Quote Originally Posted by Blinky
I play 25NL so take it for what it's worth:

I stopped playing 10NL because I found that preflop raises got no respect. 5BB, 10BB (10% of a full stack!) - it was a lottery.

More importanly, I found that I couldn't treat my stack with respect - it was easy to call a potsize (say $0.75) flop bet on a decent draw because
a) "It's hardly any money"
b) implied odds are thrown out of whack by the small blind sizes.

So far I haven't run into these problems at 25NL. As for the case of the problematic river -

Many low-stakes opps are very passive. Blocking bets on the river work reasonably well if you want to show down a hand for cheap. Of course if they come waaaaaaay over the top it's time to close up shop.
I'm learning the hard way it's like that. Though, i've found it's that way with the 25NL as well. I feel crazy, because I play the lower stakes games when the higher ones stress me, but i've found it much harder to make money at those because of the reasons you mentioned.
To address the other post as well, he said 'trust me, you'll get callers' but the concept, to my understanding, is that you don't want callers, at least not a slew of them. Hypermegachi made the excellent point that you can have excellent odds against any maniac or two, but 4 or 5 who are calling anything your odds are greatly diminished. If EVERYbody can see the whole board for free, hands like KK would diminish in strength incredibly. Like when you muck, say, 6-9 off suit, and the flop is 6-9-9, and you think the foolish thought, only for the briefest of microseconds if you're a strong player, hey maybe i'll play that next time... Well, it strikes me that the lower the stakes, the lower the respect for the money, and every hand there are players doing this exact thing. Somebody just tell me, should I just stick to the mid-level and higher stakes where i'm pretty proficient? And if I start to go on tilt, just walk away, not play lower stakes, where the stress of the money isnt great but the insanity of the plays will increase the tilt?