Instead, the small ball poker strategy offers a relatively simple and profitable way to play Texas Holdem. This strategy works well in almost any field but will do miracles in a weak lineup of amateur and novice poker players. Unlike a nitty poker strategy that includes only playing premium hands, a small ball strategy involves playing various. Essentially, small ball poker involves playing a wider range of starting hands more aggressively, but only using small bets and raises to save you from losing too much money when certain plays do not work out. Some poker game types will use the common hand ranking in different ways, such as making the lowest value hand the most desirable (low-ball poker). Learn the order of strength of poker hands on.
In poker, players with a weak mental game play many short winning sessions where they leave expected value on the table, punctuated with occasional 24-hour losing binges. The most important decision you make as a poker player is when to quit. Yasmina so much liked to play with fake pipe that that lady reaches craftsmanship in this. Hot teen haves orgy sex: french redhead 2 nikita from 1fuckdatecom. Sally charles demonstrates her awesome body and poses in spandex.
Poker at the micro stakes is where most of us start our cash game journey. It is important to start creating good habits now that will carry over once you move on to higher stakes. While the micros can be beaten without too much effort, there are a few pitfalls that you need to look out for if you want to maximize your chance of success at the lowest stakes.
The purpose of this article is to give beginners and intermediate players the top 10 keys to beating the micro-stakes. Each item on my list has been gleaned from personal experience having played millions of hands at 25NL and below. My hope is that I give you the best chance possible of crushing the games and gaining invaluable experience that will serve you well as you move up through the micros and beyond.
1. Avoid Complicated Spots
When playing for nickels and dimes online at the micro stakes, it’s not the time to try and impress your poker buddies with fancy plays made in marginal spots. This is a recipe for slower than necessary progress when trying to beat a bunch of beginners and recreational players. There will be plenty of opportunities to push small edges after you move up to mid-stakes, and beyond, where the games are tougher and easy money is much harder to find.
Instead, at the micro-stakes, you should be looking to make your money by overwhelming your opponents with a precise following of the fundamentals. By avoiding complicated spots, you can be assured that you are making money from the collective mistakes of the other players. Just grind out an exploitative ABC game by playing lots of pots in position and profit will flow into your bankroll. As a rule, relentlessly value bet your big hands and don’t overplay your marginal ones.
2. Play Exploitative Poker
One of the concepts that you must master to win at poker is to understand that poker is a people game. At the micro-stakes, there is a large variety of player types that can be exploited in one way or another. Learning to profile your opponents and label them is a key skill to learn and will allow you to make quick and targeted adjustments while you play.
Beyond your core strategy, forget about game theory optimal play. Save that kind of thinking for when you are playing high stakes. When the vast majority of your opponents are playing sub-optimally, you instead want to take advantage of those leaks in order to maximize profit. While “GTO” play would certainly win versus bad players, it simply isn’t going to let you maximize your win-rate.
3. Don’t Battle Micro-Stakes Regs
I recommend that you learn a bit about the various levels of thinking, but don’t get too caught up in trying to battle the best players at each stake. Instead, as a rule, avoid complicated spots against them and just look for their leaks the same way you do against the fish. In general, you want to make sure you play on your terms when involved in a hand with them. In other words, always play to your strengths and make the regs be at a disadvantage when involved in a hand with you.
I know, I know…. easier said than done, right? Even so, the fact that you are even thinking about such things right now gives you an inherent advantage. The best place to start is with good note-taking. Beyond that, just focus on your decision-making process and you will be fine.
4. Bet The Strength Of Your Hand
Once you are playing small stakes, 50NL to 100NL, there will be a need to start considering balance as part of your overall strategy. There will be regulars who will hone in on any weaknesses in your game and exploit you relentlessly. However, for the most part, you don’t have to worry about getting exploited at the micro-stakes. Even the “better” players at the table will mostly be playing a level one strategy that is based mostly on their own cards.
In general, you can get away with just making big bets with big hands and small bets with marginal hands. It really doesn’t take an acute understanding of post-flop equity to beat your typical micro-stakes table. Most of your opponents won’t be paying much attention to what anyone else is doing and, even if they are, won’t often know how to use that information effectively.
5. Follow Charts While You Learn
All top players know exactly what they will do in 99% of the situations they face. They then adjust their lines based on the table dynamic and game flow considerations. You need to get to the point where most of the game becomes automatic for you. It really helps you have a core strategy to fall back on.
While you are learning, you will often become lost and have no clue what to do. As a temporary learning tool, it’s a good idea to make a chart that includes all of your “vacuum” ranges and lines that you use when you are completely readless. It’s not as hard as you think, here is a downloadable template (shown below) for you to fill in the blanks. Also, if you want to know how it works, I created a free basic strategy that uses similar charts which will give you a good starting point.
Pre-Flop and Post-Flop Charts Template
![Poker Poker](https://www.888poker.com/magazine/sites/magazine.888poker.com/files/styles/hp_headline_big/public/2019-11/Poker player at the table with 5 hands face down in front of him.jpg?itok=Jv4HEV6I)
6. Set a Bankroll Management Plan and Stick to It
This might be the most important tip of all since it’s hard to play poker without any money. Beginners will have goals that are much different than experienced players who are just trying to rebuild a bankroll fast. However, no matter your level, if you don’t follow good bankroll management principles you are in for a lot of frustration. I recommend that you have at least 30 buy-ins for a cash game stake and 100 buy-ins for tournaments.
It will be really tempting to try to chase losses if you happen to run bad for an extended period of time, especially if you are playing for what may seem like “insignificant” amounts of money. Even so, at the micros, you are going to be building habits that will last for your entire poker career. If you tempt fate with your risk of ruin now, you will probably do so later on when you are playing pots that are hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Poker Games How To Play
7. More Volume, Less Study at the Micro-Stakes
Once you have a basic understanding of poker strategy, I recommend practicing what you have learned for thousands of hands before shifting your focus back to learning. Besides, just knowing the fundamentals and having a rudimentary understanding of how commitment works should allow you to beat up through 25NL on most poker sites. This will give you time to develop some personality in your game and force you to solve situations that will seem very complicated at first.
You will make mistakes along the way, no doubt. Therefore, the only type of study that I recommend at the micros is that you take notes or keep a journal as you play. Write down anything that you are unclear on and save hand histories where you had major problems or were completely lost. Post those questions on one of the major poker forums and get into discussions on how to navigate those situations for a couple of hours each week. Don’t substitute playing time to post, only do it outside of your playing schedule.
Other than that, I advocate that you wait until you get to 50NL before you start putting in more significant study time. At that point, you will probably want to play and study at a 50/50 ratio or and maybe even get some coaching. But for now, your goal for the 25NL and below should be to get out of 25NL and below.
8. No Slow Playing at the Micros
This is one of the things that I see all of the time in my students, and it drives me crazy. They are involved in a pot with your typical micro-stakes calling station and flop a huge hand. Instead of betting and/or raising, they check and call, hoping that their opponent will “catch up” a bit and commit to the pot on the turn or river. While this will definitely work in winning pots, it is also a great way to ensure that you win the least amount possible.
No matter what stake you play, one of the biggest sins is to not get enough value with the top of your range when playing in a loose poker dynamic. As a rule, you should always err on the side of betting on the larger side when unsure how to proceed. Unless you have a really good reason, throw out the call button when you flop a strong hand. Bet or raise relentlessly until the money is all-in. Your win-rate will thank you.
![Poker Poker](/uploads/1/3/9/2/139211978/976393905.jpg)
9. Do Not Play Tight, Small Ball For The Win
One of the things that most people teach beginners or intermediate players is that “tight is right” and that you should just play very few hands and let weak players make mistakes against your strong range. While this does make the game easier initially and might even work, the advice is actually pretty horrible. Eventually, if you want to compete at mid-stakes or high stakes, you will have to loosen up and learn to play a lot of hands.
The micro-stakes is actually a great place to start developing a loose-aggressive (LAG) strategy. You are playing for less money, so now is the time to get creative and face as many spots as the fundamentals will reasonably allow for. It’s much better to learn when the cost is cheap rather than when the pots are huge, relatively speaking.
Why play as a LAG? The idea is to see a lot of pots against weaker players, in position. Also, when involved in games that see lots of multi-way pots, you want to learn to play hands that can make the nuts (with the right price) and get as much value as possible when you connect. In my opinion, if your VPIP at the micro-stakes is not at least 25% for 6-max or 18% for full ring, you are playing too tight. Below is a screenshot of my positional stats back when I built my cash game bankroll in 2011.
I ran 33/30 against tables of bad regulars and fish. I learned A LOT by playing this many hands.
10. Stick to the Fundamentals
I’ve mentioned this one briefly before but the importance of sticking to the fundamentals against players with bad fundamentals cannot be overstated. Strive to play as many hands as you can with position and initiative. This will allow you to keep constant pressure on opponents who are generally really bad at dealing with pressure
The way to do this is to get good at playing the cutoff through the blinds by having a reasonably strong blind stealing and blind defense strategy. Since most micro-stakes players play badly in the blinds and generally don’t steal or defend enough, there is a lot of profit to be had from recognizing the players who play late position poorly. Your entire pre-flop strategy should be based on setting up profitable post-flop spots for yourself.
After the flop, your main focus should be on optimizing your c-bet frequencies based on your opponents and the board texture. Figure out which players are fit or fold and which ones are calling stations. Once you do that, the only thing left to do is adjust and execute.
Summary
Beating the micro-stakes is easy if you just understand the object of the game, stick to the fundamentals, and play solid aggressive poker. By following the tips in this article, you will be well on your way toward cruising through to 50NL and beyond.
If you are looking for information to get you on the right path toward beating the games, I wrote a comprehensive poker tutorial designed to prepare anyone to play winning poker. Thanks for stopping by, and good luck at the tables!
Nathan Williams
Often these days we spend too much time trying to figure out how to achieve a small win rate in tight, aggressive low stakes cash games. I personally try to avoid these games at all costs.
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get involved in poker to battle for small amounts of money with people who take the game seriously. I got involved with poker to go get the easy money from recreational players. The truth is most live low stakes games and even low stakes cash games on smaller online sites still have plenty of loose action.
However, many people today make a few key errors which hurt their win rate in these games. In this article I am going to discuss three rules for maximizing your success in loose low stakes cash games.
1. Play a Lot of Hands Versus the Recreational Players
Many people do not maximize their win rate versus the bad players because they simply fold too much preflop. You should be going out of your way to get involved in pots with them. If you have position on the rec player, I would suggest playing as much as the top 50% of hands against them.
This means that when they do their limp thing, you raise it up with a huge range of hands in order to try and get heads up against them going to the flop. This is also known as “isolating.”
A lot of people are afraid that if they don’t have a good hand themselves, they won’t know what to do after the flop. The truth is that these recreational players are playing a huge amount of hands as well. And since you have a position on a player who often will make colossal mistakes after the flop, you could very easily win a big pot with a hand like -suited or even -suited.
The bottom line is that you can’t win big against these players if you don’t get involved against them. There is also a process at work here of getting in their head and developing a dynamic with them. This will pay off later when you finally have the big hand.
2. Don’t Slow Play Versus Loose-Passive Players
Another rule for success against this category of players is never to slow play versus them. A lot of people make the mistake of not wanting to scare their opponent off by betting too much. But the truth is we call these players “passive” for a reason. They are not going to build the pot for you. If you choose to try and trap them with your big hands, then you can often look forward to winning a tiny pot.
You have to build the pot versus passive players. It is true that they will fold sometimes, but that is just because they didn’t have anything. You can’t force somebody to call you if they have nothing.
The vast majority of the time a big pot gets played in hold’em, it is because both players involved have good hands. This is just a simple fact of the game and it is not something that is under your control.
However, making them pay when they do happen to have something is under your control. Save the trapping for the aggressive regulars who might actually help build the pot for you.
3. Don’t Bluff the Bad Players (Most of the Time)
Another common piece of advice for low stakes cash games is never to bluff the bad players. Again, this isn’t quite optimal. I certainly agree that running big bluffs against them is often a recipe for disaster. However, you definitely should be betting frequently with nothing against them, especially on the flop.
As I said before, you should be isolating these recreational players with a wide range preflop. And you should also be following this up with a continuation bet on the flop most of the time. This is how you start building that dynamic with them I was talking about before.
They are only going to have a pair on the flop about one-third of the time when they do their limp/call thing. Therefore, more often than not they will have to face another bet when they have nothing.
When you are constantly isolating them with a wide range and sticking the c-bet in their face each time, they will start to view you as abusing them. This will pay big dividends for you in the future when you finally make your big hand and they have some piece of the board as well.
How To Play Small Ball Poker Tournament
The great thing about this strategy is that it doesn’t cost you much either. If they call you on the flop and you still have ten-high on the turn, then yes, you should give up. But most of the time, under normal conditions, you will be taking down a majority of these pots on an earlier street. You are also prepping them for the big blow-up hand where they give you their entire stack.
Final Thoughts
The biggest keys to success for loose low stakes cash games all have to do with keeping things simple — and I mean brutally simple. Do not get tricky in any way. When you make a big hand, you need to bet big on every street for value.
But furthermore, make sure that you are constantly playing this annoying style of “small ball” (as some might call it) against the recreational players. Try to get involved in as many hands as possible versus them and be aggressive consistently on the flop no matter what you have.
You have to remember that sometimes it simply won’t be your day. You won’t be able to make a hand to save your life and they will seem to hit the flop every time in some way. It is really important not to lose your cool during these sessions and simply trust in the process.
This is because on most days this loose-aggressive style of play in position versus the recreational players will pay off in a big way. This approach also tilts them very easily if you are running good or even just normally. This can lead to a windfall situation where they are just handing you stack after stack.
Nathan “BlackRain79” Williams is the author of the popular micro stakes strategy books, Crushing the Microstakes and Modern Small Stakes. He also blogs regularly about all things related to the micros over at www.blackrain79.com.
Get all the latest PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+!
How To Play Poker Easy
Tags
cash game strategyno-limit hold’emassessing playing stylesloose-passiveloose-aggressivecontinuation bettingisolatingonline pokerlive poker