11 Sep 2024 mindset mental game exploit fish discipline Microstakes are full of recreational players (aka 'fish') – infinitely more than at high stakes – and since profit in poker comes from playing against them, the idea that "you can't beat microstakes" or "I can't beat microstakes because they don't respect my raises" is nonsense. It would be the same as saying: “Ah! I prefer to play against professional football players than amateurs, because when I take a free kick they know how to organize a wall, so I can make my shot more professionally.” It makes you want to laugh, right? But that’s exactly what you’re saying when you claim you can’t beat microstakes because the players are too bad. You can have the highest win rates at micros because there are no good players there. For that, you only need three things: 1. Simple and Effective Strategy And what does that mean? First of all, simplify your strategy compared to the mixed strategies suggested by GTO solvers. You have probably seen solver solutions with mixed strategies, where you can raise, call, or even fold with the same hand. The screenshot below is from a solver and shows how a player should defend against a c-bet on a particular flop: Just look at how complex it is to play a simple hand like 54: sometimes you call, sometimes fold, and sometimes even raise. And what if I told you there’s no reason to play like that in practice? At microstakes, people play so fundamentally poorly that there is no point for us to mix anything. This means using only one bet size pre-flop and always playing a hand as either a raise, call, or fold, without mixing actions. Remember, GTO strategies are complex because they were created to be perfect against another perfect player. When we put real people in the equation, they deviate so much from what they should be doing that all the mixed strategies become pure to exploit these population mistakes. 2. Be Disciplined to Execute This Strategy There's no point in knowing the best strategy in the world if you get tilted and make mistakes every time you take a bad beat. That's why the mental aspect in poker is as important (I’d say even more important in some cases) as the technical part. 3. Don't Make Big Mistakes on the River Just as there is no point in having a perfect strategy and tilting every time something negative happens, there is also no sense in having a very good strategy for the preflop, flop and turn if you make mistakes on the river. This means calling when you should have folded, whether it's due to curiosity, difficulty letting go of the hand, or something like that. Making a small mistake preflop isn't that bad because there's little money in the pot. But the river is the point in the hand with the most money involved, so any mistake or correct decision has a huge impact on your win rate and profitability. Understand that as long as you keep making multiple river mistakes, it will destroy the profitability you’ve been building by playing all the other streets correctly. When you have these three things – which may not be easy but are simple – it's game over for the recreational players because you will be the big winner in microstakes.