How to play low stakes Holdem poker
You will find that at low-stakes Hold em poker, the average player doesn’t have the nerve to raise with marginal or weak holdings on some sort of bluff. This is especially the case with full-ring games because the average full-ring game player is playing that form of poker because they are more conservative on average than your typical six max player!
Think about this for a moment, if you walked into a card room or you logged onto a poker site and you could have your choice of any poker game that you wanted, then there has to be an underlying reason for why players choose full-ring over six max or vice versa and it cannot just be to do with the fact that these players are better at this form of poker. There has to be underlying reasons as to why these people preferred this game or have gravitated to it over time.
So your average full-ring low-stakes player is someone who is multi-tabling and getting rakeback. They are not overly aggressive but they will take advantage of profitable opportunities when they arise. They may even be under bankrolled or playing with money that they can barely afford to lose. They may not essentially be risk takers as most people in poker are strangely risk averse.
This statement may shock a few people but I believe it to be mainly true and certainly at certain levels. So what this means is that when someone raises and especially from early positions in these types of games then they basically have the goods. It also means that if you raise and get re-raised then you can be sure that this is a raise that is the goods more often than not.
There will be exceptions of course, if you have been raising from position and you find that you have been getting re-raised constantly by the button or one of the blinds then this may be an indication that something has changed and the dynamic of the game has altered. But on the whole, simply backing down to aggression is the best way forward most of the time because your opponents either do not have the nerve or the ability to make plays of this nature without a hand of some sort.
However there is a difference between aggression and normal betting. For example, let us say that it has been limped by four players and you are in the big blind with junk and you check along. The flop comes 10-7-2 rainbow and everyone checks, the turn is another deuce and you check and so do the next two players to your left.
The button now bets half the pot, this stands a fair chance of being a pick up play and you in the big blind could easily have a deuce as it was checked around. Unless someone is slowplaying a monster or limped with A-2s then a raise stands a very good chance of taking the pot down here. This is what I mean by normal betting, a bet by the button here is not something that I call an aggressive play……..you have made the aggressive play not them.
If the roles had been reversed and it had been you who was making a similar play from the button and the big blind raised you then this is a far more aggressive move and something that needs to be respected at low-stakes poker.
In this instance, if you had been the button then the likelihood of the big blind having a hand is more real. They could have anything, 10-7, 10-2 even 7-2 in fact. If you learn to respect raises and re-raises in low-stakes poker and be prepared to let your opponent get away with the odd bluff then your earn rate will quantum leap.