Thank goodness for $25NL. After trekking through the desert that is $10NL, $25NL was a sight for sore eyes. I remember similar behavior my first go round at Stars - $10NL felt like a rocky nit garden and then $25NL it just seemed to open up. My theory is that $25NL is the first stakes where the money starts to have a semblance of meaning. So, you've got the lowest stake @ $4NL and it's easy because there's a lot of donks and people who don't care about losing $4 and then there's $25NL where the money starts to mean something. $10NL is right in between them and the rake is horrible and you have to earn so much more money before you can move up. Anyway, to make a long story short, it didn't take long to earn the buy-ins to move up and play $50NL.
Being on Christmas break holiday and vacation definitely helped me put in the volume of hands I needed (33k) to do this in a mere 20 days plus a winrate of 10bb/100 doesn't hurt either. The last time I had a winrate HIGHER than that at any one stake was way back the first time I finished $25NL on Stars on 7/18/2009.
Looking back, there weren't any major revelations. It feels like the same line-up of players but the fish have more money to splash around and there are perhaps even a few more of them. I guess there are also better regs obviously, but I try to focus on the fish more than them. It's possible I was just on a heater because I had two pretty big spikes on my graph and maybe my true winrate is not that good, but regardless I still think it's a much better landscape than $10NL.
Because I was a little late posting the last update, I was also a little late with this one. I started adding some $50NL tables to the rotation on 01/16/2014. I had pretty much eliminated $10NL when I moved up to $25NL, but at $50NL, they don't run enough tables, so I will have to mix in some $25NL to supplement my volume. Sadly, this gets much worse at $100NL where I usually only see a table or two of Full Ring and sometimes none.
I've tried several times unsuccessfully to get my 6max game in order to improve my table selection. I will periodically try again at $4NL and $10NL when I can. I had one good session recently at 6max where I ONLY played 6max tables and no full ring ones. That type of subtle change might be the breakthrough that will help. What is irritating is that I'm usually very effective at playing HU or 6 handed on full ring tables but actually playing on HU or 6max tables often poses problems.
I'm also headed to Tunica next weekend for some WSOP cash game action. Hopefully some donkament players will find their way to my tables
My $25NL HEM graph:
Summary:
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