yes, microstakes are worth it.
if you're an inexperienced player, just starting, or maybe you want to work your way up the stakes, the micros is a great place to start for a number of reasons:
- it helps you get down the basic fundamentals
- you go through negative/positive variance
- you experience bad beats, learn how you react (negatively or positively) to them, and you can work on how to get over them
- you can experiment with different concepts like opening wider in late position, adjusting strategies with different stack sizes at different stages of an mtt, hand reading, board reading, etc, etc etc.
and you can do all that at a very low price. honestly, i would rather play and lose 500x $1 mtts as i'm learn and improve than i would to play and lose 500x $20 mtts as i learn and improve.
as someone that has been playing for a while, i play the microstakes mtts because i'm a casual player and i enjoy playing the lower stakes. in fact, i have more fun playing $1 mtts than i did when i tried playing $11. and it wasn't because of the skill level gap between the two buy-ins, it's because i get the same excitement playing and running deep in a $1 mtt as i do an $11 mtt, but i can play 10x as more mtts with the lower buy-in.
now, i'm in no way telling anyone what to do with their money but i have a big belief that, if you aren't able to beat the worst players at the lowest levels, you aren't going to beat the better players at the higher levels. it just doesn't work that way for majority of players. so, if you're having trouble with the micros and it's players, then there is room for improvement on your part. also, keep in mind that 'beating' micros or any level isn't about winning every mtt or every hand you play, it's long term profiting. if you play .25 mtts and you have a 15% itm, 20% roi, and you're making $25 a month in profits, you're beating it. mtts is a fun game where the best players bust out of more games than they cash, but they still have huge profits overall. so keep in mind that winning in mtts isn't just taking 1st place in an mtt, but also profiting in the long run. would you rather be the person that never wins an mtt but has $500 in profit after 1000x $1 mtts or would you rather be the person that has won an mtt but is still -$500 after playing 1000x $1 mtts?
as far as dealing with the maniacs in early stages, just fold majority of your hands and get it in when you have a huge equity edge. it's so simple and you don't need to play a ton of hands to do well in a mtt, especially at the start of a game that's going to last 2-3+ hours to finish. honestly, who cares if your table jams every hand for the first 2 blind levels and you have to fold, say, 50 hands in a row? how much did folding 50 hands and giving up your blinds affect your stack size? probably very little. if you started with 100 bbs, you might be down to 80-90 big blinds, which is still playable. has your chance of winning the mtt decreased any? no. in fact, it's increased because there are now less players. who cares if you're now 99/400 (out of 600 starting) players because you had to fold a ton of hands at the start. you're still in it, you still have the chance to do well.
and when you get your big hands, don't be afraid to play for you stack. don't be afraid to lose against maniac players that will call of with 27o when you aa for 100 bbs. the things is, you're going to lose with big hand sometimes. the more players you're up against, the more often you'll lose, but you also win a lot more often than they do. and not only that, you're earning so much in value when you get in with your big hands. in the end, results don't matter. you lose with aces an an mtt, oh well. it's variance, it's bad beat (if you see it like that), and it's going to happen a lot when you play. what's important isn't the fact that your aces lost, it's if you made the right decision and 99.9% of the time, getting it in with aces is never a bad decision. yeah, it sucks and it's hard to keep that mentality when you get it in good and lose with aces, but it's a long term game and you have to think about how your decision affects your results in 100 games, 1000 games, 10k games, etc.
