Progressing to $.50/$1.00

I usually buy in for $15 at $.25/$.50 and as my bankroll improved, it became increasingly tempting to try my hand at $.50/$1.0. The biggest benefit of doing so was faster point collection towards the Everest bonus. However, I was pretty scared to try incase I lost everything.

So, I set a limit X and told myself that if my account reached that value, I would try buying in for $30 at $.50/$1.0 on the basis that I would stop if I lost $10.

Yesterday my balance reached the required amount so I had no excuse.

I was so scared! However, I realised that if I was scared of losing and played passively, I'd be an easy target for the aggressive regulars.

I opened one table, playing as aggressively as my nerves would allow but lost $5.00 quite quickly. Decided to open another table anyway to balance the odds of getting bad cards a little.

I was a nervous wreck after an hour and ended the session - just about even.

Have played a few more times since and got my first big payoff (i.e. someone paid me off with a poor hand) today. Feeling more comfortable at this limit now but the play is definitely more tricky than $.25/$.50.

These sessions taught me a few things:

• it can be difficult adjusting to loses at the higher level because they look bigger (i.e. 3 big bets at $.50/$1.0 still looks like 6 big bets to me)
• play at $.50/$1.0 is much tighter and more aggressive in general. I'd say 80% of the time, everyone folds to a pre-flop raise from early or mid position so blind steals and isolation plays are more common.
• points go up more than twice as fast as at $.25/$.50 given similar playing conditions. Unfortunately, if the table is reduced to "nits", the majority of hands don't see the flop.
• when the table is ultra-tight, raising with big hands in early position is unlikely to get any action so its probably better to open-limp and hope to re-raise a mid/late play.
• also when the table is ultra-tight, you can raise a wider range of hands in mid/late cos of the fold equity. However, you don't want to do this too often because you see some observant players getting suspicious (taking longer to fold the blinds).
  

There's probably more but that'll do for now!