NL4 or NL8?

Pysterman

I have been playing NL4 for a month or so (previously built my BR over 18 months playing SNGs) and seem to making a small but consistent profit (a few bad sessions of course, but in profit overall).

I understand that a general rule of thumb for BR management is not to play with more than 5% of your bankroll, or equivalently to have at least 20 buy-ins.

Assuming a maximum buy-in of 100BB, I don't quite have 20 buy-ins for NL8, but I'm getting there.

I am looking for some advice on possible strategies to start increasing profits:

a) Continue to grind away at NL4 until I have 20 buy-ins for NL8, then try moving up. (If I was to do this, at what point would I drop back down to NL4 if I lost a few buy-ins?)

b) Move up to NL8 and buy in for (and top up to) the maximum - after all, I'm not FAR off 20 buy-ins.

c) Move up to NL8 but only buy in for 5% of my bankroll (i.e. short of the maximum for the time being).

I have a reasonably tight playing style so I rarely see any massive swings in my balance over a short period of time (my profit graph goes up reasonably smoothly). I also understand that NL4 and NL8 play almost identically, so in theory, if I think I can beat NL4 I should be able to beat NL8. I also appreciate that it can take a long time to be statistically confident that I AM actually beating the level I'm at.

Any advice?

Lambert180

Yes you are right, 4NL and 8NL are very similar. The only difference is that 8NL still has plenty of fish, just a bit less than 4NL, but I would suggest you should have a minimum of £160 to play 8NL.

Are you multi-tabling or just playing 1 table?

If you're making steady profit at 4NL, you don't wanna rush to move up if you aint got the BR. Just keep playing til you get to about £160, I'd say if you lose about £20 at that level, go back to 4NL for a bit. Yes the game is the very similar and if you beat one, you'll probably beat both but you need to make sure you have enough money to allow yourself the long term to win. If you're good, you'll win long term, but no-one can win all the time, so if you aint BR'd you're just asking for trouble.

debdobs_67

Keep grindin and skip nl8 , when ure proper rolled go st8 to nl10 , the diff between all 3 levels is similar just less awful players at nl10. If ure consistently beatin nl4 there is no real reason ya wont do the same at nl10 provided ure rolled proper xx

Dudeskin8

Well for me I did say to myself get to £160 then go to NL8 playing with 20 BI's but a few people (aggro monkeys) suggested going str8 to NL10 with what I had as it's all the same. I did that and experianced some bad variance early on that knocked my confidence, and the main reason it was knocked was that I was playing 'out of my bankroll' which is never a good thing.

I then moved to where I should have been at NL8 and if there were not many tables I simply loaded up a NL4 table so 2X NL8 1X NL4, not hard is it ? Did that till I had about 21-22 BI's (gives me some leeway if I run bad) and then began on NL10. Also I would just speak about BR in terms of BI's as it's a lot more str8forward I find then 5% lol.