Winning @ Low Stakes Poker

This week I was lucky enough to attend an internet marketing conference and was able to sit in on the keynote speech given by Phil Gordon. Phil may not seem like the most natural fit for an internet marketing conference, but Phil has definitely been-there-done-that when it comes to building successful businesses in the technology field. Back in the day Phil built up a company that was eventually sold to Cisco. One of the leading network hardware manufacturers in the world.

The bulk of Phil’s 45 minute speech centered around poker. He then intertwined aspects of how being a successful poker player relate to being successful in business. He spoke of 6 key traits a person has to have to be successful in poker.

Those traits are:

Aggression
Being aggressive at the poker table and attacking pots allows you to win the hand without ever having to show your cards. By checking and calling you are forced to show down hands and hope you have the best of it.

Patience
It sounds contradictory to being aggressive, but being patient is certainly key. You should be folding most hands you are dealt, especially when playing out of position. Waiting for the proper opportunities will win you far more in the long run than trying to attack every pot.

Courage
When sitting at the table and somebody makes a big bet, sure, it’s easy to call when you have the nuts. Having the courage to make that call (or raise) when you only have a decent hand, but are pretty sure you have the best hand, this is what it takes to make it as a poker player.

Resilience
Having a “Never Give Up” attitude is very important. When you take a bad beat and lose most of your chips, this is no time to throw away the rest of your chips in defeat. Dig deep and do whatever it takes to get yourself back in to the game. You only need to double up a few times to build up a formidable chip stack.

Observation
Watching what other players are doing while you are in a hand is important, but it’s just as important to watch what’s going on once you fold. Watch the players in the hand when the flop is dealt. Did he look at his chips? Did he swallow real hard? Did he sit up in his seat? What happened next? Keeping a mental note of how players act under certain circumstances will help you know exactly what to do when you are in a pot against them.

Desire to Improve
The previous 5 traits can all be taught. However, if you don’t have a desire to improve, you might want to take up a different game. The rules of poker are very simple. You can learn them in a matter of minutes. The nuances involved are endless. Ask any pro player if they are as good as they can be at poker and I promise that every single one of them will tell you that they are constantly trying to improve their game. That’s what winners do.

As I left the conference I asked myself if I felt that I had all 6 of these traits. I believe that I have all of these traits inside me, they just don’t always show up at the same time. One day I may have 4 with me. Another day, only 2. But I promise you this, I always have the desire to improve!

Every poker session you have is going to be unique. You’ll get in familiar situations, but how you react is going to rely on a lot of factors. Not all of them are related to poker.

Here is a list of 4 things that will affect the way you play before you even sit down.

1. Your mood
When you get to the casino to play poker, the mood you arrive in is important. Being relaxed with a clear mind is important for making proper decisions at the table. If you just had an argument and you are steaming, sitting down to play poker is likely a losing proposition.

2. How much time you have
When you are heading to the poker table, always try to arrive early enough so that you can play until you are ready to leave rather than being forced to leave because of the time on the clock. If you have only a limited amount of time you may be compelled to play mediocre hands in an effort to see action before it’s time to leave.

3. The stakes
Having a bankroll to match the stakes you are playing is important. Even though you may be perfectly comfortable with the skill level of the players at a certain level, if the limits are higher than your bankroll dictates, you may find yourself laying down a higher percentage of winning hands by playing too cautiously.

4. Your health
While you may not need to do any heavy lifting at the poker table, if you are battling a cold, you are going to have a harder time thinking clearly. You need to be clear and focused to play your A-game. If you aren’t feeling well, take the day off and rest up.

Keep this list in mind before you head to the casino. It could mean the difference between a winning and losing session.

One of the great things about playing online poker is the fact that it’s easy to find a tournament for nearly any buy-in amount. At any given time, sites like Full Tilt Poker offer tournaments with buy-ins ranging from $1,000.00 down to $1.00. There are even freeroll tournaments that let you play for a chance to win real money with no money out of your pocket.

I consider a micro-limit tournament to be anything under $5.00. In tournaments with this low of a buy-in, you can expect to see some extremely loose play. Many players will play any two cards in an effort to either win a large pot or get knocked out early to avoid wasting time in a tournament where the payout is going to be relatively low.

For the sake of this article, we’re going to assume that your goal is to win the tournament. This means you aren’t going to play like a maniac while trying to get lucky in order to accumulate chips or get knocked out trying.

Your first task is to make it past the first three levels. Here are some tips to do this:

• Play tight and fold all but the premium starting hands.
• Try to avoid race situations for all your chips
• Don’t overvalue hands like A/Q, A/J, A/10, K/Q or pocket pairs 9s or lower
• Don’t try to steal the blinds (during the first few levels, they are so low, they aren’t worth stealing)
• Identify the overly aggressive players and avoid them early on

Getting dealt some premium hands in the first few rounds can be a large benefit. Since many players are playing really loose, it’s not usually a problem to get paid off by lesser hands. Of course there is always the chance that you will get unlucky and have somebody draw out on you. This is a part of poker and there is nothing you can do about that.

After these first few rounds are over, it’s now time to change gears and accumulate some chips. Since you have been playing tight, you should now be able to use the tight image that you have portrayed to your advantage. When you enter a pot with a raise, other players, if they are paying attention, should take notice and give you credit for having a big hand. I would still suggest you avoid playing against the overly aggressive players, especially if they have accumulated a sizable stack. Many times these players will choose to play back at tight players thinking that they can get them to lay down most hands with a large bet on the flop. Unless you start with a monster hand or flop a big hand, you are going to be hard-pressed to play back at a player with a much larger stack than your own.

The number one most important rule for playing micro-limit tournaments is to remain patient. By picking your spots, getting your money in with the best hand and with a little bit of luck, you are going to find that these small buy-in tournaments can produce a profit for you on a consistent basis.

In tournament poker, it’s far more important to maximize the amount of chips you win from a big hand than it is in a cash game due to the fact that in a tournament, the blinds and antes increase on a regular basis. After the first few levels in a tournament, you are subjected to antes that eat away at your stack every hand. One way to to do this is to set a trap for an aggressive opponent.

There are several ways to set traps for an opponent, and they all require you to take some sort of risk. A great example is when you are in early position and you are dealt a hand like A/A or K/K. By limping in with a monster hand from early position, you are inviting an aggressive player behind you to raise the pot allowing you to re-raise when it gets back to you. However, the danger in limping in is that you are making it more inviting for sub-par hands to enter the pot because of the extra money you have added to it. If nobody raises after you and you are forced to see the flop against several opponents, you need to proceed with caution as it’s going to be difficult to determine the strength of an opponents hand. If you are willing to limp in, you are going to need to be ready to fold your premium hand if the flop misses you and the betting dictates that you no longer have the best hand.

While it may seem like setting a trap would always mean slow playing a big hand, that’s not always the case. In some cases, I prefer to bet my big hands depending on the situation. For example, here’s a hand from a recent online tournament. An aggressive player raised roughly 3x the BB from middle position, the player on the button called and I was in the BB with 4/4. The SB folds and I call. The flop came out A/9/4 rainbow. Being first to act with 2 players behind me, my first instinct was to check and let the pre-flop raiser do the betting for me. But, given the players aggression in previous hands, I decide to make a small-ish bet (about 1/3 the pot) which would invite the original raiser to re-raise me. As expected, he did exactly that. He made a healthy raise and I pushed all-in and he eventually folded his hand. After the hand, he claimed to have had K/K and felt unlucky that the Ace hit the board However it was me that was unlucky that the Ace hit as I would have won more chips if the flop had been Q/9/4 instead. Regardless, I made more money on the hand by betting out and letting him raise me than if I had checked and called the flop as he would have bet far less than the amount of his raise of my flop bet.

Setting traps depends greatly on how well you know your opponents. Keep your eyes open for spots where you can play a hand differently than you might normally play it in order to set up an opponent to pay you off.

If you play in the same card room be it live or online, you are bound to end up playing against people you have played with before. The more often you play with the same group of people, the more they are going to know about you and the way you play. Building up a reputation in a card room can definitely work to your advantage.

There are many types of reputations to have: gambler, a rock, a bluffer, tight, loose, aggressive, maniac, passive and many more. For the sake of this article, I’ll focus solely on my current reputation.

In my circle of friends I have picked up a reputation to always be bluffing. While this makes it much more difficult for me to pull off a bluff since I will get called down with really weak hands, it provides me with an excellent weapon that I can use against my opponents. Since I’m never given credit for a hand, I simply value-bet my hands on the flop, turn and river. There is no value in slow playing big hands in this circumstance since my opponents will not likely bet their weak hands, but will feel compelled to call me down with 3rd or 4th pair.

When in this situation, it’s very important to pay attention to the texture of the board. Since I am likely going to have to show down my hand, I need to be sure I have the best hand. If any sort of draw is filled with the turn or river card, I’m more apt to check/call or simply fold and wait for a better spot than I am to try and win the hand against an opponent who has a hard time laying down a hand, especially to a guy that he thinks is bluffing anyway.

I will usually try to control the size of the pot by being the person doing the betting. Like I said, they aren’t going to give me credit for a hand anyway, so I may as well bet my strong hands the same way I would if I were trying to bluff them out of a pot. This opens up several possibilities. Re-raising right away or smooth calling to set up a check-raise on the turn are both strong plays but need to be used based on the strength of your hand mixed with the likelihood your hand can be drawn out on.

If you don’t already know what your reputation is, pay attention to the types of hands that are showing down against you. If you are being called down with relatively weak hands, you are probably perceived as loose or even a maniac. If you are getting no action on your raises, you are perceived to be tight and will only enter a pot with solid hands.

Once you have figured out your reputation, use it to punish your opponents. They already think you play one way. Switch it up on them and you are bound to be rewarded.