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It is true that you can make very good money playing low-stakes limit Texas Holdem games. There are several reasons behind this even though the games are brutally raked. It is because the games are brutally raked that a good limit player can get an edge here. This is to do with rakeback and the importance in attaining it. A limit hold’em player who could play six limit games at $1-$2 at the same time could be generating $40/hr in rake quite easily.

The key here is to get as much of your rake back as possible. A 27% rake deal would return just over $10/hour while a 33% rake deal would be at about $13/hr. The bigger rake deals obviously give you more money back but the main drawback with these deals is that you could do far better. An 80% rake deal would return you $32/hour here and that is a massive difference from $10/hr.

So how do you attain yourself of a non standard rake deal? Well there are numerous ways to go about this but nearly all poker sites are part of networks these days. The main deal sees the network take a percentage of this money and so approaching a poker site to give you a 100% rake deal is unlikely to work because the site is usually duty bound to pay a set percentage to the host company. For example bwin poker would have to pay expenses to Ongame etc. So the best you could hope for here would be to get a “minus expenses” rake deal where the site takes nothing from you.

In return for this of course then the site would need something in return and this is where the services of a low-stakes limit player would be valuable. At the end of the day, there are many poker players out there who have tremendous value to poker sites and so you need to realise this. There are several barriers when it comes to being able to make money online. The first barrier is your own poker game and the second and third barriers are the rake and other good poker players. So if you avoid good players and strive to pay as little rake as possible then you have a serious chance of making very good money simply by breaking even on the tables.

It is often perceived that small stakes limit games are unbeatable because of the rake. This may be true and you do need to have a better game than average to offset that. But if you are creative in your approach to the game and are not prepared to accept the levels of rake that some sites take from you then you can create chances for yourself to make more money. So remember that the rake deals that are advertised are just that…..advertised. But you need to remember that your services may be of tremendous value to a poker site and you should be very cognisant of that fact.

I saw this hand in a $5 Texas Holdem SNG a few days ago and it does highlight how bad the overall play is at these levels. We were still in the first level of play with the blinds at T10-20 and the starting stacks were T1500 when it was folded around to our hero who open raised from the cut-off to 60, the button called but the big blind re-raised to 200, both our hero and the button called making over T600 in the pot before the flop.

The flop came Ad-Qs-7c and the big blind bet out 650, our hero thought for a while and called and then the button shoved all-in. The big blind called and so did our hero. The cards were revealed and the big blind had A-K for top pair top kicker, the button had A-Q for top two pair and our hero amazingly had A-Js.

He was basically drawing dead to runner runner and the turn and rive cards were of no help and he was out in ninth place. I see these sorts of hands all the time in low-stakes SNG’s. Basically he made numerous errors in this hand. It was not an error to open raise with an A-J, that is of course an entirely standard play.

But the raise was cold called by the button and then the big blind re-raised a pre-flop raiser and a caller so the A-J was marginal at best. The suited nature of the hand made the call marginal but on the flop, he had serious kicker trouble and there was also the possibility that our hero was ahead as hands like KK,JJ, KQs, TT or even 99 could have re-raised pre-flop.

So now he was in trouble and when the big blind led out and bet the pot, this was a clear indication that he was beaten at the least by one player. The subsequent flop action merely confirmed his fate. But this hand to me indicates in a nutshell how numerous players approach low stakes SNG’s.

They simply wait for a good hand and then go with what they have even if at the back of their mind they know that they are beaten. Novice players make numerous mistakes in SNG’s (not just in SNG’s but poker in general). The first error is that they do not take advantage of the excellent software that is on offer. I used “Sit and Go Shark” which is one of the best SNG tools in existence in my opinion.

Using such software isn’t just an advantage, it is also a necessity these days. The table selection processes, ICM knowledge and a good sound understanding of the basics of SNG strategy will catapult any player into being a long term winner at the lower levels.

But if you are going to make money in poker then you are going to have to take the game far more seriously. If you don’t then there will be plenty of players out there who will. If you don’t put the time in or you simply cannot be bothered to use software or you cannot find the time to try table selecting or all of the other things that require effort then what in heavens name makes you think that you can make money long term playing poker?

Also I would definitely recommend that you set aside enough time to be able to play the game. Don’t rush it, don’t play an SNG merely because of the quick time frame and then look to get your chips in the middle as quickly as possible with the first decent hand that you get.

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.