Playing at Micro Stakes

I have been playing 2NL on GGPoker for a few weeks now and I am just not moving forward, however, I am still in positive. My bankroll is just not getting to 30BI for 5NL. I play 4 tables with loose aggressive style but I am not sure if that's the right strategy. Any suggestions?

It's difficult to find a microstakes room that is easily beatable imo due to the high rake everywhere aswell as players improving across the board you need to put in considerable work to beat the penny stakes nowadays.. Just keep plugging away, db analysis, theory work, educational content, HH review etc. I will say that the preflop rake is likely a consideration on GG aswell as the extremely high rake your in a spot where even hs players would have a reduced WR and thus could experience lengthy BE/losing samples! GL G

I would cut down the number of tables you are playing on so you can pay attention to your opponents more and concentrate. This will allow you to take notes on players and begin to exploit their mistakes. Maybe you are playing too loose and need to tighten up. Once you can start beating 1 or tables a t a time then you should add a third and a forth. The more tables you play the less time you have to focus on individual players and what they are doing.

iamKK said:

I have been playing 2NL on GGPoker for a few weeks now and I am just not moving forward, however, I am still in positive. My bankroll is just not getting to 30BI for 5NL. I play 4 tables with loose aggressive style but I am not sure if that's the right strategy. Any suggestions?

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You need to specify. How many hands are we talking about? And at what winrate? How big are the swings you are experiencing etc.

We try to simplify things as humans, but we really need to focus a lot on details in poker. So terms like playing "loose aggresive" , don't really help, since that could be literally anything above a 20/15. Especially since we are only talking preflop tendecys.

I'm assuming you have some sort of trackingsofware, and if not I highly recomend you get one. Play a decent sample say maybe 50k hands and then dissect your game and look were you loose money. 50k hands is not really a lot, but as you just started out, your game has probably some massive leaks as is wich shouldn't be hard to spot even assuming there is still a lot of variance involved.

Dhendrixon said:

I would cut down the number of tables you are playing on so you can pay attention to your opponents more and concentrate. This will allow you to take notes on players and begin to exploit their mistakes. Maybe you are playing too loose and need to tighten up. Once you can start beating 1 or tables a t a time then you should add a third and a forth. The more tables you play the less time you have to focus on individual players and what they are doing.

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I have done exactly that, I started with 1 table and moved up slowly as I made progress. Now I am able to play 4 tables. I did start to tighten up as more tables are added.

LevySystem said:

You need to specify. How many hands are we talking about? And at what winrate? How big are the swings you are experiencing etc.

We try to simplify things as humans, but we really need to focus a lot on details in poker. So terms like playing "loose aggresive" , don't really help, since that could be literally anything above a 20/15. Especially since we are only talking preflop tendecys.

I'm assuming you have some sort of trackingsofware, and if not I highly recomend you get one. Play a decent sample say maybe 50k hands and then dissect your game and look were you loose money. 50k hands is not really a lot, but as you just started out, your game has probably some massive leaks as is wich shouldn't be hard to spot even assuming there is still a lot of variance involved.

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I have a 13BB/100 win rate for 12k hand sample. On my good days I win 3-5BI and during my downswing I lose 4-8BI which usually last for 2-3days. By loose aggressive I mean 30/25 but after playing at 4 tables I have around 25/20.

My main problem is that I usually have a big downswing and then I recover and make up a bit and this repeats again.

Also I know it won’t be a good idea to bluff people who can’t let go of their hands so does this mean you should play ABC Poker in micro stakes?

Your main problem is, that you are expecting fast results. But a 13BB/100 winrate is actually pretty good and might not even be completely sustainable in the long run. So the simple fact is just, that "bankroll building" is a slow process, which typically require way more than 2 weeks and 12k hands at each limit. So if you are getting bored by grinding for pennies at 2NL, then maybe just top up the account to 150$ and move to 5NL. Or even to 300$ and move to 10NL. While it can make sense to begin at 2NL to limit your risk, there is not a law against starting higher

iamKK said:

I have a 13BB/100 win rate for 12k hand sample. On my good days I win 3-5BI and during my downswing I lose 4-8BI which usually last for 2-3days. By loose aggressive I mean 30/25 but after playing at 4 tables I have around 25/20.

My main problem is that I usually have a big downswing and then I recover and make up a bit and this repeats again.

Also I know it won’t be a good idea to bluff people who can’t let go of their hands so does this mean you should play ABC Poker in micro stakes?

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The way winrates work in poker due to the variance involved could be described as follows:
Imagine a linear Funktion from start to point x. That point x is your true winrate. Now what you will see as "results" is another Funktion oscilating around the first one. The shorter the sample you are running, the wider the possible gap between both Funktions. So the up and downs you see on your graphs over short samplesizes are just variance. It's the overall trend of that oscilating graph you are after.

Hence as fundiver stated I'd say you want to relax and keep going. 13bb over 12k is nothing out of the line, but it's also unlikely that you are a massive whale

I wouldn't advice you to change your overall game just based on your current information. Since you probably do a lot of things right. Maybe not fully understanding why, but that's the theorie part behind that. Wich I wouldnt neglect.

Try to exclude possible errors in applying the strategy first. For instance: Is your preflop game on point? Meaning do you play positionally aware? What about stacksizes, sizing generally.. Do you just play your ranges or are you adapting given specific situations/ opponents? Etc.

Also generally about downswings: what happens most of the time when people hit downswings is they end up playing worse than they would if they were running breakeven or up in a session.
So try and find strategies to play as non-resultsorientated as possible.

LevySystem said:

The way winrates work in poker due to the variance involved could be described as follows:
Imagine a linear Funktion from start to point x. That point x is your true winrate. Now what you will see as "results" is another Funktion oscilating around the first one. The shorter the sample you are running, the wider the possible gap between both Funktions. So the up and downs you see on your graphs over short samplesizes are just variance. It's the overall trend of that oscilating graph you are after.

Hence as fundiver stated I'd say you want to relax and keep going. 13bb over 12k is nothing out of the line, but it's also unlikely that you are a massive whale

I wouldn't advice you to change your overall game just based on your current information. Since you probably do a lot of things right. Maybe not fully understanding why, but that's the theorie part behind that. Wich I wouldnt neglect.

Try to exclude possible errors in applying the strategy first. For instance: Is your preflop game on point? Meaning do you play positionally aware? What about stacksizes, sizing generally.. Do you just play your ranges or are you adapting given specific situations/ opponents? Etc.

Also generally about downswings: what happens most of the time when people hit downswings is they end up playing worse than they would if they were running breakeven or up in a session.
So try and find strategies to play as non-resultsorientated as possible.

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It’s hard not to play result orientated when I really want to move up in stakes. I set myself a goal where I need to increase my bankroll to a X amount in X day(s)/week(s). I feel like if I don’t set myself these goals then I am not moving anywhere because I don’t just play for fun, I want to improve and move up. And you are right downswings do change how I play but I do try not to get too out of control because tilt is a big problem for me. I have been working on managing my tilt lately.

I do play based on players and really aware of position, stack size, and raise size when I am facing a 3-bet. I do realize that my post flop play can be improved because there are times when I feel like I could have gotten more value even with marginal hands.

I really don’t use any poker tools mostly because I am not sure what would be best for me. What do you think would be best for a intermediate level player?

fundiver199 said:

Your main problem is, that you are expecting fast results. But a 13BB/100 winrate is actually pretty good and might not even be completely sustainable in the long run. So the simple fact is just, that "bankroll building" is a slow process, which typically require way more than 2 weeks and 12k hands at each limit. So if you are getting bored by grinding for pennies at 2NL, then maybe just top up the account to 150$ and move to 5NL. Or even to 300$ and move to 10NL. While it can make sense to begin at 2NL to limit your risk, there is not a law against starting higher

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You definitely are right that bankroll building is a slow process but at 2NL I was expecting it to be easy enough to move up within 2 weeks. I am considering to top up my account so I don’t really have to play at the lowest stake for too long.

iamKK said:

It’s hard not to play result orientated when I really want to move up in stakes. I set myself a goal where I need to increase my bankroll to a X amount in X day(s)/week(s). I feel like if I don’t set myself these goals then I am not moving anywhere because I don’t just play for fun, I want to improve and move up. And you are right downswings do change how I play but I do try not to get too out of control because tilt is a big problem for me. I have been working on managing my tilt lately.

I do play based on players and really aware of position, stack size, and raise size when I am facing a 3-bet. I do realize that my post flop play can be improved because there are times when I feel like I could have gotten more value even with marginal hands.

I really don’t use any poker tools mostly because I am not sure what would be best for me. What do you think would be best for a intermediate level player?

Click to expand...

Since you are not fully in control over the outcome of your grind, especially short-term, I would say alter the goal to something like play x amount of hours/ hands til deadline. Because you could very well hit an upswing on the next say 10k hands giving you the roll to move up, but having to move down imidiately because of variance.

As for tools I think some sort of databank program like Holdem Manager or Poker Tracker is essential. Hand 2 Note is also pretty decent, but it's not as user-friendly I feel. You will need to check if they run on GG- poker though, as I think they are not allowing Huds. But you can still use them for DB porpouses. I think the way it works is you can request your handhistories daily or weekly.