A Newcomer!

[TheBryce]

I like this upbeat new feller. Welcome

[Leatherass]

Welcome Mikey.

[Oddchild]

Hey Mikey. Great first blog.

Which site do you play on mate?

[MikeySong]

haha ty everyone. I didn't realize my post was so long!

I play a lot at AP for now

[aim786]

Holy crap, now I'm going to have to put up with you on 2 message boards. Life just gets worse everyday

[Jarno Virtanen]

You said:

For example, if I have 500bbs and I lose 200bbs, I’m definitely going to feel very scared about my bankroll and the last thing I want to do is drop down.

So I take it that you don't feel comfortable dropping down in limits. Is this because of financial management or something to with adjusting to different levels or what? (By the way, I'm not critisizing you here, I wouldn't even have the credentials to do so, but I just want to expand on this.)

I've come to understand that being able (psychologically) to move up and down in limits not only might improve your game, but, as you said yourself, might increase your incomes, too. It's a tough thing to do, because you might feel in "control" in a certain limit and losing control is one of the most threatening things that can happen to a human individual.

But, don't get me wrong, I think I know what you're saying and I think I will err on the side of cautiousness too, if I ever get to the stakes that have a impact on my personal finance. That said, as humans do have a tendency to get bored with just about anything, the lure of new challenges of higher limits is going to get us eventually, I think.

I just think that many of the real successful players have gambled a bit with the limits (not so much as to risk their rankroll) and got bitten by the higher limits and had to have that grueling experience of dropping down in limits. It's especially frustrating if you've grinded yourself a decent profit and end up losing much of it in a bigger game. But I think it's an important thing to go through. (Even though I haven't experienced it myself, in poker, that is.)

I think, perhaps naively, that is in big part a question of improvement. Being in the comfort zone is so much a threat to the improvement that it's real good to have yourself scared and confused once a while. Of course, being a pro should make one very cautious with bankroll management, more so that some people seem to understand, but being an expert at anything requires a constant yearn to improve, and a willpower to do so.

You can and should, of course, improve your game without moving up or down in limits. But it's so hard to battle the perspective mistake that a good feeling of one's skills gives. Even if one knows that one might be suffering of a flawed impression of one's skills, it still isn't enough to break the disillusion our brain so readily gives us. This is something that has been heavily studied in psychology and related areas and the conclusion is brutal: we are hopelessly inadept to notice flaws in ourselves. The best of us are able to battle that successfully, but it's hard work.

rambling-ly, y'rs,
jarno

[MikeySong]

you make an interesting point jarno.

I definitely do not like to drop down levels as I feel that would hurt me psychologically as well as affect my income. A 1000bbs gives me room to play. If I feel like experimenting and trying something different today, then I just might do so as losing 10-50bbs won't be as harmful at that area. It jsut gives me a lot of room to breathe.

As for being bored and not improving, I think it definitely can be true. I'm always trying to improve my game but you know what, this week I've been playing worse. I've drifted from playing correctly, letting certain people get to me, getting paranoid about being bluffed left and right, etc etc. Hopefully now that I've realized this mistake, I'll get back on the right track.

As for moving up AND down, I don't think you need to drop down to improve Why? If you move to higher limits and get spanked by better players, isn't that a much better place to learn than at lower limits where there are more fish?

I also hate dropping down. I'm the kind of guy who hates to see certain things go to waste. Here's an example:
5 or 6 years ago, I'm playing the Super Nintendo (this system had some sweet RPGs dude) and I'm playing Chrono Trigger, one of the best RPGs of all time. My characters are like lvl 90 something, so I'm close to the 99 barrier! Well, my SNES is on my desk and I move and accidently hit the chord! The SNES drops, the screen goes black, I quickly reset the game to see what happened, and everythingggggggggggggg is erased.

I put away my SNES for a year.

I later on played Super Mario RPG and the game reset itself for some weird reason.

So I put it away for another year.

I didn't have the heart to play for that long :/