My best cash game strat.

Hello
I am a quite successful micro-stakes MTT player. I've started w poker maybe a month ago and so far I've gone form 20usd bankroll to 85usd bankroll.

I've tried playing cash games as well but got absolutely crushed.
Id love to try again opening only top 20% of my hands and call maybe only 15%.
Play passively w with a call or fold mentality.

Do you think its overall a good idea?

I got into poker playing cash games, and I do think, its the best way to learn poker. You get your fundamentals hammered down, and then you can always change to tournaments later or mix it up. On average tournament players moving to cash games face much larger difficulties than the other way around.

As for strategy the best advice for beginners is to play tight and aggressive (TAG). For 6-max you should be looking to play around 20% of your hands and for full ring even less. And you should mostly play them in an aggressive way. You do need to sometimes defend your big blind by calling, but other than that you should mainly fold or enter the pot with a raise or reraise.

Sure this is an over simplification, since there are situations, where it is best to just call in position or even limp behind other limpers. But the natural tendency of poker players is to do this way to much, so if you start from the other corner and never do it, you will be closer to, where you need to be in the end.

Also after you flop you should look to be doing more betting and raising than calling. Since you will mostly have the initiative from preflop, you should put in a C-bet at least 60% of the time to keep the betting lead and try to take it down. Turns and river are then more situational, but you should still be looking to bet at least 50% of the time.

if you are new then start better with tournaments. in a cash game it's hard to climb, especially with decent money ...never rush the most important !!!:evil:

Try to look for opening charts. Because it depends on position what to open (depends what tipe of player after you) so your opening range (depending on position and oponents) can vary from 6% to 100%. Same with caling range it depends on oponents opening range, size, postflop skills, agresivnes and so on.

BartosPoker said:

Hello
I am a quite successful micro-stakes MTT player. I've started w poker maybe a month ago and so far I've gone form 20usd bankroll to 85usd bankroll.

I've tried playing cash games as well but got absolutely crushed.
Id love to try again opening only top 20% of my hands and call maybe only 15%.
Play passively w with a call or fold mentality.

Do you think its overall a good idea?

Click to expand...

I honestly think you should read Nathan Williams free book on Crushing the Microstakes. He has played millions of hands over more than 10 years and is very knowledgeable. Also sign up to his newsletter, also free. Lots of really good tips. I hope things go well for you.

Am happy for you that you grew your bankroll as a newbie! Keep us posted on the following months to come - 1x a month update would be very nice.

BartosPoker said:

Hello
I am a quite successful micro-stakes MTT player. I've started w poker maybe a month ago and so far I've gone form 20usd bankroll to 85usd bankroll.

I've tried playing cash games as well but got absolutely crushed.
Id love to try again opening only top 20% of my hands and call maybe only 15%.
Play passively w with a call or fold mentality.

Do you think its overall a good idea?

Click to expand...

I think that you really need to examine your starting hand requirements BY POSITION. This is far more important than just opening x percentage of hands or y percentage of hands. Open an extremely small percentage in the first position and increase this percentage as your POSITION IMPROVES. Also be aware of how many players are in the pot before you open and do two things. 1) Open less hands as the number of limpers increases and 2) Open to a larger size as the number of limpers already in increase. I would advise to open in a cash game for 4 bb + 1bb for each limper already in the pot when you open. Thus if there are 3 limpers, open for 7 bb, but do so with a tighter opening range than if there were no limpers.