If there is one thing I hear the most from small stakes poker players it is they can't seem to consistently turn a profit at the poker tables.
Playing Better Online Poker. Mastering real money poker is about more than strategy. It goes well beyond simply knowing how to play poker; Game selection, bankroll management, and tilt control are all very important things to learn as well.When you decide to play poker at Ignition, start at the lowest stakes and work your way up; the competition at these stakes is relatively easy, and you’ll. May 29, 2016 Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Fundamentals of Exploitative Online Poker: Learn to Exploit Your Opponents Through HUD Stats, Player Tendencies and Table Selection.
They will win big one session — or even several sessions in a row — but then inevitably the cards will go south on them and they will lose all of their profit back.
This is a problem because everybody has winning and losing days in poker. What the most successful poker players do, however, is lose less on their bad days and win more on their good days.
In this article I am going to give you five of my top strategies for learning how to win consistently in small stakes poker games.
1. Maximize Your Winnings on the Good Days
As I mentioned above, you are going to have good days and bad days in poker. Some days you will be hitting every top pair, making your flushes and the like. And just as importantly, on those good days your opponents will keep having decent second-best hands with which to pay you off as well.
But there will also be other days when you can't make a hand to save your life. And when you finally do make a hand, guess what? That's right — they will have the higher flush, the higher set, and other better hands. If you have played poker for any amount of time, I think you know what I am talking about here.
Now half the battle to learning how to win consistently at the poker tables is simply maximizing your winnings on the good days. You know that on some days you are going to have to take some losses, so winning as much as possible on the good days is absolutely key.
This is why you need immediately to shed the 'protectionist' mentality many small stakes players have of winning a few buy-ins and then wanting to quit in order to 'lock up the win.' This isn't how poker works. Poker is one long session and your results on any individual day literally matter very little.
By quitting early when things are going well — and, more importantly, when you are probably playing well also — you are only hurting yourself. When the cards are falling your way, try to keep playing as long as possible.
2. Minimize Your Losses on the Bad Days
The reverse is true as well. On the days when absolutely nothing is working for you, you want to quit early and stop the bleeding.
But again, many small stakes players do the exact opposite. They want to keep playing to get back what they've lost. Or even worse, they'll jump up in stakes if they are stuck a lot to try and win it back faster.
The problem with this strategy is that even though you might not realize it in the moment, you are likely playing very poorly on days like this. Your judgment and decision-making is clouded by emotions. You are likely to play a looser game and more aggressively, and as a result you'll be more apt to make bad calls and other poor decisions.
If you want to start turning a long term consistent profit in poker, one of the absolute best things you can do is just leave the poker table on these bad days. You have to remember that poker games literally run around the clock. That's true both for online poker and even for live games for the most part. In other words, the games aren't going anywhere.
One of the absolute most valuable lessons you can learn in poker is how to take a small loss and come back the next day with a clear head rather than continuing to play and burying yourself with a big loss.
3. Don't Play in Unprofitable Games
Something else you can do in order to win consistently in poker is to start paying more attention when it comes to game selection. If there isn't a clear reason why you are at the table (i.e., somebody at the table who plays much worse than you), there is no reason why you should be at that table.
This is a big mistake that I see small stakes players making all the time. That is, they sit down and play in games full of other strong regulars, not thinking how detrimental taking on such a challenge is likely going to be to their bankroll.
While I know it can be a pain to change tables or even poker sites or casinos, you have to understand that the profit in poker does not come from playing with other people who are equally skilled to you or better. You are going to be essentially trading money back and forth with them in the long run (if not losing). And truthfully, even if you hang in there against such opponents, you will often still show a loss once the rake is taken out.
It is absolutely crucial, then, that there is always at least one player who is a clear soft spot in any poker game that you choose to play.
4. Don't Pay Attention to the Short Term
As I touched on before, short term results (day-to-day, week-to-week) really just aren't that important in poker. It is only the long run of months and years of play that really matters.
This is why I would suggest you make a real effort, especially if you play online, to stop checking your bankroll so often. Keep recording your results after each session, of course, but avoid the constant checking. As long as you are properly bankrolled for the games in which you are playing, there should be no issue.
By not checking your bankroll so frequently, you prevent yourself from getting emotional during the downswings. You also prevent yourself from getting a false sense of superiority during the good times.
As I often say in poker, neither the heaters nor the downswings are what is real. Both are illusions — the outliers, the abnormal. The truth about your abilities actually lies somewhere in the middle.
5. Take Them to Value Town
Small stakes poker games are often dominated these days by tight-passive regs and loose, 'calling station' recreational players. The biggest key to your success in these games therefore is going to be getting the maximum value with your good hands.
There is no point in trying to bluff a lot at stakes like this. They are just going to call you down, which will cause you to get even more tilted.
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You need to become a master of the value bet instead. And I am not talking about situations here where you have or a flush. Everybody knows how to value bet in these spots. I am talking instead about the thin value bets where you have something like second or even third pair on the river and they check it to you.
Oftentimes many of these bad players at the lower limits will be willing to hero call you with their ace-high if you make a bet. This is especially the case with smaller bets like one-third of the pot.
Don't just check it back and take the showdown like most people do at these stakes. The very biggest winners in these games are always getting that thin value even when it seems impossible that they can call you with worse. Trust me, they can and will at the micros!
Final Thoughts
Learning how to win consistently in the lower limit poker games is one of the very first steps you need to take in order to have a lot of success in this game.
One of the most important keys to remember is to maximize your winnings on the good days and minimize your losses on the bad days. Most players do the exact opposite.
You also want to make sure that you are always playing in profitable games, getting the absolute maximum value out of them, and ignoring your short term results.
Nathan 'BlackRain79' Williams is the author of the popular micro stakes strategy books Crushing the Microstakes, Modern Small Stakes, and The Microstakes Playbook. He also blogs regularly about all things related to the micros over at www.blackrain79.com.
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Starting Hand Selection:Chen Formula : Sklansky Starting Hand Groups
In Texas Holdem, it is important to have good starting hand selection. This is important as it prevents you from entering pots with sub-standard hands, which could eventually lead to you losing a lot of money in the process.
'Starting hand selection' is simply choosing the good hands over the bad, and thus folding the bad hands when you get them.
It is true that any hand can win in Texas Holdem (or poker in general for that matter), but the fact of the matter is that some hands will win more than others. So if we stick with the good hands, then we should see better results in the long run.
Basic starting hand selection.
Top tier starting hands - top 2% of starting hands.
Good Texas Holdem starting hands are typically hands like big pocket pairs and big connecting cards. So some of the top starting hands would be:
- AA
- KK
- AKs
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The little ’s’ indicates that the cards are suited, which will increase the value of the cards because it makes it more likely that they will be able to make a flush compared to if the cards were not suited.
This is obviously the top tier when it comes to starting hands, and if we were to only ever be dealt these starting hands we would be making a lot of money. In fact, if we folded every other hand that we were dealt and only played these hands, there is a fair chance that we would be winning money in the long run. But this would only work at the lower limits where other players probably wouldn’t be aware that we only play premium hands.
Second tier starting hands.
If we only ever played with this elite group of cards, we would be folding numerous hands along the way and missing out on other opportunities to win money. Even though these are the cream of the crop when it comes to starting hands, there are still other great hands out there that can win us a lot of money in the long run if we play them.
Such hands are:
- AK
- AQs
- AJs
- JJ
- TT
This gives us another 6 starting hands that we can play with, increasing the number of pots that we will be entering. Although these are not as good as the first set of premium hands mentioned, they are still great starting hands that should help us to win money.
Top 10 Texas Hold’em starting hands.
Now if we stick with this set of 10 starting hands we should definitely by on the right track to winning some money from poker. So for any player new to the game you should try your best to stick to the following top 10 hands (also throwing in some of top 20 hands if you have good position):
- A A
- K K
- Q Q
- A K (suited)
- A Q (suited)
- J J
- K Q (suited)
- A J (suited)
- A K
- T T
- A T (suited)
- K J (suited)
- A Q
- 9 9
- Q J (suited)
- K T (suited)
- 8 8
- Q T (suited)
- A 9 (suited)
- A J
These hands can be played profitable from most positions by experienced players, but you should only play these hands from late position if there has been no action before you (no betting or raising) if you are still learning the basics.
As your game improves, you can look to open up your starting hand requirements and require more marginal hands like suited connectors. However, if you’re new to the game you are better off sticking with the big cards that hit bigger flops and make post-flop play a hell of a lot easier for you.
Starting hand selection and table position.
Your table position should always play a big role in determining the range of hands that you choose to play with.
You should stick to playing much stronger hands from early position than you would from late position.
This means that if you are in one of the early position seats, you should stick to playing the top two tiers of hands and avoid lesser hands like; AQo, AJs, AT, KQs and so on. Conversely, if you are in late position and there has been little action before you, you can afford to play these sort of hands far more comfortably.
Basic Poker Strategy
Why is table position important in starting hand selection?
If you are one of the first to act in a hand, you are going to be at a serious disadvantage to the rest of the players who are acting after you. Therefore, to avoid making things worse, you do not want to be entering a pot with anything less than a premium hand.
Acting first means that you are going to have little information on your opponents. If you are playing with a mediocre hand, it is likely that you are going to be in a spot where you have no idea whether you have the best hand or not. These situations are the ones that lose you the most money in poker, so avoid falling into them by playing stronger hands from early position that will make it easier to determine whether or not you have the best hand.
The importance of starting hand selection.
Starting hand selection is key because it helps to save us from sticky situations post flop, especially if we are new to the game.
Starting hand selection example.
Say for example we are not exercising very good starting hand selection and we decide to call a raise with K T. The flop then comes K 8 2 giving us top pair, which looks like a very strong hand. Our opponent bets into us and we decide to call, because after all we do have top pair.
The turn comes a 4, and our opponent bets once again. We have top pair and we call seeing as we are still happy with the strength of our hand.
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The river comes a 7, and our opponent bets into us one final time. We make the call with our top pair thinking we might still have the best hand, but our opponent turns over K Q.
He also has a pair of Kings but he has the higher kicker, so he takes down the pot.
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Starting hand selection example evaluation.
This is an all too common problem for poker beginners, and it could have been so easily avoided by being a little stricter with our starting hand selection. Having top pair is great, but all so often an opponent can easily beat it with a better kicker. This is why it is important to have two big cards instead of one, because the size of our kicker can play a vital role in determining who the winner of the pot will be.
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You are dealt two cards in Texas Hold’em; make sure that they are both good cards before you enter a pot. An ace with a low kicker is going to lose you more money than it wins.
Don’t be tempted to call raises or enter pots with hands like A4 (rag aces) or K7, because they will just get you into more trouble than they are worth. Make sure that you are the one with the better kicker every time and take the money from the players who are entering the pots with weaker hands than you.
It is actually reasonable to bring down our starting hand requirements if we have good position. Position will give us an advantage over our opponents if we are last to act, so we do not necessarily have to have such a strong hand to play with because will be obtaining information from the way our opponent plays because they will be acting first.
This information and knowledge of our opponent’s hand from the way they play will compensate for the fact that our starting hand is a little weaker than normal. However, we still have to be prepared to fold as having position does not guarantee that we will win the hand, it simply gives an advantage. It is advised that you only enter pots with weaker hands in position once you have become a little more experienced.
Conclusion.
As you continue to play poker and gain experience from the game, it is a good idea to start expanding your starting hand requirements and experimenting here and there. However, if you are new to the game it is strongly advised that you stick to the big cards so that you give yourself the best opportunity to win money from poker.
If you are entering pots with a poor hand, you should be expecting to see poor results.
Go back to the awesome Texas Hold'em Strategy.
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