Three Steps to Increase Your Profit in Small Stakes Cash Games

Many people know me as the guy who has played millions and millions of hands at the lowest stakes of online poker. I have made tens of thousands of dollars in these games. I am talking about the $0.01/$0.02, $0.02/$0.05 and $0.05/$0.10 stakes that many of you play at (popularly between NL2 and NL10).

Playing such high volumes at these stakes – often against some of the worst players in the world – has allowed me to understand what it takes to achieve maximum success against such players. In this article, I’ll cover the 3 most important steps to increasing your profits in Small Stakes Cash Games.

Step 1: You must maximize value

What do I mean by “maximizing value”? I mean that you should absolutely take as much as possible from your opponents when you have the best hand. Good hands don’t come around often in poker, and one of the biggest mistakes players at these limits make is slowplaying them or simply not betting enough.

Maximizing value starts before the flop. There’s no need to play “complicated” when your hand comes AA, KK, QQ, JJ, or AK. I’ve had good results at these lower stakes by just making the most obvious plays with premium hands before the flop, raising or reraising if the bet has already been raised.

The same goes for after the flop. Don’t try to dress it up. If you have top pair, an overpair, two pair, trips, a flush, a straight… just bet! Depending on the strength of your hand and how the board plays out, you may sometimes choose to check back on the turn or river to control the pot. However, your main goal should be to get as much value as possible when you have these hands.

If there's one thing most players at these limits like to do, it's call bets. You he must give them the opportunity to do just that. And you do that by betting and raising.

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Step 2: You must fold at the right time

The old adage that “a penny saved is a penny earned” is very true in poker as well. Minimizing your losses when you have the second-best hand is just as important as maximizing your value when you have the best hand. You can do this by understanding the type of player you’re playing against and learning to be more respectful of your opponents’ bets at those limits.

Recognizing player types is very important, as you will often encounter extremely tight regulars who are just on autopilot at dozens of tables. When players like these start betting or raising – especially on the turn and river – it is a sign that they have a big hand. Trust me, they didn’t just decide to piss you off by betting.

This will be the case with most players at these limits. If there is one unifying characteristic about most low stakes players, it is their passive play. Players at higher limits are much more aggressive and capable of sophisticated plays, which is not the case here.

If you are unable to fold any hand at low stakes, you will probably encounter some bluffs. However, you will encounter better hands than yours more often than you will encounter bluffs, causing you to lose far more money than you win. Most of the time when players at these stakes start to get too aggressive, they have exactly what they are representing (i.e., something better than what you have).

Learn to make “sick folds” against tight regulars, especially when they raise you on the turn or river. Your AA or KK is just another pair, and probably not the best hand anymore. Almost all players at these limits are not creative and basically give away the strength of the hands they hold by their actions. The ability to fold hands in a disciplined manner when it is obvious that you have been beaten is one of the keys to success in these games.

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Step 3: You must not go on tilt

Controlling your emotions can be the most important step in this type of game. Tilt is a bankroll and dream killer at these limits.

When you're playing against a lot of bad players who like to call, you're going to get beat often and in ridiculous ways. They'll occasionally hit a ridiculous hand like two pair on the river and take down the pot – that's just the reality.

However, basic math tells us that most of the time they will miss and not hit that ridiculous two pair. That's why I emphasized the importance of getting as much value as possible when you have the best hand.

Poker is a stressful game with endless ups and downs, even when everything seems fine. The lower limits are known to take the craziness factor to a whole new level. You need to be prepared for this and ready to keep your mind calm on days when everything seems to be going wrong.

If you feel your temperature rising and frustration setting in, it is imperative that you have a strategy in place to calm yourself down. Many people set a loss target so that they can stop playing if they start to have big losses (the famous stop loss, which can be better understood in this article). This means that, for example, if you reach a 5 buy-in loss you should stop playing no matter what you are thinking about winning back what you lost.

In short, tilt is the number one enemy for most players at these limits. Things will go wrong in poker sometimes, it always has been and always will be. If you lose your temper and start throwing money away by making bad plays and calling with bad hands (even at low stakes), it will negatively impact your profit in the long run.

Most people have no idea how bad decisions influenced by emotions and tilt can impact their win rate in the long run. Since we are all human, we can never eliminate this completely. However, if you want to make money at low stakes, you need to learn to be better than most at keeping your cool when things go wrong.

Final considerations

Great results at lower stakes poker (whether online or live) are not a mystery. It’s still about playing the basics. Get the most value out of your hands, lose as little as possible with your second-best hands, and don’t let emotions negatively affect your play, as many players do when the dark side of variance rears its ugly head.

I often visualize success at these stakes as being in the middle of the ocean without a life jacket. The key, most of the time, is to just keep your head above water. Then you have to make the most of it when your big hands are above water as well. However, most people struggle, drowning all their profits through tilt, pride, and an inability to find the fold button.

Author: Nathan Williams

Translated and adapted from the original: Three Steps to Increasing Your Profit in Small Stakes Cash Games