• Online Poker Micro Stakes Strategy Play
• Online Poker Micro Stakes Strategy

In the earlier parts of this series, we covered how to approach micro stakes tournaments from the early stages, approaching the money, and newly in the money but prior to tangible pay jumps that occur closer to and at the final table. Today we’re going to discuss the deeper money stages leading up to the final table.

Bluffing is an online poker strategy that can be very effective in micro stakes poker tournaments and even in cash games of poker. This is a part of the loose aggressive strategy we have been talking about and it works best with scare cards like A K and Q. And also a flush or a straight filler. Micro Stakes MTT Strategy is mainly about grinding and improving. A final tip is that if you’re going to play micro MTT games, try to only play events with smaller fields (below 1,000 entrants). This not only makes it easier to make the final table and grind some money, but it also reduces variance and allows you to play more tournaments faster.

At this stage, all players have locked up a nice little payday. But typically, nerves and tension is now higher than ever. You’ve made it through thousands of players, and now are down to the final few tables. Every one of your opponents knows how much the winner of the tournament will be adding to their account. To many of your micro stakes opponents, this sum represents a big score, perhaps in some cases making their account balance the largest it’s ever been. And when entering tournaments with thousands of runners, who knows when we’ll be back to this point again?

The desire to capitalize on this opportunity right now will be strong. Winning tournament regulars are much less impacted by this pressure, because they understand they are profitable with volume, and they’ve been here before, probably many times. In micro stakes tournaments however, most of these players won’t be in that category. Many are recreational players who may be looking at their biggest potential score to date. And it’s not just the money that’s a factor. They are eager to tell their family, friends, significant others about their success. They want to say they won. Not that they finished 35^th. There is emotional and psychological pressure that comes with this spot as well as financial. How much each of these affects individual players varies, but they are all going to be present in some sense.

Online Poker Micro Stakes Strategy Play

How can you identify who’s feeling the pressure, vs. who’s playing to win?

Actions: Players who are feeling ominous about busting out will instinctively start playing not to lose, which is very different from playing to win. The natural direction of a not-to-lose mentality is to become tighter, more conservative, and being more reluctant to put their stack at risk. When a player who was playing more reasonably starts getting very tight in these later stages, it’s a decent indicator they are feeling pressure. If they go broke getting KK cracked, their poker friends will all understand and commiserate. If they go broke 3B resteal jamming over a wide button opener with A3s because they ran into AK or QQ this time, not all their poker friends (many of whom will be losing players) will understand and may scoff at them, declaring it a punt. Forget about their family or significant other understanding. A bad beat story provides an “excuse” for the exit they can save face with. A well-executed exploit that is unluckily timed doesn’t.

Verbal: This happens more in live events, but online sometimes chatters can give themselves away. They may fold to a raise on the turn saying in chat “it’s not worth the risk”, or viewing an aggressively active player, may admonish them for “being foolish” or “trying to punt”. These comments or statements can take many forms, but they tend to revolve around the same thing… the player is projecting their own insecurity about the situation onto their opponents while adjusting their play to a more conservative, not-to-lose mentality.

Stack Size Movement: A slow decline in stack size is another indicator that naturally flows from the conservative, wait for strong hands and scared to bust mentality. They are folding. A lot. Blinds and antes are large now and eroding the stacks of the folders. By this stage of the tournament, even if you multi-table, you are now likely paying close attention to your table. Noticing who’s stack is slowly shrinking, and who is folding a lot vs. being more active will help you devise a strategy to exploit them.

The best ways to adjust now at this stage of the game include:

Keep the Faith: What I mean by this is, try and make a conscious effort to continue playing to win, i.e. don’t fall prey to the above pressures yourself. This can be easier said than done, but if you don’t do it, then it will be your stack eroding and it will require a large amount of luck for you to final table, and end up in the top few spots… the luck of getting some big hands, and having them both get action and hold up, or getting lucky over and over as a short stack to fade elimination at the hands of the bigger stacks.

Attack the Folders: Those people who seem to have gone into a not-to-lose mentality can be stolen from quite liberally. They’ll be reluctant to risk their tournament life or a chunk of their stack on a marginal holding. They may still open some weaker hands in late position, because they know they should be, but will quickly discard them to pressure. So 3-bet their LP opens a bit more liberally, steal their blinds more, etc.

Attack Playing to Win Players: Some players will be ramping it up a bit to exploit the folders and leverage the pressure of the late stage game. When one of these players opens with a wide range, don’t be afraid to attack them. Everyone is scared of engaging these types, but that’s just the fear of busting rearing its ugly head. The truth is most of these will be the fearless players and stronger players, but they don’t want to punt any more than the tight players do. They likely perceive themselves to have a decent edge now given all the folders handing them small pots, and won’t want to relinquish that with a bad call off. So they provide a situation where they are likely opening wider than normal, but content to concede when played back at and they don’t have the goods… creating even more fold equity for you should you chose to seize it.

One last thing… invariably, deep in these tournaments some players will straight up punt their stack. It can be the loose-aggressive players not recognizing when to slow down, but the tight folders do it too sometimes. I see it in virtually every tournament I’ve ever run deep in at low or micro stakes. The pressure sometimes builds up until someone snaps. How can this guy who’s folded for 50 hands in a row suddenly 3B shove for 8bb over a 2.5x open (thus having no realistic expectation of fold equity) with 97o? That’s the big hand they were waiting for all this time? No, of course not… they just snapped. It can be difficult to adjust to this since it’s hard to predict when someone might snap… but the key is to make sure it’s not you this happens to. My best advice is to try and continue taking deep breaths, stay as relaxed as possible, and stay the course with your game plan. So while the other player may say to themselves “I’m sick of this bully opening constantly, taking all my spots, controlling the table, they’re full of it, I’m all in” and sheepishly showing 97o when they are obviously called, you’ll say to yourself “I’m sick of this bully opening constantly, clearly they are light. But I have 8 big blinds and they really aren’t likely to fold to a shove after opening 2.5x. And 97o is a really bad hand so to have a profitable shove spot I really need that fold equity. Sigh, I really do need to let this go.”

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Micro Stakes MTT Strategy

There are very few articles out there defining exactly what micro MTT strategy is. $0 – $10 entry fee tournaments are very popular nowadays however, so here is an article explaining how to grind a bankroll out of micro MTTs.

Online Poker Micro Stakes Strategy

Where to Play Micro MTTs – Go to Full Tilt Poker + $600 Bonus

I personally recommend Full Tilt Poker to build a bankroll in micro MTTs with. Round the clock sit and goes start from $1 + $.25 and micro MTTs start from $0.10 – all these games are solid and winnable. The daily dollar is also a great value event with a $10,000 prizepool for just $1 entry. Likewise, you should definately try Matrix Tournaments at Full Tilt, where each tournament consists of 4 STTs (single-table tournaments) played simultaneously against the same 8 players. You win money based on each of your table positions, plus if you win all 4 tournaments you get a special dominatrix prize. We also recommend you go play the 90 and 180 man MTTs there.

Full Tilt also do 12 xdaily freerolls with a $500 prizepool running every 2 hours. They got alot of players, but if you have the time I recommend them for practice and experience.

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Micro Stakes MTT Strategy

Firstly, you must be aware that most the players in micro MTTs are fishy/weak. The effect this has on your overall game is perhaps the most important. In $1 – $10 micro MTTs you’ll be looking at about 80% of players not knowing what they’re doing. These are the type of players who make opening raises of 20xBBs etc and call really bad hands out of position.

To counter this, you should be playing very tight, and definitely try to avoid playing lots of hands early on. As time progresses, the worst players will bust out early, and the quality of players will get gradually better. However the reason you should play super tight early (AA,AK,QA,KK) is because you’ll get up to 2-4 donks calling you each time and you will often get sucked out. Even with a great preflop hand like AA you don’t really want more than 2 or maybe 3 callers.

In freerolls you it’s usually best to play super aggro in the first few hands (all-in with any two cards) because doubling/tripling up is necessary and stops you wasting your time if you don’t. We have an article on freeroll strategy here.

Elsewhere in your tournament you should make big changes in your play from regular MTTs. In micro stakes MTT strategy, donks do not really understanding concepts like 3betting, re-stealing and limp shoves. Your best bet is to stick to ABC strategy which involves playing tightly and utilising position. The number of calling stations is a lot greater, so you should be constantly overbetting and betting for value on all your good/monster hands. Generally speaking the early stage of micro MTT strategy is practically standard and you should be able to do it on auto-pilot.

Alot of players will also recommend using software like Tournament Shark. In my experience this really isn’t necessary for micro MTTs. Players will not be consistent, so using their stats to find their 3bet ranges etc isn’t going to be all that important.

Is it Possible to Grind Bankrolls in Micro MTTs?

Yes. This is a question many players will ask, mainly because people view online micro MTTs having such small payoffs. You can make alot of money and grind a $100-$200 bankroll in these games. Sometimes it’ll take a while before you make a big finish, but if you play enough games correctly your ROI will be heading towards 10-20% with an ITM of around 16%.

For those of you discouraged by micro MTTs, I recently read a forum saying someone went months without cashing out big, but then finally won a the Full Tilt Daily Dollar tourney and won $16,00 from a $1 buy-in. So look, it does happen. Micro Stakes MTT Strategy is mainly about grinding and improving.

A final tip is that if you’re going to play micro MTT games, try to only play events with smaller fields (below 1,000 entrants). This not only makes it easier to make the final table and grind some money, but it also reduces variance and allows you to play more tournaments faster. Profitability/time period is important too.

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