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25nl Poker Meaning

Posted on 4/6/2022 by admin

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Every cash game poker player strives to move up from micro-stakes to small stakes beyond. I have been playing for over 12 years and can shed some on the various stake levels as well as what it takes to beat them.

What is considered small, mid, and high stakes poker?

How often should you take a shot in poker? For me the answer is nearly every time that I sit down to play. My default stakes are 5NL and 10NL. My shot-taking stakes are 25NL and 100NL You may notice that do not mention 50NL. I tried 50NL more than a few times when 25NL shot-taking started making money. I got my brains beat in. The first thing I would say it depends a bit what stakes level you are playing. I will assume 25nl for the moment. I will also assume 14% pfr is position specific meaning villain 1 pfr utg is 14% (if V1 is 14% overall I would assume his pfr is much tighter and this would typically force me to fold since alot of the JX hands i have dominated would be gone from his range- this is why pfr.

There are actually five different stake levels in online cash game poker:

Micro-stakes – 2NL, 5NL, 10NL, 25NL
Small-Stakes – 50NL, 100NL
Mid-Stakes – 200NL, 400NL, 600NL
High-Stakes – 1000NL, 2000NL, 5000NL, 10000NL
Nosebleeds – 20000NL and up

Now that you know what the stakes are, let’s discuss each level in turn and find out what it takes to move up.

The Key Differences Between Cash Game Poker Stakes

The nature of each cash game stake will vary from poker room to poker room. However, in my experience, there are some fundamental commonalities of what can be expected at each level as you move up through the stakes.

1. Micro-Stakes Cash Game Poker

Micro-stakes poker ranges from lowly $0.01/$0.02 up to $0.10/$.25. This is usually either a place for recreational players to splash around or a proving ground for ambitious players who want to move up as soon as possible.

The games are typically characterized by looseness pre-flop with lots of limping and passive post-flop play. It is not unusual for there to be multiple players still in the pot when the river is reached.

Tips on Beating the Micros

It does not take a ton of skill to win at the micro-stakes. In fact, the winners are usually just the ones who are making the least mistakes. Here are a few tips:

Play a lot of hands in position and very few out of position in order to capitalize on the fit-or-fold nature of many micro-stakes players. Acting last also gives you the ability to realize equity with a lot of your marginal hands
Include holdings that can make the nuts or dominate your opponent when you build your pre-flop hand ranges. Making flush over flush or out-kicking your opponents is where a lot of the big pots are won at the micros.
Throw out the call button and instead focus more on value betting and bet-folding your medium strength hands. Continuing with marginal top pairs by check-calling is a recipe for disaster against loose-passive opponents.

How much can a good micro-stakes player expect to win per month?

How much can be made at the micros is really irrelevant. You should not be looking to play at penny stakes more than just a few weeks or months while you learn the game.

Even so, there are quite a lot of players who are full-time regs at either 10NL or 25NL. Even with mass-tabling and uber rewards, it’s hard to make more than $8 an hour doing this.

My advice is that if you don’t have aspirations to be a poker “star” and are okay just making a few hundred every month playing poker, then work hard on your game and learn to beat at least 50NL.

50NL players are not that much tougher to beat than 25NL regs, so you owe it to yourself to study hard enough to at least break into the lowest level of small stakes.

2. Small-Stakes Cash Game Poker

Small stakes games include just two stakes, $0.25/$0.50 and $0.50/$1.00. This is where you first start seeing a large number of full-time or part-time pros eeking out a marginal living in poker. It’s not uncommon to find players who have been 50NL or 100NL players for several years.

The quality of small-stakes games can vary widely from poker site to poker site. For example, on America’s Cardroom small stakes are very difficult to beat except for even the most dedicated players. The level of play that was once only common at 200NL or 400NL is now seen on numerous tables daily on ACR.

On the other hand, softer sites like Ignition poker have soft enough small stakes games that even newer players have a chance of winning. I would say that 100NL on Ignition is comparable to 25NL on ACR. There are more rewards on the latter, which does narrow the gap a bit. Even so, it’s always much better to play the higher stake then rely on being a “rakeback pro.”

Tips on Beating Small Stakes

To beat small stakes, you need to have more than just a basic “tight is right” strategy. You have to also have at least a rudimentary understanding of some advanced topics that include:

Equity and SPR and how those concepts are implemented in order to maximize profit versus a wide variety of opponents.
Game selection and profiling opponents.
The ability to use a HUD effectively, if applicable, in order to glean the information necessary to interpret the tendencies of opponents.

Beyond these factors, you will need to be able to think on level two and have an elementary understanding of gameflow and table dynamics. Small stakes is all about playing exploitative poker.

How much can a good small-stakes player expect to win per month?

High volume small-stakes player with a reasonably high win-rate of 4bb/100 or high can expect to make anywhere from $15 to $25 an hour. It would not be unheard of to make between $2,500 and $5,000 a month, once rewards are figured in. Even part-time winners at 50NL can expect to make around $1,000 per month.

There actually are well-documented cases of 100NL professionals making over $10,000 a month after rakeback and rewards. This is mainly associated with Pokerstars in the “old” days and on the Winning Poker Network now, with the Beast promotion. This is more the exception than the rule though.

3. Mid-Stakes Cash Game Poker

Mid-Stakes includes $1/$2, $2/$4, and $3/$6 blinds. Online, these are the stakes where most of the best players on the site congregate. In fact, the only time most really good player will play higher than mid-stakes, is when there is a known bad player on the table.

For laymen, it’s impossible to tell the difference when watching a small-stake or mid-stake game side-by-side. For long-time poker professionals, the difference is usually profound.

The most striking difference that you start seeing at mid-stakes lies in the more nuanced bet sizings. People are a lot more of aware of potentially getting exploited, so they try to optimize their bet size accordingly.

For example, it’s not uncommon to still see 3x raises with a steal on the button at 100NL and below. You will almost never see this from a reg at 200NL or higher. They know they can accomplish the same thing by raising to 2.5x or even a min-raise, so why waste the extra money when they fold to a 3-bet?

Tips on Beating the Mid-Stakes

If you want to join the top 2% of poker players and learn to win at mid-stakes be ready to dedicate your life to poker, at least partially, for some time.

The amount of study hours it takes to go from beginner to being able to beat 200NL in the modern game is akin to going from a white belt to black belt in martial arts.

In fact, it actually seems like a pointless exercise for me to give a list of tips in beating this level. This is because it’s like trying to explain the universe in one sentence and with 4 examples.

Nevertheless, here are just a few things you must master before even attempting to beat 200NL or higher (on most poker sites):

Level 3 thinking is the minimum thinking level necessary to compete,
How to build hand ranges in your head during play and evolve them to fit the changing dynamic as the session progresses.
Being aware of how opponents might be adjusting their strategy based on you.
A moderate understanding of balancing and how to avoid being exploited over time if you have out of line frequencies

The point of this article isn’t try and give you a guidebook to winning at poker. I understand that many people reading this won’t have a clue what I am talking about. That’s okay, but you need to be aware of just how big of a chasm there is between the poker mind maturity of a winner at micro-stakes and mid-stakes. A good analogy is for an average chess player to try playing a grandmaster.

How much can a good mid-stakes player expect to win per month?

For most online poker sites, mid-stakes is where you start to see highly skilled players emerging who can make a decent living playing professionally. For example, my win-rate at 200NL was around 8bbs/100 which gave me an approximate hourly rate just under 40/hr while 4-tabling.

4. High Stakes Cash Game Poker

Save for a few wealthy “whales”, most players will never experience what it’s like to play for average pots that exceed in excess $1,000 on a regular basis. Enter the high-stakes cash game poker professional.

High stakes poker games online include $5/$10, $10/$20, $25/$50, and $50/$100. While there are quite a few regs that play these stakes, a good number of them also still play mid-stakes as well. It’s not uncommon to see a skilled reg playing 400NL, 600NL, 1000NL, and 2000NL in the same session.

Basically, what typical high stakes players do is game select heavily and work hard to ensure that they have an edge in every game they play. In fact, often the skill difference between mid-stakes and high-stakes players mainly lies in their ability to manage their bankrolls and careers a bit better.

Tips on Beating High Stakes

To win long term at high stakes takes a dedication to the game and an ongoing commitment to keeping up to date with the latest strategy. Career management must be strong.

I am not going to give you a list of tips on beating high stakes. It’s actually pretty ridiculous to do so since only 1 in 100,000 players will likely even ever play a session of 1000NL or higher. Personally, I have never played a hand higher than 600NL and am not even qualified anyway.

What I will say, is that once you are beating mid-stakes you will already understand what it takes to at least some degree. Whether you decide to take a shot at high stakes will depend mostly on financial security in taking a shot.

How much can a good high stakes player expect to win per month?

For the few that do make it as a successful high stakes poker player, the amount of money you can win is pretty limitless. Even for part time guys that beat high stakes, 100,000 a year likely feels like the floor for them. Think about it, 100,000 is only 100 buy-ins of $5/$10.

5. The “Nosebleeds”

Stakes with a buy-in of $20,000 or higher are known as the nosebleeds. One of the most popular stakes for nosebleed players is $200/$400.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Variance is insane at these stakes. Almost no one is actually correctly bankrolled to play the nosebleeds. Conservatively, you really need at least 50 buy-ins to be a regular at any stake. Even for the “smallest” nosebleed stakes, this is $1,000,000.

If you start talking about $500/$1000 stakes, $5,000,000 feels like a small bankroll when you consider $1,000,000 swings seem to happen almost daily for these players.

Beating the Nosebleeds

The nosebleeds are an interesting phenomenon that reached their height right before the fall of Full Tilt Poker. The volume of hands played at those ridiculously high stakes has never been matched since.

The truth is, it takes a special type of person to play at this level. You have to be a billionaire, a big risk taker, or have a huge ego to even think about taking on the nosebleeds.

Even so, the level of play at the highest levels is actually probably not as good as it is at even mid-stakes. The reason is that most strong poker players will not risk their hard-earned money without having a gigantic edge in the game. That’s why you’ll often seen players enjoying a higher win-rate at 2000NL or above than they have at 1000NL.

How much can a good nosebleeds player expect to win per month?

Since very very few many people solely play the nosebleeds, it’s more of an opportunistic or ego exercise for the majority of the player pool at any given time. Therefore, it’s not even worth commenting beyond just saying that fortunes are won and lost weekly and even daily in these games.

Besides, it’s really hard to be a regular in those nosebleeds and get enough volume in. Like high stakes, the nosebleeds are more about taking shots for the vast majority of the players.

What Minimum Bankroll Is Needed to Play Each Stake Based on a 100 Big Blind Buy-In?

Assuming that each stake is your regular game and you are not taking shots, you typically want at least 50 buy-ins at a stake. Based on that, here are the bankroll requirements of each stake:

The Stake Levels in Live Poker

This article has mostly been about online poker. So, let’s briefly discuss the stakes in live games. Below is a list of the live equivalents in skill level.

Here are the live equivalents to online stakes:

Micro-Stakes – No such thing since the lowest stake you typically find is 200NL.
Small Stakes – 200NL, 500NL
Mid-Stakes – 1000NL, 2000NL, 5000NL
High Stakes – 10000NL and up
Nosebleeds – This is more of an online term. A 10k buy-in or higher is called high stakes. 100,000 buy-in is generally the biggest “regular” game you see. This is the common buy-in we saw in the show “High Stakes Poker”, with $200/$400 blinds.

Keep in mind that you can only 1-table in live poker. This means everyone is presumably able to play their A Game. Also, live recreational players tend to be much worse live. This means 200NL live is like 5NL online. 1000NL or 2000NL live is often like 200NL online. You get the idea.

Final Thoughts

Now you know the differences between all of the stakes, both live and online. You also have some idea of what it takes to become a winner at every level.

25nl Poker Meaning Urban Dictionary

If you are interested in taking a step toward building a poker game with a strong foundation, you might be interested in my full poker tutorial.

Thanks for reading!

What is standard deviation in poker?

Your standard deviation stat gives you an indication of how “swingy” your game is.

The higher your standard deviation, the higher your variance.
The lower your standard deviation, the lower your variance.

Standard deviation can also give you an indication of how far you can expect to veer from your current winrate over 100 hands (hence why Std Dev stats are shown in BB/100 ['Big Bets' or 'Big Blinds' per 100 hands]).

That's simple enough, but it doesn't give us much to work with. For a better understanding of the poker std dev stat, we'll need to find out what this standard deviation stuff is all about.

An introduction to standard deviation.

Standard deviation is a measure of how spread out numbers are from the average.

To give an example, lets say you go to your local supermarket and measure the width of 5 loose oranges. The widths of these 5 loose oranges are:

Widths of 5 loose oranges.
6cm
7cm
13cm
5cm
10cm
Average width of these 5 oranges = 8.2cm

Now, instead of measuring 5 loose oranges, you decide to measure another 5 oranges from a pack of “medium oranges”. The widths of the 5 oranges from the pack are:

Widths of 5 'medium' oranges from a packet.
7cm
8cm
9cm
8cm
9cm
Average width of these 5 oranges = 8.2cm

You'll notice that the average widths of these two sets of 5 oranges are the same, despite the width of each individual orange in each set being quite different.

In the first set of loose oranges, the results are varied and spread out.
In the second set of 'medium' oranges, the results are very close together.

Now, because standard deviation is a measure of the spread of results from the average, we can say that:

The standard deviation of the loose oranges is higher than the standard deviation of the 'medium' oranges.

I could run through an equation and give you an exact number for the 'standard deviation' of each of these two sets of oranges, but I don't want to get too mathsy (and you don't necessarily need to know how to work it out). If you are interested in the equation though, check out this very straightforward article: basic standard deviation example and equation.

This standard deviation video on youtube is also very helpful.

Note: Okay, I can't leave any stone unturned. The SD of the loose oranges is 3.3, and the SD of the 'medium' oranges is 0.8. These numbers tell us the average spread.

Standard deviation and poker winrates.

Okay, that's enough about oranges. How does standard deviation in poker work and what does it tell you about your winrate?

Well, instead of measuring oranges, what if you split up your poker career in to 100-hand mini-sessions (or 'chunks'), and measured your winrate for each of these sessions?

From a set of results like this, you could work out your mean average winrate (this will give you the average winrate stat that you're used to seeing) and also your standard deviation. The more your winrate varies in each chunk of 100 hands you play, the bigger your standard deviation will be.

Additionally, if you plotted the frequency of the winrates (how often each winrate occurs) over each of these 100 hand chunks in a graph, it would look something like this:

This is called a “bell curve” or a “normal distribution”. There are 2 important things to note about this graph of your winrates:

Your average winrate is in the very centre of the curve (the peak).
The further you move from the centre of the curve, the lower the chances of these sort of winrates occurring over 100 hands.

This makes sense, because more often than not your winrate will remain close to your average, but there will be rare occasions where it ends up being quite far from average.

So for example, if you have an average winrate of 4BB/100, achieving a winrate of 4.5BB/100 over 10,000 hands is very likely. However, achieving a winrate of 18BB/100 over 10,000 hands is highly unlikely.

25nl Poker Meaning Dictionary

High and low standard deviation graphs.

So, we know that if we plotted a graph of our individual winrates from many small 100-hand sessions it would form a bell curve, with our most frequent winrates collecting around the centre.

But what do high and low standard deviation graphs look like?

I'm hoping that you can make sense of these graphs by just looking at them. If not though:

If you have a low standard deviation, your winrates are generally going to remain close to your average winrate over each 100 hand chunk.
If you have a high standard deviation, you winrates are going to wildly vary over each 100 hand chunk.

The lower your std dev, the thinner the bell curve. The higher your std dev, the fatter it will be to account for the wide variety of winrates.

What does standard deviation tell us about our winrate?

Three useful things:

There is a 68% chance that you will be within 1 SD of your winrate over 100 hands.
There is a 95% chance that you will be within 2 SDs of your winrate over 100 hands.
There is a 99% chance that you will be within 3 SDs of your winrate over 100 hands.

Why these percentages? Because this is just how bell curves work. Here's another bell curve graph with some notes to help you understand what's going on.

For more information, here's a short wikipedia article that actually isn't overly complicated: 68-95-99.7 rule wiki.

Using standard deviation example.

Lets say that you're a $50NL player with a winrate of 5BB/100. You also have a std dev of 30BB/100.

Note: In this example we're using poker tracker BBs (Big Bets), which are equal to 2x the size of the big blind (i.e. 1BB at $50NL is equal to $1 instead of $0.50).

68% of the time.

There is a 68% chance that your winrate will fall between 1 standard deviation of your current winrate.

1SD = 5BB +/- 30BB
1SD = -25BB <=> 35BB
1SD = -$25 <=> $35

So there is a 68% chance that you will win (or lose) between -$25 and $35 over the next 100 hands given your current winrate and standard deviation.

95% of the time.

There is a 95% chance that your winrate will fall between 2 standard deviations of your current winrate (2 x 30BB = 60BB).

2SD = 5BB +/- 60BB
2SD = -55BB <=> 65BB
2SD = -$55 <=> $65

99% of the time.

There is a 99% chance that your winrate will fall between 3 standard deviations of your current winrate (3 x 30BB = 90BB).

3SD = 5BB +/- 90BB
3SD = -85BB <=> 95BB
3SD = -$85 <=> $95

What affects your standard deviation stat?

Your playing style.

25nl Poker Meaning Slang

If you have a LAG (loose-aggressive) playing style you will have a high standard deviation. This makes sense, as you should already know that maniacs and LAGs experience a lot of variance.

On the other hand, if you are a nit that only ever plays premium hands, your standard deviation will be low.

If you're a TAG, you'll be somewhere in the middle.

What's are low and high standard deviations in poker?

The majority of poker players' standard deviations lie between 35BB/100 and 50BB/100 (70bb/100 and 100bb/100).

If your SD is far outside of this bracket, you're probably playing too tight or too loose to achieve an optimum winrate.

Which is better, a high or low SD?

It doesn't matter. Your winrate is the most important thing.

25nl Poker Meaning Synonym

It's like traveling to the next town in a car compared to traveling to the next town on horseback. You get the same destination in the same amount of time, you just take different routes (with one being bumpier than the other).

Most people would prefer the less 'swingy' route with a low SD, but don't change your game just because you don't like the look of your SD. Unless your std dev stat is huge and you're due for a myocardial infarction, I wouldn't worry about it.

See how standard deviation affects your results for yourself.

Play with this awesome poker variance simulator.

Keep your winrate the same and enter varying standard deviations and see how the affect your results over different sample sizes.

it just goes to show how you shouldn't worry (or get too cocky) about your winrate over small sample sizes. The differences in the results is surprising.

Poker standard deviation conclusion.

Standard deviation is a measure of how much you are likely to swing up and down during the course of small sample sizes of hands. The higher your SD is, the larger the swings you will face and the longer it will take for your results to converge to your actual win rate.

The higher your Std Dev stat is, the more (and the bigger the) swings you will experience throughout your poker career.

I'm hoping that this big article with all the graphs has helped you to understand standard deviation in poker a little better. It can be a little tricky at first (especially with some of those equations), but it's not so bad when you start to get your head around it.

Here are some more links that I found really helpful:

Go back to the interesting Texas Hold'em Articles.

Can You Afford Not To Use
Poker Tracker 4?

“I wouldn’t play another session of online poker without it”

“I play $25NL, and in under 1 week PT4 had paid for itself”

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