Micro Stakes Poker

Micro stakes tournaments are filled with inexperienced and poor players. Recreational players abound, tossing their hat into the ring for some fun and cards. The massive fields and peculiarly wild plays that are the norm in the low buyin tournaments can be frustrating for the aspiring poker student.

Micro stakes poker takes a few different skills and attributes if you want to be successful. First, you will need to have an ample bankroll. While the variance is not going to be nearly as dramatic in these. The micro stakes are where most people begin learning about the beautiful game of poker and let’s face it, it can be a lot of fun to play. However, most new players miss out on the best part of all – WINNING.

Understanding that we will have to deal with navigating these large minefields, have some hands hold up, and be prepared with the mental and emotional fortitude to avoid tilting when bad things happen, how should we go about giving ourselves the best chance to take one of these tournaments down? In this series of articles we’re going to try preparing you for just that, by breaking down what we’re dealing with at various stages of the game and how to adjust your approach and strategy to give you the best chance to succeed. We’re going to start with the early stages of a micro stakes tournament, right from the first hand. Let’s talk about what we should expect, and then how to approach the field in light of those expectations.

The field will be full of weak and poor players. This isn’t news to you. But let’s break down a few types we can expect to see so we’re starting to put some definition to the madness.

Loose-Passive chasers

These types will call. A lot. They take flops with weak hands, but also tend to call with stronger hands. Just bear in mind their limping and calling along is more likely to be a weaker holding than a premium, simply because there are more weak hands that good ones. They love the thrill of hitting a big hand, it’s what motivates and drives them. That’s why they call your raise with 96s, and why they call your flop and turn bets with a gut shot. Once in a while, they spike that big hand, and oh the thrill! Beating up on this type of player is easy. Value bet them frequently. Value bet thinner than you might against other players. When they put in a big raise, dump all but your strongest holdings. This type isn’t much for bluffing. So when you’ve raised preflop then bet all 3 streets with AA on a run out of 57KT8 and suddenly they raise you on the river, just lay it down. They’ve got you.

Maniacs

Or just very loose-aggressive players. They both call and raise a lot. They bet with air, with bottom pair, and with big hands. They are constantly involved in pots, but not always with the goods. Unlike very skilled players who choose a loose-aggressive style, they are just sort of flailing around, often putting themselves in bad spots. We also want to value bet our strong hands relentlessly against this player type, but we can also call them down more with medium strength hands that perform well as bluff catchers, as we’ll catch this type bluffing more frequently than they should be.

Nits

These are tight players. They’re waiting for good starting hands, and not playing much at all as a result. They are loathe to put large chunks of their stack in the middle without a hand they consider to be a winner. And their tournament life? Forget about that being put at risk without a huge hand until they get very short stacked. As an aside, these players also are the type that fancy themselves as good players because they don’t play “bad hands” (but they’re not, they’re just another variety of losing player that loses more slowly than their splashy counterparts). These players are also easy to beat… they can be easily bluffed off of small pots when they don’t have much, and off bigger pots when the board runs out scary to them. When they want to put a lot of chips in the pot, it’s a good idea to get out of the way unless your hand is very strong.

Newbs

Inexperienced or newer players who don’t really know what they’re doing. They make decisions on whims that are hard for the student of the game to grasp because it leads them to doing things that don’t make good poker sense. They will usually make calling mistakes, but unlike the loose-passive stations, they may sometimes make raising mistakes overplaying hands because they don’t understand ranges, or folding mistakes because they get it in their head they’re beat without any form of critical analysis. It makes their play seem almost random at times, but it’s just a product of their lack of experience and skill sets. Simply playing a more straightforward, ABC style in pots against them works wonders.

In the early stages of these fields that are well saturated with all form of bad players, generally playing a more straightforward and conservative style works consistently well. That doesn’t mean become a nit and wait for premiums. But rather, start with reasonable ranges. Speculate cheaply when stacks are deep early on with holdings that can flop strong hands or draws. Raise your strong starting hands for value, and increase the sizing. I recently watched a training video where the coach raised 2.2x on 200bb effective stacks so he can “play a lot of hands and outplay his opponents post flop”. It turned my stomach. This is fine for world class players, or experts with a wealth of skill sets and experience to leverage their post flop advantages.

Micro Stakes Online Poker

It’s ludicrous to teach to inexperienced micro stakes students trying to learn the fundamentals. Might you look silly raising to 10x over a couple limpers on level 3 with a premium pair? I’d say, who cares? You’re trying to extract value, if they will give it why not take it? Just last night a player in a $100 tournament I played online limped in from UTG and called my 5x raise with 96s. In micros, they’re doing worse. Take advantage of it. Post flop, continue building pots with big hands. This means if you flop that set or that nut flush, don’t slow play, simply bet your hand.

Players in these weak fields most common mistake is calling too much. Start building the pot. Go for 3 streets. The weak garbage that will call you down will astound you. When you miss flops, be much less inclined to bluff at these early stages. It’s okay to just give up and let it go. You still have a zillion blinds to work with. In short, try to put chips in when you have the best of it, and stop putting them in when you have the worst of it, and you’ll not only survive these early stages more often but also start to build stacks more often as well, setting you up nicely for more middle stage action. We’ll touch on that in Part 2.

Small Stakes Poker Strategy

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Grinding out a profit in the micro stakes is not nearly as easy as it might seem. While beating the smallest online poker games used to be a cake walk, today it will take a lot of time and practice. Many micro stakes players are among the most consistent and biggest winners in the online poker world today. It is very hard to compete with players who have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of hands worth of experience.

Think about how many hands you get in per hour when playing one table, online or live. If you are lucky, you might get 90-100 hands in per hour when playing online, depending on whether you are playing full ring or 6-max tables. In live games, 30 hands per hour is the most you could ever hope for. Now, compare those numbers to a 12 tabling player who plays for 8 hours per day. At that rate, this player would have roughly 9,000 hands played every single day. Of course, few people have this exact work ethic, but it is not out of the realm of possibilities when it comes to the micro stakes.

What It Takes

-Bankroll

Micro stakes poker takes a few different skills and attributes if you want to be successful. First, you will need to have an ample bankroll. While the variance is not going to be nearly as dramatic in these games as it is in small stakes or higher games, you will run into the occasional 10+ buy-in swing. For this reason, you should always be playing with roughly 30 or so buy-ins. If you are playing 25NL, the number of ideal buy-ins is not as high as it would be if you were playing 100NL. The higher limit the game, the more variance you should be prepared for.

-Emotional Control

Bankrolls are hardly the only thing needed for success in micro stakes poker. You will also need an awful lot of emotional control at the tables. Most poker strategy books and guides neglect to teach perhaps the most important skill that any player could have, a tilt-free approach to the game. No one is perfect, and everyone tilts a little bit from time to time, but it is vital that your emotions are kept in check. If you are playing six tables at a time, blowing off three buy-ins due to tilt can be a lot easier than it might seem. Players who are on tilt tend to forget everything they learned, like this very article, though, so this is something that is best accomplished through practice and implementation.

-Multi-Tabling Skills

The ability to multi-table and multi-task should never be understated for micro stakes players. There just isn’t any good money to be made playing one or two tables at a time in the micro stakes games. Even the biggest winners at 100NL (the highest micro stakes limit) would be lucky to win $15/hour playing two tables of 6-max at a time. It can be a difficult transition, especially for new online players, to learn how to play four, six, or ten tables at a time. The fact of the matter is, however, that all serious micro stakes players have a solid skill set when it comes to multi-tabling. This isn’t to say that you need to play 20 tables at a time, but being able to 8 or 10 table would certainly be beneficial.

-Poker Tracking Software

HUDs and other poker tracking software are an absolute must for multi-tabling, serious micro stakes players. A HUD (heads up display) will be a tremendous benefit when you are trying to concentrate on a number of different decisions at once. Instead of forming your own reads on opponents, a HUD will allow you to have a quick summary available for anyone you face. It will be much easier to shove all in pre-flop with pocket queens if you know that the original raiser plays 90% of their hands. Now, imagine if you had no information on that same player; you would have to decide whether queens are ever ahead. Some old school players feel that software and HUDs are nothing more than cheating, but that makes no sense since most poker rooms are perfectly OK with it.

Aside from allowing you to make more precise reads at the table, poker software like PokerTracker also provides in-depth statistics on your own play. You can easily analyze all of the hands that you played in your last session, no matter how big or small. Beyond this, poker software can tell you how often you raise, what hands you win with, if you fold to re-raises too frequently, and much more. Plus, who doesn’t like to see a graph of their winnings? For an investment of $100 or less, any micro stakes player would be making a big mistake if they played without some sort of software.

-Work Ethic

Last but not least is the need for a sound work ethic. If you want to beat the micro stakes for any significant amount of money, you will need to put in a whole lot of work. People who don’t know poker tend to scoff at the idea of poker being a lot of work, but it certainly is. Today there are infinite resources available for players who want to improve their game. From books to training sites, there is something out there for players of all skill levels and all limits.

Books are the most outdated method of learning how to play winning online poker. The flaw with most books is that they are old and generally teach concepts that are quite basic. Books would have been a great way to aptly learn the game back in 2002, but the competition is way beyond that at this point in time. There are a select number of books that concentrate on winning online play and teach more modern concepts, but they are far and few between. Be sure to read a number of up to date reviews before you lean on any written book as your poker bible (especially if Hellmuth wrote it!).

Online resources are the best way to improve your skill set for tough micro stakes games. There are innumerable online sites with strategy guides of varying quality, but the video training sites have taken over in popularity. There are a handful of different poker training sites that offer video tutorials for aspiring players. These videos consist of a winning player recording their play and relaying it to the viewers. The players record themselves during play, explain their thought processes, and viewers soak in the information. As was the case with books, you should carefully analyze who is making the video and whether they are a reliable source of information.

Going hand in hand with poker training videos are poker coaches. Coaches are people who will watch you play over the internet (known as sweating) and offer their input and advice as you play. These coaches vary in quality and rates, but some can be had for very affordable rates. Shop around at the video training sites for your choice of coach if this seems like an attractive way to learn the game for you. It is not for everyone, and it could be costly, but many people have transitioned from losing or break even players into big winners with the help of a solid coach.