Small Stakes vs. Micro-Limits

[jason1990]

In terms of the concepts in SSH, what are the key differences between small stakes and micro-limit games? In other words, what are some of the most important concepts from SSH that do not apply to micro-limit games? (Or that must be applied differently?)

One guess I have is that maybe you should not try to protect your hand as much in micro-limits, since it is much less likely to succeed. And when it fails, you've ended up not getting value for your raise, which gives you negative EV. Can anyone with some experience comment on this or other ideas? Thanks.

[Evan]

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maybe you should not try to protect your hand as much in micro-limits, since it is much less likely to succeed. And when it fails, you've ended up not getting value for your raise, which gives you negative EV.

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Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say here, but this doesn't mkae any sense. Protecting your hand can't "fail". If you mean that you raise and someone calls with a hand/draw that they shouldn't, do you view that as a failure on your part? Protecting your hand is a concept that I see a lot of people misunderstand. Many people think that when you flop 2 pair you want the gutshots and backdoor flush draws to flod when in reality you don't. You want to force them to fold or make an incorrect call.

Proctecting your hand is really just giving your opponents the opportunity to make mistakes. Let's try an example...say you hold KQ in the small blind and the flop comes KQT. The pot is 6 SB's (raised PF and 3 handed) you check MP checks and the button bets, you c/r giving MP 4-1. Let's say MP holds an Ace for a gutshot to broadway, do you want him to fold or call? The answer is you want him to call, you've sucesfully protected your hand and there is nothing he can do about that. If he folds that's fine, if he calls then you're making money on the call because your pot equity is probably over 50% at this point.

Hopefully that made a little sense and wasn't pure rambling.

[jason1990]

Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I guess I was thinking of a situation where you're the one with the gutshot and, say, an overcard. You have five opponents and have the pot-odds to call. But it's a large pot, so you raise instead in order to drive out opponents and clean up your overcard outs. But if you don't drive anyone out, then you just got 5:1 on your raise, which is negative EV for you in this situation. Even if the cold-callers are making a mistake and throwing dead money in the pot, you are probably not the one benefitting from their errors. This was my thinking. Am I totally off-base here?

[Evan]

okay I see, so more along the lines of raising with a second best hand and buying outs. Ummm.....yea, that probably is something I'd refrain from doing as much at lower limits. However, you have to realize that because those players have lower standards and call too often, your overcard outs will already be good more than you'd think. One of the reasons to raise in the senario you described is to avoid beaing beaten by dominating hands. You'll be less likely to be up agaisnt a dominating hand when the players play way too many hands. So in short, yes, your thinking was right. It's not a disaster though because of other factors in thier play that I described.