My advice to small rollers

If you have less $100 and dream big, here is my advice to you:

Dump holdem. Find another form of poker that appeals to you and study it as hard as you did holdem. There are tons of people out there who can play HE, and against someone who knows even basic strategies, a good player's edge is frustratingly small.

But the other forms of poker out there? At the lowest limits, they are incredibly, incredibly soft. There are people who honestly don't know how to play poker, there are people who know how to play holdem and are trying to play the same strategies, and there are people who are just bored and want to try something different. You can skin all of them at the lowest limits. Obviously, as you move up it gets tougher, but at the early stages of bankroll building, this is your best bet I think.

I've gone from grinding out NL10 to just absolutely crushing Razz and PLO8.
It's challenging and fun, and most important profitable.

Great Advice Kyle, but what about the people have >$100? My bankroll is at around $400 from playing NLHE, but it is not increasing as fast as I would like. Should I be testing out other new games as well?

seem to play better myself playing omaha h/l,or even 5 card draw.of course not to many sites have 5 card,but it is fun to play something different.

I certainly encourage you to try it, but I'm not as sure of it as I am the lowest limits.. I've been watching the 2/4 and 3/6 razz games, and they seem quite a bit stronger than the .50/1 at PokerStars. In PL08, there seems to be a much smaller difference. I think it seems to be pretty weak up through .25/50, which is about as far as I've looked.

MY 2 cents:

The H/L omaha games on full tilt are a good source of BR. I built 4 dollars into 90+ lately, before going broke after getting too cocky and playing the game heads up.

The games are very soft. I played limit,pot and no limit at mostly .10/.25, these games are very beatable with only basic knowledge of the game and a good sense as to poker in general.

I have been looking to improve in other games, such as PLO8, but for now I want to make holdem my strongest game and show consistent money at it, then move on to other games.

i've actually thought about doing this, i play pretty good, and i know how to play pretty much every game Full Tilt has to offer, but i dont know all the ins and outs of it haha, but i like hold 'em alot too but i think if i wanna build the bankroll maybe i should actually give it a shot.

Yep, microlimit PLO8 on PS is a goldmine. The lower limit Razz is too. What I like to do is focus on those and then jump back to some NL SNGs and MTTs then back to PLO8 again.

Any experience on Bodog with alternate games? If the Bodoggies are even softer than they can be at Hold 'Em, I'll give it a try!

If you don't mind mindless play and can be patient, always try Razz. The play is as straightforward as it can get, and through five of the seven cards (and sometimes beyond) you will often know for certain if you are ahead or behind. Who wouldn't kill for that in holdem?

HORSE on pokerstars is the softest game I've ever seen at the level it is. It's full of clueless people who will call all the way down with top pair in stud. Since the .50/1 is the lowest limit they offer, you can find all the awful players playing there. Coupled with that and the fact that it's limit, and you will see showdown practically every hand. Just sit back and wait for hands and you'll get paid off 90% of the time. I have no idea what I'm doing with stud strategy and am relatively clueless in Omaha, limit hold 'em, and razz. Yet somehow I'm one of the better players I guess or maybe I've just been lucky. It's also an FPP gold mine. Since it's limit, around half of the pots reach $8, and you get an FPP. From someone getting FPPs at the rate of the 5c/10c NLHE tables, this is huge for me. I just cleared the echecks bonus that I was hoping to have cleared by the end of February.

i disagree completely

You are right. I should phrase it differently:

The good player's edge is frustratingly hard to get as compared to an average player. A single misstep in a session is often the difference between a profit and a loss.

That's another good point: I could be wrong, but I believe anted games accrue points and clear bonuses much faster than blind games.

micros stakes NLHE can easily be beaten. Im playing a $100 Bankroll and started 2 weeks ago at 1c/2c Full Ring. I played 5k hands with a VP$IP of 25% and showed $30 profit. I looked through PT stats and narrowed my opening range, i also called less and either folded hands like AJo preflop or reraised, i also played my position alot more. I then played a further 7k hands where my VP$IP was 17% and have shown a $63 profit. For both expieriments i was playing on 12-16 tables.

Am yet to try it out at higer limits but I think that they key to beatinf micro stakes ring games is the preflop edge you have my playing tighter than your opponents. Playing 17-20% of hands while they play 25-30% of hands and having position on opponets is important. If you only play hands preflop where you are the aggressor you gain another edge as well because your opponents with basic knowledge think you have AA if you raise 50BB preflop which can generate alot of dead money and more flod equity.

On saying that i also play the 1c/2c PLO8 tables for fun sometimes and just play for the nuts and am running $57 profit after 6600 hands.

I think what you are getting at is that to gain an edge in Holdem you need to be a better player than you did say a few years or even months ago as players are learning profitable strategies you have to adjust your game to stay ahead of the competition.

I think another good low lvl technique is to play bodog beginner sit and go. for 10 man table top 5 spots get at least money back and usually you can be in the top 5 without even playing any hands.

i found it 10 times easier to make money 2 years ago, when the sites were not overrun by players....since poker has become so popular, it seems that lucky donks rule the world of poker....its ashame, but i think its true....

i was thinking about the best solution to avoid donks, but whether you play low limit or high limit, they seem to be everywhere.....

jupi

if you think you want to avoid donks, you have a fundamentally flawed understanding of where one's profit in poker comes from

If your good at hold em' and can back it up with your BR then you will overcome variance. Simply put

The same should go for bad beats. If you're opponent has to get thunder in a bottle to suckout with 2 outs, then you've got him right where you want him.

You want to get bad beats, because it means that you're dominating your opponents, but sometimes they do catch that lucky card or two.

Let me rephrase.

I highly doubt anyone wants bad beats, but when they happen, you should know that you got your money in with the best of it. You should know that when they do suck out you were able to manipulate them into getting all their money in with virtually no outs, which is pretty damn good IMO.

The Term "Bad Beat" is to loosely used IMO. Alot of the times in holdem you will be a 60/40 or maybe a 70/30 chance of winning. Loosing in these situations isnt reall that bad of a beat and often players give their opponents the odds to win the 60/40's and 70/30s by not betting big enough. IMO a Bad Beat is when you have him dominated all in such as you have AA he has KK and a K hits the board, or you have say AQ and he has KQ the flop is QQ4 and all the chips go in, turn is a K.

^^^^^^
This.

This type of bad beat is what I am talking about and I am sure what flint is talking about. We both referred to a bad beat as an opponent nailing a 2 outer.

I love Horse cause I'm good at all 5 games and the fact that people are pretty generous in Limit poker, especially Razz and Omaha.

i was referring to a more general aspect of players who feel that if they are even slightly ahead they should win the hand everytime. I think that this is what jupite was reffering to when he talked about there being more badbeats now than two years ago.

people create an illusion through selective memory of only remembering the times they loose with hands and not the time they win with hands.

Anyway getting back to the topic of this thread i have come to the conclusion that NLHE micro stakes has alot of donks but also has more good players than the other games. The reason people find other games easier to beat is because the ratio of good players to bad ones is lower. So in holdem for every good player (or at least a plyer who understands TAG style and tries to play that way) there is 2 or 3 bad ones whereas in other games such as PLO8 there is 5+ bad players to every good player thus making it more likely that you will play bad players in PLO8 than in holdem so you win more $ faster.

^In short, the more bad players, the more profitable a game.

good players : bad players

NLHE = 1:3

PLO8 = 1:6