General low limit theory? - Help Me Please!

[WriterBoy]

ok, time to get specific. micro-limit play is at volatile as it gets. when retirees and college freshmen are playing for nickels, they will take the thinnest draws often, sometimes just to see what happens.

so opening up as far as Q5s is the exact wrong way to go. the major benefit of micro-play that a lot of us poker newbs overlook is that it teaches you extreme discipline.

obviously all hands are situational so im not going to go into if/then scenarios, but you really do have to pay attention to what your fish are playing.

this is a golden opportunity to work on hand-reading skills, as well as the ideas of 'Fold!' and 'Raise!'. Because you will often be thinking, "what on earth could he be calling with?"

good luck.

[dedmoney]

One liner: Change your pyschology.

In the micro limits, you're going to get beat by stuff you'd only dream about. I deposited 75 in party last year, ran it up to 225 and lost it all thinking I was playing well. And I was, I would have been kicking ass on a 5/10 BM table, but I wasn't playing well for the limits I was looking at. Super System (so I've heard, haven't read) is like a college level text, you're playing against kindergartners mainly. You've got to change your approach. Read a lot of stuff here. Definately read the stuff in the micro FAQ. The money's there for the taking, if you start small and study, you'll pick it up. If you have the dough, buy SSH, even if you don't, read as much here as possible until you do.

[MooFrog]

Get yourself the preflop chart from SSH, follow it exactly until you know why you're deviating.
Link

Read the microlimit FAQ
FAQ

Play at a limit where you feel comfortable. I didn't start playing well until I moved down to 0.10/0.20, if your bankroll is very small or you don't want to risk much, you might even want to go lower. Crazy Poker has really easy games at these limits, lowest is 0.05/0.10. I think a few sites have 0.01/0.02 tables if you really want to play for cheap. As well, Crazy, Pacific, and Royal Vegas all give you $10 on signup, which has allowed me to play for free for the last month or so.

Have odds charts in front of you all the time, make sure you don't chase with pots that are too small. Use this combination of playing and charts to try and understand why you are doing things (may take way longer than you expect).

Read SSH (Ed Miller's first book). I'm gonna assume that his other book, which is more basic, would be even better. I personally found it very difficult to adjust from Jones to Miller compared to what I thought it would be like. I'm thinking of picking up Miller's new book just because the last one was so fun to read. I read his SSH 3 or 4 times, and I still can't apply a significant amount of it as well as I should.

Always remember that this is going to take a long time, and be a lot of work. Don't play for money, play for learning. Even though the super small limits seem ridiculous, they should let you get a ton of playing in super cheaply.

Oh, and playing correctly is very high variance when you don't know what you're doing. There'll be days, weeks, or months when you have no idea why you're doing it (ie. AA getting cracked by 93o on river when capped preflop), and it's really hard to remember that your play is correct when stuff like that is happening and you don't quite believe in yourself yet. The flipside, and why microlimits are so awesome, is that there are times where you'll have 3 callers to the river when you have the nuts and have been capping every street.

Get pokertracker, at least the demo, and look over your hands and sessions. Compare your play with what you think you should have done, look for similar hands on here, and post hands you aren't sure of. Don't worry about people being pissed off, the reason this forum exists is for idiots like us to stop being idiots (I've just managed to overcome this fear after lurking here for almost a year, and now I'm posting advice like I know what I'm talking about!). Plus, a lot of the time smarter people will correct your posts, which helps everybody.

And follow all the good advice everyone else said, too. It takes a lot of work and study, but the number of bonehead plays your opponents make all the time makes it all worthwhile.

[Felipe]

blindpost [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

Ed Miller has a great post that highlights specific low limit strategies. These include what hands to play and where, when to fold/call/raise etc. They include some ideas that should definately change your perspective of lowlimit games. Good luck, it's long!

Soon you'll look back at this post and chuckle!
(i can't find my old whiney one, can anyone help. LOL)