Master Micro Stakes Poker

admin 4/14/2022 14/04/22

Become a master of micro stakes online poker In this course, you'll learn everything you need to know to crush online micro stakes poker. I will teach you how a tight-aggressive approach to the game that yields tons of profits through a fundamental understanding of poker strategy and tactics. Master Fundamental Poker Concepts Necessary to Crush the Micro Stakes Learn the Importance of Aggressive Poker, Position, Equity, Expected Value and Much More Understand Essential Poker HUD Stats and Player Types That'll Allow You to Outplay Your Opponents Master Pre-Flop Strategies Necessary to Beat the Micro Stakes. Poker Masterclass. Master micro-stakes from 2NL to 25NL with expert info on mechanics, tactics and overcoming your brain’s default state. This is a 10-hour masterclass, recorded by multi-million dollar poker pro Charlie Carrel. Uniquely, the course combines.

Poker at the micro stakes is where most of us start our cash game journey. It is important to start creating good habits now that will carry over once you move on to higher stakes. While the micros can be beaten without too much effort, there are a few pitfalls that you need to look out for if you want to maximize your chance of success at the lowest stakes.

The purpose of this article is to give beginners and intermediate players the top 10 keys to beating the micro-stakes. Each item on my list has been gleaned from personal experience having played millions of hands at 25NL and below. My hope is that I give you the best chance possible of crushing the games and gaining invaluable experience that will serve you well as you move up through the micros and beyond.

1. Avoid Complicated Spots

When playing for nickels and dimes online at the micro stakes, it’s not the time to try and impress your poker buddies with fancy plays made in marginal spots. This is a recipe for slower than necessary progress when trying to beat a bunch of beginners and recreational players. There will be plenty of opportunities to push small edges after you move up to mid-stakes, and beyond, where the games are tougher and easy money is much harder to find.

Instead, at the micro-stakes, you should be looking to make your money by overwhelming your opponents with a precise following of the fundamentals. By avoiding complicated spots, you can be assured that you are making money from the collective mistakes of the other players. Just grind out an exploitative ABC game by playing lots of pots in position and profit will flow into your bankroll. As a rule, relentlessly value bet your big hands and don’t overplay your marginal ones.

2. Play Exploitative Poker

One of the concepts that you must master to win at poker is to understand that poker is a people game. At the micro-stakes, there is a large variety of player types that can be exploited in one way or another. Learning to profile your opponents and label them is a key skill to learn and will allow you to make quick and targeted adjustments while you play.

Beyond your core strategy, forget about game theory optimal play. Save that kind of thinking for when you are playing high stakes. When the vast majority of your opponents are playing sub-optimally, you instead want to take advantage of those leaks in order to maximize profit. While “GTO” play would certainly win versus bad players, it simply isn’t going to let you maximize your win-rate.

3. Don’t Battle Micro-Stakes Regs

I recommend that you learn a bit about the various levels of thinking, but don’t get too caught up in trying to battle the best players at each stake. Instead, as a rule, avoid complicated spots against them and just look for their leaks the same way you do against the fish. In general, you want to make sure you play on your terms when involved in a hand with them. In other words, always play to your strengths and make the regs be at a disadvantage when involved in a hand with you.

I know, I know…. easier said than done, right? Even so, the fact that you are even thinking about such things right now gives you an inherent advantage. The best place to start is with good note-taking. Beyond that, just focus on your decision-making process and you will be fine.

4. Bet The Strength Of Your Hand

Once you are playing small stakes, 50NL to 100NL, there will be a need to start considering balance as part of your overall strategy. There will be regulars who will hone in on any weaknesses in your game and exploit you relentlessly. However, for the most part, you don’t have to worry about getting exploited at the micro-stakes. Even the “better” players at the table will mostly be playing a level one strategy that is based mostly on their own cards.

In general, you can get away with just making big bets with big hands and small bets with marginal hands. It really doesn’t take an acute understanding of post-flop equity to beat your typical micro-stakes table. Most of your opponents won’t be paying much attention to what anyone else is doing and, even if they are, won’t often know how to use that information effectively.

5. Follow Charts While You Learn

All top players know exactly what they will do in 99% of the situations they face. They then adjust their lines based on the table dynamic and game flow considerations. You need to get to the point where most of the game becomes automatic for you. It really helps you have a core strategy to fall back on.

While you are learning, you will often become lost and have no clue what to do. As a temporary learning tool, it’s a good idea to make a chart that includes all of your “vacuum” ranges and lines that you use when you are completely readless. It’s not as hard as you think, here is a downloadable template (shown below) for you to fill in the blanks. Also, if you want to know how it works, I created a free basic strategy that uses similar charts which will give you a good starting point.

Pre-Flop and Post-Flop Charts Template

6. Set a Bankroll Management Plan and Stick to It

This might be the most important tip of all since it’s hard to play poker without any money. Beginners will have goals that are much different than experienced players who are just trying to rebuild a bankroll fast. However, no matter your level, if you don’t follow good bankroll management principles you are in for a lot of frustration. I recommend that you have at least 30 buy-ins for a cash game stake and 100 buy-ins for tournaments.

It will be really tempting to try to chase losses if you happen to run bad for an extended period of time, especially if you are playing for what may seem like “insignificant” amounts of money. Even so, at the micros, you are going to be building habits that will last for your entire poker career. If you tempt fate with your risk of ruin now, you will probably do so later on when you are playing pots that are hundreds or thousands of dollars.

7. More Volume, Less Study at the Micro-Stakes

Once you have a basic understanding of poker strategy, I recommend practicing what you have learned for thousands of hands before shifting your focus back to learning. Besides, just knowing the fundamentals and having a rudimentary understanding of how commitment works should allow you to beat up through 25NL on most poker sites. This will give you time to develop some personality in your game and force you to solve situations that will seem very complicated at first.

You will make mistakes along the way, no doubt. Therefore, the only type of study that I recommend at the micros is that you take notes or keep a journal as you play. Write down anything that you are unclear on and save hand histories where you had major problems or were completely lost. Post those questions on one of the major poker forums and get into discussions on how to navigate those situations for a couple of hours each week. Don’t substitute playing time to post, only do it outside of your playing schedule.

Other than that, I advocate that you wait until you get to 50NL before you start putting in more significant study time. At that point, you will probably want to play and study at a 50/50 ratio or and maybe even get some coaching. But for now, your goal for the 25NL and below should be to get out of 25NL and below.

8. No Slow Playing at the Micros

This is one of the things that I see all of the time in my students, and it drives me crazy. They are involved in a pot with your typical micro-stakes calling station and flop a huge hand. Instead of betting and/or raising, they check and call, hoping that their opponent will “catch up” a bit and commit to the pot on the turn or river. While this will definitely work in winning pots, it is also a great way to ensure that you win the least amount possible.

No matter what stake you play, one of the biggest sins is to not get enough value with the top of your range when playing in a loose poker dynamic. As a rule, you should always err on the side of betting on the larger side when unsure how to proceed. Unless you have a really good reason, throw out the call button when you flop a strong hand. Bet or raise relentlessly until the money is all-in. Your win-rate will thank you.

9. Do Not Play Tight, Small Ball For The Win

One of the things that most people teach beginners or intermediate players is that “tight is right” and that you should just play very few hands and let weak players make mistakes against your strong range. While this does make the game easier initially and might even work, the advice is actually pretty horrible. Eventually, if you want to compete at mid-stakes or high stakes, you will have to loosen up and learn to play a lot of hands.

The micro-stakes is actually a great place to start developing a loose-aggressive (LAG) strategy. You are playing for less money, so now is the time to get creative and face as many spots as the fundamentals will reasonably allow for. It’s much better to learn when the cost is cheap rather than when the pots are huge, relatively speaking.

Why play as a LAG? The idea is to see a lot of pots against weaker players, in position. Also, when involved in games that see lots of multi-way pots, you want to learn to play hands that can make the nuts (with the right price) and get as much value as possible when you connect. In my opinion, if your VPIP at the micro-stakes is not at least 25% for 6-max or 18% for full ring, you are playing too tight. Below is a screenshot of my positional stats back when I built my cash game bankroll in 2011.

I ran 33/30 against tables of bad regulars and fish. I learned A LOT by playing this many hands.

10. Stick to the Fundamentals

I’ve mentioned this one briefly before but the importance of sticking to the fundamentals against players with bad fundamentals cannot be overstated. Strive to play as many hands as you can with position and initiative. This will allow you to keep constant pressure on opponents who are generally really bad at dealing with pressure

The way to do this is to get good at playing the cutoff through the blinds by having a reasonably strong blind stealing and blind defense strategy. Since most micro-stakes players play badly in the blinds and generally don’t steal or defend enough, there is a lot of profit to be had from recognizing the players who play late position poorly. Your entire pre-flop strategy should be based on setting up profitable post-flop spots for yourself.

After the flop, your main focus should be on optimizing your c-bet frequencies based on your opponents and the board texture. Figure out which players are fit or fold and which ones are calling stations. Once you do that, the only thing left to do is adjust and execute.

Summary

Beating the micro-stakes is easy if you just understand the object of the game, stick to the fundamentals, and play solid aggressive poker. By following the tips in this article, you will be well on your way toward cruising through to 50NL and beyond.

If you are looking for information to get you on the right path toward beating the games, I wrote a comprehensive poker tutorial designed to prepare anyone to play winning poker. Thanks for stopping by, and good luck at the tables!

Every cash game poker player strives to move up from micro-stakes to small stakes beyond. I have been playing for over 12 years and can shed some on the various stake levels as well as what it takes to beat them.

What is considered small, mid, and high stakes poker?

There are actually five different stake levels in online cash game poker:

Micro-stakes – 2NL, 5NL, 10NL, 25NL
Small-Stakes – 50NL, 100NL
Mid-Stakes – 200NL, 400NL, 600NL
High-Stakes – 1000NL, 2000NL, 5000NL, 10000NL
Nosebleeds – 20000NL and up

Now that you know what the stakes are, let’s discuss each level in turn and find out what it takes to move up.

The Key Differences Between Cash Game Poker Stakes

The nature of each cash game stake will vary from poker room to poker room. However, in my experience, there are some fundamental commonalities of what can be expected at each level as you move up through the stakes.

1. Micro-Stakes Cash Game Poker

Micro-stakes poker ranges from lowly $0.01/$0.02 up to $0.10/$.25. This is usually either a place for recreational players to splash around or a proving ground for ambitious players who want to move up as soon as possible.

The games are typically characterized by looseness pre-flop with lots of limping and passive post-flop play. It is not unusual for there to be multiple players still in the pot when the river is reached.

Tips on Beating the Micros

It does not take a ton of skill to win at the micro-stakes. In fact, the winners are usually just the ones who are making the least mistakes. Here are a few tips:

Play a lot of hands in position and very few out of position in order to capitalize on the fit-or-fold nature of many micro-stakes players. Acting last also gives you the ability to realize equity with a lot of your marginal hands
Include holdings that can make the nuts or dominate your opponent when you build your pre-flop hand ranges. Making flush over flush or out-kicking your opponents is where a lot of the big pots are won at the micros.
Throw out the call button and instead focus more on value betting and bet-folding your medium strength hands. Continuing with marginal top pairs by check-calling is a recipe for disaster against loose-passive opponents.

How much can a good micro-stakes player expect to win per month?

How much can be made at the micros is really irrelevant. You should not be looking to play at penny stakes more than just a few weeks or months while you learn the game.

Even so, there are quite a lot of players who are full-time regs at either 10NL or 25NL. Even with mass-tabling and uber rewards, it’s hard to make more than $8 an hour doing this.

My advice is that if you don’t have aspirations to be a poker “star” and are okay just making a few hundred every month playing poker, then work hard on your game and learn to beat at least 50NL.

50NL players are not that much tougher to beat than 25NL regs, so you owe it to yourself to study hard enough to at least break into the lowest level of small stakes.

2. Small-Stakes Cash Game Poker

Small stakes games include just two stakes, $0.25/$0.50 and $0.50/$1.00. This is where you first start seeing a large number of full-time or part-time pros eeking out a marginal living in poker. It’s not uncommon to find players who have been 50NL or 100NL players for several years.

The quality of small-stakes games can vary widely from poker site to poker site. For example, on America’s Cardroom small stakes are very difficult to beat except for even the most dedicated players. The level of play that was once only common at 200NL or 400NL is now seen on numerous tables daily on ACR.

On the other hand, softer sites like Ignition poker have soft enough small stakes games that even newer players have a chance of winning. I would say that 100NL on Ignition is comparable to 25NL on ACR. There are more rewards on the latter, which does narrow the gap a bit. Even so, it’s always much better to play the higher stake then rely on being a “rakeback pro.”

Tips on Beating Small Stakes

To beat small stakes, you need to have more than just a basic “tight is right” strategy. You have to also have at least a rudimentary understanding of some advanced topics that include:

Equity and SPR and how those concepts are implemented in order to maximize profit versus a wide variety of opponents.
Game selection and profiling opponents.
The ability to use a HUD effectively, if applicable, in order to glean the information necessary to interpret the tendencies of opponents.

Beyond these factors, you will need to be able to think on level two and have an elementary understanding of gameflow and table dynamics. Small stakes is all about playing exploitative poker.

How much can a good small-stakes player expect to win per month?

Master Micro Stakes Poker By Alton Hardin

High volume small-stakes player with a reasonably high win-rate of 4bb/100 or high can expect to make anywhere from $15 to $25 an hour. It would not be unheard of to make between $2,500 and $5,000 a month, once rewards are figured in. Even part-time winners at 50NL can expect to make around $1,000 per month.

There actually are well-documented cases of 100NL professionals making over $10,000 a month after rakeback and rewards. This is mainly associated with Pokerstars in the “old” days and on the Winning Poker Network now, with the Beast promotion. This is more the exception than the rule though.

3. Mid-Stakes Cash Game Poker

Mid-Stakes includes $1/$2, $2/$4, and $3/$6 blinds. Online, these are the stakes where most of the best players on the site congregate. In fact, the only time most really good player will play higher than mid-stakes, is when there is a known bad player on the table.

For laymen, it’s impossible to tell the difference when watching a small-stake or mid-stake game side-by-side. For long-time poker professionals, the difference is usually profound.

The most striking difference that you start seeing at mid-stakes lies in the more nuanced bet sizings. People are a lot more of aware of potentially getting exploited, so they try to optimize their bet size accordingly.

For example, it’s not uncommon to still see 3x raises with a steal on the button at 100NL and below. You will almost never see this from a reg at 200NL or higher. They know they can accomplish the same thing by raising to 2.5x or even a min-raise, so why waste the extra money when they fold to a 3-bet?

Tips on Beating the Mid-Stakes

If you want to join the top 2% of poker players and learn to win at mid-stakes be ready to dedicate your life to poker, at least partially, for some time.

The amount of study hours it takes to go from beginner to being able to beat 200NL in the modern game is akin to going from a white belt to black belt in martial arts.

In fact, it actually seems like a pointless exercise for me to give a list of tips in beating this level. This is because it’s like trying to explain the universe in one sentence and with 4 examples.

Nevertheless, here are just a few things you must master before even attempting to beat 200NL or higher (on most poker sites):

Level 3 thinking is the minimum thinking level necessary to compete,
How to build hand ranges in your head during play and evolve them to fit the changing dynamic as the session progresses.
Being aware of how opponents might be adjusting their strategy based on you.
A moderate understanding of balancing and how to avoid being exploited over time if you have out of line frequencies

The point of this article isn’t try and give you a guidebook to winning at poker. I understand that many people reading this won’t have a clue what I am talking about. That’s okay, but you need to be aware of just how big of a chasm there is between the poker mind maturity of a winner at micro-stakes and mid-stakes. A good analogy is for an average chess player to try playing a grandmaster.

How much can a good mid-stakes player expect to win per month?

For most online poker sites, mid-stakes is where you start to see highly skilled players emerging who can make a decent living playing professionally. For example, my win-rate at 200NL was around 8bbs/100 which gave me an approximate hourly rate just under 40/hr while 4-tabling.

4. High Stakes Cash Game Poker

Save for a few wealthy “whales”, most players will never experience what it’s like to play for average pots that exceed in excess $1,000 on a regular basis. Enter the high-stakes cash game poker professional.

High stakes poker games online include $5/$10, $10/$20, $25/$50, and $50/$100. While there are quite a few regs that play these stakes, a good number of them also still play mid-stakes as well. It’s not uncommon to see a skilled reg playing 400NL, 600NL, 1000NL, and 2000NL in the same session.

Basically, what typical high stakes players do is game select heavily and work hard to ensure that they have an edge in every game they play. In fact, often the skill difference between mid-stakes and high-stakes players mainly lies in their ability to manage their bankrolls and careers a bit better.

Micro Stakes Poker Strategy

Tips on Beating High Stakes

To win long term at high stakes takes a dedication to the game and an ongoing commitment to keeping up to date with the latest strategy. Career management must be strong.

I am not going to give you a list of tips on beating high stakes. It’s actually pretty ridiculous to do so since only 1 in 100,000 players will likely even ever play a session of 1000NL or higher. Personally, I have never played a hand higher than 600NL and am not even qualified anyway.

What I will say, is that once you are beating mid-stakes you will already understand what it takes to at least some degree. Whether you decide to take a shot at high stakes will depend mostly on financial security in taking a shot.

How much can a good high stakes player expect to win per month?

For the few that do make it as a successful high stakes poker player, the amount of money you can win is pretty limitless. Even for part time guys that beat high stakes, 100,000 a year likely feels like the floor for them. Think about it, 100,000 is only 100 buy-ins of $5/$10.

5. The “Nosebleeds”

Stakes with a buy-in of $20,000 or higher are known as the nosebleeds. One of the most popular stakes for nosebleed players is $200/$400.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Variance is insane at these stakes. Almost no one is actually correctly bankrolled to play the nosebleeds. Conservatively, you really need at least 50 buy-ins to be a regular at any stake. Even for the “smallest” nosebleed stakes, this is $1,000,000.

If you start talking about $500/$1000 stakes, $5,000,000 feels like a small bankroll when you consider $1,000,000 swings seem to happen almost daily for these players.

Beating the Nosebleeds

The nosebleeds are an interesting phenomenon that reached their height right before the fall of Full Tilt Poker. The volume of hands played at those ridiculously high stakes has never been matched since.

The truth is, it takes a special type of person to play at this level. You have to be a billionaire, a big risk taker, or have a huge ego to even think about taking on the nosebleeds.

Even so, the level of play at the highest levels is actually probably not as good as it is at even mid-stakes. The reason is that most strong poker players will not risk their hard-earned money without having a gigantic edge in the game. That’s why you’ll often seen players enjoying a higher win-rate at 2000NL or above than they have at 1000NL.

How much can a good nosebleeds player expect to win per month?

Since very very few many people solely play the nosebleeds, it’s more of an opportunistic or ego exercise for the majority of the player pool at any given time. Therefore, it’s not even worth commenting beyond just saying that fortunes are won and lost weekly and even daily in these games.

Besides, it’s really hard to be a regular in those nosebleeds and get enough volume in. Like high stakes, the nosebleeds are more about taking shots for the vast majority of the players.

What Minimum Bankroll Is Needed to Play Each Stake Based on a 100 Big Blind Buy-In?

Assuming that each stake is your regular game and you are not taking shots, you typically want at least 50 buy-ins at a stake. Based on that, here are the bankroll requirements of each stake:

The Stake Levels in Live Poker

This article has mostly been about online poker. So, let’s briefly discuss the stakes in live games. Below is a list of the live equivalents in skill level.

Here are the live equivalents to online stakes:

Micro-Stakes – No such thing since the lowest stake you typically find is 200NL.
Small Stakes – 200NL, 500NL
Mid-Stakes – 1000NL, 2000NL, 5000NL
High Stakes – 10000NL and up
Nosebleeds – This is more of an online term. A 10k buy-in or higher is called high stakes. 100,000 buy-in is generally the biggest “regular” game you see. This is the common buy-in we saw in the show “High Stakes Poker”, with $200/$400 blinds.

Keep in mind that you can only 1-table in live poker. This means everyone is presumably able to play their A Game. Also, live recreational players tend to be much worse live. This means 200NL live is like 5NL online. 1000NL or 2000NL live is often like 200NL online. You get the idea.

Final Thoughts

Now you know the differences between all of the stakes, both live and online. You also have some idea of what it takes to become a winner at every level.

If you are interested in taking a step toward building a poker game with a strong foundation, you might be interested in my full poker tutorial.

Thanks for reading!

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