Eventually, you’ll want to move up in limits. As a poker player, this should be a major decision, since moving up will change your earning potential, will expose you to further risk, and might even be an unprofitable decision. A greedy poker player is a broke poker player. Employ the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. Play where your $/hr is highest; this might mean maintaining a larger ROI at a lower limit than a smaller ROI at a higher limit. It also means play where the games are frequent. For me, the sweet spot in terms of $/game was the $200s HUSNGs, but the sweet spot in terms of $/hr was the $30s!
I would get so many more games at the $30s, and I could four-table them, so my earning potential was the highest there. I did take a very small $/hr hit by not playing the $50s, where my earning potential was about fifty cents per hour higher than in the $30s. I decided the additional risk was not worth the additional earning potential, because I would have more freedom to cash out my bankroll, and I would experience much less significant downswings: my ROI was higher in the $30s, and the stake was smaller; these two factors led to my average downswing being $200, whereas in the $50s my average downswing would have been closer to $600. I did eventually move up (by game selecting) to the $500s, and I am confident that my hourly was substantial there, but I played so few games that I never really got to experience the “long run,” and good games were so infrequent that I could not make a career out of playing solely $500s.
