Marginalpoker

One would think that beating low-stakes Texas Hold’em poker games for any decent player should be a mere formality. By low-stakes, I mean levels like $2 games up to $10. The reality of the situation though is a lot different. The games are populated by weak players sure enough but they are also populated by minimum stack merchants and rake that is very high in proportion to the average pot size.

The average pot sizes are smaller so this means that the implied odds are nowhere near as great and this makes for an all round environment that isn’t easy. Then we have another problem, because the stakes are so low then you tend to get an awful lot of players messing about with their money. This should make it easier in theory and it does when these players get all-in with some very weak holdings.

But they can also call and raise with some very weak holdings as well and this in full-ring games can be an absolute nightmare for a player who is trying to play solid conventional poker. You may think that the best way to beat these players is to simply adjust but that’s just the problem, when you are trying to extract a decent earn rate by multi-tabling then it is hard to tell just who is messing around with their money or playing badly from those that are playing decent poker.

If you were using a tracker like Poker Office then you may be able to identify individual tendencies but many players simply do not use them at these levels. Playing micro-stakes and low-stakes poker really is nothing more than a recreational activity for these people so they do not want to start going down the avenue of taking their game to a whole new level of seriousness.

To cap it all off, we then have the low level unsophisticated cheating that goes off in these games. Some people believe that if anyone wanted to cheat at online poker that they would only do so at higher levels. This is not the case for several crucial reasons. To do so at higher levels would not only require a substantially larger bankroll but the players at these levels would be sophisticated enough to spot it and then report it to the site.

Most of the serious players at the higher levels use trackers like Poker Office or PokerTracker and so they would become aware of any nefarious practices even if the poker site in question were unaware. But you are on your own to a large extent at the lower levels and players can easily combine against you using simple devices like MSN.

Let us say that a player has AA and is first to speak and limps in. His accomplice is on the button with garbage but his sole role in this hand is to pump the pot for his team mate. You have QQ in middle position and raise, the player with garbage raises the minimum simply because he knows that his accomplice has aces. Now the pot is being dangerously escalated in a situation where you are a big dog in the hand. This cheating isn’t sophisticated but it is a serious problem if it isn’t being corrected.