Continuation betting micro stakes strategy

After the flop, I will use intelligent aggression to exploit imbalances in their ranges in order to overcome the fact that my ranges are out of balance as well. For example, let's say I open from middle position and get a call from the button and the big blind.

I will often fire a continuation bet on a dynamic flop like and continue barreling on the turn if only the big blind calls on the flop. The big blind's defending range is normally weak as is, but here, it is even weaker because of the increased pot odds offered to the big blind by the button's call. Also, maybe the big blind would feel comfortable trapping preflop with a hand like against my open alone, but this is less likely with the button in the pot as well.

The weakness of the big blind's range combined with the perceived strength of my range given that I was willing to c-bet into a multi-way pot from out of position gives me one of the biggest range advantages possible. Not to mention that this highly favorable spot is even subsidized by the button's dead money! That makes this one of the most profitable bluffing spots in all of poker.

For this reason, I will open as wide as 40 percent of the deck from middle position here in hopes of creating this scenario against unsophisticated players who flat with hands they should be three-betting or folding. If I am able to get it heads up with the big blind by the turn, I will often shove the river expecting to get a fold the vast majority of the time.

When players just call the turn on dynamic flops like these, they often have one pair. When they entered the pot from the big blind getting a great price preflop, that pair is often very weak and not worth playing for stacks on the river. This gives those of us who are observant players license to fire away until they adjust. You will also learn why it is so effective which is just as important.

Let's get started! Delayed CBets Are Highly Effective at the Micros A continuation bet in poker CBet is when you raise before the flop and then continue the aggression with another bet on the flop. This is a highly effective punch in poker because it makes a lot of people fold.

So when you make a delayed CBet in poker, it just means that you choose to make the continuation bet on either the turn or the river instead. As I discuss all the time on this blog and in my books, at the lower stakes you should be playing an exploitative style of poker in order to have maximum success. And what this means in plain English is that you should be capitalizing on the large glaring errors that most of your opponents will be making at these limits.

So this is why I often talk about why you should just go ahead and bet your strong hands a large amount of the time and avoid any slow-play. And on the flip side, you shouldn't run complex multi-street bluffs very often either. In other words, just keep things as simple as possible at the micros and you will profit more. But what about all of those middle of the road spots where you kinda have something decent but not great?

This is where a lot of small stakes poker players in particular get themselves in trouble. I am talking about situations where you have: Top pair - bad kicker Middle pair A weak draw with overcards These are hands which have plenty of value and are often the best hand right now as well. However, they are also the type of hands where if you get raised, you are often going to be behind.

And that is exactly how a lot of inexperienced players end up getting themselves in tons of trouble again and again by getting involved in bloated pots where they don't know what to do. The delayed CBet is how you fix this. This is because they are good but not great hands. This means that there often isn't a huge amount of upside to betting them, and if you do get action it can end up putting you in some really nasty spots later on in the hand.

The benefits of using a delayed CBet instead are huge though: 1. You provide deception about the real strength of your hand a good hand would bet the flop right? If you happen to be behind right now, you give yourself a chance to catch a lucky card on a later street and make the best hand.

The next time you have one of these middle of the road types of hands considering checking back on the flop instead of just betting out every time. Because this is one of those classic cases where there isn't a ton of value to be gained by betting they aren't calling with worse very often.

And if you do get action, it is often because you are behind to a better pair or they have a strong draw with plenty of equity. Do you want a simple step by step guide to show you exactly how to start winning consistently right now? That is why I recently wrote this free little 50 page no BS guide to teach you exactly how to start crushing these games right now. Enter your details below and I will send my free poker cheat sheet to your email right now.

And the reason why is for a lot of the same reasons that we just discussed. These hands have some reasonable value but we aren't going to get called on the flop by worse hands very often. Also when we do get action it is usually because we are behind. So if I flop a gutshot straight draw for instance with a couple of over cards, this is a great spot for a delayed CBet. I also give myself a chance to realize my equity by hitting one of my outs on those later streets.

This is something that I discuss in much greater detail by the way in my new book, The Micro Stakes Playbook. This is because it makes you easy to read and highly exploitable. So you want to go ahead and sometimes just make a CBet with your weak top pairs, middle pairs, weak draws and missed overs as well.

This is the "standard play" for a reason after all. But a decent amount of the time at the micros, you should also consider using a delayed CBet in these marginal situations. Let's look at a few examples. This is an excellent spot to use a delayed CBet.

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I cannot stress enough how important to take your time and build your poker empire slowly. They run around the clock both online and live. Start small, develop a world-class understanding of the fundamental principles of the game and your transition to mid, high and nosebleed stakes will be much smoother.

But believe me, this is a recipe for disaster. Often, they end up going broke again and again as a result. First things first, you should always have at least 30 buy-ins for any game that you are playing. The reason why is that downswings at the micros happen even to the very best players. And many players are surprised at how lengthy they can be. This variance calculation shows the importance of micro stakes poker bankroll management In plain English, this means that if you had 30 buy-ins in your bankroll, then your bankroll would be gone.

Now, there are many ways to mitigate against this. Simply having a higher win-rate, for example, will reduce these odds tremendously keep reading this article for more on that. But the bottom line is that variance in poker is real and it can be brutal—even at the very lowest stakes. Make sure you start your poker career with a proper bankroll, and a solid game plan for moving up the stakes as well. I recommend writing down exact bankroll requirements for each limit in a blog or a journal.

Write down when to move down in stakes as well. This ensures that you have a clear purpose and goal in mind every time you sit down to play poker. All three of these formats require different skill sets for success, and demand widely different strategies. The problem with trying to play everything—and this includes merely dabbling in other games like PLO, limit, triple draw, etc.

Look at any of the top players out there you will typically find they are specialists at a single game type. They are the best at what they do, whether that is 6-max, cash games, Heads Up SNGs or live tournaments. It is fine to branch out a little bit, and to learn some new games, but you should spend the majority of your time trying to master one specific game type. Which one should you choose, though?

Well, this is really just a matter of personal preference. There is money to be made in all different types of poker games. What is most important is that you actually enjoy the games that you play in. Find your foundation The micros are the ideal stakes to build your foundational knowledge of the game.

This means that you are going to see some of the craziest plays on earth all the time, such as players cold-calling a 3-bet out of position with a small suited connector. You would never expect someone to have a 4 in their hand in a 3-bet pot when the flop comes K44 But they can and sometimes will at the micros!

This is why it is important, when you are first starting out, to keep everything as simple as possible and to be very selective about what hands you play. What does this actually mean in practice? You can probably go a bit looser from the cutoff as well. Furthermore, it is important to play these hands aggressively. This means that you should be entering the pot with a raise, and sometimes re-raising with the top end of these ranges. After the flop, you should be betting for value frequently, and making plenty of semi-bluffs if you catch any piece of the board.

Generally, by playing a solid TAG strategy you will give yourself the best chance of success at the lower limits while keeping yourself out of awkward and potentially tilting situations. One of the biggest mistakes I see players make in these games is over-thinking common situations. And it means death for your win-rate at the micros. You have to remember that most of your opponents at these stakes are relatively new to the game. The problem is that most of the time your high-level fancy play is going to go right over their heads, and they are just going to call you down with their middle or top pair, anyway.

It is really hard to raise somebody the price of a Big Mac and make them lay a decent hand down. They are going to get curious and look you up. So, one of the best things you can do at the micros is just keep everything as stupidly and mind-numbingly simple as possible. And yes, believe me, it will be boring sometimes. But save it for the higher limit games especially where the money is actually meaningful to most people. The only way to crush the cheeseburger stakes is by keeping everything as simple as possible.

Fast-play most of your strong hands The overwhelming majority of micro-stakes players are way too passive. So, when you pick up your over pair, top pair, or any other strong hand, you need to keep betting at the pot until you have a clear reason to slow down. The key thing to remember about the passive, recreational players is that they hate folding and love calling. In fact, one of the greatest thrills for recreational players is to catch you in a big bluff.

They are also highly superstitious players who hold a deep belief that everyone is always trying to bluff them. So how do you profitably counter someone who thinks like this? Answer: You bet big, and frequently, with all of your good hands. And you lay off on the big bluffs in all but the best of spots. Try to improve your game at least a little bit every single day One of the best things about poker today is the ease with which you can improve your game.

There are countless educational resources out there, from modern books, poker courses, training videos, streaming video sites, forums, and personal coaches. When I first started playing poker online a decade ago none of this existed. So if I flop a gutshot straight draw for instance with a couple of over cards, this is a great spot for a delayed CBet.

I also give myself a chance to realize my equity by hitting one of my outs on those later streets. This is something that I discuss in much greater detail by the way in my new book, The Micro Stakes Playbook. This is because it makes you easy to read and highly exploitable. So you want to go ahead and sometimes just make a CBet with your weak top pairs, middle pairs, weak draws and missed overs as well. This is the "standard play" for a reason after all. But a decent amount of the time at the micros, you should also consider using a delayed CBet in these marginal situations.

Let's look at a few examples. This is an excellent spot to use a delayed CBet. We caught a reasonable flop for our hand - gutshot straight draw to the nuts, backdoor nut flush draw and we still have two big cards that could pair up later on too.

A lot of people would opt for a standard continuation bet in this spot. And as I said before, there is nothing wrong with that. You absolutely should just go ahead and make the standard CBet here plenty of the time. But if you can start mixing in some delayed CBets here it makes you a lot more difficult to play against because they can't put you on a hand quite as easily.

It also gives you all the benefits of pot control, deception value and the ability to realize your equity later on in the hand that we discussed before. Once again, we have an excellent candidate for a delayed CBet in this hand. While we flopped top pair we don't have much of a kicker to go with it. It is pretty unlikely that a tight player like this is ever going to have a worse top pair to call us with.

Also, by checking the flop we create some of that deception value that I discuss a lot in my books. This is because in his mind top pair should always bet the flop. But since we checked the flop, then he will be much more inclined to think that we are bluffing. Now again, I want to be clear that you should absolutely just go ahead and make the standard CBet here plenty of the time as well. But this is another one of those spots where mixing in some delayed CBets can be highly effective as well.

This is another spot where I think it is a great idea to frequently mix in a delayed CBet. This is the old middle pair versus a recreational player type of spot. The thing about playing against the fish is that they can have nearly anything.

Therefore, there is almost no point in even bothering to put them on a range of hands. They don't play the game according to logic or mathematics or even common sense like we do. This is why it is often so easy to spot the fish at the poker tables. So versus our opponent's "anything range" here our middle pair with a good kicker is likely to be the best hand. But does this mean that we need to bet it every single time? No, of course not. We also give ourselves a chance to get lucky and hit trips or two pair on the occasions when he does happen to have the ace and we are behind.

Once again, it is perfectly fine to go ahead and make the standard CBet here. But there are many benefits to learning how to check back here frequently as well. Final Thoughts Delayed CBetting is a powerful tool to start mixing into your game no matter what limits you play.

In fact, it a key component of any advanced poker strategy in my opinion. But I think it is especially important for beginners and people playing at the micro stakes to learn and understand how to use the delayed CBet. If you are currently having trouble beating the lower stakes, then this is a great way to start avoiding some of those marginal situations where you are probably losing money right now.