What a difference a stake makes

The .02/.05 stakes have seriously changed my game. I hadn't realized how loose calling standards had gotten until I jumped up a notch. The change was most noticeable when I had both penny and nickel tables open side by side. Since I'm playing so tight on the nickel tables it is very obvious how I would leak chips on the penny tables because I can see that I'm playing drastically different depending on the stakes.

I had another reasonably solid session on the nickels with two hands that got away from me. I had nearly a full buy in front of me which is $1.75, the minimum buy for the standard tables and I get AAKJss in the BB. Now I'm playing tight but I'm not going to pass on this hand. There is a pot sized raise from UTG and three other callers which is almost ideal conditions for me to get as much of my stack in as possible. A pot sized bet gets $1.02 in with .66 left behind and thins the field down to two callers. Flop is 623 rainbow which I wish weren't so coordinated but there's no way that I'm not jamming the last of my stack in getting 6:1. A fold, a call, then the button shoves with A237ds (this isn't O/8 buddy) so he hit two pair but I'm still about 1 in 4 to pull out a win. Turn boats him up and I'm down to two theoretical outs which don't come. A monster $5.38 pot goes away after getting most of my chips in good. The other hand I flopped the nut straight and got virtually my whole stack in on the flop but it turns out that I was being freerolled by the same straight with flush redraw which hit. Those were the two biggest losses of the session and considering the circumstances I'm OK with that.

I finish the session down by about a buck and a half but chalk it up to normal variance at the new stakes. Wouldn't do anything differently. I'm still +EV over the last 2000 hands, the new stakes makes the Full Tilt Points pile up much faster, and my game has been re-focused.