The other day I was playing poker with a group of experienced players and the subject quickly became about choosing games and table limits.
One player offered this comment: "Playing above your limit is the surest way to lose."
That really makes a lot of sense.
While the game of poker doesn't change if you are playing at a $40 buy-in game or at $5,000 buy-in game, YOU the player, can change with the denomination of the game. Let me explain more.
It's only natural for players to preserve the money they have. But in poker, a desire to protect your money from loss can keep you from winning money. It's happened like that to me several times, for example:
My original buy-in of $100 has now grown to a bit more than $500 and I decide that at this point I want to "go home" with at least $500. So I decide only to play the best starting hands such as AA or KK. As a result, I fold and don't even consider playing pocket tens or pocket threes, but as fate would have it, I would have won those hands with a set or a full house. Once I even laid down a pair that had I played would have made quads.
What kept me from playing was the idea of conserving my win.
So when you reach a chip stack that you want to conserve, don't sit around waiting for AA and KK and let your blinds get lost. If you have reached your win goal leave, and take the extra blind money with you.
But let's look at the reverse situation, which is the original premise of this. Say you bought in to a game that is above your comfort zone and now you become overly defensive and you fold cards that would have won but were afraid to bet because they weren't the best starting hands.
Well, you might never get AA or KK or AK in a poker game, and you can't let your stack get blinded away waiting for those starting monsters. To put it bluntly, playing above your limit forced you to become guarded to the point that you let yourself be blinded out.
But when you play in a "comfort zone" and at table denomination that is right for you, you will not be as protective or as defensive, and you will be able to take the chances that can make you a winner.