Today's micro stakes poker seems to be geared more and more towards ego wars and playing fancy has gone out of hand. Very weak players don't often want to get bluffed and regulars try to apply moves they don't really have a full understanding of. We can really exploit this by playing very solid ABC post flop and bluff only when it's cheap and we have a good spot to do that. We don't want to check the flop almost ever with a nice hand.
I did a research on my HEM database and found out that my biggest outcome came from big hands where I kept on betting. There are surprisingly many occasions when I stacked a reg when he had nothing.
The biggest losses came from hands where I either got sucked out (nothing new there), suffering from a setup (standard) or when I tried to execute a bluff against a fish, who called me down with something that only beats my bluffs.
I also lost a lot of value by trying to play fancy and sometimes my villain had just an overcard and I let him get there, or I missread his hand by looking too much to his stats and lost value from a street or two by slowplaying.
Lately I've been trying to apply more and more straight forward approach and my results have been somewhat epic.
Let's go fishing
We play poker to win money and fishes are the ones who provide the most of it. A player like 60/2 likes to call a lot and pretty rarely bets himself unless he has a very big hand. Of course, there are exceptions, but most of them call often and bet rarely.
The best way to exploit calling stations is to bet very strong with big hands, play slow marginal hands and give up when we have nothing. Sometimes it's good to overbet when you think your opponent has a hand he can't fold. One example being when the board has 5 clubs and you have bet the flop and the turn, he has called, and you have the nuts. On the river you can often just shove no matter how much you/he has behind. A station is just not going to fold his flush very often
You can bet a dry flop and give up if he calls, because he is unlikely to fold his pair. If you decide to bluff, you will need to bet multiple streets pretty often, usually 3. You will want to have some kind of a draw, two overs or something to give you more equity when (semi)bluffing. Pure bluffs are generally bad. Sometimes it might work to 3 barrel when the board is draw heavy and all the draws miss. But you don't want to make the pot too big when bluffing.
Fishes don't really understand image, hand ranges and so on. If you bluff a station, don't expect him to go crazy next time when you actually have a hand. So against fishes, every hand is a new hand and the history is pretty much gone - especially when they often quit after winning a big pot and you will probably never see him again.
The only exception to playing big hands fast is when you have a lock on the hand. Let's say you have AA and the flop comes AA7 rainbow. The fish just can't have anything as any sevens and pocket pairs are so small part of his range, so we want him to hit something, so we are checking the flop in this case.
If we have lets say 77 and the flop comes 774 with a flush draw, then the situation is totally different as he is calling with any flush draw, any straight draw, many A highs and of course pp and any 4.
So, bottom line, play straight forward.
Maniacs, another gold mine
Maniacs, who play like 45/35 are another great source for our monies. Again, we want to play fairly straight forward. The reason is that they are constantly suspicious. They will call you down pretty light and make moves on boards when you never should have anything. And they are generally just spewy.
Don't try to bluff them, because they will call or raise you. Don't check 994 rainbow flop to them when you have a hand like AA or A9. They will never believe you have a hand when the flop comes 994 and they will float or raise you. Also, if maniacs get stacked, they are often tilting and they become insane. If you have a marginal hand but still callable, you can go into check/call mode especially on the river, where they like to bluff.
Exploiting regs
The biggest leak that regs have is that they don't adjust correctly and that they rely too much on stats.
Let's say that you have a reg on your right that plays 24/21 over a decent sample. What you can do is that you can start 3betting his CO raises pretty light on the button until you see resistance. Then you can tighten up a bit. The trick is that you never 3bet him light OOP. This way, you are giving yourself a high 3bet% in his hud, but he doesn't realize that you have a hand OOP and he starts to defend light, 4 betting light etc and he is basically turning into a spewtard.
Also, regs use a lot of stats that need way larger sample size than they actually have. Especially when they lose a big pot, their very often start tilting, and they start to make incorrect moves based on incorrect stats. They make a read of you based on those and they are going with it and spew their stack away.
Keep your stats simple
Playing solid requires that you don't rely on stats too much. VPIP and PFR are stats that are very effective in spotting the fish, but they can make 20/17 guy look like a nit even after 100 hands if he has a huge monkey on his left and he is card dead. So be careful even with those.
Fairly accurate 3bet% stats require hundreds of hands and positional stats which require even more hands. You can keep it on your hud, but use it very carefully.
AF is a dangerous stat if you play against a nit. AF doesn't take folding under consideration. If a nit has a big hand, he bets and raises often. He probably folds if he has like AK and he doesn't hit or if he called with 22 for a set value, he is often folding when he doesn't hit and raising when he hits. This means that is AF will be very high, but he always has a hand when he gives aggression. Always use AF in relation to preflop stats or use AFq together with AF for more reliable aggression reads.
Use AF only when you have enough hands from the villain and when the reading is either very low or very high. River aggression is sometimes very different from the overall aggression, so take that into account, but remember that you need a fairly large sample.
ADDED: Put villains on ranges and stay consistent with it through out the hand
A common mistake that micro regs do is that they don't put villains on ranges or they expand it during a hand.
There is always some kind of a range, it might be 100% or 1% of hands. If you don't have any reads on the villain, put him on some kind of an average range.
The perceived range often narrows down as the hand progresses, but it should never expand. Let's say we have a villain who plays 14/10 over 1k hands and he raises UTG. You have A
K
on the button and you 3bet him and he calls. In your mind, you are putting him on some kind of a range. Let's say it's something like 99-JJ and AQ+.
The flop comes K
T
8
. He checks, you bet and he calls. The turn comes 7
.
This is the point where a lot of micro regs start to panic. "He could have a flush or a straight." If you find yourself thinking this way, ask yourself "what was his range preflop?". Did it include J9 or 96? No it didn't. How many flushes does he have in his range? A pocket pair doesn't make a flush, so we have only AQ and AK left. The king on the board is hearts, so he doesn't have a flush with AK. So the only hand that can have a flush is AQ of hearts. There are more combos of jacks than flushes and straights in his range.
Next time when you have this type of a situation, don't expand villain's range to include all kinds of monsters just because they are possible. This will also help you catch bluffs.
Final thoughts
To cut the long story short: when you have a hand, bet bet bet. When you have something marginal, play it more slowly. Against maniacs, you can check them to induce a bluff. Don't try to bluff a fish, especially when it becomes expensive.
When you slowplay, slowplay on times when your opponent is very likely to have either nothing or the nuts and there has been enough aggression already and all his air will be folding to further aggression. So that second raise is not always a good thing.
Don't rely on stats too much, remember to have large enough sample! Remember that regs make stupid mistakes and sometimes they turn into spewtards when they have a strong but wrong read of you. Use it to your advantage by playing your hand fast rather than trying to trap by checking.
And most importantly. Play in a way that makes people make mistakes and minimize your own by playing strong and solid poker. Remember to have fun!
Playing straight forward at the micros
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