Poker Tips and Strategies

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There seems to be an endless wave of new poker players coming into the game. Most people would think that these players are the typical fish of seven or eight years ago. Well, due to the boom in poker tournaments and the wide variety of poker books and instructional videos available to these players many of them are very knowledgeable even if they are playing online for the first time. Many of these players start out learning the game in Micro-Stakes poker tournaments and cash games. That is not to say that poker strategy is not used in these games but micro-stakes games do have a different feel to them than the standard games that most regular poker players are used to. Micro-Stakes games can be as small as Five and Ten cents blinds all the way up to / blinds. Usually players will be somewhere in between at Twenty-Five cents and Fifty cents blinds. This is the level we will be focused on as I discuss the micro limits.

No matter how high the blinds are you always want to be sure that you are bankrolled properly. In this case 20 buy-ins will suffice. That means you will need a bankroll of 00 in order to play comfortably. Playing with scared money is a very bad idea and will not allow you to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves as the play at your table proceeds. Assuming that we are playing cash games and not tournament poker you will need to tighten up a bit. Hands like suited connectors and small pocket pairs from early position are hands that you should muck in early position.

Why?
Because you are playing at extremely low stakes and there will be a number of factors that make folding speculative hands in early position the correct play. One of the main reasons is because players at this level will sometimes play a draw for their entire buy-in especially if the buy-in is capped. Second, pre-flop all in raises and re-raises still take place in these kind of tournaments and you, being the intelligent player that you are, are not going to call these kinds of raises with middle pairs even if you do know the raiser is holding Ace King. Lastly, cash games are about patience. There are no blinds crashing down on you like they are in poker tournaments.

The bottom line is that playing in cash games is about being the best player you can be over the long run. Giving up small pot after small pot setting up the play for a big pot is what cash game poker is all about. Online poker play tends to be hyper-aggressive and players will push all their chips in the middle in attempts to protect their hands. You need to make note of these kinds of players because they are the ones that will pay off your Set of Threes when the board has a flush draw on it and they are holding a high pocket pair.

By now you should be getting an idea of where your mindset should be. Playing cash games is all about maximizing the value of your hand versus tournament poker where you are constantly trying to protect your hands to the death to avoid being knocked out of the tournament.

Let’s take a look at a couple of online situations I found myself in recently in a / tournament:

Hero has 5 [A][A] on the button
Villain has 0 [Ks][Qs] in the small blind

The action folds around to the button and our hero make it to go and the SB calls.

The Flop comes down [2s][6c][Kd]

SB bets and the Hero smooth calls. The Turn is the [9s]

SB makes it to go.

(At this point I am confident that I am not up against a Set or Two Pair. However, I am and should be concerned about a flush draw hitting the board and I act accordingly)

Hero makes it 0 and puts the SB All-In. The Small Blind calls and has a number of outs. The River is a [Qd] and the SB scoops the pot.

Should I have played the hand differently? Absolutely not! You played the hand for value and after the turn there was no way to protect your hand as your opponent was pot committed. However, this is exactly what you wanted in that you got all the chips in the middle with the best hand. However, when the Queen hit the board on the Turn it gave him additional outs and made you just a little more than a 3 to 2 favorite in the hand. Although we would love to have better numbers than that going into the River we are still ahead in the hand. Obviously, the River was an extremely bad card for the Hero and we lost the pot. It happens and you have to be prepared for these kinds of things.

The fact that our Hero was on the button didn’t help matters as King Queen was certainly a strong enough hand to call with and it is likely he put you on a steal. On the other hand you are much more likely to win this hand the majority of the time simply because of the strength of your hand and the likeliness of your opponent folding. You could also make an argument for minimum raising in that spot as well but you have to ask yourself this question, “Am I good enough to fold if I face a large raise from either of the blinds?”

Yes, even at the micro-stakes you are going to be faced with difficult decisions that will severely affect your bankroll one way or the other. For a new player to lose one or two-hundred dollars can be devastating but if played well and the cards break even you can dominate and win consistently while earning your stripes and building your bankroll. That is what micro-stakes poker is all about, building your bankroll to play higher stakes.

Curtis Mayfield III

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Tags: cash games, online poker, small stakes, Strategies