[jhasper]

I'm curious as to wether or not anyone else has experienced this problem.

I usually play the cryptologic site Interpoker. With their bonus and good play I regularly turn a small deposit around $30 or $50 into $300 in two weeks or less, and am usually around 6 bb/100 when i cash out, which i think is doing a little better than okay. I play .50/$1 limit by the way, don't laugh please. I've tried, after building a proper 300BB bakroll to then switch to other sites that tend to be significantly looser than interpoker. I.E. Party poker and pokerroom. When I do this I almost dump my bankroll before I finally start to make any profit. By dump i mean almost down to nothing, $30 maybe. It then seems that I struggle back up to $50 or $75 dollars and then pull it out and go put it back on Interpoker.

I've done this twice, and now realize that if I'm making money on cryptologic sites it makes sense to just stay on cryptologic site. Duh. But the $2/$4 games and higher at Cryptologic sites I've been told and read, are relatively tight, not quite poker stars/absolute, but tighter than most others though. When I move up in blinds I assume I will need to move to a looser site to make money.

So, with all of that said. I am wondering, has any one else has encountered this problem? What do you think the problem might be? Does anyone have any solutions or suggestions? I've considered that it might be because party/pokerroom are looser than interpoker, but don't think it would make that much of a difference. Is it possible that I'm not staying on these sites long enough to show profit?

[friscosardines]

think it's just the lack of sample size. I always laugh when friends of mine tell me "I played well today, made $50." (As if it had more to do with extraordinary play than the cards and opponents they had on that given session.) Online limit holdem is a long-term thing, I'm pretty sure it's just random fluctuation that's made you do well on Inter and bad on Party thus far. Generally speaking, the looser a game, the more mistakes your opponents are making, and if long-term results show you to do worse in looser games then you are doing something wrong.

Sklansky's "Small Stakes Holdem" would be a great tool to make sure you're playing correctly in these loose games. Good luck.

[teddyfist]

"When I move up in blinds I assume I will need to move to a looser site to make money."

As you go up in stakes, you will find loose players and tight players, you will run into good loose players and bad loose players, you will run into good tight players and bad tight players, you will run into super agressive maniacs who are very good at it and super agressive maniacs who are very bad at it. You will see weak tights who are easy to move off of pots and loose tricky players who will be very hard to read and play against. It is a sea of different styles and tendancies. To get better, you need to sample the various styles and get used to them, you need to see what works against different players, and you need to play lots of hands.

Equating loose with bad and tight with good is too simple of logic. You will see this as you move up and around.

But planning to find a site that has the same mix of bad players at higher limits as you currently have at your smaller limits is not a good strategy in my opinion. You want to learn the game. Play better players with all kinds of different styles to learn and get better instead of just hoping that you can find similar chumps at more than the smallest games.

[rhandy]

teddy,your advice sounds more geared for NL games. Unless I'm misunderstanding, Jhasper is playing limit. Did you intend this advice for limit games? If so I have to disagree with you to some extent. Online limit is pretty strictly a science, where it's almost impossible to be an effective player by adopting a loose style. For the most part, loose is bad. Some players make better decisions after the flop, and obviously changing gears always has some upside to it, but no one is beating low stakes limit HE by playing anything but tight poker.

Like I said, I think you were talking about NL games.... I just don't want Jhasper to be confused.