Online Poker Micro Stakes Tips

Taking control, playing a consistent micro strategy, and playing the long-term game are essential winning concepts. Dominating the micros is closer than you think. Creating real and lasting consistent profits at the micro stakes poker tables is something that ends up alluding most people. But it really doesn’t have to.

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.

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.

1. 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.
2. Home Online Poker Online Poker Strategy How to Beat the Micro Stakes SNGs From personal experience I can tell you that the micro stakes sngs can be tough to beat. They’re different than the.
3. Wisdom Begins with Wonder - Socrates. Alton is an educator, poker coach, self-published & best-selling author, and full-time IT and Business professional. He is also the founder of MicroGrinder Poker School, an online poker school dedicated to micro stakes poker players, where he provides a wide array of free and low-cost poker resources and poker training, included poker strategy articles.

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.

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.

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When we talk about micro-stake poker, we can compare it to a great ocean. Some people, sometimes with a stroke of good variance, are able to swim effectively and move on to deeper waters. Others, simply can’t do it and either drift aimlessly or indeed even sink.

In this article we want to give you a little guide to be a winner in this immense pool called micro-stakes. If you follow these simple yet effective steps, your possibilities to win, and eventually move forward, will increase considerably.

Step 1: Bankroll Management

If you ever read a poker forum or asked advice from an expert player, surely you’ve seen or heard something about Bankroll Management. Bankroll Management means to manage your money in poker. And when we talk about “money in poker”, we mean the money you can dedicate exclusively to poker (that money is called your poker “Bankroll”). Bankroll Management should generally mean having at least 100 buy-ins for your chosen game however it can be different from player to player. For example, some people can use an aggressive Bankroll Management strategy, because they are less inclined to tilt, and so losing part of that Bankroll won’t cause them too much pain, and they can play easily with 30 buy-ins. Other people have much more difficulties in handling losses, so a “tight” Bankroll Management strategy is recommended for them (50 to 100 buy-ins is a good starting point at micro-stakes).

Online Poker Micro Stakes Tips Free

If you are unsure what type of game, and more importantly what limits (the buy-in cost of your chosen game) you should be playing, then you should seek some advice from more experienced players. A good way to do this is to post a question in a poker forum asking for advice. A solid Bankroll Management is the best way to avoid going broke, and it’s one of the most important concepts if you want to play poker seriously.

Step 2: Use Your Position

As you probably already know, your position in any given poker hand is one of the biggest advantages you can have, as well as having a great starting hand of course! Taking advantage of your knowledge of position means you can play a wider range of starting hands when you play from later position. As a contrast it’s usually best to play a tighter range from when you are in early position. Here are some reasons why playing in position can benefit your win rate:

• There are less opponents left to act. That is, you already know what (at least) half table did, and can act consequently.
• You will probably be the last one to act during the post-flop. Thus, you have the advantage to know what your opponents did before you take action.
• You can steal a lot of blind. Of course, this will be opponent-dependent. If you have at least one tight player, you can open almost any two cards and expect profit from your stealing.

Let’s answer this question as an example:

“Why is K6o going to be profitable in position against a loose passive opponent, but will not be when out of position?”

If you have position against a loose but passive opponent then you have the advantage of seeing his actions first. If he checks the flop this will most likely mean that he has not a strong made hand. You could bet here and take the pot down there and then or you have the extra choice of just checking back to see the Turn without having to invest any more money in the pot. This way it is more likely that you will get to the showdown cheaply and against your opponents’ loose range and it’s possible your K6o might be good enough to win.

Step 3: Value Bet

A value-bet is a bet where you expect to be called mostly by worse hands. The value bet is probably the strongest weapon in your arsenal. Micro-stakes are populated by lots of loose-passive players who are willing to see the showdown with a middle pair or even worse. When you have a big hand (2pair +), the decision is easy, and you just want to follow the path of bet/bet/shove to take all of your opponents chips.

Of course, the decision won’t always be so easy, because sometimes it may be you that is holding the weak hand. In this case proceed cautiously and remember that sometimes your opponent may just have the better hand. If they make an unusual action, like a check-raise for example, think about why they made that move and don’t under-estimate their actions. That doesn’t mean that you should avoid betting when you find yourself in a situation like this, it just means you have to be more cautious. How? Thin value-betting!

You thin value-bet when your opponent has a range of hands which either is beaten by or beats you. To make your bet EV+, of course, you need to decide if that the hands you beat are more plentiful than the one you’re beaten by. This is where good hand-reading skills come into play.

Step 4: HUD and Notes

The fact that the micro-stakes field is so large and often you are sitting at a table against new players can lead you to believe that a Heads Up Display (HUD) is not so important. Of course it’s not necessary, but having one can help you improve your game in so many ways.

A HUD is a really great tool, especially if you multi-table. At the lower limits you don’t need a particularly complex HUD. It would be enough to have one that displays the basics information (like pre-flop, c-bet, 3bet, blinds and steal stats). Approved HUD’s, such as Hold’Em Manager and Poker Tracker, also give you the possibility to study your game after you play which is a habit to adapt.

In addition to the HUD, you can even take notes on the players, which helps you in a way the HUD can’t. Taking good notes can be very important for your game, because it allows you to understand better your opponent’s actions. For example, if you see a player always min-raising monster hands pre-flop, write it down and play your hand accordingly the next time you see it happen.

Step 5: Concentrate on the Basics

Online Poker Micro Stakes Tips Tricks

In other words, keep in mind the information you have already learned and focus on it. The basics are all you need to get through micro-stakes. You don’t need to study complex concepts like a raise all-in bluff on the river, because it is a situation that will happen so rarely that won’t affect at all your win rate. If you reinforce the basics enough, you will be able to be a winner at micro-stakes, and you will have a good starting point to move on to the higher levels.