Stake Segregation

The other night I had a poker-related realization that came to me in the same way that most such insights have come to me lately: while lying in bed at 2am. Fortunately, this timing essentially forced me to write down my thoughts in the form of a message to Lorin, lest I forget by morning. The gist of my message was that I've been treating the $25 games that I've been playing too much like the $5 and $10 games, which has created two problems. First, because I've been integrating the bigger games into my lower-stakes grind sessions, I've brought the lower-stakes mindset, which is more or less ABC poker, to the bigger table where it isn't always enough to win. Second, the disparity between the $25 games and, say, the $5 games has a negative effect on my ability to focus on the latter; if I've lost a bigger game, knowing that it will take 5 wins at the $5 level to recoup that single $25 loss makes for impatient and distracted play, and completely disrupts the rhythm of a good session.

The solution that I put forward for myself was to segregate the $25 games into an entirely different session, separate from the lower stakes grinding that I do on my own time and my own dime. The text of my message to Lorin, as well as his reply, can be read here at his blog, The Short Stack Hero.