Operation : Silver star and clear 10NL+ learn full ring

Time for me to announce my new operation. I'm in the same boat as Wonderland, at the end of April my bankroll was $250 on stars and FPP's were 297. My first deposit bonus expires on 9th June so I need 210 (already had a few fpp's from before I deposited) in the next 6 weeks. I had been playing 5NL and had got to the stage where I was beating 5NL and thinking anout moving up to 10NL but wasn't sure when exactly I should make the leap.

The 50$ bonus is an incentive to get the FPP's and at 5NL I was getting ~10 per night and adding in the fact that I won't be playing much for probably 10 days in the next 6 weeks it was going to get tight. Stars also announced there silver star promotion for UK players so I only need 250 fpps in May to achieve it.......... SO...... it's time to make the leap and 10NL here I come.

I started with ~$250 and have set myself a $190 floor on the bankroll before I have to move back down to 5NL. I started off with one table of 10NL open , so that I could concentrate , get used to the new level and try to develop reads on what the plays at this level actually meant.
I normally play quite a LAGgy game and run 33/22 ish at 6max, BUT having read Robb's advice to tighten up whilst initially moving up thats what I did. 113 hand in I was playing 13/9 and had lost $30. WHAT?????? Jeez I was punch drunk . I got stacked with a full house , a set and the first one was with top pair no kicker( ok i was stupid with that one) but what made it worse was that most of the money went to the 75/4 fish I had position on who was bleeding money to everyone else but when I hit my monsters , he had better ones. Feeling bad I shut the 10 NL table down for the night and played 5NL and managed to bleed a bit more before recovering and getting a 2$ profit on the 5NL play to leave the bankroll on $222.

I was thinking about it all day yesterday , and wondering whether I should be dropping down to 5NL and grind it back up to $250 again before trying again. In the end set vs set and boat vs boat were just coolers , top pair NK vs slow played flopped double gutshot straight was a hand I should have been playing for a small pot , not a stack and the raise all in on the river should have got me out of the hand cheaper . Oh well ,$10 now to learn the modest changes in other peoples play was a price worth paying. ( I hope I only have to pay it once though). The other main differences I found were :-
min raises - WTF .....they seem to be everywhere ...oh well seems as though they are the nuts and sign to be cautious at 10NL ...at 5NL they just seemed to be crappy players who weren't too sure how good their hand was.
3betting - THere seems to be an abundance of 3 betting PF usually resulting in a fold....5nl it was just a 3bet,4bet, 5bet all in war.....I think I'm going to have to experiment with my AA,KK,QQ,AK type hands to see what the best way to get value is.Its also made me wonder whether I should be looking to 3bet lighter with hands like AJ,AT, KQs, QJs as a steal in position since people seem to be folding a lot more to the 3bet. Depending on how it goes it might mean that the odd suited connectors may also fall into this camp.

OK , so you may have noticed this is a day late but it took til getting home last night to decided that the move down level of $190 was there for a reason, ,it allowed for mistakes while I get used to this new level and some variance. Therefore it was time to start again and keep a close eye on how close I was to the $190 if I did lose some stacks but that I should continue with 10NL . Combined with the fact that I didn't want to start an Op and have to abandon it inside of 2 days means that I'm posting this today. Last nights play will follow in the next post.