Hi,

I'm a losing poker player online and recently I've decided to take the game a bit more seriously and try to improve by playing microstakes 0.01, 0.02.

I tracked all my big winning and losing hands across about 1500 hands. I would have won money across that session, but for 2 large pots.

The first one I tried to bluff with a reraise on the flop with ace high and a pretty dry board; villain had trip 6's.

The second one the flop was JJK, and I had AK. Got into a raising battle and went all-in; called by QJ. I raised quite heavily pre-flop and was called so I was surprised to see QJ. I thought AQ, QQ, 10 10, A10 were much more likely than a jack hand.

I'm not sure I did too much wrong in these hands. The first hand was risky but I felt there were a lot of hands that would have folded (AK, AQ, AJ, A10, QK, QJ, Q10.. basically anything that isn't a pocket pair). My assumption is that players will go all-in with hands like QQ and AQ and A10 in the 2nd hand. Perhaps this assumption is false and I should respect players a little bit more in these situations?

Comment and discuss if interested!

I think that it depends on the situation of the player when he is already at risk for having few chips it is obvious that you play in a more open way but if he is a player with a big stack he will call with anything from any position already if someone with a decent stacks call with A-4 all in AK is taking a risk you can win per 70% of the time you lose but win 30% of times

Basically it sounds like you need to choose your bluffs more carefully and in order to do that, consider how you got into the situation of playing vs. a set of 6s and Js. What may seem like a "heavy" raise to you is not necessarily a substantial raise to knock micro players off of their pairs and Broadway connectors.

TLDR: Sample size needs to be at min 120k to decant variance.

with online play i woudl say that you have to expect anything. people will play some garbage hands and hit big on the flops. i've seen it happen more that once.

Some micro players will play any hand to showdown, they don't care about odds, they just want to try to hit and when they have a pair they hold on to it no matter what.

at this level of rates... 0.1-0.2... you need to respect everyone..)))

Originally Posted by playinggameswithu

TLDR: Sample size needs to be at min 120k to decant variance.

Is there a reason for suggesting 120k hands is the threshold to account for variance? Not challenging you, I'm curious.

Originally Posted by NoPlace4U

Some micro players will play any hand to showdown, they don't care about odds, they just want to try to hit and when they have a pair they hold on to it no matter what.

Thought process of a micro player:

Preflop - fingers crossed...
Flop - Bingo!

Originally Posted by puzzlefish

Basically it sounds like you need to choose your bluffs more carefully and in order to do that, consider how you got into the situation of playing vs. a set of 6s and Js. What may seem like a "heavy" raise to you is not necessarily a substantial raise to knock micro players off of their pairs and Broadway connectors.

Thanks for taking time to respond, what you say makes a lot of sense.

For the AK QJ hand they raised to 0.06, I raised to 0.22 preflop. I've found some success with this raise size for premium hands with players calling with trash then folding the flop when they miss, so perhaps I should expect to bring a lot of jack hands for that size, and count them in the possible range post-flop at micro. In that case folding post flop to villain strength isn't out of the question depending on price, and raising more pre-flop is an option to try and knock out most marginal hands.

I think I'd probably play the AK hand the same next time, potentially considering a nitty fold post-flop and the bluff hand probably warranted one c-bet, if that. Spot on with choosing bluff spots carefully

I respect when someone raises;that's a good information during the hand.The raise means a certain range such as AK AQ AJ etc..

It would also help to pay attention to how each person plays. If the person is a calling station, seeing just about any 2 cards to the flop and going to the river with any pair, never worth it to bluff, as 99.999% of the time, it won't work. If the person is normally a really tight player you can typically bluff, but once they start raising back, it might just be best to dump the hand.

It is somewhat of a waste to bluff in micro stakes. You are probably going to lose chips that way in the long run unless you are very very good at it. Their weakness is they call too much. If that is the case, then bluffing doesn't sound like a good strategy. Now once you get a huge stack built up you may have the opposite and everyone is afraid to play with you and folds when you bet because they know where their chips are going to go. Then it's time to adjust and start bluffing with small bets. If they don't work on the first few tries give up, they aren't likely to change their style at that limit.

Be careful about how you gather your statistics. You can't say that all your losses are from a certain pot or two just because the amount happens to be where you lost a bunch. Look at your wins too. Perhaps you won more in similar situations than you lost even though you did lose a big pot or two that would have made you a winner otherwise and if you adjust your strategy to avoid the loss you may also styfle wins that would require the same thinking. Also if you don't tilt and adjust to your table image a loss in 1 hand can't really be calculated as you may gain some of that back when they pay you off more than they normally would on another hand. It could even be worth 10-100 times that in the future or more. (though not likely it will be remembered at those stakes).

Originally Posted by Cardsfromcod

Is there a reason for suggesting 120k hands is the threshold to account for variance? Not challenging you, I'm curious.



Thought process of a micro player:

Preflop - fingers crossed...
Flop - Bingo!



Thanks for taking time to respond, what you say makes a lot of sense.

For the AK QJ hand they raised to 0.06, I raised to 0.22 preflop. I've found some success with this raise size for premium hands with players calling with trash then folding the flop when they miss, so perhaps I should expect to bring a lot of jack hands for that size, and count them in the possible range post-flop at micro. In that case folding post flop to villain strength isn't out of the question depending on price, and raising more pre-flop is an option to try and knock out most marginal hands.

I think I'd probably play the AK hand the same next time, potentially considering a nitty fold post-flop and the bluff hand probably warranted one c-bet, if that. Spot on with choosing bluff spots carefully

There was a Artificial Intelligence challenge between "top" HU poker players against a University bot. 3 players against same bot for 120K hands. Since the study needs to be scientific and level out luck which can be done in a cash game were each hand is independent they used 120k hand sample size to play. I understood from that that a minimum sample size needs to be 120k hands takes couple months.