1. Advanced Online Poker Strategy
2. Low Stakes Online Poker Strategy
3. Winning Online Poker Strategy
4. Low Stakes Online Poker Strategy Game

Table Of Contents

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Small stakes online poker tournaments are fantastic fun. They can be frustrating at times — I'll give you that — but for the most part, it is difficult not to enjoy yourself while competing in one.

A complete guide to beating the low stakes no limit hold'em games 'Although poker is not an easy game to fully master, beating the low stakes poker games from 2nl up to 25nl is not hard at all.' Now, the above statement is by no means meant to be disparaging to those micro stakes no limit players who are struggling to make a profit in online poker. Low Stakes Poker Strategy. Rarely Bluff When Playing Low Stakes Poker Online. You see lots of players attempting major bluffs on televised poker shows and it can be tempting to impersonate guys like Phil Ivey. The only problem is that he is playing a different set of opponents and you are not Phil Ivey.

1. Depending on the location, most card rooms will have cash games at relatively low stakes that should suit all poker bankrolls. Take your seat and take a look around the table to see who you are up against. One of the most important skills you must use in live cash games is profiling your opponents; are they drinking?
2. Neatly organized by the stakes he was playing, the table — which went viral in the poker world around 2009 — catalogs his online poker winnings: He’d made a $53 profit playing at a table.

They are also potentially lucrative beasts, not least because they tend to attract players in droves.

On some sites — in particular GGPoker and partypoker — tournaments with buy-ins as small as $1-$10 may see several thousand hopefuls take to the virtual felt in the hope of turning their tiny investments into much more meaningful sums.

As you can imagine, the majority of these huge fields are populated with recreational players and therefore the standard of play is, as a rule, very poor.

That's not to say navigating your way through the crowds and winning one of these things is an easy task, because it isn't.

In other words, don't think you're going to deposit $200 online, play a bunch of these online poker tournaments, and suddenly be rolling in cash like Scrooge McDuck in Ducktails.

It's not going to happen.

What is going to happen, or what should happen, is that you continue reading this article — and others you find in the Strategy section — and once you've armed yourself with the weapons of knowledge, you go out there and apply that learning to do more than just enjoy these tournaments, but to profit from them as well.

Here are five tips designed to help you both prepare for and find success in small stakes online tourneys.

1. Be Prepared for a Long Session

Most of these low buy-in, big field tournaments take several hours to complete, so you need to be prepared to play for a long time.

Be patient as always, but also be ready for a lengthy grind should you go deep in the event.

I've been fortunate enough to chop the $3.30 rebuy on PokerStars twice. On both occasions, the tournament started at around 7:00 p.m and we finished at 6:30 a.m.

This is all well and good if you are a poker pro who can sleep the next day, but you have to take into consideration work commitments if you have a job.

Know what you're potentially getting yourself into when registering for these events.

This tip to beat online poke tournaments does not apply only to low-stake events. As you can see on our Sunday Million strategy guide, also pros like Arlie Shaban and Felix Schneiders advise all players to master the art of being patient.

That said, not every tournament is a 12-hour commitment. All poker sites have a calendar that features also much quicker online tournaments where you can have fun and win meaningful sums.

These are the top sites to play online poker tournaments in 2020:

2. Be Prepared For Some Crazy Swings

The variance in small stakes poker tournaments is huge because of the sheer number of opponents you have to get through and the fact many of these opponents can be nearly impossible to put on a hand.

Also of significance when playing against a large field full of recreational players is the possibility of players calling your raises — even your all-in ones — with some ridiculous holdings, adding further to the unpredictability of outcomes.

While this situation is very favorable in the long run, over the short term you can often find yourself running worse than you ever thought possible.

Make sure therefore you have an ample bankroll to fall back on when times are hard — something in the range of 200-300 times of your average buy-in (I'd recommend).

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3. Keep it Simple and Value Bet Your Hands to the Max

DO NOT try to run an elaborate bluff at any stage of the tournament because it will only lead to tears of sorrow.

A lot of your opponents only care what cards they have in their hand and won't realize from your actions that you're representing a specific hand — they just want to get to showdown and hopefully win.

More often than not in these events you will want to keep matters simple, playing 'ABC poker' and letting the cards fall how they will.

Along the same lines, make sure you get the maximum value from your made hands.

Higher-stakes tournament grinders may routinely fire 1/3 pot-sized bets at their opponents, but that's because it is more difficult to get paid off at those stakes.

At the lower end of the spectrum, you can get away with betting more. Because so many of your opponents will love to call your bets, you may as well take advantage with your strong holdings.

4. Listen to the Betting / Prepare to Lay Down Some Big Hands

How often have you heard poker players bemoan their luck and come out with some rubbish such as 'I can't beat these donkeys, they always hit the nuts on the river.'

What they don't tell you is that 'these donkeys' often play their hands in a manner that allows you to get away from pots should you need to.

For example, if a weak player has limp-called preflop, called the flop, called on the turn, and then leads into you on the river when the flush comes in, guess what?

That player almost certainly has the flush.

The same is often true for raises on the river. Even if the only hand that beats you is , if an obviously weak player raises you on the river, you have to consider that he or she probably has !

5. Don't Worry About Playing a 'Balanced Style'

If someone tells you that you have to play a 'balanced style' of poker in large-field small stakes poker tournaments, laugh and walk away.

While you have to do this higher up the poker food chain, you are highly unlikely to come up against the same players ever again in a field of 3,000-10,000 foes, so you can be as unbalanced as you wish.

That means not worrying so much about not revealing certain patterns with your play, such as always betting big with strong hands.

While against stronger opponents you should balance your play by varying your bets and actions so as not to be read so easily, against large fields of less skilled opponents this isn't as great of a concern.

Obviously, the five tips above are not all you need to be successful in small stakes online tourneys, but they should at least help you in your quest to turn a little into a lot!

WHAT NEXT? Check out the best real money poker games to play in 2020!

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People sometimes complain these days about how tough the cash games are even at the lowest limits online — a topic I considered not long ago in “How to Beat Tough Low Stakes Cash Games”).

However, if you play on some of the smaller lesser known online sites and utilize some table selection — or if you play live at all — then you know that there is still plenty of very loose low stakes action out there.

These games require a completely different approach to beat them, though, and that is what I am going to address those strategies separately here. What follows are three ways you can beat loose low stakes cash games, live or online.

1. Practice Patience, Not Aggression

As I discussed last time, in order to beat the tougher low stakes cash games, you need to identify the weaker regulars and play aggressively in the right spots against them. When you are playing against a bunch of loose calling stations (including recreational players), however, you need to employ the exact opposite strategy.

In these looser games, most of the time when you have nothing it is better just to give up on the pot and let them have it. You can shovel as much money in the middle as you want, but if your opponent won’t fold bottom pair, you are still going to lose the hand. And, of course, your failed bluff attempts will only cost you even more.

Instead, the way to beat a loose calling station is to wait patiently for your opportunities. The reason why is that most recreational players are only first-level thinkers (i.e., thinking about their own hands). They aren’t thinking about what you are trying to represent.

Now don’t get me wrong — I am not advocating here that you wait for aces before getting involved. In fact, against the bad players you should try to get in as many pots with them as possible, ideally when you are in position.

Advanced Online Poker Strategy

Before the flop, you should often raise when they try to limp in (an “isolation raise”). Then most of the time you should take a stab at the pot on the flop with a continuation bet. This includes any time that you have connected with the board in any way as well as with all of your reasonable no pair/no draw hands such as ace-high and king-high.

The reason why you should continuation bet this wide is that loose calling stations do still fold sometimes, too, and if they are going to fold it will most likely be on the flop. Furthermore, when you are only betting 50%-60% of the pot with your continuation bet (as you should), then you don’t need that many folds in order to turn a profit.

The turn and the river are a different story. If you get called on the flop, this means that they connected with the board in some way. They may only have a weak draw or bottom pair, but they like something about their hand. And players like this do not like to fold when they like something about their hand.

This is why it is crucial that on the turn and river, where the pot starts to get a lot bigger, that you do not make the mistake of trying to bluff these players off of their hands with nothing. Patience instead is the key to success. This often means checking it down or even folding if they bet. (I discuss further the importance of being patient at the micros here.)

2. Value Bet Absurdly Wide

Another key strategy difference when playing against bad opponents — as opposed to decent and competent ones — is that you need to value bet a lot wider.

Against thinking opponents, it often doesn’t make sense to value bet bottom pair or sometimes even middle pair on the river, because they will usually only call with better and fold all worse hands. Loose calling stations, though, will call you down with bottom pair and even ace-high or king-high hands. So while you need to be extra patient against these types of players when you have nothing, ironically you should be hyper-aggressive against them when you have any kind of made hand.

I will routinely bet all three streets with top pair versus these types of players. But I would never do the same against a competent player, because there is no way I could get this much value out of them. In fact, if I am up against a bad player I believe might be on tilt, I might even take a middle-pair hand and just bet all three streets with it for value.

In a nutshell, versus loose calling stations just bet absurdly wide even when you can’t think of a hand with which they can possibly call. They will come up with something.

3. Stagger Your Bet Sizes Both Preflop and Postflop

I famously (or infamously) claimed in my first book, Crushing the Microstakes, that you should stagger your bet sizes versus bad poker players. A lot of people misread this to mean all poker players and criticized me because of it. I was never talking about all poker players, but only the category of players we are focusing on in this article. Versus those players, this is absolutely still the correct strategy.

What do I mean by “staggering” your bet sizes? I mean you should make your raise amount preflop according to the strength of your hand. In a crazily loose, live $1/$2 game, there is no reason why you should be raising the same amount with all of your hands. Your opponents aren’t paying any attention to what your bet sizes mean, so you should simply make it more when you have a premium hand in order to build the pot and prevent too many callers.

The same goes for postflop. If I am trying to pick up the pot with ace-high on the flop, I will make my continuation bet 60% of the pot at most. If I have top pair or better, however, I might just pot it or even over-pot it if I know that my opponent is on tilt against me.

You should never follow any kind of standardized betting rules against really bad poker players. Doing so is only important against competent players who might be paying attention to what you are doing. Against loose calling stations, simply bet more when you have it, and less when you don’t.

Low Stakes Online Poker Strategy

Final Thoughts

The strategy to beat loose low stakes cash games is actually very simple. First off, get involved with plenty of hands preflop by coming in for a raise whenever you can. You don’t need to wait for the nuts against opponents who are playing any two cards.

But be patient if you do not hit the board in any meaningful way postflop. The worst thing that you can do is try to bluff a player whose favorite thing to do is call. On the flip side, you should aggressively value bet with all sorts of made hands against these types of opponents because they will call you down extremely wide.

Winning Online Poker Strategy

Lastly, don’t be afraid to stagger your bet sizes according to the strength of your hand against really bad players. A marginal increase in the size of your bet size means very little to them if they are intent on calling. But it allows you to build a much bigger pot when you have a big hand and stack them quicker.

Nathan “BlackRain79” Williams is the author of the popular micro stakes strategy books, Crushing the Microstakes and Modern Small Stakes. He also blogs regularly about all things related to the micros over at www.blackrain79.com.

Low Stakes Online Poker Strategy Game

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