Micro Stakes Poker Coaching
I discuss 3 important poker training strategies that micro stakes players must do to improve their skills and ready themselves for moving up.
Micro Stakes Poker Training (3:50) If you’ve read any of my books or listened to this podcast for a while, you’ve heard me discuss tons of ways to study and practice your poker skills. Today I’m giving you the 3 training strategies that every micro stakes player MUST do to train yourself to become a better poker player. Micro stakes tournaments are filled with inexperienced and poor players. Recreational players abound, tossing their hat into the ring for some fun and cards. The massive fields and peculiarly wild plays that are the norm in the low buyin tournaments can be frustrating for the aspiring poker student.
In case you missed episode 246, I answered 8 of your burning micro stakes poker questions.
- We reviewed ALL the best poker training sites in 2020. Find out the best free online poker training sites and check out the top paid poker coaching courses!
- Free 6 Steps to Profitable Poker Course Use the Following Coupon Code to Get Any MicroGrinder Poker School Co.
Challenge (2:40)
Here’s my challenge to you for this episode: I’m about to give you 3 different training strategies. Which is the one you need to begin improving your game and your skills in order to build a micro stakes bankroll? The choice is up to you! Pick one and run with it.
Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker game.
Micro Stakes Poker Training (3:50)
If you’ve read any of my books or listened to this podcast for a while, you’ve heard me discuss tons of ways to study and practice your poker skills.
Today I’m giving you the 3 training strategies that every micro stakes player MUST do to train yourself to become a better poker player.
Yep, I’m using the word “train” by choice. One of the definitions for the word “train” is:
A series of parts or elements that together constitute a system for producing a result and especially for carrying on a process automatically
We are training necessary skills into our game at the micro stages for the result of becoming a better, more successful and profitable poker player.
These 3 training strategies are important at any level of poker, but by working on them in the micro stakes, you are setting yourself up for lifetime poker success.
#1: Study and Application (5:15)
The only way you’re going to ingrain new skills into your game is by studying some form of training content then applying what you learn on-the-felt. The item you study might be listening to a podcast, watching a training video or reading an article or a chapter from a book.
By studying this content, you’re doing only the first part which is exposing yourself to new strategy insights. But, that’s not really where skill building takes place. First you learn the strategy, then you practice it over and over again, through on-the-felt application.
Let’s say you want to learn how to make effective value cbets. Well, you can listen to one of my cbet-related episodes, like #133: Cbet Principles. In this episode, I discussed the difference between value and bluff cbets, important HUD stats to look at, bet sizing, the type of player you’re up against and I even gave you a cbetting checklist.
After you listen to the podcast and read the show notes, you must decide on your own how you’ll apply what you learned:
- Are you going to focus on the HUD stats I discussed and use them to make good cbetting decisions?
- Are you going to use the checklists I gave you as you practice your cbetting?
- Will you follow the bet sizing recommendations I gave you?
- Will you focus on position to help you make better cbets?
There are so many ways to apply what I taught in the episode, and it’s your job to choose how you’ll apply what you learned.
Episode #133 Example:
At the 12:50 point, I give you a value cbetting checklist. The first item on the list is: “You must be able to name the weaker hands they can call you with.”
You realize that you’ve never actually done this. Every time you value cbet, it’s simply based on the strength of your holding, not really thinking about what your opponent can call you with.
So, you decide in your next session that for every value cbet you make, you will say aloud the hands that they can give you value. It might take you multiple sessions to get comfortable with this strategy, so you apply it over the next 4 sessions.
Bam! Now, you’ve learned a little something about value cbets and you’ve applied it multiple times.
You’ve trained yourself to become a better value cbettor. This skill will be useful for the rest of your time at the micros and beyond.
If we distill the prior example to its basic steps, here’s what happened:
Step 1. You learned new strategies for value cbetting by listening to the podcast and reading the show notes.
Step 2. You applied one of the strategies on-the-felt repeatedly over 4 sessions.
From these 2 steps of Study and Application the result was you improved your cbetting skills.
From this point forward, it’s going to be up to you to do this over and over again… study and application, study and application, study and application. Do this to turn yourself into the poker player you want to be.
But, how do you know what to study next?
#2: Know Yourself and Target Un-Comfortability (8:45)
How many times have you opened the pot preflop with A9s, somebody makes a 3bet, and then you thought to yourself, “Crap, what do I do now?”. Or, how many times have you made the cbet IP and then your opponent check-raised you? “Crap, not again!” Or, here’s another one: how many times have you been dealt JJ in the SB with a 3bet squeeze opportunity, and you didn’t know whether to squeeze or just call?
We are often not as “present” or “tuned-in” to our play session as we should be. We encounter a ton of these uncomfortable spots, sometimes over and over again. But, we don’t recognize it as an area that needs work. We don’t tag or take note of the spot to help us remember to study it later on off-the-felt.
That’s what this 2nd training strategy is all about.
By knowing yourself and knowing what situations cause you problems, you can work to remove these areas of un-comfortability one at a time. By doing so, you’re building your skills, adding to your confidence and making poker easier. All of these things will make your sessions more profitable and will eventually propel you beyond the micro stakes.
Know Yourself Example
Let’s say you worked on your cbetting skills as mentioned previously, but as you practiced your cbetting you realized that every donk bet you faced gave you a tough decision.
Sometimes they would donk bet 1bb, sometimes ½ pot, and other times full-pot or bigger. What do these bets mean? Why are they donk betting and not check-raising me? Why not just check and fold? Are they betting for value or bluffing me, or are they blocking bets to get me to not charge them more to see the next street?
Now that you realize you don’t know what donk bets represent nor how to respond to them, you take the opportunity to study them. You’re going to go back to training strategy #1 of Study then Application.
You find that I did an episode on donk betting called The Donk Bet, #146. You decide to listen to the episode and follow along with the show notes.
In this one, I taught you all about the donk bet: what they mean, what different sizes mean, making them, facing them, how to study them… I basically covered the donk betting gamut.
So, you decide to apply what you learned in two ways:
1. You’re going to practice making donk bets as well as practice calling and raising donk bets you face.
2. You’re going to filter in your database for donk bets you faced that went to showdown. This way you can work to learn what hand strengths different player types donk bet with, and you’ll pay attention to the bet sizing they use for donk bets.
Bam! You’ve taken your un-comfortability with donk bets and pursued a new avenue of study and application. Now, you’re an even better player when it comes to being the preflop raiser.
Use code POD10 for 10% off this month’s webinar…
#3: Daily Hand Reading Exercises (15:25)
In last week’s Q&A, you heard me answer a question about hand reading. Let me reiterate my answer to that question here: yes, even at the micro stakes, hand reading is a great skill to develop.
I know you do not want to stay at the micro stakes forever. You’re working in the micro stakes to train yourself to be a great poker player, and the most important poker skill to have is hand reading.
Here’s the biggest incentive to develop the skill of hand reading: it forces you to think through the logic that your opponents use as they make their decisions.
This off-the-felt attention to their logic will naturally bleed into your on-the-felt game.
Just imagine: you’ve been doing one full hand reading exercise every day over the past 30 days. In each of these exercises, you constantly ask yourself on each street:
“Which hands does my opponent make this play with?”
By asking and answering this question over and over again, you’re training this into a mental game habit.
Naturally, when you play, you’ll ask and answer this same question.
- Villain called your preflop open-raise from the BB; What hands do they call with?
- They check-called your cbet; What hands do they call with on this board that also called preflop?
- They donk bet into you on the turn when the 3rd spade hit; What hands do they bet, out of position, on this very wet board that called preflop and called on the flop?
Truly, it’s important for micro stakes players
Hand reading is so important because within poker, we are dealing with imperfect information. We don’t know the cards our opponent is holding, but we can use what we know about their play style and their actions to put them on a range of hands. Then, we make our plays based on this range in an effort to make them fold or gain value from them.
A lot of people think that you can’t do micro stakes hand reading because people play too many hands and play them erratically. And while that can be true, that’s not always the case. And, even if they are playing tons of hands, they’re still using some form of logic to make their decisions. They aren’t just flipping a coin or rolling a die.
To help you learn hand reading successfully, I recommend you do it with ranges that are tighter in general. Don’t do hand reading with limping ranges or limp-calling ranges or being the 5th caller in the BB. Those are way too wide.
Keep your hand reading exercises to these 4 common and more narrow ranges:
- Preflop open-raising range. Depending on the position and the player, it might be as narrow as 10% or as wide as 30%.
- The preflop caller vs an open-raise. 10% up to 40% range.
- Preflop 3bettor. Maybe 3% up to a 15% range (player and position dependent).
- The 3bet caller. They opened the pot, faced your 3bet and chose to call instead of folding or 4betting. This is often somewhere from 5% up to 25% range.
So, you can see these four situations are not dealing with crazy wide ranges. Plus, they’re the most common ranges you’ll be up against.
Recapping the 3 most important micro stakes training strategies:
1. Study and Application. You learn new strategies then you apply them on-the-felt in order to build skills.
2. Know Yourself and Target Un-Comfortability. If you focus on those uncomfortable spots by using them to select your studies and applying what you learn, you’ll make poker easier on yourself.
3. Daily Hand Reading Exercises. As you study and apply what you learn, do daily hand reading exercises in relation to the strategies you’re studying. This will build a beneficial habit of working through your opponent’s ranges and the logic they use in their decisions.
Support the Show
Rob Papandrea and John Lutz picked up the best poker software, PokerTracker 4. My favorite since 2006! In appreciation, I sent them each a copy of my Smart HUD for PT4. Along with the growing database of hands to study, the Smart HUD is a powerful tool in anyone’s poker toolbox.
Vijay Handa and Brad Alexander purchased the Smart HUD for PokerTracker 4. It’s the best online poker HUD in the business, and you can get the Smart HUD by clicking here.
Kevin Doesburg picked up two books: How to Study Poker: Volume 1 and Volume 2. Good luck and I hope you enjoy, Kevin. You’ve got your work cut out for you!
Up Next…
In episode #248, I’ll discuss the art of finding the fold in the micro stakes.
Until next time, study smart, play much and make your next session the best one yet.
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Grinding out a profit in the micro stakes is not nearly as easy as it might seem. While beating the smallest online poker games used to be a cake walk, today it will take a lot of time and practice. Many micro stakes players are among the most consistent and biggest winners in the online poker world today. It is very hard to compete with players who have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of hands worth of experience.
Think about how many hands you get in per hour when playing one table, online or live. If you are lucky, you might get 90-100 hands in per hour when playing online, depending on whether you are playing full ring or 6-max tables. In live games, 30 hands per hour is the most you could ever hope for. Now, compare those numbers to a 12 tabling player who plays for 8 hours per day. At that rate, this player would have roughly 9,000 hands played every single day. Of course, few people have this exact work ethic, but it is not out of the realm of possibilities when it comes to the micro stakes.
Micro Stakes Poker Coaching Drills
What It Takes
-Bankroll
Micro stakes poker takes a few different skills and attributes if you want to be successful. First, you will need to have an ample bankroll. While the variance is not going to be nearly as dramatic in these games as it is in small stakes or higher games, you will run into the occasional 10+ buy-in swing. For this reason, you should always be playing with roughly 30 or so buy-ins. If you are playing 25NL, the number of ideal buy-ins is not as high as it would be if you were playing 100NL. The higher limit the game, the more variance you should be prepared for.
-Emotional Control
Bankrolls are hardly the only thing needed for success in micro stakes poker. You will also need an awful lot of emotional control at the tables. Most poker strategy books and guides neglect to teach perhaps the most important skill that any player could have, a tilt-free approach to the game. No one is perfect, and everyone tilts a little bit from time to time, but it is vital that your emotions are kept in check. If you are playing six tables at a time, blowing off three buy-ins due to tilt can be a lot easier than it might seem. Players who are on tilt tend to forget everything they learned, like this very article, though, so this is something that is best accomplished through practice and implementation.
-Multi-Tabling Skills
The ability to multi-table and multi-task should never be understated for micro stakes players. There just isn’t any good money to be made playing one or two tables at a time in the micro stakes games. Even the biggest winners at 100NL (the highest micro stakes limit) would be lucky to win $15/hour playing two tables of 6-max at a time. It can be a difficult transition, especially for new online players, to learn how to play four, six, or ten tables at a time. The fact of the matter is, however, that all serious micro stakes players have a solid skill set when it comes to multi-tabling. This isn’t to say that you need to play 20 tables at a time, but being able to 8 or 10 table would certainly be beneficial.
-Poker Tracking Software
HUDs and other poker tracking software are an absolute must for multi-tabling, serious micro stakes players. A HUD (heads up display) will be a tremendous benefit when you are trying to concentrate on a number of different decisions at once. Instead of forming your own reads on opponents, a HUD will allow you to have a quick summary available for anyone you face. It will be much easier to shove all in pre-flop with pocket queens if you know that the original raiser plays 90% of their hands. Now, imagine if you had no information on that same player; you would have to decide whether queens are ever ahead. Some old school players feel that software and HUDs are nothing more than cheating, but that makes no sense since most poker rooms are perfectly OK with it.
Micro Stakes Poker Coaching Tips
Aside from allowing you to make more precise reads at the table, poker software like PokerTracker also provides in-depth statistics on your own play. You can easily analyze all of the hands that you played in your last session, no matter how big or small. Beyond this, poker software can tell you how often you raise, what hands you win with, if you fold to re-raises too frequently, and much more. Plus, who doesn’t like to see a graph of their winnings? For an investment of $100 or less, any micro stakes player would be making a big mistake if they played without some sort of software.
-Work Ethic
Last but not least is the need for a sound work ethic. If you want to beat the micro stakes for any significant amount of money, you will need to put in a whole lot of work. People who don’t know poker tend to scoff at the idea of poker being a lot of work, but it certainly is. Today there are infinite resources available for players who want to improve their game. From books to training sites, there is something out there for players of all skill levels and all limits.
Books are the most outdated method of learning how to play winning online poker. The flaw with most books is that they are old and generally teach concepts that are quite basic. Books would have been a great way to aptly learn the game back in 2002, but the competition is way beyond that at this point in time. There are a select number of books that concentrate on winning online play and teach more modern concepts, but they are far and few between. Be sure to read a number of up to date reviews before you lean on any written book as your poker bible (especially if Hellmuth wrote it!).
Online resources are the best way to improve your skill set for tough micro stakes games. There are innumerable online sites with strategy guides of varying quality, but the video training sites have taken over in popularity. There are a handful of different poker training sites that offer video tutorials for aspiring players. These videos consist of a winning player recording their play and relaying it to the viewers. The players record themselves during play, explain their thought processes, and viewers soak in the information. As was the case with books, you should carefully analyze who is making the video and whether they are a reliable source of information.
Going hand in hand with poker training videos are poker coaches. Coaches are people who will watch you play over the internet (known as sweating) and offer their input and advice as you play. These coaches vary in quality and rates, but some can be had for very affordable rates. Shop around at the video training sites for your choice of coach if this seems like an attractive way to learn the game for you. It is not for everyone, and it could be costly, but many people have transitioned from losing or break even players into big winners with the help of a solid coach.