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Sorry about the length  ...
"Micro Stakes" ($2NL-$25NL) retrospective
I've just started my transition from "micro stakes" ($2NL-$25NL) to "small stakes" ($50NL-$200NL) and thought it would be appropriate to summarize what I believe to be some of the more common reasons why players aren't succeeding at these stakes. And, if $50NL kicks sand in my face so much that it makes me want to come crying back, I'll have a good point of reference when I return  I'm no expert, so take these with a grain of salt, but I have had some success and the experience is fresh on my mind, so if you're not getting the results you want at the micros, you may want to consider if you're guilty of one or more of these:
1) You're playing too many tables and don't table select well. Micro stakes are the quintessential learning phase of poker. Most players shouldn't be or don't aspire to spend the rest of their poker career grinding out a bankroll 16 to 20 tabling $10NL. The simple fact is that unless you have been blessed with some extraordinary ability that 99% of the rest of us don't have, you cannot play much more than 4 to 6 tables and truly be playing poker in the sense of getting reads on your players, noting the action, knowing stack sizes, knowing table position, making moves, and the like. Once you add too many tables, you start to play like a robot - I will play these cards in these positions, I will call or raise this in that position, or I'll continue/fold this flop or that flop. That's no way to play poker. You will rarely ever be able to bluff, steal, call down light, pick up timing tells, or make a thin value bet with 2nd pair weak kicker because (A) You know it's the best hand and (B) You know villain will call.
Yes, you can probably come up with a simple formula to play 16 tables and "beat" $10NL, but what does that get you? The point of this is to learn, get better, and graduate to higher stakes. You're not learning poker. You're not getting better. Your true, possible win-rate is no where NEAR what it could be. You're not preparing yourself to move up. Against any average thinking player, that style is HIGHLY exploitable. As long as I have two or three fish, I love 16 tabling robots at my table - I steal from them ALL the time like it's a way of life. Then, when I get a near nut hand and know they have just a big hand, I can usually extract maximum value because they play THOSE hands predictably as well. They have zero imagination at the table and are ABC ... at best.
Adding more tables is a process of calibration where you try to maximize your win rate WHILE still playing poker. I played 1 table for most of $2NL before playing with 2 tables towards the end. I played with 2 tables for most of $5 before playing with 3 tables towards the end. I played with 3 tables for most of $10 before playing with 4 tables towards the end. I played with 4 tables for most of $25 and towards the end, I never really played 5 except for times when I knew I was about to leave a table and wanted to have a good replacement ready. I am planning to move to 5 tables soon, but it's hard to imagine I'll ever get it past 6 unless I get REALLY proficient because I look at a lot of things when I play. You shouldn't be thinking about playing with huge number of tables until you've maxed out how high you can get AND have calibrated to that number. If you can't get out of the micros ... read on and hopefully more of these tips will help.
Just as important as playing the right number of tables is selecting the best ones to play at. I personally like tables that have a lot of players see the flop and players loose enough to pay me off when I hit. I prefer as many fish as I can get and as few regulars as I can avoid - not because I'm scared of them, but I prefer easy money to less easy money and always maximizing my EV. Maybe your style prefers something different, but figure out what players you want to see at your table and try to find tables that complement that. Playing at bad tables when good ones are available is akin to voluntarily giving yourself one hole card instead of two ... maybe not THAT bad, but still bad because you're just handicapping yourself. Poker is about giving yourself edges, not taking them away.
2) You don't follow bankroll management. I constantly read posts about players taking shots, wanting to take shots, and then inevitably complaining about their failed shot. Most of these lines are linked by one common thread: they didn't follow bankroll management. Most commonly, players move up without enough buy-ins OR they don't heed a prudent 5% of their entire bankroll one day stop loss. I already posted a lengthy thought about bankr0ll management and why you should follow it, so I won't regurgitate it again. But, as it relates to succeeding at the micros, if you don't have the discipline to stick to bankroll management and treat the chips as chips, you're much less likely to succeed because you won't have the discipline to make good decisions and the money in your bankroll will eventually if not immediately have a negative affect on your play. When it comes to bankroll management, if you don't have 30 buy-ins before you jump up to the next stake, have 40, not 20.
3) You tilt too much and believe in downswings. I think it was Barry Greenstein who said that 90% of the money won or lost on the poker table is done through tilt. I've said it before, others have said it, too, but it bears repeating. Downswings are not real. They are a random occurrence in the past and have no bearing on the future as it relates to luck. Yet, I read countless posts of players blaming their results on variance or bad luck going so far to say that they are "due" for a heater. Some even ask for advice on how to get out of a downswing. That thought process is absurd EXCEPT for the real life negative affect it has on your game by believing it. Imagine flipping a coin 1000 times in a row where you win a dollar for heads and have to pay a dollar for tails. Suppose from flip numbers 300 to 311 in that sample you flipped tails 12 times in a row - in poker terms, that would represent your "downswing". Here's the important part: Flip # 312 still has a 50/50 chance of being heads or tails. Those previous 12 flips have no bearing on what will happen next. Chance has no memory. The truth is that when you think you are in a "downswing", you are most likely suffering some variance, but also not playing optimally. It is this lack of optimal play that gives the appearance that "downswings" are real, but it is actually the player through tilt and ignorance that gave it life. If a player continues to play well, there is no such thing as a being in a "downswing" - you only would have suffered a random "downswing" in the past. But, many players have trouble playing optimally during a "downswing" because they superstitiously think, "I better not re-raise my Kings, because I'll just just lose against aces" or "I have to call here because there's no way he could have out flopped me 5 hands in a row" or "I've got top set, but runner runner flush probably hit this loose villain the way I'm running, so I'll just check the river". You may justify to yourself that you're just unlucky and hitting the top part of villains' ranges, but ask yourself if it's possible that it is YOU who has made the error in not correctly identifying those ranges?
If you play enough hands, every player will have the same amount of coolers and bad beats. But, where the good players excel in this regard is that they try to play and maintain their best game when things aren't going well. They don't blame their long term results or try to predict their short term future on what has happened in the past. Other players less skilled in this area WILL blame their results on this. They will quantify and package it in a nice wrapped package, red bow, and slap the label "downswing" on it. Because of that, they distract themselves from what is actually going on - tilt and bad play. It's been said by several other pros before, but most of the time a player is in a downswing, they aren't playing their best. Micro or beginning players, maybe even more so than higher stakes players, need to feel validated and confident and "downswings" can be soul crushing. But, if you can overcome this psychological hurdle, you'll be ahead of the vast majority of your competition and out of the micros before you know it.
If nothing else, just know that proper strategy is only part of the battle and that minimizing tilt is also a big part the keeps many players down.
4) You worry more with losing less than winning more. There are two sides to the +EV coin. Minimize what you give to villains and maximize what villains give to you. It seems like most players focus way more on minimizing their losses than maximizing their wins. This is evident by most hand histories being ones they lost and "how could I get away from this hand"? I always laugh to myself when I get a decent hand that I want to get to showdown and villain will put a small min bet on the flop, a 2x min bet on the turn, and a 4x min bet on the river and they turn over a set. Congratulations, I had a good hand, you had a monster hand, and you went for 7bb's. I'll give that to them every time. When I lose that little on their monsters, they didn't really win. I won. But, when I have a monster and get their stack, they think they are just "unlucky".
No limit hold'em at its core is about stacking your opponent. Granted, this situation doesn't come up as often as we'd like and it more often devolves into a battle for the blinds. But, if you have the best hand and know it, you should ALWAYS try to figure out how to get their stack. If you can't get their stack because they won't put in all their money with just 2nd pair or top pair weak kicker, then you always want to get the most possible. Mis-sizing just one river value bet that would have been called for 8bb's is financially EV the same as having your big blind stolen 8 orbits. Extracting maximum value is an art form, yet most players seem content just to win. Don't settle. Treat winning more money just as important as losing less.
5) You put FPS before the fundamentals. FPS is fancy play syndrome and I read posts all the time of players struggling in the micros who are guilty of it. The most common FPS I see is the concept of 3 betting. Pre UIGEA, you rarely heard 3 betting mentioned when talking about no limit and now no one will shut up about it. I play full ring, so maybe 3 betting legitimately is more important in the micros @ 6 max, although I have my doubts, but I firmly believe that 3 betting at the micros is highly overrated @ full ring cash games and something you shouldn't be very worried with. My pre-flop game is pretty simple. I get Aces and Kings all-in before the flop if villains will let me. I raise other premium hands like AK, QQ for value and some others for deception or to steal. If I get 3 bet and like the price to play versus their range, I play. If not, I fold. Don't get fancy. In fact, I recently saw a video with "Bottomset" mentoring a student who had 3bet% in his HUD during $10NL games and "Bottomset" flatly said to take that stat off because it wouldn't be useful @ these stakes. In a thread on a message board asking what concepts would players like to see discussed in full ring videos, many asked about 3 betting, and poker pro and coach Sean Nolan replied, "I'm fairly confident that the vast majority of you guys are vesting way too much interest into three bet pots."
There's many other advanced concepts you probably shouldn't worry about much in the micros: bluffs, check raise bluffs, floats, delayed floats, limp re-raises, and "balancing your range" just to name a few. That's not to say you can't creep some of those in your game if all else is going well and you have a solid grasp of the fundamentals, but don't get hung up on advanced concepts when you're struggling at the micros. Focus on the fundamentals like position, relative hand strength, value betting, hand reading, board texture, note taking, and the like. Put villains on ranges. Guess villain holdings @ showdown. One of my proudest moments over thousands of hands was in $5NL during a hand I had already folded, before showdown, I said out loud of one villain, "He's got pocket Kings and one of them is the king of hearts" and I was right. Don't be afraid to try new things and experiment, but realize the simpler concepts will beat all bad players.
6) You're a lazy robot who wants everything handed to you on a silver platter. Ok, maybe that was harsh, but poker is about problem solving and figuring out puzzles. If you don't recognize that and embrace it, you're not going to get far. I see a lot of players not interested in the theory or asking questions to understand why or what if? When things go wrong, they go from an eager student of the game to "woe is me" looking to blame their situation on anything but themselves or just sulk. I am usually motivated to study and play poker when I am winning and even MORE when I'm losing. Mediocre players want a simple system they can follow and any questions they might ask, they want one simple answer to ALWAYS do in that instance whereas the real answer to just about any poker question is "it depends". Even with all the resources available in books, on forums, and in audio & video, I'd guess the overwhelming majority of players aren't taking full advantage. Just because you tell someone position is important doesn't mean they will do it, use it correctly, or they understand why. Plus they will have NO CLUE when to go off book for a given hand. I've been in situations where I've correctly folded KK pre-flop in cash games. I've correctly raised 72o, too. I've done a thousand things that look classically incorrect, but profitable because I got reads and thought outside of the box in that moment. These situations don't come up all the time and I'm armed with the fundamentals I understand are correct and profitable most of the time but I'm also CONSTANTLY looking to solve the puzzle of THIS table or THIS hand against THIS villain to make it profitable by any means necessary. One of the most prevailing qualities you see of the most successful players is creativity, imagination, and ingenuity @ table - again, they may not have to use it most of the time, but they can when the need to. Putting in the study time off the table, putting in the hands at the table, and embracing the challenge for information are hallmarks for success. You should be rigid enough to apply fundamentals most of the time, but fluid enough to know when not to, and savvy enough to know why each method was successful or at least smart enough to learn from your mistakes and improve for next time if it wasn't successful. Remember that this task of reflection and improvement isn't easy because poker is hard. The GAME of poker is deceptive. Poker will reward you for making a bad play and convince you it was the right play. Poker will punish you for making a good play and convince you it was the wrong play. Just like your opponents, poker will bluff you. How well will you read the game?
Poker is only profitable to those who have an edge. Do you have an edge? What is it? How are you using it to make money? It's all a big puzzle connected together in a rich tapestry. If there was one easy answer or method, everyone would be doing it. Since there isn't, what will you do differently to stand out in positive, +EV way? 
If you're struggling in the micros, hopefully following these tips will help you find your way.
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How High Can You Get?
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Originally Posted by daven
, K
, 3
, 9
(couldn't remember off the bat lol) 
