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To illustrate this dynamic, let’s say that you’re dealt AA in early position, and you raise 7x the big blind which is a pretty big preflop raise. Three players end up calling your raise, and now any advantage you may have had is long gone on a four-player flop. Sure everybody may miss the board and you’ll still be ahead with top pair, but it’s just as likely that one of the three other players will hit something on the flop.

This aforementioned scenario is a big reason why many players claim the micro stakes can’t be beaten. After all, micro stakes games are usually the setting where these type of hands happen. So does this mean you can’t still raise for value preflop when everybody’s a calling station?

Certainly not because there are still quite a few scenarios where you can get value out of your preflop raises when several players are involved. You just have to make sure you’re raising with hands that play well after the flop.

For instance, K-Q suited is an excellent hand to raise with because several other players could call and raise the pot when you’re in an advantageous position. K-Q(s) gives you a solid chance to get a high flush or straight and take somebody’s stack. Also, pocket pairs (potential set, quads) or ace-high suited hands (potential nut flush) are good to raise with in these situations.

Once the flop is dealt, don’t be disappointed when you completely miss it and have to fold. But the key is to pump up the pot when you have solid hands that could potentially give you top hand. And again, be willing to lay down your hand if one of the other limpers/calling stations connects on the board.

For example, let’s say that you’re sitting in MP with As-Ts and a tight player UTG makes a 4x the big blind raise. Now your suited AT combo is certainly a nice hand because it gives you nut flush and top pair potential. However, your table position isn’t great, and it’s likely the UTG player’s range has your hand beat. Case in point, this isn’t a good preflop raise to call.

Let’s assume you don’t have any information on your opponent and have to decide whether or not to call a preflop raise. Some good general advice for this subject would be to only call a preflop raise when you’ve got a solid hand like AQ, KQ (w/ position), AJ (w/ position), or if you’ve got a speculative hand in a pot with several players involved.

As for the latter, small and mid-pocket pairs as well as suited connectors have good speculative potential. And the value of these hands increases when three or more players are involved since it provides more of an opportunity for you to take somebody’s stack when a hand does connect.

But other than these instances, it’s not a good idea to cold call a preflop raise when you’ve got a marginal hand and no information on your opponent. Furthermore, if you’re OOP this only makes calling a preflop raise even more difficult because you now have to act before your opponent. So to sum all of this up, you’ll be folding to preflop raises a lot more often than you call or re-raise them.

Poker is not totally unlike sports in this regard because many successful players have spent a large amount of time fine-tuning the mechanics of their play. And this differs from the vast majority of players, who are more concerned with their day-to-day profits than whether or not they’re making the correct moves in each situation.

For example, let’s say that you’re holding Ks-Qd on a flop of Kh-9h-9s, and you are isolated with a really tight opponent. They make a pot-sized bet, which, based on the way they’ve been playing, makes it very likely that they’ve flopped trips (or quads) and are value betting. The smart decision here would be to fold, but just for the sake of what we’re going to discuss, we’ll say that you call and another king lands on the board.

Assuming you went on to win the hand and a huge pot, it’s all too easy to forget about this mistake if you end up having a monster cash game session. However, the reality is that you made a bad play, but got rewarded with more profits. Case in point, focusing on profits is not the best way to improve your game.

Instead, it’s more important to think about how you played each hand afterward, and decide if you did so correctly or not. Additionally, you should go over about a half hour or hour’s worth of poker strategy each day to improve the mechanics of your play. This could include visiting a poker forum, reading poker books, or joining a training site like DragTheBar.

Whatever the case may be, don’t rest on your laurels just because you’re profiting at a certain level. There’s always room for improvement, and the end goal is to play mistake-free, or as close to it as possible.

1) What range of hands your opponents are playing preflop

4) What hands your opponents play in various situations postflop

The last point is an open book because there’s so much information you need to account for with postflop hand ranges for each player. However, the key is that you watch your opponents and learn as much as you can about their tendencies in each situation. For example, how large of bets do they make when they’ve flopped top pair with a strong kicker? Do they slow-play big hands? Do they check-raise other opponents with the nuts? Are they willing to raise with a flush draw as a semi-bluff?

This is just a small sample of the questions you can answer while studying other players. Obviously you won’t remember each little detail from every opponent during a session, which is why player notes are always handy. In addition to taking notes, your overall online poker experience will help out immensely when profiling opponents. After all, things tend to slow down on the poker tables when you’re playing consistently every day, and this makes it easier to get a good read on each player.

If you’re really serious about getting better at reading opponents, you can always observe tables; this works great if you’re thinking of moving up a level and want to scout out the competition without betting any money. Of course, there’s nothing making you do this since it gets pretty boring.

In any case, just make sure you’re able to concentrate on the game at hand and study your opponents. By doing so, you’ll gain invaluable information on them, which will aid your decision-making process quite a bit.

The main thing you have to understand here is that value betting is your friend. If you strongly feel you’re ahead based on an opponent’s tendencies, you bet the maximum that the opponent is willing to call. In most cases, micro stakes players are the easiest to value bet against because the money is so insignificant, and they just want to see more cards.

Just be sure to watch your opponents for a while before making any huge raises so that you can identify their playable range of hands, which should be pretty wide in the micro stakes. Sure there will be times where you go all-in with pocket aces and get called by a couple of players – one of which cracks your aces. But thinking long-term, if you keep making strong value bets, you should have little trouble with these stakes.

Along with value betting, you need to keep a very tight range of hands and avoid bluffing. The latter is a downfall of many players who lose in the micro stakes because they try to make steals from the cut-off and button, only to get called by one or two players afterward. Simply put, there will be enough spots where you can make money without bluffing in low stakes play, so don’t spew off money trying to steal.

Another point worth mentioning here is that you need to select your tables carefully as well. When looking at the lobby statistics, a high flop-viewed percentage coupled with big average pot sizes highlights where the loose players are. Furthermore, these represent the best players to value bet when you’re ahead because they’re highly likely to call.

One more point worth making is to always consider the possibility that your opponent actually has a hand when they’re betting big. Many players make the mistake of thinking that micro stakes players are constantly going all-in with bottom pair and ace-high, which isn’t always the case.

3-betting Light Definition – The basic definition of 3-betting light is re-raising another player preflop without great cards, and/or when you know you’re behind. For instance, if a player out in front of you raises, and you re-raise with 8s-9s, this is a light 3-bet because your holdings aren’t that strong.

Example of 3-betting Light – To better illustrate how 3-betting light looks in action, let’s say that a player to your right (button) who’s been stealing a lot raises to $6 in a $1/$2 Hold’em game. The small blind folds, and you (big blind) 3-bet to $18 with 7d-8d. Obviously your cards aren’t overly strong and would be best played in a multi-way pot. Furthermore, your position after the flop will be bad, which all combines to make this a light 3-bet.

Best Light 3-betting Situations – Expanding on the situation above where you 3-bet light with 7-8 suited, the ideal situation is for your opponent to fold here. If they call, you’re going into the flop with cards that don’t play well heads-up, and you are out of position too. If they reraise, it would be silly to do anything other than fold in this situation.

Taking all of this into account, the best scenario for 3-betting light arises when a TAG opens the betting from late position in hopes of stealing the hand. The reason why this is ideal is because they’re far more likely to fold being a TAG because they were simply hoping to steal the hand.

Now some people might ask why we don’t light 3-bet a LAG because they play such a wide range of hands. The reason is because the LAG is less likely to fold to a light 3-bet than the TAG, and their range will probably beat your’s in light 3-betting situations. Furthermore, you should be looking to value 3-bet bet LAG’s with good hands because your range will normally be ahead of their’s.

Tip #1: Make Bigger Raises -The first thing you need to throw out the window in micro stakes games is the idea that 3x-4xbb preflop raises are going to scare anybody off of a hand. If you make a 4xbb raise in $0.01/$0.02 Holdem, you’re only betting $0.08, which won’t dissuade a micro stakes player from calling. And this can be a big problem if you’re holding pocket aces, and three other players decide to call your 4xbb raise to see the flop. So keep in mind that you’ll be forced to make 10xbb raises or more (depending on the table) to scare off potential callers.

Tip #2: Overbet with the Nuts – One nice thing about playing in micro stakes games is that players are willing to call big raises with far less holdings than those at higher stakes. For example, some players are willing to risk their whole stack with second or third best pair. With this being said, you can usually get more value out of the nuts by overbetting. For instance, if you hold As-Ts on a board of Ks-9h-3s-Qs, you can bet two or three times the pot size and still expect a call on this obviously dangerous board.

Tip #3: See Lots of Flops – Not everything in the micro stakes is about overbetting and making big preflop raises. In fact, you can also put yourself in some favorable situations by being passive preflop with suited connectors and small pocket pairs just to see flops. Once you’re on the flop, you can try to outplay others because micro stakes players are well-known for being bad postflop players.

In bigger poker tournaments, it’s pretty much impossible to keep track of everybody, which is why you should be taking notes on players. Now this isn’t to say you need to keep track of every single player who makes a 2xbb raise from the button, but you should at least keep track of poker players who make significant moves that can define their play.

For example, let’s say you notice a player make a 3xbb raise from middle position, and two other players behind them call. The flop comes out A-9-4, and the player shoves their stack into the middle when they’re in no danger of blinding out. One player folds, some fish calls, and the original raises shows pocket queens, while the fish shows K-9. The board fails to help either player, and the original raiser wins the hand.

Seeing as how the original raiser is still alive in the tournament, it’s worth taking a note on this particular play. You could jot down: “Screen name” makes moderate raises from MP (middle position) with premium hands, then overplays second pair when OOP (out of position). Assuming you and this player both move onto new tables, only to meet up later in the tournament, this information could be extremely helpful.

If you’re wondering how to take notes in online poker, Carbon Poker offers a nice feature where you can both tag opponents and jot down notes on them. To do this, just click on the player’s name during a game, and a screen will come up. Here you can tag the player as a Shark, Fish, Buddy, Champion, Bluffer etc., and jot down your own personal notes on their play. And what’s nice is that you’ll be able to see this information whenever you find them in a poker tournament or cash game.

Measuring All of the Factors

The typical poker tournament bubble scene goes like this: the large majority of short stacks freeze up and either wait for A) a great hand to come, or B) the bubble to burst. Many poker strategists suggest playing really aggressive in these situations because so many others are playing tight, but this doesn’t usually work for the short stacks.

After all, the biggest stacks are far less likely to respect your raises or shoves when you are short on chips. So if you’re trying to hang on to make the money, it’s often counterproductive to bully other players around when you don’t have the stack to scare anybody.

On the other hand, folding pocket tens when they come around preflop isn’t a good idea either. You don’t know when the bubble is actually going to burst, and you could get stuck trying to decide whether or not to shove your remaining 2bb with Q-4 offsuit.

All in all, playing the bubble when you’re in danger of blinding out involves a number of factors such as how low some of the other remaining stacks are, how likely you are to get away with a steal, how much a small cash actually means to you, and whether or not the amount of money is worth passing up +EV moves. To illustrate these factors in action, let’s move on to a tournament example.

Playing the Bubble with a Low Stack

Assume you’re down to the final 21 players in a poker tournament where the top 15 cash. Your stack is at around 6bb, and there are nine other players with about the same stack size. At this point, you’re in a fold or shove situation because if you raise, it’s very likely a bigger stack will reraise and put you all-in anyways. So this becomes a time where you should be thinking about two main options:

1) Keep folding and pray for a cash
2) Play aggressively and hope to double up

Most people would say the first option is a terrible idea because other short stacks will be playing aggressively, and this strategy will earn them the blinds needed to stay alive. But if the money is significant to you (instead of a tiny cash), not going all-in with hands like J-T(o) could be to your benefit. In some situations, players will get a good run of cards right when it appears as if their tourney life is over. Furthermore, assuming there is another short stack or two at your table and they’re not playing aggressively, you could sneak into the money if they bust out.

As for the other suggestion, most players will advise that you do everything possible to double up before being in danger of blinding out, which is certainly a good idea because if you do double up, at least your stack will have some power behind the bubble. However, just because you have 3bb left doesn’t mean it’s the time to shove with T-3(o). A lot of what you do in this scenario will depend on position, and your judgement of how likely you are to be called here. A good idea is to wait for the cut-off or button to come around, then try to steal – especially if the players behind you are tight and/or low stacks.

One more thing to keep in mind is that when you play a lot of poker tournaments, the bubble becomes less of big thing, which allows you to forget about the money and make +EV plays without fearing a non-cash.