Micro-Cash Games

Aim to have a constant +bb/100 average? Or aim to build a stack size pot and double up..
what are your strategies for cash games? regs and newbies welcome to post.

I'm not really aiming towards either, just take the opportunities as they come

What did you decide on in the end? FR or 6max? And how's it going so far?

haha joker
and I still havent got a roll yet, atm I'm a uni student, and I'm waiting on my grant.. they owe me a grand at the moment and I get more in january.. so I'm waiting for that to actually start my roll.

I'm thinking FR, easier to multitable and fish at these levels have no concept of position so it should be easier to take their money in the long run.

Still planning on working on tightening up, will probably be my biggest leak haha.

BB/100. The longterm is all that matters in poker.

Poker is constant flux, don't worry about what to do in what position and look at a statistical chart. Measure your villains, look at their stacks, find your spots. Got a weak loose player calling in early position and a reg raising in MP, drop the hammer in CO IF you have reads on their play. Observe, observe, observe; constant evaluating villains, ask yourself questions and base play on results of those questions.

When first starting out in the micros with less than 100,000 hands to go by, don't aim for either. Just aim for making the right decision in every hand, improving your game, and forget about the monetary results.

If you focus on your winrate too much at the beginning (or ever, really), you will probably end up like this guy: http://www.cardschat.com/showpost1745490-post1996.html

If you're playing at the lowest levels, don't otherthink and overplay. Straight forward ABC works fine. Don't go crazy with a pair of aces and 6 kicker convincing yourself that the other guy "must" be just trying to push you around.

Keep the pot small with mediocre hands and play aggressively when you have a strong hand.

Patience is very important in poker. All it takes to double up is one hand.

And don't worry about what percentage you should be playing and cbetting and all of that stuff. Play tight aggressive.

As you get more experience, you can start adjusting to opponents. But in the beginning, if there is an aggro guy who rarely ever folds on your immediate left, switch tables. Plenty of passive players around to exploit.

Yeah I do/and will adjust, just wondering whether to aim to get stacks in or consistently take down a series of small pots. I do try not to be results oriented, but I do want to be in the black in the long run lol.
Overbets vs calling stations? Btw, what are the typical stats of a calling station? I'm going to try out PT3 when I start and maybe buy a HUD when I'm high enough in limits..

LOL, that guy. Guess if you can't handle the swings you shouldn't be playing poker.. and lol at the guy limp calling multi-way with KK. Fish of the day

What should I be looking to stack with, sets and better? Is TPTK plausible at 5/10nl? Since people tend to jam with TPSK.. because if I fold in that situation then that makes me bluffable in their eyes and they might adjust, if not slightly?
Yeah thats another problem of mine, game selection. Do I aim to get the loose passive tables that have like 5000 people to every flop, or the tight passive tables where I can just abuse nits blinds.

Well, fx was a good guy who I think had too much going on outside of poker to be able to keep his poker play objective. I wouldn't mock others until you've experienced the wrong end of a 20 buy-in swing, as unless you've experienced it you really don't know how you would react. Most don't do so well with it.

The reason why I linked you there was because fx concerned himself too much over his winrate, imo. Given typical variance, even over a million hands or so your winrate could fluctuate a fair amount (+/- 3bb/100) with no actual reflection on your true ability.

http://www.evplusplus.com/poker_tool...nce_simulator/

Getting back to your questions:

You should be doing both, depending on the situation of course. To aim for one and ignoring the other means you are not maximizing your opportunities and profits.

Calling stations have large gaps between their VPIP and PFR, and low aggression frequency. At FR, numbers like 35/10 or so often indicate a loose passive calling station.

The PT3 60-day trial is a very good way to start. When I had a bankroll of $120 or so I made a move from 2nl to 5nl and started my PT3 trial period. 60 days later, my trial ran out and I was playing 10nl on a $500 bankroll. It was easy to purchase the micro version of PT3 at that point and still be plenty rolled for the levels I was at.

It of course depends on the situation, but generally at 10nl against unknowns, I'm happy to stack with top two or better given a dry-ish or drawing board. Getting 100bb stacks or more in with TPTK is usually a recipe for a depleted bankroll, particularly at FR. This is of course just in general against unknowns -- obviously things change once you have some history with your opponents. Depending on who you are playing, TPTK is sometimes instafold and sometimes instashove.


Let them bluff. Aggressive donkeyfish bluffing against my made nut hand makes me happy.

Just play and see what you are more comfortable with. Both types can be profitable. Nitty tables are generally lower per-hand profit, but with less variance. Loose tables are obviously going to be swingier, but generally have better profit potentials in the micros since there are so many spewy fish.

[quote] Well, fx was a good guy who I think had too much going on outside of poker to be able to keep his poker play objective. I wouldn't mock others until you've experienced the wrong end of a 20 buy-in swing, as unless you've experienced it you really don't know how you would react. Most don't do so well with it.

The reason why I linked you there was because fx concerned himself too much over his winrate, imo. Given typical variance, even over a million hands or so your winrate could fluctuate a fair amount (+/- 3bb/100) with no actual reflection on your true ability.

http://www.evplusplus.com/poker_tool...nce_simulator/ Oh I'm not mocking him, I'm mocking the guy playing so passively with KK, the other guy played the hand fine.. nothing he can do there really. And I know win-rates shouldn't have that much effect, but don't you rate your skill level compared to other players on average at that limit by your win rate?

Well thanks, this has been really useful. Last question (I think): amount of buy ins before you move up? I know you need to be comfortable and have a consistent win rate etc.. but on average? 20+ or 25+? ..and how many hands at a level consist of a decent enough sample.

[quote=Campbell92;1824797]See, comparing win rate differences of maybe +/- 5bb/100 at sample sizes less than 100,000 hands means very little. Even at 1,000,000 hands and more there is a lot of natural variance in win rates. I know people love to have metrics showing just how much they dominate at a skill-based game like poker, but you do have to also take into account that luck plays a big part of the game as well.

This is part of what drove fx crazy -- the fact that his winrate was a meandering 1-2bb/100, and where he had heard that to be a "good" player was to have a winrate of 5+bb/100. He was measuring his self-worth and his poker play solely by his winrate. Especially when talking about a gap of only 3bb/100 or so, it's silly to think that winrate is only based on skill and that luck has no influence on it.

Now, I'm not saying that there aren't a very select few people out there who could probably slaughter the game and have a consistent 20bb+/100 winrate. I know these people do exist, and the style they play and the careful selection of their tables helps eliminate some of the variance that most people experience.

The thing about winrate is that it is not results-independent. I know everyone sensible about poker always preaches to not focus on monetary results. Well, how can you do that if you hold your winrate as the sum of all your poker play? Perhaps if you calculated a Sklansky bucks winrate -- now that would be something to go by. Since I know of no automated way to do it, the best way to evaluate your poker play is to go through it hand by hand. This is also impossible, so the next best thing is to go through some select hands you remember having doubts about and figuring out if you made the right play or not.

If you go on 2p2 or other forums like that, there will be people flexing their e-peen all over the place, saying look at this winrate, blah blah blah. I'll just tell you now that if you can avoid that trap and just focus on playing poker with a goal to keep bettering yourself, you will probably have a much better time than if you are constantly comparing yourself against others using a statistic that has a good amount of luck built into its calculation.

My general rule at the micros has been to have at least 20 buy ins for the level I'm at, and if I drop below 20 then I drop levels. I also like to have 25 buyins before moving up. So if I have been playing 25nl and my bankroll drops to $499, then I drop down to 10nl until I can get it back up to $625 to take another crack at 25nl. Even playing the best poker in your life, you can drop 4-5 buyins in a single session pretty easily, particularly if you are multitabling. It's always good to have buffer room to help control the swings and limit the amount of tilt you experience after a crappy session, week, or month.

As for hands... there is never enough to be a decent sample. Up and downswings can easily last tens of thousands of hands. I think around 40-50,000 hands you can sort of get a picture, or at least have enough hands to look through and analyze things you are doing right and wrong. It's probably not until you are ready to move up to the next level that you get a clear idea of where you really stood with your current level.

Your threshold for stacking off is dependent on your opponent. What I've found at micros (4NL) is that there really aren't that much playing back at you. If they shove, they usually have it UNLESS they are the terrible ones or you've played incredibly nitty. The ones who will shove with a pair of Ks and a T kicker usually have already telegraphed their aggro nature before that so you can plan accordingly.

Beware if the villain calls two barrels from you then suddenly goes all in on the river. Usually that's a slowplayed monster at the micros.

Loose tables are the easiest to win since you can control the size the pot so you can win big when you have it and lose little when you lose.

Don't concern yourself with win rate until you have enough hands under your belt to have a reasonable idea of what your rate actually is. How many this takes can vary with your style, your opponents' styles, FR vs 6max, etc. as well as the normal swings of running good and bad. So just try to make the best decisions you can while all of these regress toward the mean.

And I'll second what was said about playing ABC. There's no need to get fancy. Micro players typically have an "I play my cards" mentality. It is possible to outplay them quite often. However, you tend to lose more when you try and it doesn't work than you win when it does work, so in terms of profitability, the breakeven is above half the time, possibly well above. It's not easy to achieve this, especially as a relative beginner.

As for loose vs passive tables, loose ones are more profitable if you're an above-average player, but you can also lose more if you're not. Passive tables tend to be easier to play, and while they can be less profitable, can also be lower variance. Ideally, you should aim to be capable of beating both, but starting where you feel less discomfort is probably a good idea.

Was just about to write before you commented AJ, sorry I took so long (uni book review - Ace on the river )

Mr Monkey, that's a good rule actually, I'm deffo gonna stick to that when I start. At what level do I NEED a HUD though? And can you explain sklanksy bucks? I've heard of it before but honestly I never researched it. Is it comparable to Galfonds G-bucks?

And last question, should I value bet a lot bigger at micros? Since they shouldn't really adjust.. would it be +ev? or is the overbet only ever used for polarising.

Probably not until you get to 10NL.

BUT having said that, I got one when I was playing 2NL (now I'm playing 5NL) and it's really useful and helped me improve a lot. It's only a one off $45 for the microstakes version, which is good up to and including 25NL. Well worth it imo.

Well, I think around 25nl at Full Tilt before it was shutdown was sort of the cutoff where I began feeling naked without a HUD on, multitabling or not. Part of that could be though that I had grown so accustomed to it. I think if you are keeping simultaneous tables at 4 or under and taking very detailed notes you can actually get by and be playing profitable poker without a HUD at almost any level 50nl or under. However, having a HUD still can help you optimize your play and gain a bit of an edge, as well as being much easier to review your history. Every edge you can get in poker is important.

I had to look into G-Bucks, but yes, Sklansky Bucks are the basis for the concept of G-Bucks. G-Bucks takes Sklansky Bucks a bit further and applies it to hand ranges rather than just the actual hands turned over. G-Bucks is a great concept, and reviewing your hands this way will certainly make you a better player. For anyone interested:

http://www.bluffmagazine.com/magazine/'G-Bucks'-Conceptualizing-Money-Matters.-Phil-Galfond-985.htm

I don't think there are specific rules for value betting more or less -- you need to figure out what works against specific opponents and maximize what you can get from them. That said, in general at the micros and against a complete unknown you can tend to assume they are bad more often than not and will be more willing to stay in a hand with increasingly bad odds to do so. So yes, you need to still analyze your opponents when you can, but in general you can get more value from large value bets and overbets in the micros.

This. Spend a lot of your time reviewing and studying while playing the micros. Putting it the study time will help you move up so that you can play at levels where you can actually make a profit.