Memoirs of a beginner NL micro student.

Greetings fellow pokerians,

I have been studying pretty much full-time poker over the last few weeks and wanted to share my learnings even though i've not had a vast amount of application experience.

I began with SNGs and was doing ok with them. Finishing ITM at least 50% of the time and breaking even over about 100 games. I wanted a full time career out of playing them but heard that cash is the way forward for that kind of munnys. An FTR'r pointed me in the right direction and off i went, hardly playing poker at all, just reading and taking notes and eventually dipping my toe so to speak.

Que the sound of chinese bamboo flutes and me standing in the woods wearing comfortable clothing, poised sharply with a pair of playing cards clasped between my toes. A poker jedi's training is far from easy.

Anyways...

Stuff i've learned about micro stakes (insert corrections or advice/insults):

- micro stakes players or 'fish' as it were almost NEVER fold top pair good kicker. Sometimes they never fold top pair shit kicker.
- they don't watch the board often and just watch their hand
- while watching their hand they don't think how they COULD be beat i.e. shit... i've got AJ and there's an ace on the board!... all in? well, i can't possibly be beat...i call. Shit... he had AK (thanks fishy)
- be careful, they will often limp in with great hands, some of them don't raise and if they do it's a min raise.
- a micro fish doesn't think about how to get as much value for his hand, he merely thinks: how can i win this pot. I've seen a mirco fish check AA all the way down to the river.
- i used to fear big stacks in poker as i worried they would bully me. One of the BIGGEST things i have learned thus far is implied odds. In NL you play for stacks. If i sit down at a table and notice that most players have a shorter stack than me, i find another table. FISH WILL GO ALL IN WITH TPGK WHEN YOU HAVE A SET.
- fish don't think: hmmm, i can't play this hand, over the long term i will lose money and it will be a leak, i should fold it. They instead think: 0.02c to call... pfff... i can call two cents, so what if i have 84o.

One more thing that i will get told off for:

I WILL limp AA in early position. Fish think that if you limped you can't have much. I recently did that and faced a raise and a call ahead of me. I then 3bet them to fatten the pot. Shoving all of your chips against someone pre flop with AA is +EV no? Post flop i tripped my aces and raised someone's bet all in. They called with AJ. I doubled up

Cheers for all the help and encouragement FTR'rs

I don't respond to alot of posts really, just observe, and this is ONE thing I observed. Seems quite a contradiction.

Originally Posted by wonderland

- be careful, they["microstakes fish"] will often limp in with great hands
- a micro fish doesn't think about how to get as much value for his hand

I WILL limp AA in early position.

sure, ok. I shall explain further.

they limp in just because they seem to have this idea (and i remember back to when i was brand new) that you only need to complete the betting circle and get to the flop.

My AA limp is very deliberate. Because i want them to think i'm weak BECAUSE fish are very loose at calling/going all in.

I won't limp AK but they sometimes will.

Originally Posted by wonderland

sure, ok. I shall explain further.

they limp in just because they seem to have this idea (and i remember back to when i was brand new) that you only need to complete the betting circle and get to the flop.

My AA limp is very deliberate. Because i want them to think i'm weak BECAUSE fish are very loose at calling/going all in.

I won't limp AK but they sometimes will.

Limping AA in early position isn't an atrocious play, and can very well work out nicely often. However, there are pitfalls you must examine first.
1) Are you able to get away from AA postflop when the situation/board is sour and not looking good? If not then don't limp as this will happen more often.

2) If individuals aren't isolating the limpers with raises, and instead are just limping behind then you are in a bad spot limping AA. Reason being is your probably gonna end up in a multiway limped pot oop with AA, and that is not good. You need to be almost certain there will be a raise for you to do this, so that you can 3b it and get the hand HUs.

3) If this is the only hand you are limp/raising with, then any reasonable player will be able to read this like a book and toss all but their best hands. Maybe most at the microstakes don't pay attention to limp/raises, but it's heavily weighted towards AA,KK,AK imo.

4) You say they they are very loose at calling/going all in. Well this is another contradiction here. If a player is loose at calling then you should be betting your good hands because you except them to be calling with worse quite often. Well AA is the best hand, so you should be betting it so they can call loosely, or go allin over it.

so ummm... where do you play?!

Any reasonable player? well... there often aren't any reasonable players. Thus far i tend to fin that .1/.2 players aren't watching you closely.

I think it's really important to remember that the psychology of the 50/100 nl game is different to micro stakes where people just aren't as observant, but...

Another point: how often is AA going to come up? twice in one game TOPS. If it happens a second time i guess they would know by then what happened the last time you 3bet and act with more restraint. But there's every chance that the next time you get AA you're perhaps later and people HAVE already raised before you. Now then... i would not just call a riase where UTG raised and everyone else called and we have 4 people in the pot. Then i would 3b to narrow the field down to probably 2.

I am aware that as good as AA is, i don't want more than 2 people in with me.

I guess i'm talking about one game where AA comes up once, which is still a long shot, let alone more than once. I don't play KK the same way btw because any micro fish with A3 can have you beat. I'm a lot more careful.

Well I think you are wrong if think that NO players at 2nl/5nl are observant. While there aren't good players per se, because if they are they wouldn't be playing there, there are players with good habits and a nice foundation that just haven't the BR yet to move up. And while there probably aren't as many "regs" at micros as other limits, there are some. And my guess is not many of them are heavily multitabling so there is a chance they pick up on it and it will hurt you later. I'm not totally against the play at micros, but more micro players are passive so alot of times you will get a multiway hand doing this, and if you can't fold AA postflop when the situation no longer looks good then you are in for some heartache.

I think you should be very careful with limping big pairs. It's likely that what you gain in any deception you gain will be more than canceled out by the value you lose when you play them for a limp instead of a raise.

Well the regs might know this line to begin with. I just tied it in NL10, someone limped UTG, I limp behind and a TAG raises behind. Limper calls, I 3b and get two folds :/

I guess the regs at NL10 know this line

Originally Posted by iopq

Well the regs might know this line to begin with. I just tied it in NL10, someone limped UTG, I limp behind and a TAG raises behind. Limper calls, I 3b and get two folds :/

I guess the regs at NL10 know this line

Anyone who's read PNLHE knows this line....

at 10nl limp/re-raise PF screams AA/KK... so unless your vil is smart enough to do it with something else, a fold would be correct....

Originally Posted by wonderland

- micro stakes players or 'fish' as it were almost NEVER fold top pair good kicker. Sometimes they never fold top pair shit kicker.
- they don't watch the board often and just watch their hand
- while watching their hand they don't think how they COULD be beat i.e. shit... i've got AJ and there's an ace on the board!... all in? well, i can't possibly be beat...i call. Shit... he had AK (thanks fishy)
- be careful, they will often limp in with great hands, some of them don't raise and if they do it's a min raise.
- a micro fish doesn't think about how to get as much value for his hand, he merely thinks: how can i win this pot. I've seen a mirco fish check AA all the way down to the river.
- i used to fear big stacks in poker as i worried they would bully me. One of the BIGGEST things i have learned thus far is implied odds. In NL you play for stacks. If i sit down at a table and notice that most players have a shorter stack than me, i find another table. FISH WILL GO ALL IN WITH TPGK WHEN YOU HAVE A SET.
- fish don't think: hmmm, i can't play this hand, over the long term i will lose money and it will be a leak, i should fold it. They instead think: 0.02c to call... pfff... i can call two cents, so what if i have 84o.

nice list.

Now start raising/3-betting your big pairs, play some hands, win, move up, repeat...

It's also worth noting that sometimes you just get a feel for your table. A few hands to see who's going all-in with what, showing down what, raising what. If i see a decent PFR i watch that guy like a hawk with the notes panel open hoping to see what he considers raise worthy. Most of the time it's ace rag/king rag.

I want to see a table where every fucker is limping, every other fucker is min raising and people are calling because they've hit middle pair.

My issue, however, has been that at such tables i feel very nervous about a PFR because the buggers all call! So i do admit that i tend to limp with SCs and PP. I take a deep breath if i get AK. I kick myself for doing it but it's hard when you're playing people who are so unpredictable.

If i do hit, i'm still reeeeally nervous when they bet back. I think, fuck, they have a bigger set... *close eyes*... call... whu? they had a pair? and they were raising my large bets?? with one fuckin PAIR? notes panel!

It's a funny game micro stakes. I guess... my point might be that i don't play TOP form with them... i just figure out a way to play the player, which means breaking some rules sometimes. Now i can't tell if i've stumbled upon an advanced concept or i'm just playing bad.

Originally Posted by wonderland

Now i can't tell if i've stumbled upon an advanced concept or i'm just playing bad.

probably this, no offence intended. The worse the player the harder the reads the more abc you should play

sorry, just to clarify.

Are you saying, the worse the player, the harder the read?

and so i should play more ABC poker?

cheers

Originally Posted by wonderland

and so i should play more ABC poker?

Funny you say this, 'cause I ask myself this exact same question EVERY day.

With a big pait like that you have to be very careful and have a lagtard willing to raise with weak to marginal holdings when limpers are there... Otherwise as noted, you can easily go broke with AA as "fish" also do not let go of str8 and flush draws...

I guess my point was that if you can get all your chips in with AA, hypothetically 100% of the time, you will win significantly more than you'll lose.

It's a long term thing.

Or perhaps i'm wrong?

But i would imagine that AA is favourite to win most of the time... infact i just checked it in pokerstove and against the top 20% of hands it's still about 85% favourite.

What do you think?

Originally Posted by wonderland

sorry, just to clarify.

Are you saying, the worse the player, the harder the read?

and so i should play more ABC poker?

cheers

The bold prompted me to share an idea I pulled out of my ass in IRC a few nights ago when explaining something to someone:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...ea-t76662.html

Just read that.

I like the idea of poker being a series of questions that if you get right you make money.

It also seems that most of the questions in poker are answered in this fashion:

"... it depends on the villain."

I was brewing a theory that the most important things you need to know in any poker game is who you're playing.

That last link proposed pretty much that: if you don't know people's ranges, the Q9 example is just a fold.

Am i warm?