I thought I’d try 4NL for a bit. I’m still not sure whether I want to risk $10 buy-ins for 10NL as I haven’t played enough to know if I’ve really developed some kind of competence at poker or not.
Unfortunately it didn’t go too well. I think I was my own worst enemy though – the first few tables I met a huge amount of aggression with preflop 3betting going on all over the place. I then stupidly adjusted my play and started calling down what I thought were light bets, and also 3betting light a bit myself. Of course, while they were 3betting light, it still didn’t go to well for me;
6 players
Stacks:
UTG ($4.44)
UTG+1 ($5.90)
CO ($5.17)
Hero (BTN) ($4.94)
SB ($4.82)
BB ($5.58)
Pre-flop: ($0.06, 6 players) Hero is BTN 6
T
3 folds, Hero raises to $0.14, 1 fold, BB raises to $0.28, Hero calls $0.14
Flop: T
4 5
($0.62, 2 players)
BB bets $0.58, Hero calls $0.58
Turn: A ($1.78, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $1.04, BB calls $1.04
River: 7 ($3.86, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks
Final Pot: $3.63
Hero shows: 6 T
BB shows: 9 A
BB wins $3.63 ( won +$1.73 )
Hero lost -$1.90
I then ran into some tables which had calling stations, which was pretty bad after getting all aggro on the previous tables. In one hand I ran into my old enemy of not recognising straight draws being hit;
4 players
Stacks:
CO ($5.00)
BTN ($4.12)
SB ($4.25)
Hero (BB) ($6.31)
[CO posted $0.04]
Pre-flop: ($0.10, 4 players) Hero is BB 5 Q
CO checks, 2 folds, Hero checks
Flop: Q 4 3 ($0.10, 2 players)
Hero bets $0.10, CO calls $0.10
Turn: 9 ($0.30, 2 players)
Hero bets $0.30, CO calls $0.30
River: A ($0.90, 2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $0.45, Hero raises to $2.25, CO goes all-in $4.56, Hero calls $2.31
Final Pot: $9.52
Hero shows: 5 Q
CO shows: 5 2
CO wins $9.52 ( won +$4.52 )
Hero lost -$5.00
The hand was going well until the river, and then I aggro’d myself into a big loss 
I gradually settled down, and began to see that 4NL wasn’t much different from 2NL. That’s not to say it wasn’t different, it definitely was. 3Betting doesn’t really exist at 2NL, and it clearly does at 4NL. Plus most players have a VP$IP of less than 30, so people have clearly sorted out their starting ranges.
So I decided that I should push on and try and recoup my losses for the session. At that point I was down 2 buy-ins ($10), and it looked do-able to get it all back.
It turned into a 1000 hand marathon, taking me about 4 hours and I still didn’t get it all back. Towards the end I was just thinking ok, down 1 buy-in is acceptable, let’s just get to that point. Every time I stacked someone, I crashed out on another table. I just couldn’t get my won$ amount to shift up, although at least it wasn’t going down either;
is rake there 10%? that’s way too much. either move back to 2nl or find another site, imo
rake is much lower at Titan than PokerStars
Titan $0.01 per $0.20 max $1
PS $0.05 per $0.20 max $3 (for 6 players)
ok my mistake – it’s 5%, not 10%. on stars it’s the same:
$0.05 for each $1.00 in Pot (max $3) but pots <$1(majority of pots@2nl) aren’t raked so in fact it’s a bit softer: http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/rake/
ah, yes it is per $1 in pot – that makes quite a difference I would have thought – if titan is per $0.20 then that’s 5 times as much as stars (although as you say, not many pots get to $1 in 2NL)