Low Stakes Poker - Low Stakes Poker Player

To win at multi-table poker tournaments it takes a lot of concentration, stamina, and patience, patience, patience (much to the degree of what Daniel Negreanu says in his PokerStars commercials).

Nonetheless in multi-table tournaments I cannot stress the word patience enough. In these types of tournaments the key is to preserve your chips as much as possible until the time is right to start taking some chances. But for the point of this discussion I’m going to stick to the early stages in tournament poker. A player wants to choose his spots wisely so they don’t donk off their chips when there is any reason to do so.

For example, if the blinds are 15/30 and you are under the gun with a mediocre hand like A 10 its best to fold and get out of the way. I would recommend only playing strong starting hands from this position with blinds being the way they are. If you are raising in this position with a hand like A10 then you would be risking 90 chips for a whopping 45 chips if you were to take down the blinds. A player could be raising like that to set up an image at the table but I still think it’s the wrong play because with a table full of players to act behind you your A10 is likely dominated by another hand. If someone would come along with AQ, AK or even a big pocket pair then you’re in real trouble already. Also if a player is holding AJ or better and you both hit your Ace then you could end up losing some chips if not your whole stack. There are many different areas where you can preserve your chips but this one example of how to play smart and patient in the early stages of a tournament. Remember the word patience when you are playing your next tournament and watch your tournament cashes increase.

Poker legend Daniel Negreanu is going to attempt an incredible low stakes poker feat. He plans on trying to turn $10 into $100,000 playing online poker. He will start off playing $0.01/$0.02 micro-stakes no-limit hold’em games. For his sake, I hope he polished up on his low stakes poker strategy, because the game-play in those small stakes games is vastly different than the nosebleed games he is accustomed to.

Fellow pro Chris “Jesus” Ferguson succeeded in a similar feat years ago when he turned a bankroll of $0 into $10,000. It took him several months to do this as building a bankroll from nothing is not easy.

I predict Negreanu is unable to maintain the patience required to complete such a feat. As far as meets the eye, he does not have any high-stakes side bets or any other significant initiative in place to motivate him to complete this challenge. I’ll bet he simply has too much money and values his time too highly to spend the countless hours of grinding low stakes that is required to complete this challenge. Just to go from $10 to $1,000 would take several thousand hands played over the course of dozens of hours. Going from $1,000 to $100,000 is a whole different story. Even Daniel Negreanu won’t have the easiest time beating mid- to high-stakes online poker games nowadays. Many of these games are filled with young sharks who don’t easily dump off their stacks.

So while, on paper, this is an interesting sounding challenge and all. I’ll bet no way Negreanu even comes close to going through with it. If I were him, I’d just focus more of my time on hanging out with fellow gamblers making high-stakes bets on golf and paying visits to the Vegas-area strip clubs afterwards!

Despite its current popularity, the game of poker is thought to have originated more than ten centuries ago.  Most poker historians believe it to be a combination of different games that usually have involved ranked cards and the process of bluffing one’s opponent.

Most people believe that poker came from the Chinese around 969 A.D.  Legend holds that Emperor Mu-tsuang played “cards” with his wife on the eve of the New Year.  On the other hand, some poker aficionados believe that the Egyptians deserve the credit for introducing the first poker variant.  Egyptians in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries played several forms of cards; and in the sixteenth century, Persian peoples used “Treasure Cards” for a variety of gambling games.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the French game Poque and the German game Pochen were very popular.  Both of these games developed out of a Spanish game called Primero.  This game was played by dealing three cards to each player and involved bluffing as a large part of the game.  This was actually the first game that directly relates to what we now consider poker.

The game was brought to North America by the French and it was eventually introduced into New Orleans in the eighteenth century.  After this, it didn’t take long for the game to spread throughout the country.
In the 1800s, Jonathan H. Green referenced poker in his writing when he mentioned the rules to the “cheating game.”  This game quickly replaced three-card monte, as many people felt it was more honest and more challenging.  Green looked again at the game and named it Poker.

Following this came a time in US history when there wasn’t a saloon across the country that didn’t have a poker table.  During the Civil War, both armies played the game.  The influence from Europe on the game of poker ended in 1875 with the introduction of the joker.

In just over two hundred years, poker has become so popular that there several different variants of the game that have dominated the poker scene.  Five card draw was the most popular for over a hundred years.  In fact, the State of Nevada determined that five card draw was a game of skill, and therefore could not be affected by existing gambling laws.  However, stud poker was still illegal since it was believed to be a game based only on chance.

In 1931, Nevada reversed its decision and legalized gambling in its entirety.  Seven card stud became all the rage after the Second World War and lasted for almost forty years as the most popular variation of poker.  Texas Hold’em hit the circuit in the 1970’s when it was introduced as the title game in the famous World Series of Poker, and it continues to be the most popular variation of poker today.

You’ll also find many other variations on the game, including Omaha, Draw, Razz, and Manila, but none are anywhere near as popular as No Limit Texas Hold’em.  It definitely looks as though poker is going to stick around for awhile.  With the advent of poker rooms online and the ease of playing with real or play money, its safe to say that poker will continue to grow in popularity for some time to come.

Of all poker concepts, perhaps the most important in low-stakes games is pot odds. Quite simply, pot odds determine whether or not it makes sense to call to see the next car. If you are hoping to hit a flush or a straight, you use pot odds to determine whether or not it makes sense to call and see another card.

Pot odds are so important since many hands in low-stakes games see a showdown. Most often, hitting a high pair like kings isn’t enough to win; you need to have a very strong hand like a straight or a flush. By using pot odds, you can tell if it makes sense for you or your opponents to call and try to hit one of these hands.

To calculate pot odds, you divide the amount of the bet by the pot. So if the bet is 10 and hte pot is 40 (including your bets contribution to the pot), then the pot odds are 25%. In this case, you need a 25% chance of hitting your hand to call.

How do you know what percentage chance you have of improving your hand? First, you determine the number of cards that would help your hand (these are called ‘outs.’) You mulitply your number of outs by 2 and then add two. So if you have 7 outs, you do 7X2 then +2, so 16%.

One thing about poker is that it can be an expensive game to improve at. After all, ‘learning’ often costs money.

People frequently site play money poker games as a way to improve your poker. However, the problem with these games is that the players often don’t try at all. They will just call or raise to blow off steam.

You are better off playing micro-stakes, like $.01-$.02 than play money games if you are trying to learn to play. It’s a tough stretch to say a game like this or a $.25-$.50 is out of your bankroll. If it is, then you should focus on your own personal money issues and not play poker anyways.

A good way to learn tournaments are the freerolls and the $1-$5 buy-in tournaments. Even though the freerolls are ‘free,’ they generally award some real money prize so people still at least try. You get the benefits of learning from a real money game but without the risk of having to pay anything.

One thing people often think is worth it is to ‘take a shot’ at a higher stakes game, with the atittude that they’ll learn a lot even if they lose money. Generally, it’s just not worth it. Only start playing for higher stakes when you feel comfortable enough to play there for awhile. Otherwise, you are just playing scared and are going to lose money, without learning many new poker skills.

Many successful online poker players have never made a deposit to an online poker room. How is this possible? Through freeroll tournaments.What is a freeroll tournament?

Freeroll tournaments are one of life’s few chances to win something for nothing. Some online poker rooms, such as Everest Poker, regularly hold freeroll tournaments (one of their current promotions lets players take their shot at a $2,500 prize pool without having to risk a penny). This may sound too good to be true, but there isn’t a catch. It really is possible to win real money playing online poker without ever having to risk a dime of your own money.

Warning: Grinding Required

While it’s not hard to win money through no-limit hold’em freeroll tournaments, it can be hard turning those winnings into anything meaningful. Cashing in a freeroll tournament will often yield a payout as small as just a few cents. It can be very challenging turning a handful of change into a significant online poker bankroll.

For starters, play the lowest stakes available on the network. If you win $1 or $2 in a freeroll tournament, you can use that money to play $.01-$.02 no-limit hold’em. Since players at these stakes tend to be generally awful, one could conceivably build a $1 bankroll into several hundred dollars provided they are very disciplined.

Sit-’N’-Go Approach

Another way to utilize one’s freeroll tournament winnings is to roll the dice on a sit-’n’-go tournament. Many online poker rooms (Titan Poker and Gnuf to name a few) offer extremely low buy-in sit-’n’-go tournaments. For example, at Gnuf, they have tournaments with buy-ins that start as low as $.10. These can be a great way to parlay a few cents into a workable poker bankroll.

The sit-’n’-go approach tends to have more variance than grinding cash games. It’s not uncommon to have a streak of 10 or more tournaments where one fails to win any money. So if your first couple of tries in a sit-’n’-go are unsuccessful, try not to be too hard on yourself. Remember, even Phil Ivey goes through stretches of losing in tournaments.

Strings Attached

The only downside to online freeroll tournaments is that everyone is chasing the same free money as yourself. On some of the larger online poker rooms, freeroll tournaments attract thousands of players. To combat this, many poker rooms require players to exchange a certain number of “points” for entry into a freeroll. Usually, these points are earned through participating in real-money games on their network. Of course, to participate in real money games, one will either need to make a deposit or win money through a freeroll. One option is to make the minimum deposit (some poker rooms allow deposits as small as $10) and play low stakes games to collect a lot of player points. Once you have enough player points, you can start joining some of the more “exclusive” freeroll tournaments void of hoards of freeloaders who have never played real-money poker before.

Low stakes poker players often have a hard time finding a game to their liking in a casino. Some casinos will spread games as small as $2/$4 or $3/$6 limit. No-limit poker games rarely get smaller than games with $1/$2 blinds. While these games might be considered “small stakes” in brick-and-mortar poker games, one could still easily lose over $100.

For poker players who don’t want to risk losing more than a couple of dollars, thankfully there’s online poker. Many online poker rooms spread very, very affordable poker games. Just how low can you go?

Some online poker rooms like Titan Poker offer no-limit games with blinds of $.01 and $.02. To play these games, one could buy-in for as little as $1! It’d be impossible to find such small games in a casino poker room.

Of course, what costs less than $.01? Something that costs nothing! Thanks to the internet, there are plenty of ways to enjoy poker for free. One might think that playing poker for free is a great way to practice poker strategy. This is actually not true. Many play money online poker games are filled with players who have no incentive to play in a manner that simulates real-money conditions. In other words, play money games are often filled with people playing like clowns. After all, what do they have to lose?

To hone one’s poker skills in an environment where other players actually want to win, low stakes online poker is the way to go. Sure, you might wind up losing a couple of dollars in the process, but who cares? For risking the cost of a sandwich, one can play low stakes online poker and begin to build their skills against other players at any time of the day.

Who knows? Maybe all that practice will have you with a little pocket money and the confidence to take on the players at the casino!

When starting out playing poker, many people believe they can play for fake money (play money) and then transition for real money. This simply is not the case. There’s a big difference between fake money games and real-money games.

In fake money games, there’s no incentive to fold whatsoever. All of the online poker sites will give you unlimited amounts of fake money, so there’s no major reason to conserve your chips. Obviously, in a real money game, you don’t have an unlimited amount of cash (if you do, congrats!) so people actually play seriously. Some play-money players play for pride (some nice alliteration huh?), but that incentive is not nearly as much as cold, hard cash.

In a fake money game, you will be called and paid off with all sorts of hands because people simply want to see what you have. People won’t do this in a real-money game, even if the bet is just a dollar. If you play a lot of play money games, you will get used to winning more with your ‘winning hands’ which doesn’t transition into a real-money game. Your hand selection will get too loose, and it will affect your style of play too much.

While fake money games are good to get used to the rules of Texas Hold’em or just for fun, they are not a good learning tool for transitioning into low-stakes real-money games.

This website is about succeeding at low-stakes poker, but what exactly is low-stakes. In their poker strategy articles, PokerTips.org referrs to fixed-limit Texas Hold’em games of $2-$4 or less as low-stakes. As for no-limit holdem, games with $.50-$1 blinds are considered low-stakes.

I could be politically correct and say that ‘low-stakes is whatever low-stakes is to you,’ but that would be a disservice. The truth is that low-stakes referrs to a style of play, more of a Texas No Fold’em if you will. What is low-stakes depends if you are live or online, since live games tend to be much looser than live games.

Nowadays, with online games being tougher, I’d think of fixed-limit games of $1-$2 and lower being low-stakes, and no-limit games with $.25-$.50 blinds as low-stakes. For live games, I’d say you could multiply these amounts by four or so. Pretty much any game that is $5-$10 fixed or less or no-limit with $1-$2 blinds play like low-stakes games.

Shocked by the difference? If anything, the online games are probably tougher at these limits, since they are full of nits, whereas the live games tend to be full of calling stations.