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Winning Microstakes Poker Games

Sunday, February 6th, 2011 by Phil

How to Win at Micro Stakes Poker

You might see professional players in tough, high-stakes games playing weak starting hands like 73 suited or J5 offsuit on television, but playing weak starting hands is a bad strategy in micro stakes poker games. Professionals play these weak hands sometimes to make it harder to tell what they have, but this is unnecessary at micro stakes and will only cost you money.

In early position when many people are left to act, you should only be playing strong hands like the following:

• Pocket pairs 77 and up
• Ace-King offsuit or suited
• Ace-Queen offsuit or suited
• King-Queen suited only

Playing strong hands in early position is necessary because with so many players left to act in the hand, you are more likely to run into a good hand if you come into the pot with a weak hand like King-Ten offsuit. Avoiding these trap hands when out of position will keep you out of trouble and help you win at micro stakes poker.

Beating Loose Players at Micro Stakes

Micro stakes poker players are known for not wanting to fold if they have any piece of the board in large pots. Because the pot is the largest on the turn and river betting streets, most of your opponents at micro stakes are going to call you down with any piece, so you should avoid bluffing on the later streets.

While a lot of players at micro stakes will be very loose, you’ll need to pay attention to which players are tight instead. Keeping up with player types is critical at micro stakes so you will know who the loose players are that you can target with big value bets on later streets when the pot is large. Most of your winnings at micro stakes will come from targeting these bad players, but you have to know who they are first.

Winning Against Tight Micro Stakes Poker Players

When you do find some tight players, try to sit to their right at the table. If you have tight players to your left, you’ll be able to steal a lot of blinds. If you steal the blinds just twice in an hour of play, that’s another three big blinds added to your win-rate. If you are playing $0.10/0.25 blinds and getting 400 hands an hour, that’s another $3/hour added to your win-rate.

A popular strategy at mid-stakes and high stakes games is to slowplay big hands like pocket Aces and pocket Kings pre-flop by just calling with them instead of reraising. At micro stakes this is a big mistake because people aren’t going to be folding enough to your reraise to make calling better. The idea behind calling and slowplaying with these big pairs is to keep players in the pot while you have the best hand, but at micro stakes people will often call you pre-flop with any two cards anyway, so calling is pointless.

Open limping is when a player just calls the big blind pre-flop when it has folded to them. Open limping is typically a very bad strategy, and you should avoid doing it. When it folds to you pre-flop, either come in for a raise, or just fold.