what levels in poker does "bad" poker start to deteriorate?

Quick question for you.

What levels(stakes) in poker can you expect bad play to be less?

I know It still seems like I'm whining about micro limit stake poker but it's so hard especially in tournaments to ride out variance to get a good placed finished. I've finished first in SnG's before, still waiting for a good MTT result though. An example was the past couple of days, I cashed in some $0.25 SnG's so decided to try some $1.00 MTT's as well. I was doing well in a 5k guaranteed, 5000k entrants and down to the last 300 or so and I was placed around 15th. I was also particapting in some facebook and another $1.00 3k gurantee and doing ok in all. Within a matter 10minutes, I was out of them all which I think was due to bad beats, A,K i raised on the button got re-raised I flat called. Flopped a King and 2 low cards, I raised got re-raised all-in confident I had the best hand which I did, only to find (was a big stack player) he hit a 5 on the river so won with K,5. If I won i'd of been in top 3...

The point I'm getting at is the range people call with, it's so sick and I watch the higher buy-in games and replays of the final table 1million tournament and a raise is respected and a K,5 is an instant fold. They are then witting agaisn't a lesser range the top players I've noticed which seems somewhat easier. At micro levels you seem to be open to ANYTHING..

I just wonder what level do people start folding bad hands and not hope to get lucky in their $1.00 tournamnet buy-in because lets face it, a lot just play hoping to get lucky it's so dam hard...

From what I've seen watching Videos and "pros" playing I can seem to guess or put someone on a hand much easier at the higher levels and the suckouts are so much less....it just gets me mad the craziness of the low limits.

If you don't like variance, the solution is certainly NOT to move up. The higher you play the lower your edge gets over the competition and the more your results will depend on luck.

The only thing you can really do is give up on playing MTTs, the highest variance game of them all. Switch to STTs or better yet start playing cash games.

Why would you want less bad play?

Check me if I'm wrong, but playing with people who play bad poker is what a poker player wants.

BelgoSuisse said:

If you don't like variance, the solution is certainly NOT to move up. The higher you play the lower your edge gets over the competition and the more your results will depend on luck.

The only thing you can really do is give up on playing MTTs, the highest variance game of them all. Switch to STTs or better yet start playing cash games.

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I understand there is a lot of variance in MTT I was just saying the variance at micro limits is a lot more from what I've seen. I can imagine the edge at the higher limits are a lot lower, although the difference which is HUGE is the preflop all-in and multiple raises at lower limits is so much more meaning variance is a lot higher. An example was my kings was raised preflop and the normal procedure to re-raise, which I did and then got re-raised (3 callers) So i jsut went all-in and all called. Q,10 and 7'7s vs Kings, i hit trips where as the Q,10 made a straight. At the higher limits, a re-raise would say "Hey, I've got at least a poker pair and an all-in bet means I must have a top pair"

People don't see this and just call it, I see it all the time at higher levels people folding to re-raises all the time knowing they are beat

TheNoob said:

Why would you want less bad play?

Check me if I'm wrong, but playing with people who play bad poker is what a poker player wants.

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Hey...It's isn't because of that. Of course I want bad play, I was just asking when it stops because the variance in MTT's is high enough and the lower limits is a lot more variance meaning to pull in a "good" result seems a lot harder as your trying to second guess a much wider range.

Oh and by the way, it's just after hours of "hard" work to then lose an all-in when your massive favourite which is frustrating. At least in a cash game you can get it back, not in a tournament you have to wait for the next one and you're bound to take a bad beat during a tournament and it's usually when all your chips are at risk lol so it's like well, is there far to much luck involved at the micro limits?

It's like how often do your raises get respected in a micro limit MTT? Not very often.. So with that in mind, It makes you wonder, even when you'er a massive favorite you're for sure going to be sucked out at some point during a tournament, I just wonder if because of the added varience in micro limit MTT's, if this can be over turned with so many callers in the long run.

1: Big varience in MTT's (espically micro)
2: You're going to be sucked out at some point during any tournament unless you're very luck
3: Are the times your favourite and you take bad beats and going bust from a tournament going to be less enough to survive a tournament long enough unless you're lucky?

ramdeebam said:

the lower limits is a lot more variance

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that is not true

Move up to where they respect your variance????

So you would rather play in a game where it's much harder to get your money in favourite? People who say they would rather against better players really don't have a clue. What they fail to realise is that whilst they won't get called by T7o when they have AK is that they'll rarely find themselves in a better spot.

WVHillbilly said:

Move up to where they respect your variance????

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No..

If you read the post I say, respect your raise. For example if you watch the big games on pokerstars or any of the wcoop at the beginning of a tournament or even mid point. If someone on the button raises to try and steal, then are re-raised they will most of the time fold unless they are holding a decent hand.

People will fold 10's,jacks,queens if re-raised a few times preflop knowing they are probably beat. Micros, once they have raised and put money in they feel obliged to just call it. Or another example, if you re-raise someone, they will instant go all-in lol. There is no 3/4 bet sequence or trying to out play your opponent. It's all-in or nothing so yeah, the variance is much higher, you don't get a chance to fold a lot of the time it's a coin flip.

TheUndesirable said:

So you would rather play in a game where it's much harder to get your money in favourite? People who say they would rather against better players really don't have a clue. What they fail to realise is that whilst they won't get called by T7o when they have AK is that they'll rarely find themselves in a better spot.

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Well, I've played (which I class higher level) £1/£2 in a casino and you can read so much better and know if you're beat or not, micro's you can expect the most obseen cards to be turned over for some sick straight which would never of been called out of position at higher levels.

BelgoSuisse said:

that is not true

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Well, if you go of more people involved in a hand (which is definitely the case) It's not all that odd to have the whole table involved in a hand even after a raise preflop. Most of the hands which called are garbage and one will get lucky, this just doesn't seem to happen at the higher levels I'v watched so yeah with more people involved in a hand say at least twice as many as there would be at higher limits you're bound to get more variance..

ramdeebam said:

I understand there is a lot of variance in MTT I was just saying the variance at micro limits is a lot more from what I've seen. I can imagine the edge at the higher limits are a lot lower, although the difference which is HUGE is the preflop all-in and multiple raises at lower limits is so much more meaning variance is a lot higher. An example was my kings was raised preflop and the normal procedure to re-raise, which I did and then got re-raised (3 callers) So i jsut went all-in and all called. Q,10 and 7'7s vs Kings, i hit trips where as the Q,10 made a straight. At the higher limits, a re-raise would say "Hey, I've got at least a poker pair and an all-in bet means I must have a top pair"

People don't see this and just call it, I see it all the time at higher levels people folding to re-raises all the time knowing they are beat

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you are fixated on the result of individual hands, not long term profit. We've all run into these situations but over time your wins will exceed your losses. If you cannot think of poker in those terms you will not succeed. For all the times that you lose with KK to 84 you forget about the nice big pots you won either without a showdown or a to a smaller pair or set or whatever. Look up your numbers


Now if you point to the fact that this happens frequently then I would say you are not betting enough preflop. If you bet 3bb and get 3 or more callers then you need to bet more. If there is someone at your table who will call every raise you make then keep making your raises bigger until you are open shoving.

You want bad players, trust me. About 10 days ago I really started to target the loosest 2nl tables on Full Tilt.

Below are three tables, one my overall win rate with AA & KK, another with the losing hand amounts with AA & KK and my overall details since targeting the fish.

I'm not looking at the short term mate. The question wasn't about bad beats, it went off course really it was about at what levels does bad play stop? Like stakewise..

anyway again, going off track I understand in the long-term hands will show a profit that should do (not sure if they do in tournaments though)

ps: In cash games I'v actually made a lose more than any other hand with Aces and been dealt them around 40 times in total. Think I'm down over $10.00 from the micro stakes with Aces! Again that's going off track.

Nice stats though.

ramdeebam said:

Well, I've played (which I class higher level) £1/£2 in a casino

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That's microstakes too for a B&M casino, isn't it?

ramdeebam said:

ps: In cash games I'v actually made a lose more than any other hand with Aces and been dealt them around 40 times in total.

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ok, so you've played less than 10k hands total, which is a tiny tiny sample size and you have no clue whatsoever about poker variance. I get it now.

Fwiw, I've been dealt AA about 40 times so far this month.

ramdeebam said:

I'm not looking at the short term mate. The question wasn't about bad beats, it went off course really it was about at what levels does bad play stop? Like stakewise..

anyway again, going off track I understand in the long-term hands will show a profit that should do (not sure if they do in tournaments though)

ps: In cash games I'v actually made a lose more than any other hand with Aces and been dealt them around 40 times in total. Think I'm down over $10.00 from the micro stakes with Aces! Again that's going off track.

Nice stats though.

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Bad play never completely stops, but according to many pros 400NL is the point where you really need to hunt to find fish and have to come up with strategies that deal with primarily decent regs.

Variance is linked to win-rate.. the higher your win-rate the lower your variance. So if your complaint is varience at micros then that means your winrate is low and thus your skill advantage is small.

A decent micros winrate is around 7bb/100 but you have to factor in that ontop of that you pay about 6.5bb/100 in rake so your total winrate would be around 13.5bb/100

In the case of high stakes players a decent winrate is around 3bb/100 and rake probably only accounts for around 0.5bb/100 so your total winrate would be around 3.5bb/100 thus you would expect higher varience at higher stakes as your winrate is smaller and thus not able to absorb bad beats as well.

At micros the following is true.

Bluffs are rarer than you think. (people simply do not bluff enough to make snap calling your default line.)

Your fold equity is lower than you believe. (when you bet repping a hand and get a fold, dont pat yourself on the back too much for folding out a better hand.. chances are villian had a hand you beat anyway).

People call too much.. RIO is an important concept.

TPTK / Overpair should usually be played in a pot no bigger than 60bb

People who consider themselves fairly decent players play very spewy in 3bet pots. This is why people always run into sets. When a fish calls your 3bet its never with a hand that he could 4bet for value. When you bet the flop in a 3bet pot you usually bet too big, causing pot commitment issues in the turn. Fish call with PP because if they hit a set they think they will stack you. You will most likely 3bet a purely value range which coupled with the large bet size on the flop will mean you will end up paying off sets. If you hold AA, 3bet and get called, most of the time villian will not hold a hand that will call even a 1/3 pot sized bet. So if he dosent fold to that bet you are likely against a range that beats you, but have sufficiently lagre stacks that you should be able to notice that the passive guy is now taking a line that is most likely a hand that beats you.

Most people do not play back at you.. ever!

3bet ranges are tight!

and finally .. if you 3bet AA then cbet small, get called.. check through the turn and then villian leads out small on the river.. you can snap off his bet. However do not assume that when he shows up with 99 he has "turned his hand into a bluff" He is incorrectly value betting, believing his 99 to now be best as he believes you would have bet the turn with a hand like AA. People often see villian bet out here on the river and make the assumption that villian bluffs. He dosent, he puts you on a hand like AK and leads in his mind for value. Of course this is a mistake as the hands he beats would never call his bet.. but people are bad!

So getting it in with AA preflop is +EV but getting it in with AA postflop is usually -EV in a 3bet pot because even on a J 7 2 board you are essentially flipping. If villian has exactly AJ then you are ahead, if he has JQ he is unlikely to want to stack off. If you hold AA then there are 6 combos of AJ you beat. There are also 3 combos each of JJ 77 and 22 giving 9 combos that beat you. What about the 6 combos of QQ? Well put it like this.. if villian is uncomfortable about getting QQ in preflop against your range, why will he suddenly feel great about it postflop? The temptation is to include it in the combos you beat, but if villian plays QQ passively preflop, then he is more likely to play it passively postflop than a hand like AJ.. AJ has improved whereas QQ is the same hand being played against the same range.. if he felt it wasnt good enough to stack off with preflop then why does he decide its good to stack off with postflop? He will call you down but not lead.

So by keeping spur TPTK hands and over-pairs in smaller pots you extract value from lesser hands but are able to get away from the hand if villian starts raising postflop.

People often assume they would do better at higher stakes as fish make less mistakes preflop at higher stakes, but in reality this thought process usually implies that whilst you play well postflop and on the flop, you tend to make mistakes postflop which are vastly more costly that the preflop mistake made by the fish. (so who is the fish.. is it the guy who makes a 5bb preflop error or the guy who makes a 90bb error postflop?)

Stu Ungar ITT!!!

And judging by the length of your reply you've been in here a while.

Nice to see yo back.

WVHillbilly said:

Stu Ungar ITT!!!

And judging by the length of your reply you've been in here a while.

Nice to see yo back.

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LOL Thanks, nice to hear from you.

Was literally the first thread I clicked on and though I'd try and explain where I think people go wrong postflop with big pairs.

Of course most of what I think is geared towards fullring rather than 6max where you can stack off more liberally with big pairs.

I also have radical ideas about not charging flush draws on the turn against reasonably agro players because by charging the draw on the turn we define our range too much and prevent lesser hands bluffing the river when the draw misses... but I'm sure everyone will disagree!! lol

Stu_Ungar said:

LOL Thanks, nice to hear from you.

Was literally the first thread I clicked on and though I'd try and explain where I think people go wrong postflop with big pairs.

Of course most of what I think is geared towards fullring rather than 6max where you can stack off more liberally with big pairs.

I also have radical ideas about not charging flush draws on the turn against reasonably agro players because by charging the draw on the turn we define our range too much and prevent lesser hands bluffing the river when the draw misses... but I'm sure everyone will disagree!! lol

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That would certainly be very villain dependent. There are many players at smaller stakes, at least, who will not fold a FD on the turn no matter what. There are also players who will rarely/never bluff a missed draw on the river. Against both of those player types not betting the turn is criminal.

Also if your opponent is fairly agro you should expect him to raise your flop cbet with a FD most of the time.

WVHillbilly said:

That would certainly be very villain dependent. There are many players at smaller stakes, at least, who will not fold a FD on the turn no matter what. There are also players who will rarely/never bluff a missed draw on the river. Against both of those player types not betting the turn is criminal.

Also if your opponent is fairly agro you should expect him to raise your flop cbet with a FD most of the time.

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Well the reason is because an "bad thinking" villians range is much wider than FDs when we bet the turn we do so tyo charge his FDs but we also fold out his middling hands as we are repping a had which beats them. When we check trough on the turn, he then re-evaluates our range and will likely put us on the draw. So when it misses we extract value form a range of hands we usually folded out on the turn. When his draw bricks and he is on the FD, he is now more likely to bluff as we have under repped our own hand. From my experience of micros, the reason people do not bluff their bricked draws enough s that we have repped a big hand and also created a big pot. Villian usually believes he cant bluff as we will call. Think about some scenario where you rivered a set or 2pair and shoved.. you usually get called by someone who has raised the flop and turn. So if we want our opponent to make mistakes we have to create the conditions to let him make a mistake.

Against a passive opponent who will call a FD but never bluff / value bet the river incorrectly then we just bet the turn, but against an agressive opponent who will bluff a high % when we show weakness this should be a more EV play as 80% of the time the draw will brick and we pick off his bluffs. The 20% of the time it hits we actually save ourselves the money we would have bet on the turn. We can even call a % of those if we also believes he bluffs when the FD comes in (although our check through should lead him to believe that FDs are in our range too so he should be bluffing far less in this spot).

The final aspect is that we avoid the difficult decision faced should he check-shove the turn. Here we are against a range of sets and FDs. He fuly expects us to bet the turn so we should see unusually large river bets made with his sets trying to regain the missed money on the turn.. so if he shoves the river we can usually fold knowing the strength of his hand.

All villian dependent but there are a lot of vilians this would work well with at micros

BelgoSuisse said:

ok, so you've played less than 10k hands total, which is a tiny tiny sample size and you have no clue whatsoever about poker variance. I get it now.

Fwiw, I've been dealt AA about 40 times so far this month.

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22k in cash games actually..

So what you're saying is that the variance isn't more if more people play in a hand? How does that one work?

Evidently your big hand is going to bust much more often than it should if there are more people in the hand...riiiight?...Thats a guess for someone without variance knowledge as you say. Any dummy can work that one out, or not as it seems!

So in actual fact, what you're saying is that your win rate over a course of say for example one million hands that the variance will equal out if in a full ring game 9 people play the hand for a million hands rather than say, 2/3 players playing in every hand for 1 million hands? As for a very inexperienced player I say your wrong, it doesn't take much maths to work that the more people involved in a hand means more variance lol...

If I am wrong then please feel free to explain how and why and make me look an idiot, I don't mind so long as I learn from it.

I was only saying the FX who posted his stats that my Aces had lost a lot. Wasn't a whine either and I might not have the experience yourself has at the tables, however if your saying the variance is the same regardless of how many are in a hand then I have to disagree purely based on percentages and the more amount of hands involved means the better hands stand less chance of winning.

Wow - nice posts stu, very helpful many thanks sir.

ramdeebam said:

22k in cash games actually..

So what you're saying is that the variance isn't more if more people play in a hand? How does that one work?

So in actual fact, what you're saying is that your win rate over a course of say for example one million hands that the variance will equal out if in a full ring game 9 people play the hand for a million hands rather than say, 2/3 players playing in every hand for 1 million hands?

I was only saying the FX who posted his stats that my Aces had lost a lot. Wasn't a whine either and I might not have the experience yourself has at the tables, however if your saying the variance is the same regardless of how many are in a hand then I have to disagree..

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Variance isnt really higher in a MW pot.

Your hand (AA) is less likely to win in a MW pot and even less likely to win when played postflop in a MW pot.

Therefore you need to take lines with this in mind.

It is more likely that you will encouter a big hand postflop in a MW pot than a HU pot, but either way, if you are mindlessly stacking off without a thought as to what the villians range is in this situation then that in itself is not varience. As I pointed out in my earlier post, you are not in a good situation postflop with a hand that suffers from RIO when you create a big pot. You are in an even worse situation when this pot is MW; this is not variance.

ramdeebam said:

Wow - nice posts stu, very helpful many thanks sir.

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No probs

I really like your explanation Stu. I've often felt the same way the OP has at the micro tables. I don't necessarily think the play is as bad as I would hope/expect it to be. Honestly, tonight it's just been lots of bad beats. Those that were in the hand with me weren't completely unjustified in being there, but just ended up catching cards on the turn or river. Unfortunately now I'm down to 0.50 and will have to attempt to claw my way back (which is going to be really tough because the swings are massive.)