Playing tight aggressive at micro-limits DOES NOT MAKE MONEY

I'm a bit pissed. I've been 4 multi-tabling 6 player tables and playing tight aggressive today and after about 5 hours of playing 2-4 tabling I'm down like $7. I've found that playing tight aggressive in micro-limits does not work. It is at BEST break even assuming you make no mistakes post-flop and fold when you don't hit. The problem is that if you are playing TAG then your edge is between 15%-20% max and sometimes about 8-10%. The rake is 10% thus your essentially break even after the rake assuming you make zero mistakes. But one mistake stacking off will cost you several dollars which is equivalent to a ton of work.

So how do you make money in micro-limits? I've found most money to be made is made post-flop with big drawing hands such as straights, flush, and 2 pair.

I think the TAG is a good foundation but today it is not working for me. Also, to get good calling when playing TAG you must raise quite a bit and spend money because people know you are raisign with strong hands. Raising with drawing hands can help a bit.

Also, I will tell you when you can bluff at .01/.02 you should almost never bluff past the flop. Generally you can only bluff when players are not interested at all in the flop. Flop bluffs can work in an unraised pot and turn bluffs will occasionally work but river bluffs are almost never a good idea. At .02/.05 which I've only played a little then you can start to bluff and take down some decent pots but at .01/.02 I generally don't bluff unless it is on the flop or I've limped in on the blinds.

The best way to make money in micro-limits to play a TAG as a base foundation and mix it up with a lot of post-flop play. Post flop you can have an edge of at least 65-70% in many cases and on the river your edge can even higher. I admit I play TAG as a foundation but today I made 1 mistake and it ruined all the TAG work I made.

Here is another problem with playing TAG. You raise with AK and you get 1 caller. You've spent say 17 cent. You C-bet and take down a pot worth 17-18 cent or you get no callers and take down a pot worth 5-8 cent. Okay so you miss the flop and check instead of cbetting and he hits a pair and bets enough on river -- now you lose more then you win.

Where do you make your big money is post flop when you get someone to put their stack in -- you can win or lose $2-$3 in a few seconds. I made a mistake and realized I did soon as I made it and lost $4. 1 mistake but thats where I usually win too.

umm, dont play where they charge u 10% rake? And it is possible to profit at .01/.02 and .02/.05 playing TAG. Ask Tenbob, I believe he worked his way all the way up from 5NL

I've had it work for me too but its not working today and when I made it work for me it was only when I started raising with a lot of suited connectors and things too which essentially I was playing LAG then. I was able to get callers on my big hands because I was raising every time when it worked the best.

Let's look at some reasons its hard to make money using TAG. At TAG if you dont' move all-in pre-flop then your going to put in between 8 and 16 cent or 4x-8x the big blind.

That means you'll have an edge of say +15% most of the time. Assuming nobody calls your post-flop bet then that means you'll be getting a return of 2-3 cent on average. The blinds are 3 cent.

Whereas playing post-flop with larger bets you can put in $1-$3 at a +15-20% favorite where you will be making roughly 20-25 cents on average.

EDIT - I gotta stop posting on tilt.

Lets just say I find it really surprising that you're losing with a "TAG" style.

Here is my blog tracks all progress
Light's Poker Blog

I've made some winnings TAG but I seem to win more when I play my own style which is TAG but LAG. It is a tricky style but the reason I keep trying to do more TAG is so that I can multi-table because good LAG requires too much thought.

My data over 12k hands shows that most of my money is won with flushes and straights.

I think the reason that playing a smart LAG style pays off in micro-limits is the pre-flop bets are so small compared to stack sizes. So, okay your stack is $3-$5 and your pre-flop raise is 4x the big blind or 8 cents to 17 cents then that is very small compared to stack size.

Post flop the bets can get very large thus the post-flop edge becomes more important. My LAG style is fairly tight too though. I always play suited aces too. Keep in mind I'm playing 6 player ring game so that might be part of it too.

The main difference between what I call my TAG vs LAG style is when I play LAG I'll start raising more off the button. I think the LAG style is actually negative expectation but you get so many more callers on your premium hands that it makes up for the money you pay to play the weaker hands.

I *will* say I think it pays off more at .02/.05 then .01/.02 but I can't say for sure. I think the big problem with playing TAG is a good example. A guy raises and he has like $5. I call with a weak ace and knowing I'm behind and flop 2 pair with an ace rag. I didn't flop top 2 pair but I'm ahead of all AK/AQ and I stack him.

What if I didn't stack him? What he won.. maybe 30-40 cent. So he'd have to do that 100x to be able to withstand 1 stack off.

The way i view it is the raiser is always ahead and the caller is playing catch up. Raiser is playing defense BUT he must protect his stack FIRST to the POT or else he is at serious risk because the caller or opponent playing catch up will usually hit something way bigger if he catches up.

To give another example.. if your playing LAG you have a lot more chance to hit stuff and put in large post-flop bets. That's the benefit because its typically cheap to see flops in most fishy games. The downside is you have to be thinking a lot more and put more in marginal situations.

Just to give some ideas where I stack people and stacking is the only way real money gets put in the pot:

A LAG opponent flops top 2 pair and I flop a straight on the flop. Stacked.
A TAG raises AK and I play ace-rag which I usually don't do but it was probably suited. I flop 2 pair. Stacked.
A TAG raises with queens. I flop a flush. Stacked.

You see its the big hands that stack people.

I play a TAG game at 1/2c NL. And i have a bb/100 of 8 over 25,000 hands hah 25k of hands and that is on 6-9tables where i make mistakes.

My stats usually range around 17/14/4(after dorkius told me to up my PFR raising) and i ain't even a good player post flop(which is why i'm at 1/2c STILL!!). So TAA does work at mirco stakes it has 2. Also you've only had 5hours of play. I had a Break even downswing for 5,000 hands at one point..therefore, 5hours of play is nothing to go on. PLus i have down sessions of -$5 max. I just lost =$2 then where i was sucked out on..combined with poor play.

I think at good TAG would hit around 15bb/100 at these limits. Maybe even higher..who knows.

Actually, i did jsut aswell. Playing a nitty style of 13/6 ahah. Ahh those were the days..i seemed to get paid off more back then..when i first started.

btw it is questionable to stack with 2pair.. many times i stack guys with 2pair with a set. I usually only stack with 2pair with half my stack invested in the pot. Or with about 8times the size of the flop size.

If your stacking with 250bbs with 2pair it is a mistake - unless they r really fishy. I even layed down a set before.. The lowest set 22..simple because the guy was at 6/2/1(something like that) and was all in on the flop for 250bbs. I was pretty sure he had a higher set and i'd never seen him stack with OPs. I was pretty confident his range was purely PP's ahah crazy player. I rem the board was 289 and that fitted his limping range for sets. AK2 and i was all it on a limped pot vs him etc. Edit.. i say this because i see some players with good stats of 17/11/3 overplay their hands. Like in ur examples.. QQ stacked, AK TPTK stacked..well even if a player is a TAG he will struggle at even 1/2c. If he can't get away from strong PF hands.

Yeah, it is definitely possible to move up from 0.01/0.02. That's were I started (and 0.02/0.04 limit). And TAG does work.

TAG doesn't mean you don't play draws, so I don't see how your winnings with straights and flushes would be affected. TAG just means you don't make -EV calls and you don't push until you think you have the best hand or a big edge. You can be seeing 30% of flops and still technically be playing TAG, because your pot odds and implied odds are so good. This is frequently the case at micro stakes, because it's a limp-fest and the players don't know when to fold post-flop. Successful LAG style is all about fold equity, and you're not going to have much at micro stakes. And you'll only get paid off more on your big hands if your opponents are noticing you're LAG, which is also unlikely at the micros.

What happens when you only hit a pair or a weak draw against top two pair? Do you fold it?

What happens when you flop just a pair of aces versus the AK? Do you fold it?

What happens if you flop one pair against the queens? Do you fold it?


If you don't fold it, then you're losing a lot more money than you think when you don't get those perfect "stacking" situations.

If you do fold it, then you're not playing LAG at all. You're playing TAG, but you're taking a lot of implied odds into account because of the fishiness of your opponents and the deepness of your stacks.

theres no LAG and TAG at .01 table, only DONK and FISH

I'd rather see your orig. comment .

Most likely you don't understand what TAG means. It's not a strategy, just general play less hands and be aggressive. Being aggressive with SCs, PPs is certainly within the realms of playing TAG.
I don't quite get this. You certainly aren't saying that you simply cbet if you hit and check if you miss are you? That's not TAG at all? Also you seem to be implying that whenever you miss they hit and whenever you hit they fold. This is not the case at all anywhere, let alone the micros.

Along the lines of what I was thinking. I dabbled in those stakes when I first deposited. Too much like freerolling for me. I didn't find what I would consider a game lucrative enough to justify my time spent, until I hit about $10NL. $25NL was better, and $50NL is my current favorite. I personally just can't get excited about taking down 5-10 cent pots for hours at a time.

I understand you may have BR issues, so you play whatever you can afford. Personally (and this is just me) I'd "bend" the BR rules somewhat to get myself up to at least $10NL. If you're willing to risk making another deposit and move up, and you are truly a TAG player, then you should be able to build a sufficient BR in short order. Still a lot of donks, but not at the concentrations I found at the penny stakes.

As an example, since Sunday I've been casually playing single-table FR $50NL at PokerStars in the evenings, while doing other stuff like watching old episodes of HSP on PokerTube, reading e-mail, catching up on work, etc. Total profit since Sunday is $129, which would be $140 if I didn't buy-in to an $11 MTT and miss the money. All done in a few hours of distracted casual play on a single table. When I'm focused and multi-tabling (the most I'm comfortable with is 3-4 atm), obviously the potential is much greater provided I don't overload or hit an unusual downswing (which does happen, so BR is still important).

Agreed that your concept of TAG is off a bit. I consider myself a TAG player, but have no qualms about aggressively chasing draws, making semi-bluffs, and even making the rare stone cold bluff, all under the right conditions and reads of course.

Just got home from the office and wanted to add to my above post (the edit timer expired so I can't add it directly). Here's a screenshot from PT3 showing my results since Friday (was thinking it was since Sunday, but that's when I moved back up to $50NL, I forgot about Friday's $25NL session).

IMO if you can swing the BR to play at these stakes, I think you'll find it much more satisfying and rewarding.

Lol have you ever heard of variance?

Just so you know, at 50nl, 40 PTBB/100 is totally unsustainable. Just so you know that all sessions will not have you winning that much at 50nl, and if you don't have the bankroll that you can have huge swings. If you've got the bankroll for it and are good enough to beat it playing it is fine, but encouraging people to go really fast up to 50nl until they have a big enough bankroll and are good enough at poker is not good advice.

LOL, I knew that was coming, I'm surprised you guys took so long.

Yeah guys, of course I'm aware of variance -- I've been on the wrong side of it many times. I'm not saying I have a 100% win rate, in fact the line below that line, from two weeks ago (last time I played Stars FR) is red. If I were that good I wouldn't be at $50NL. And I did add the disclaimer about BR and playing only what you can afford, I'm not trying to push him into something he isn't ready for.

I was just responding to the OP's complaint and agreeing about how in my experience penny stakes is often a crapshoot. If he's really a TAG (arguable since he apparently wasn't clear on the definition) and can possibly swing the BR, I think his chances are good at $10/$25/$50NL. Again, *if* he can swing the BR. That's all I'm sayin...

OP, listen to these guys over me.