll nicely, and zoom into a game two levels higher in an attempt to spin it up even further.
My idea here is that, when you do make the carefully considered decision to move up, you will not be moving back down when you hit a bad run (since that, too, is being results-oriented). Your decision was, as far as you are concerned, irrevocable (or at least permanent until the stats show that there is a 95% chance that you are a loser at the new level!)
There was a nice line on EstonB's blog recently. It went roughly along the lines of "I got one step closer to verifying empirically that I'm a losing 10-20 SH player when I 10-table.".
It sounds humorously intended, but it raises a valid serious point. This is the right way to approach online limit, not in a dilettanteish "try this, try that" kind of way, and sticking with the game where you are lucky. You need large samples, you need to test, you need to analyze.
And, yes, I am perfectly aware that I have broken all these rules with my mnoves up to three tables and back again....
++++
And finally, a post on 2+2's Internet gambling forum. I'm sorry, but it just made me smile. But, this is what happens when too many multi-tablers chase too few fishes... What's puzzling is that the poster seems unable to associate cause and effect...
I may just be running bad, but it seems like ever since November, Bodog 25NL and 50NL is full of multitabling weak-tight nut peddlers. As a multitabling weak-tight nut peddler myself, I find this terrible.
There is an understandable reason for moving up when things are going well — you have the bankroll to do it. And so for many of the players at the highest stakes, the path to those levels has normally been "do well, move up, get spanked, move back down, do well, move up, get spanked, move back down" and so on, until you get a "do well, move up, do well" sequence.
The other understandable reason for moving up when things are going well is that you are full of confidence. And, if you go into a game thinking that you are going to lose, you are probably doomed. So it makes sense to go into a new game thinking that you can beat it.
However, just because the people who have reached the top have done it that way, that doesn't make it the best way.
The problem with moving up when things have been going well is that it is too results-oriented. You are likely to have been going well when you have been lucky. So, you move up, the regression to the mean kicks in, and your win rate falls dramatically, the confidence that you had vanishes, and you start losing.
Ideally, I think, you should move up to a higher level when the following facts are in place:
1) You anticipate that your expected win is greater at the higher level than at the level you are currently playing.
2) You are confident that you can beat the higher level.
3) You have sufficient bankroll to play the higher level.
4) You are not on a kind of "winner's tilt" (or, even worse, on a loser's tilt) which will affect your rational attitude to the game
This would seem to dictate against moving up when you are running well and would seem to be some explanation for the problems that nearly all the top-flight players had in moving up through the levels.
Far better, I suspect, to move up a level after a period of stasis, when you have been winning not at an exceptional and probably unsustainable rate, but at a nice rate. You need to have suffered a few bad beats and still be recording winning sessions. Your confidence comes not from good results, but from a rational assessment of your own skills compared to the average player's skills at the lower level. You don't need to be just beating the losers at this level, You need to be beating the winners.
Then, perhaps after a quiet month when not much has happened, you have a long think about things and say to yourself "right, I am ready".
What you definitely don't do is hit a hot streak on a Friday night, punp up your bankroll nicely, and zoom into a game two levels higher in an attempt to spin it up even further.
My idea here is that, when you do make the carefully considered decision to move up, you will not be moving back down when you hit a bad run (since that, too, is being results-oriented). Your decision was, as far as you are concerned, irrevocable (or at least permanent until the stats show that there is a 95% chance that you are a loser at the new level!)
There was a nice line on EstonB's blog recently. It went roughly along the lines of "I got one step closer to verifying empirically that I'm a losing 10-20 SH player when I 10-table.".
It sounds humorously intended, but it raises a valid serious point. This is the right way to approach online limit, not in a dilettanteish "try this, try that" kind of way, and sticking with the game where you are lucky. You need large samples, you need to test, you need to analyze.
And, yes, I am perfectly aware that I have broken all these rules with my mnoves up to three tables and back again....
++++
And finally, a post on 2+2's Internet gambling forum. I'm sorry, but it just made me smile. But, this is what happens when too many multi-tablers chase too few fishes... What's puzzling is that the poster seems unable to associate cause and effect...
I may just be running bad, but it seems like ever since November, Bodog 25NL and 50NL is full of multitabling weak-tight nut peddlers. As a multitabling weak-tight nut peddler myself, I find this terrible.
