Koony17

Hello, and thanks again for all the content — I’ve gone through several parts of the blog multiple times.

I recently read P. Howard’s article on the importance of moving up in stakes:
https://pokerdetoxmtt.com/the-money-spreadsheet-how-to-make-money-playing-poker/

I’d like your perspective on moving up in stakes, especially when table quality and volume are the main constraints.

At the moment, my biggest issue is that I seem “stuck” at NL200 due to volume considerations. This year (small sample), my volume breakdown is roughly 60% NL200, 30% NL500, and 10% NL1k.

I actively open and sit at empty tables, but when they fill up with regulars, I usually leave after 3–4 orbits if no recreational player joins. I also avoid HU vs regs: I try not to immediately forfeit the table, but after 10–20 hands I tend to leave, which often results in losing the seat anyway.

For ethical reasons, I don’t use seat scripts or similar tools, so on some sites good table access is genuinely competitive — you have to be fast. Constantly scanning lobbies also comes with a mental cost, but it feels unavoidable if table selection matters as much as we believe it does.

Regarding table quality:
– If there’s a weak recreational losing ~10bb/100 seated to my left, I usually leave.
– In high-rake environments, I may even leave tables where the rec is losing 15bb/100.

This probably puts me in the “bumhunting” category, although I don’t insta-leave the moment a recreational busts.

One potential solution I see is incorporating some NL2k action: even if it’s only 5–10% of my total volume, it could outperform a large chunk of NL200 volume in absolute €EV (assuming reasonable table quality). The downsides are obvious: extremely low volume and very high variance.

As we move up in stakes, good tables naturally become rarer. My question is whether, at some point, we have to accept playing in games that are not clearly +EV in isolation — with the idea that they become +EV over time due to future recreational entry. In other words: how much short-term table EV should be sacrificed to avoid getting “stuck” at lower limits?

For context, I mostly play during European morning/afternoon hours, when overall game quality tends to be lower. I play exclusively on major .com sites (no apps or private games).

I’d really appreciate your thoughts on this in general — especially whether my current approach might be too conservative from a long-term growth perspective.

Thanks a lot!

Hi! Very nice to meet you.

This is by far the best blog I’ve ever read. Thank you for all the knowledge you share and for the effort you put into it.

I’m a midstakes player, currently playing NL200–NL1k on the major .com poker rooms.

I usually play in the morning or early afternoon European time, which is probably far from optimal in terms of game selection, but it works well for my overall life balance. As a result, I mostly play NL200–NL500 due to limited action, although I’m still able to put in around 40k hands per month.

My main goal is to improve. You’ve already covered the CFP topic in depth (thanks a lot for that), so I won’t go deeper into it here.

Another possible path for improvement is private coaching. Even at a cost of $500–1,000 per hour, doing, say, 10 focused hours would still be significantly cheaper than committing to a CFP. Also, from what I see, in most CFPs true one-on-one coaching usually happens at most once per month, while the rest is group work (which is of course still very good value).

Another potential downside of CFPs — and please correct me if I’m wrong — is that there seems to be very limited action above NL2k. So while you might acquire a lot of high-level knowledge, you may not be able to fully apply all of it in practice. This point might be completely off, and I’m genuinely curious to hear your thoughts. Poker is constantly evolving, and in a couple of years there could be much more high-stakes action again.

To conclude, I currently find it quite difficult to identify strong private coaches for my stakes. For example, I haven’t had much success on 2+2. Many high-stakes players seem to focus mainly on running CFPs rather than offering private one-on-one coaching. Am I right in this perception? Is this also your case?

That said, it’s also possible that I simply haven’t done enough research yet.

Again, thank you for the effort and depth you put into every answer.