10k post: micro stakes full ring guide [long]

I realize I'm a little past 10k posts, but we'll just call this my 10,000th post

Beating Micro Stakes Full Ring Cash Games

Full ring is relatively straight-forward, and with some multitabling can be very profitable. This guide is intended to help the relative newbie to micro stakes full ring, but I hope some intermediate players will get something out of it too.

I've averaged $20/hr through my entire 100k hand database, including my subpar results in 100nl, and havemore recently been averaging somewhere near $50/hr. Anyways, the point isn't how much money I make, but how much money is possible to be made, and how much you can make. I'd go so far as to say that 50nl can definitely be considered full-time, 5 or 6-figure job if taken seriously.

Something that might help for the newest of players is this thread. I realize I use a lot of poker lingo and terms that not all people will understand, so that link should help out.


I have very little to no experience in anything lower or higher than 25nl or 100nl respectively, so unfortunately I can't give any advice in that respect.

25nl is essentially full of very very poor players, and to be blunt, if you aren't beating this level for a significant winrate, there's probably something wrong with your game. Even at PokerStars where there seem to be the most regulars of any site, you rarely run into someone who's actually a 'good' player. You should try to keep your stealing and bluffing frequency relatively low unless you've pegged someone as a tight player, as most will look you up with pretty wide hand ranges. Ideally you want to simply get your money in with your good hands, and stay away from the bad ones. Tossing in very basic, staple bluffs is fine too of course, but pick your spots well.

The jump to 50nl is somewhat significant. The first thing you'll notice is that there are a fair amount of regulars who are actually half-decent. Stealing, playing your position, bluffing - all of these are now more prominent, and you should be adding them to your arsenal of weapons on top of the standard nut-peddling. Adjustments to the regulars are pretty crucial, and we'll get to that later.

From 50nl to 100nl is even more significant. The regulars are now more prominent and, on average, are better. Again, more on them later.

Assuming you are properly bankrolled and are completely new to rings, I'd say it's safe to start at 25nl and take it from there. If you are still having trouble, try 10nl. By 'properly bankrolled' I mean at the very minimum 20 buyins. Yes, you can survive by playing with fewer buyins than that, but the swings will of course be worse. The smaller the portion of your bankroll you play with, the smaller your swings will be, and the less tilt you'll be prone to.


I decided to simplify this section into a video that I'd been meaning to do for a while:

MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service

...and some links to the mentioned software:

Poker Tracker and Poker Ace HUD
Poker Office
Holdem Manager
Holdem Ranger and Realtime HUD
PokerStove
AutoHotKey
Overcards (AHK poker scripts, pokergrapher, other stuff)
AllSnap


This is a very general subject and something I definitely would say you shouldn't abide by %100 of the time. This is essentially my opening range if I'm at a table full of unknowns, but as soon as I pick up some reads I will adjust my ranges accordingly.

Early position (UTG-UTG+1): Raise {AJs+, AQo+, TT+}, limp {22-99}
Middle position (MP1-MP3): Raise {ATs+, AJo+, KQs+, 66+}, limp {22-55}
Late position (CO-SB): Raise {most aces, most broadway, suited connectors, some offsuit connectors 22+}

Now again this is very general, and varies depending on a lot of factors including stack sizes, table reads, our image, the action ahead of us, etc. Eventually you get a feel for what you should be opening with in what position, but for beginners without a clue I think this hand chart should be a nice starting guide. A very basic, very standard rule I think one should abide by a very high % of the time is folding to 3-bets out of position without a very strong range. Position is crucial, especially in 3-bet pots. Raising hands like AJo and calling 3-bets with the intention of folding on the flop unimproved (or even improved occasionally) is going to be a HUGE leak in your game. Things like raising AQo in EP and folding to a 3-bet should be routine and standard.


Aside from the four default stats - VP$IP, PFR, AF and total hands - I like to keep the ATS, FFB and the FTS stats on my hud, and of course a couple dozen stats in the popup. Stat explanations and formulas can be found here on the pokertracker documentation page.

Yet again I'm generalizing here, but there are essentially four player types I run into regularly, and of course there are infinite variations and 'in-between' player styles, but I think these should give you a nice guide of what to expect and how to adjust. The numbers I'm referring to are VPIP/PFR, and of course are very general. I'm also going to include some general situations relating to each player style that I think I run into the most frequently.

Type one is the maniac (~40/30 or higher). These players are either shoving their whole stack in preflop with marginal AJ-type hands, or they're trying to run bluffs every hand. The fairly straight-forward approach to them is to wait for a hand and trap them. Limp utg with AA, check your set and let him bet pot or more with nothing on the flop, lead-push with monster draws, etc etc etc. Don't get caught up with bluffing or outplaying them - these guys hate to have their egos bruised and simply will rebluff you. These guys usually don't last long, so just wait for a hand and pray it holds up.

Villain (60/40, 100bb) shoves utg
Folds to Hero
Hero in the SB calls with K♣K♥

Easy capeezy

Type two is the LAG (~20/15 to 30/20). Now we're getting into the territory where our opponent might have half a brain. They're no longer shoving their whole stack around, but are seemingly betting and attacking every pot they're in. Yet again, wait for a hand and get your money in.

The difference with this group is that they won't necessarily stack top pair with a weak kicker, or TT all in preflop. Just because they open, say %25 of their range preflop doesn't mean their 3-betting or 4-betting range is proportionally as big. They might give in easily to 3-bets, or they might only stack preflop with AA. It's a little difficult to get reads on these guys in that respect without a stat-tracking program that lets you see exactly what ranges they're doing what with. In general of course it's fine to get your money in a little lighter against these guys since on average they'll usually have a wider range, but don't take it too far.

LAG (28/19/5, 100bbs) limps utg+1

He's been floating you and attacking any sign of weakness with big 'scary' bets the whole session

MP2 limps
Hero raises with A♣A♥ in SB to 6.5bbs
BB folds
LAG calls
MP2 folds

Flop comes 10♥2♣2♠ (pot: 15bb)

Hero bets 11bb
LAG calls

Turn Q♦ (pot: 37bb)

Hero checks

The LAG will most probably bet here, so we're checking as a trap and hoping either that he'll pay us off with a ten, queen, or a draw when we check-raise. Occasionally we'll even get looked up with 99 and similar hands.

The loose-passive or tight-passive fish (40/3/0.5 or 18/5/1) is a fairly common player type. You should be able to make hefty profits against them by either bullying them or by value betting them with your marginal hands. Make sure you're not bluffing the calling stations. WTSD, fold to flop or turn stats and his general play will tip you off to how far he goes with his hands and you can adjust accordingly.

Folds to fish
Fish (30/3/0.5, FFB %75, 100bbs) open limps HJ
Folds to Hero
Hero Raises 9♠7♠

The fish's high fold to flop bet % gives us reason to raise nearly our entire range and if we get called, bet just about any flop. Occasionally we'll take it down pf, and a good chunk of the time we'll take it down postflop. When we get called on the flop, occasionally we'll improve to the better hand, or occasionally we can double barrel him off of a weak second pair or other hand.

Another key factor in this hand is that villain has a full stack. If we're up against someone with 20bbs we should be folding this a much higher percent of the time. Villain will commit his stack with a wider range of hands (draws, weak pairs, etc) and our play becomes much less profitable.

Then we have the aggressive regular (~17/13). These are by far the toughest to play in my book, and they're usually the biggest winners over the long-haul. They resteal your button raises, float your c-bets, and are generally just a pain in the butt to play against. These are the types you will run into more and more as you move up in stakes, and putting it simply, there's no use tangling with them unless you truly feel you can outplay them. I generally try to keep away from them without a big hand or a solid, high percentage opportunity to play back at them. There's absolutely nothing wrong with avoiding these players entirely - in fact, table selection should ensure you don't run into them very often at all at 50nl and below.

Folds to TAG
TAG (15/12/3, ATS of %30, 100bbs) opens CO for 4bbs
Folds to Hero
Hero 3-bets 9♣10♣ to 13bbs

The TAG's high attempt to steal means he's opening a very wide range on the button, and considering we have position, we can really take advantage of this spot by attacking his steal. We can also float here and make a move postflop.

TAG (15/11/4, ATS of %40, 100bbs) opens utg for 4bbs
Folds to Hero
Hero folds A♠Q♠ in the BB

It might seem strange noting his attempt to steal stat here, but it has an indirect and crucial affect on his range. ATS is effectively a preflop raise percentage for the last three positions (CO, BTN and SB). If the stat is relatively high (read: %40), then that means that his early position raising ranges must be inversely proportional, ie very tight, in order to average out to the PFR% we see. I'll omit the maths behind it for the sake of simplicity, but in general if a player's ATS is much higher than his PFR, then not only will his late position range be wide, but his early position range should be proportionally smaller.

So in our example hand, considering the fact that his range is much tighter than the perceived %11, and that we'll be out of position against a very aggressive player for the rest of the hand, our A♠Q♠ isn't looking so hot anymore, and we pitch it.

The next player type is the tight, nitty regular (~10/7 or tighter). Now we're approaching our bread-and-butter, believe it or not. There's plenty of money to be made playing lags and maniacs, but huge chunks of your profit should spawn from playing your small 'potential' hands. These are the types that can't let go of overpairs or TPTK hands, and stacking them when your pair of deuces hits a set is like taking candy from a baby. Hell, occasionally you'll get them to stack AK on raggy flops like 257 just because they hate getting pushed off of the hands they only get once every 200 hands.

Nit (8/3/7, 100bbs) raises utg to 6bb
Folds to Hero
Hero calls with 2♣2♥

"6bb raise! Shabby-looking baby pair! Fold!" Wrong. These are the bread and butter spots I touched on. A nit has raised to a huge amount utg. He's in effect telling the whole table that he has a big pair, and we want in there with any pair purely for the implied odds. Our 2♣2♥ is obviously crushed by his range, but he's rarely getting away from his big pair postflop, and we can make tons by calling in spots like this and set-mining.

Nit (8/3/7, 100bbs) raises utg to 4bb
Folds to Hero
Hero mucks A♦Q♣

Something to be careful of is getting involved with marginal hands like AQo here. A simple way to analyze the situation is to use the aforementioned pokerstove and actually plug his %3 preflop raising range and our AQo into the program, and see what our equity looks like:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 34.548% 34.08% 00.46% 19258847 262672.50 { AdQh }
Hand 1: 65.452% 64.99% 00.46% 36721840 262672.50 { 99+, AKs }

As you can see we're about a 2:1 underdog against his range. Also remember if his range opens in late position (ie his ATS is higher than his PFR), then his range is even tighter from early position, and we're even more of an dog. Run with your tail between your legs.

I didn't want this little gem to get lost in the shuffle. I'm stickying it for now until it's ready to be archived.

Great idea! Some of us plan on using this in the future!

me for certain. sit n go's are fine, but my history w/ cash tables keeps me away from them. Thanks for all the time u took

I like it, well put, well said. Txs for this.

Thanks for this very informative guide.
Very interesting reading.

ChuckTs, fantastic thread, this will be invaluable to me, thanks for taking the time to do this.
KD

<3 ChuckTs

Bump for a good read, thanks! I was reading this while playing a .50/$1 ring just now and walked away with $33 in about 20 minutes.

Great tip here! Thanks for taking the time to post.

TheHoag57

How did I miss this thread until now.

Great post Chuck.

Here's my MSFR guide.

- Set mine
- ????
- Profit

very insightful post ChuckTs! great in depth discussion here

awsome post chuck so how long you been playing pro?

excellant post very well put together,some very valuable info,best strategy guide i have read,and i have read a right few

Great post! I am new and would liek to use poekrtracker for extra help..

What does "fts" and "ffb" mean? ..sorry couldnt find it in the tool box..