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1. Home / Playing Online Poker – The best online poker sites 2020 / Strategy / For Beginners / Low Stakes Poker: Keep it Simple! AngusD 2020-12-01T07:36:31+01:00.
2. I have been playing, teaching, and writing about “micro” and low stakes online poker ($0.01/$0.02 to $0.25/$0.50) for a long time now. I have played millions of hands at these stakes and had.
3. I have been playing, teaching, and writing about “micro” and low stakes online poker ($0.01/$0.02 to $0.25/$0.50) for a long time now. I have played millions of hands at these stakes and had.
4. Small Stakes Leaks Strategy Guide. A good attack is no good without a good offense. Most Small Stakes poker regulars know how to blind steal 3bet, c-bet and double barrel proficiently.

That said, there are some general adjustments you should be ready to make at low stakes poker, both live and online. In this article, I’ll be reviewing a session Doug Polk played for The Poker Lab at $0.50/$1.00 where he demonstrates key adjustments, some of which apply only to low stakes players (live $2/$5 and lower, online 200NL and lower).

If there is one thing I hear the most from small stakes poker players it is they can't seem to consistently turn a profit at the poker tables.

They will win big one session — or even several sessions in a row — but then inevitably the cards will go south on them and they will lose all of their profit back.

This is a problem because everybody has winning and losing days in poker. What the most successful poker players do, however, is lose less on their bad days and win more on their good days.

In this article I am going to give you five of my top strategies for learning how to win consistently in small stakes poker games.

1. Maximize Your Winnings on the Good Days

As I mentioned above, you are going to have good days and bad days in poker. Some days you will be hitting every top pair, making your flushes and the like. And just as importantly, on those good days your opponents will keep having decent second-best hands with which to pay you off as well.

But there will also be other days when you can't make a hand to save your life. And when you finally do make a hand, guess what? That's right — they will have the higher flush, the higher set, and other better hands. If you have played poker for any amount of time, I think you know what I am talking about here.

Now half the battle to learning how to win consistently at the poker tables is simply maximizing your winnings on the good days. You know that on some days you are going to have to take some losses, so winning as much as possible on the good days is absolutely key.

This is why you need immediately to shed the 'protectionist' mentality many small stakes players have of winning a few buy-ins and then wanting to quit in order to 'lock up the win.' This isn't how poker works. Poker is one long session and your results on any individual day literally matter very little.

By quitting early when things are going well — and, more importantly, when you are probably playing well also — you are only hurting yourself. When the cards are falling your way, try to keep playing as long as possible.

2. Minimize Your Losses on the Bad Days

The reverse is true as well. On the days when absolutely nothing is working for you, you want to quit early and stop the bleeding.

But again, many small stakes players do the exact opposite. They want to keep playing to get back what they've lost. Or even worse, they'll jump up in stakes if they are stuck a lot to try and win it back faster.

The problem with this strategy is that even though you might not realize it in the moment, you are likely playing very poorly on days like this. Your judgment and decision-making is clouded by emotions. You are likely to play a looser game and more aggressively, and as a result you'll be more apt to make bad calls and other poor decisions.

If you want to start turning a long term consistent profit in poker, one of the absolute best things you can do is just leave the poker table on these bad days. You have to remember that poker games literally run around the clock. That's true both for online poker and even for live games for the most part. In other words, the games aren't going anywhere.

One of the absolute most valuable lessons you can learn in poker is how to take a small loss and come back the next day with a clear head rather than continuing to play and burying yourself with a big loss.

3. Don't Play in Unprofitable Games

Something else you can do in order to win consistently in poker is to start paying more attention when it comes to game selection. If there isn't a clear reason why you are at the table (i.e., somebody at the table who plays much worse than you), there is no reason why you should be at that table.

This is a big mistake that I see small stakes players making all the time. That is, they sit down and play in games full of other strong regulars, not thinking how detrimental taking on such a challenge is likely going to be to their bankroll.

While I know it can be a pain to change tables or even poker sites or casinos, you have to understand that the profit in poker does not come from playing with other people who are equally skilled to you or better. You are going to be essentially trading money back and forth with them in the long run (if not losing). And truthfully, even if you hang in there against such opponents, you will often still show a loss once the rake is taken out.

It is absolutely crucial, then, that there is always at least one player who is a clear soft spot in any poker game that you choose to play.

4. Don't Pay Attention to the Short Term

As I touched on before, short term results (day-to-day, week-to-week) really just aren't that important in poker. It is only the long run of months and years of play that really matters.

This is why I would suggest you make a real effort, especially if you play online, to stop checking your bankroll so often. Keep recording your results after each session, of course, but avoid the constant checking. As long as you are properly bankrolled for the games in which you are playing, there should be no issue.

By not checking your bankroll so frequently, you prevent yourself from getting emotional during the downswings. You also prevent yourself from getting a false sense of superiority during the good times.

As I often say in poker, neither the heaters nor the downswings are what is real. Both are illusions — the outliers, the abnormal. The truth about your abilities actually lies somewhere in the middle.

5. Take Them to Value Town

Small stakes poker games are often dominated these days by tight-passive regs and loose, 'calling station' recreational players. The biggest key to your success in these games therefore is going to be getting the maximum value with your good hands.

There is no point in trying to bluff a lot at stakes like this. They are just going to call you down, which will cause you to get even more tilted.

You need to become a master of the value bet instead. And I am not talking about situations here where you have or a flush. Everybody knows how to value bet in these spots. I am talking instead about the thin value bets where you have something like second or even third pair on the river and they check it to you.

Oftentimes many of these bad players at the lower limits will be willing to hero call you with their ace-high if you make a bet. This is especially the case with smaller bets like one-third of the pot.

Don't just check it back and take the showdown like most people do at these stakes. The very biggest winners in these games are always getting that thin value even when it seems impossible that they can call you with worse. Trust me, they can and will at the micros!

Final Thoughts

Learning how to win consistently in the lower limit poker games is one of the very first steps you need to take in order to have a lot of success in this game.

One of the most important keys to remember is to maximize your winnings on the good days and minimize your losses on the bad days. Most players do the exact opposite.

You also want to make sure that you are always playing in profitable games, getting the absolute maximum value out of them, and ignoring your short term results.

Nathan 'BlackRain79' Williams is the author of the popular micro stakes strategy books Crushing the Microstakes, Modern Small Stakes, and The Microstakes Playbook. He also blogs regularly about all things related to the micros over at www.blackrain79.com.

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People sometimes complain these days about how tough the cash games are even at the lowest limits online — a topic I considered not long ago in “How to Beat Tough Low Stakes Cash Games”).

However, if you play on some of the smaller lesser known online sites and utilize some table selection — or if you play live at all — then you know that there is still plenty of very loose low stakes action out there.

These games require a completely different approach to beat them, though, and that is what I am going to address those strategies separately here. What follows are three ways you can beat loose low stakes cash games, live or online.

1. Practice Patience, Not Aggression

As I discussed last time, in order to beat the tougher low stakes cash games, you need to identify the weaker regulars and play aggressively in the right spots against them. When you are playing against a bunch of loose calling stations (including recreational players), however, you need to employ the exact opposite strategy.

In these looser games, most of the time when you have nothing it is better just to give up on the pot and let them have it. You can shovel as much money in the middle as you want, but if your opponent won’t fold bottom pair, you are still going to lose the hand. And, of course, your failed bluff attempts will only cost you even more.

Instead, the way to beat a loose calling station is to wait patiently for your opportunities. The reason why is that most recreational players are only first-level thinkers (i.e., thinking about their own hands). They aren’t thinking about what you are trying to represent.

Now don’t get me wrong — I am not advocating here that you wait for aces before getting involved. In fact, against the bad players you should try to get in as many pots with them as possible, ideally when you are in position.

Before the flop, you should often raise when they try to limp in (an “isolation raise”). Then most of the time you should take a stab at the pot on the flop with a continuation bet. This includes any time that you have connected with the board in any way as well as with all of your reasonable no pair/no draw hands such as ace-high and king-high.

The reason why you should continuation bet this wide is that loose calling stations do still fold sometimes, too, and if they are going to fold it will most likely be on the flop. Furthermore, when you are only betting 50%-60% of the pot with your continuation bet (as you should), then you don’t need that many folds in order to turn a profit.

The turn and the river are a different story. If you get called on the flop, this means that they connected with the board in some way. They may only have a weak draw or bottom pair, but they like something about their hand. And players like this do not like to fold when they like something about their hand.

This is why it is crucial that on the turn and river, where the pot starts to get a lot bigger, that you do not make the mistake of trying to bluff these players off of their hands with nothing. Patience instead is the key to success. This often means checking it down or even folding if they bet. (I discuss further the importance of being patient at the micros here.)

2. Value Bet Absurdly Wide

Another key strategy difference when playing against bad opponents — as opposed to decent and competent ones — is that you need to value bet a lot wider.

Against thinking opponents, it often doesn’t make sense to value bet bottom pair or sometimes even middle pair on the river, because they will usually only call with better and fold all worse hands. Loose calling stations, though, will call you down with bottom pair and even ace-high or king-high hands. So while you need to be extra patient against these types of players when you have nothing, ironically you should be hyper-aggressive against them when you have any kind of made hand.

I will routinely bet all three streets with top pair versus these types of players. But I would never do the same against a competent player, because there is no way I could get this much value out of them. In fact, if I am up against a bad player I believe might be on tilt, I might even take a middle-pair hand and just bet all three streets with it for value.

In a nutshell, versus loose calling stations just bet absurdly wide even when you can’t think of a hand with which they can possibly call. They will come up with something.

3. Stagger Your Bet Sizes Both Preflop and Postflop

I famously (or infamously) claimed in my first book, Crushing the Microstakes, that you should stagger your bet sizes versus bad poker players. A lot of people misread this to mean all poker players and criticized me because of it. I was never talking about all poker players, but only the category of players we are focusing on in this article. Versus those players, this is absolutely still the correct strategy.

What do I mean by “staggering” your bet sizes? I mean you should make your raise amount preflop according to the strength of your hand. In a crazily loose, live $1/$2 game, there is no reason why you should be raising the same amount with all of your hands. Your opponents aren’t paying any attention to what your bet sizes mean, so you should simply make it more when you have a premium hand in order to build the pot and prevent too many callers.

The same goes for postflop. If I am trying to pick up the pot with ace-high on the flop, I will make my continuation bet 60% of the pot at most. If I have top pair or better, however, I might just pot it or even over-pot it if I know that my opponent is on tilt against me.

You should never follow any kind of standardized betting rules against really bad poker players. Doing so is only important against competent players who might be paying attention to what you are doing. Against loose calling stations, simply bet more when you have it, and less when you don’t.

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Final Thoughts

The strategy to beat loose low stakes cash games is actually very simple. First off, get involved with plenty of hands preflop by coming in for a raise whenever you can. You don’t need to wait for the nuts against opponents who are playing any two cards.

But be patient if you do not hit the board in any meaningful way postflop. The worst thing that you can do is try to bluff a player whose favorite thing to do is call. On the flip side, you should aggressively value bet with all sorts of made hands against these types of opponents because they will call you down extremely wide.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to stagger your bet sizes according to the strength of your hand against really bad players. A marginal increase in the size of your bet size means very little to them if they are intent on calling. But it allows you to build a much bigger pot when you have a big hand and stack them quicker.

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.

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Low Stakes Online Poker Strategy Ignition

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