23/03/2026
Is it even worth playing lower stakes?
I get questions like this all the time. A lot of players ask me things like: should I deposit €50 and start playing now, or should I wait until I save up €500 so I can win “real money”?
In short: yes, it is worth it — and this way of thinking is completely wrong.
If you cannot beat games with a $5 buy-in, and you cannot move up without constantly redepositing again and again, then you will definitely not magically start winning at higher stakes.
In general, the lower the stakes, the weaker the players are. Sure, you can sometimes find an insanely soft table higher up too, but on average, the weakest players are at the lowest limits. Yes, the rake is usually higher at lower stakes, but the player pool often makes up for it. The lower the stakes, the higher winrate you can usually achieve.
If I took the exact same player and made him play a big sample at NL10 first, then NL25, and then NL50, he would almost certainly have the highest winrate at NL10, a bit lower at NL25, and the lowest at NL50. There can always be exceptions — maybe a poker site has some weird rake jump between limits, or some other anomaly — but that is not the main point here.
So what is winrate, and how do we calculate it?
It is measured in bb/100, which means how many big blinds you win per 100 hands. If you win 1 buy-in over 1,000 hands, that means you won 100bb, so your winrate is 10bb/100.
Now let’s look at what that means over 10,000 hands if your winrate is 10bb/100:
It will always be 1,000bb, which is 10 buy-ins.
• NL10 = $100
• NL25 = $250
• NL50 = $500
• NL100 = $1,000
For some people, that might mean it only makes sense to play NL100 or higher if they want to make a living. Of course, you can play much more than 10k hands, so even NL50 can generate a decent income over time. I am only writing this so your expectations are realistic, and you do not expect to win 2–3 buy-ins every one-hour session.
You can estimate your winrate pretty easily. Just check how much you are up or down over, for example, 1,000 hands. Or even better: how long does the €50 you deposited actually last before you lose it and need to redeposit? And of course, count all your losses.
Do not ignore a session just because you played badly, had a few drinks, were tired, tilted, or your wife pi**ed you off.
You may realize very quickly that your real winrate is not +10bb/100, but maybe -100bb/100. And that means that on NL10, over 10k hands, you are not up $100 — you are down $1,000, which is honestly not rare at all.
So what happens if you move up while not beating the lower games? You start losing more.
Mainly because the games are bigger, but also because in my example I used the same winrate for every stake just to keep it simple. In reality, the higher you move, the more you usually lose per 100 hands — or the less you win per 100 hands.
So we come back to the same conclusion:
If you are not beating lower stakes, nothing good will suddenly happen at higher stakes. If anything, it will usually get worse.
And if you are not beating the games and treat poker just as a hobby — which is completely fine, everyone has hobbies that cost money — then it makes sense to risk only money you can comfortably afford to lose.
Of course, to know how you are really doing, you need to play a meaningful sample, because everything I am writing here is long-term theory. But long-term theory is what matters most — everything else is just noise.
In real life, even I cannot be in profit every 100 hands, or even every 1,000 hands, at the lowest stakes. But if losing €50 on NL5 usually takes you about an hour, then higher stakes will not bring you anything positive.
Only more adrenaline — and more staring at the ceiling before sleep.
