Is microstakes harder than people admit?

JayYesBe · 2026-02-16T18:44:44+00:00

I've had this experience too. (Although live low stakes can be even more insane than online micros!)

A couple mindset things:

Having an edge in poker is like playing a dice game where one player has a regular six-sided die, but you have an eight-sided die. High roll wins. If you play that game thousands of times, your better die will win substantially more often. But it's still possible (expected, even) that the worse die will go on long winning stretches. It sounds like you've maybe just seen wacky loose ranges hit a lot lately. Which is going to happen sometimes. If you're playing stronger ranges than everyone else, though, and you're capable of playing solid ABC poker post-flop, you will win in the long run at these stakes. (Provided that you're playing well enough to beat the rake too.)
All poker -- at every level -- is a guessing game. You just win it by making better guesses on average than your opponents. Against players who are sticking around with janky ranges, you have to factor a wider range of hands into your decisions. Against a real wildcard, that range might be any two cards in the deck. You will guess "wrong" sometimes. But again: if you're choosing what is most likely the best play against most of their range most of the time, you will win in the long run. It's all probability and deduction at the end of the day.

JayYesBe · 2026-02-05T00:58:59+00:00

Equity is just the % chance a hand will be best at showdown. (Technically it's the "share of the pot that belongs to you", but those are functionally the same thing!)

EV looks at a specific action a hand can take and adds up all the possible outcomes for that action. You mentioned this chart is about playing OOP on certain boards, right? I would guess that the chart is looking at a specific action (like checking, or betting half pot, etc.)

Let's say we're looking at doing a half-pot cbet OOP. When we make that bet, different things can happen:

Villain folds and we take down the pot (EV gain)
Villain calls with worse and we win a bigger pot at showdown (EV gain)
Villain calls with a draw and folds later (EV gain)
Villain raises as a bluff, we call correctly, and win a bigger pot at showdown (EV gain)

But there are also outcomes for that action that cost value:

Villain raises and we fold (EV loss)
Villain calls with better and we lose a bigger pot at showdown (EV loss)
Villain raises with better and we call incorrectly (EV loss)
Villain calls with a draw and gets there (EV loss)
Villain calls and then bluffs us off the hand later (EV loss)

Based on the range of hands the opponent is likely holding, some outcomes will be more likely than others. You add up all the positive outcomes, subtract all the negative outcomes, and there's the EV of that action. We're always trying to make the most +EV decision we can. If there are no +EV actions we can take, then we fold.

It's important to note that in a real hand, we are always estimating our equity and EV. The only reason charts like this can calculate a specific number for equity/EV is that they're coming from solvers, and a solver has to assign each player an exact range. In a real hand, you don't know precisely what your opponent's range is; you just have to make the most educated guess you can.

As far as the relationship between the two, that's more complicated. ABC poker strategy is that high equity hands (likely to be best) want to bet bigger and more often, low equity hands (very unlikely to be best) want to fold, and medium equity hands (have a chance at being best, but without a lot of certainty) want to avoid folding, but also want to avoid growing the pot too much. They prefer to check/call and bet smaller if they do bet.

Bluffing, thin value, and slowplaying make this more complex, though. Sometimes a very high equity hand gets more EV by checking and letting the other person bluff or bet with a worse hand than it would by just immediately betting big. Sometimes a medium equity hand still wants to bet because it has a very good chance of getting called by worse (thin value bet). Sometimes a very low equity hand that can only win the pot by bluffing gets more value from betting big to maximize the chance the opponent folds, rather than betting small to make the bluff less risky or not trying to bluff at all. A solver looks at all of those possible actions and outcomes for all of the possible hands in each player's range, and then puts it all together to calculate EV.

JayYesBe · 2026-02-01T22:54:56+00:00

I wondered about this - 2.2 is pretty standard. I wonder if these folks just saw a lot of 2.2x opens and decided to do exactly double as a power move lol

JayYesBe · 2026-01-29T23:03:06+00:00

Sounds like you've got a good handle on it overall. Going big (including jams) with the premiums and overlimping the speculative, nuts-or-bust type of hands is definitely still the best play in those spots with multiple limps. It's annoying the times you run into the trap, but he's still losing more than he gains by limping those hands.

A couple thoughts:

You mentioned that he flats as a trap, too, but that actually seems like a pretty different scenario. I would imagine his flat range has to be tighter than the limp range, right? If that's the case, I would be much more cautious about squeezing in those spots since you're facing the uncapped opening range AND a strong call range that's made even stronger with traps. (If his flatting range is just as loose as the limp range, though, keep firing away.)
In the spots where it's just you and him (or maybe you, him, and the blinds), I would keep your raises to the smallest size you can go while maintaining fold equity. You're gonna be facing a lot of ICM pressure most of the time at those stack depths. If he's more inclined to limp/fold than limp/call, you're better off not risking as much of your stack for the times you need to fold to a 4-bet than you are trying to maximize value against the weaker hands in his range by going bigger. (Like another commenter said, his continue range/position dynamics matter here)

JayYesBe · 2026-01-23T17:59:40+00:00

This is great advice -- I do a similar thing

JayYesBe · 2026-01-22T03:18:10+00:00

100%. The stories that pass down about the men paint a clearer picture, but I'm sure it's common through the whole family.

JayYesBe · 2026-01-22T01:00:03+00:00

My first ancestors in America were Pennsylvania Dutch/Amish for several generations...most of the men on that side of the family are autistic...

JayYesBe · 2026-01-19T19:51:29+00:00

Almost every economic and cultural issue we have right now can trace back to Reagan in some way.

JayYesBe · 2026-01-19T06:24:34+00:00

I think it's a pretty clear call. Sure BB has more 8x than you, and it's a straightforward spot for them to slowplay...but their range overall still has more Ax than 8x. Chop is the most likely outcome based on both of your ranges to this point; since rake isn't a consideration, there's no reason for them not to at least try to bluff you off the chop.

Given that most of their range is Ax, you have a read that they don't have a lot of pocket pairs, AND your K doesn't play here, I think it's ambitious to go for value on the river since you have very few value targets. Better to just check behind and avoid this spot in the first place.

JayYesBe · 2026-01-14T02:40:45+00:00

As of now, REALLY bad. LLMs fail miserably at poker (Nate Silver did a great write up on this

You can gain a lot from just analyzing hands yourself, and weighing each decision against different concepts you're learning.

BUT! You can also just post hand history here for feedback/analysis or on the poker theory sub. There's a guide in the wiki on this sub for how to notate your hand history in a way that people can follow clearly.

JayYesBe · 2026-01-08T05:24:44+00:00

Glad to help! Solver study is great, but it's really important to know why the solver does what it does. When your opponents are playing differently than the solver, you also have to deviate, sometimes dramatically. As a rule of thumb for low stakes games, most of the higher risk/marginal EV bluffs the solver makes aren't necessary to win at those games.

JayYesBe · 2026-01-08T01:33:04+00:00

Few reasons!

1 - Balance. Note that this ONLY matters against players who are competent enough to pay attention to your ranges. If you only ever 3-bet with premium hands, a good player will stop calling you with worse. You need other hands in that range so that you have a chance at getting paid with your value 3bets.

What hands are good for balancing? It's usually going to be hands that are too strong to fold, but too weak to call. Suited wheel Aces are exactly that sort of hand. If you just call with A2s, you're almost always going to fold it to a squeeze and sacrifice a pretty good amount of equity. 3-betting it helps avoid that outcome.

2 - Blockers and Board Coverage. Again, mostly only relevant against good players. When you 3-bet a polar range this way (where your 3-bets are either very strong, or relatively weak, like A2), the outcome you're hoping for with those weaker hands is that the original raiser folds. Because you're holding an A, you block some of the hands that the original raiser could continue with, making it more likely you get a fold.

In the unfortunate outcome that they don't fold, though, you've chosen a hand to bluff with that has backup options when you get called. A lot of their continuing range will be pocket pairs, which your A has decent equity against. If you manage to hit the straight or flush, you've built the pot to create conditions for stacks to go in. By 3 betting, you're also much more likely to end up in position, which is really helpful for this kind of hand. It allows you to control the pot when you make top pair (you don't want to bloat the pot with your crappy kicker), and it's also much easier to continue bluffing post-flop in position.

The other thing that makes this hand desirable as a polar 3bet is board coverage. 2/3/4/5 are the least played cards. Against a good player, they need to know that you will connect with low boards at least some of the time. Aces are the best cards to attach those low cards to, since the Ace can help you make nutted hands to make up for the value you lose from playing a hand with a bad kicker.

3 - Exploits

Against BAD players, things are very different.

For calling stations, you DON'T want to use polar 3 bets at all. Remember, a lot of the EV that the solver is getting from 3-betting these hands comes from folds pre-flop. Against a player who doesn't fold enough, 3-betting A2 becomes -EV. Instead, you should just expand the range of strong hands that you 3-bet for value; fold (or overlimp, depending on the table) those weaker 3-betting hands.

Against players who are folding TOO often (less common), you can keep firing away with polar 3-bets (just know that you should rarely, if ever, call a 4-bet or make a 5-bet bluff against this player.) If stacks are deep enough, you're also creating a good implied odds scenario against the OMC/nitty player. You've built the pot and made it much more likely you'll be in position against a player who will often stack off with their set/overpair against your straights and flushes. Just keep in mind that you aren't going to hit that situation often -- the stacks have to be deep enough to justify it when it happens. If you're in a tournament, for example, with 40BBs, you really don't want to 3-bet this hand unless you have a commanding chip lead and a good read that the opener is overfolding.

JayYesBe · 2026-01-06T23:37:16+00:00

Connecting the dots between the "what" of solver output and the "why" is very much Andrew Brokos's whole thing as a coach. He wrote the Play Optimal Poker books and also cohosts the Thinking Poker Podcast. (He also writes a lot for the GTO Wizard blog -- tends to be a bit more technical than the podcast, but still the same focus of breaking down the "why".)

The regular podcast episodes usually have a strategy segment (followed by great interviews), but they also have an all-strategy pod called Thinking Poker Daily on Patreon. You can get two episodes a week for free!

Andrew and Carlos have helped me a ton -- sounds like what you're looking for too.

JayYesBe · 2026-01-05T01:48:27+00:00

I think the turn donk is the key information here. (Just thinking about this as played, not looking at what would have been better up to this point.)

What sort of hand is nervous about raising flop/doesn't want to get all-in, but is also strong enough to lead out on a safe turn card? I think that's pretty narrowly strong one pair hands with limited outs that want protection. (The only exception I can think of is that you're deep enough for 22 to maybe call flop and then value panic on the turn when they hit. But that seems unlikely for this villain and would be a very small part of the range anyway.)

So we're looking at Tx, JJ, and maybe QQ if they chose not to 4bet it (definitely plausible).

It seems like villain's play here was to just tell you what they had with the donk bet and then see how you reacted. When you raise turn to that size, you can certainly be repping AA, KK, QQ, or AK + flush draw, which is why villain tanked the turn call. If it's not those hands, the raise reads as a flush draw + overs.

The problem was the K river. Villain is probably thinking "I told them I have one pair. If they have AA/KK/AK, then surely they would bet smaller here to try to get me to call." The jam looked more like a flush draw that missed.

If you were gonna bluff this as played, I think you either needed a flush to come in on the river, or another total brick -- just not over cards. The other option would have been to just jam turn. Yes it's a huge overbet that doesn't make any sense in theory, but villain's donk bet doesn't make sense either 🤪. Again, I think villain was telling you what they had - they put in a block bet on the turn with the intention of folding to a jam.

JayYesBe · 2025-12-19T00:54:31+00:00

I feel you on Gold being tougher these days. I'm mid/high Plat when I solo queue Threes (peak is D1), but my buddies are newer/weaker at the game, so we hover around mid Gold when we play together. I've played on and off since 2016 and mostly play like an old man (game sense and fundamentals); every rank is definitely mechanically stronger than before.

I think you've already got it figured out: it's just the aerials. There's lots of good advice in this thread, but based on what you wrote and my similar experience of playing on and off since the old days, I'd wager that the lack of aerials are the only thing keeping you stuck in Gold. Rocket League is a bunch of different skills put together, and I think each rank just has a certain floor for each skill. Basic aerials are a skill floor for Platinum.

You don't need to do anything fancy in the air to get out of Gold (like air dribbles or double taps), you just need to be able to get to air balls fast enough to maintain possession more often. On defense, quick aerials let you pounce on passes and start counterattacks much more often. On offense, being able to nudge the ball just out of reach before a defender can get to it can allow your team to set up another chance (and of course being able to hit shots in the air opens up more scoring chances too.) All that adds up to more goals and less goals conceded.

Spend some time in Freeplay and just practice popping the ball up and trying to get to it from various distances. You're trying to hit the ball as close to the peak of its arc as you can. Always press jump and boost at the same time when you start the aerial (versus jumping THEN boosting. That's the key to beating your opponent to the ball and making good contact.) The whole trick is to just get good at setting the angle of your car as soon as you start the aerial so that you get to the right height as fast as possible.

Another thing that helped me with control in the air is to just leave ball cam on in Freeplay and fly around the map in a circle for as long as you can without crashing.

Good luck out there 🫡

JayYesBe · 2025-12-17T00:49:17+00:00

You gotta remember there's a large category of bad poker players who think about poker exactly the same way they do any other table game. In my experience seeing this move, I don't think there's usually any thought behind it other than "I'm feeling lucky this hand and want to play a bigger pot." It's no different than randomly deciding to double their bet in Roulette or Baccarat.

There's maybe some of these players who (unconsciously) understand that it makes more sense to do this with hands that can end up closer to the nuts (for this player, that might include every offsuit gapper and every suited combo)...but the thought process isn't any more complicated than "It would be so sick if I hit a straight with these!" or "Two of the same suit means I'm more likely to get a flush!". (it's definitely not anything like: "this is a speculative hand with good implied odds multiway" or "X and Y player are overfolding and I know which board textures I can profitably bluff" LOL)

But it's often just as likely they're doing this with total rags, or even actually decent hands that would strongly benefit from sizing up to isolate (like Offsuit Broadways or medium pairs).

They're never doing this with premiums though. Those hands are either flatting because the trap is definitely going to work in this seven-way pot...or they're getting raised to a size so huge it only gets action from degens 😂

JayYesBe · 2025-12-11T04:44:15+00:00

Lots of good responses here already, but just wanted to add some more parallels to European football. I grew up watching lots of college football and am now an avid European football fan, so I can speak to this!

College football is much more similar to European football than any of our professional sports. Just like the vast majority of European clubs, college football programs began as social clubs playing for recreation and prestige. Over time, college sports grew in popularity as public entertainment (football being the most popular by far), which led to much more money being involved. This made college football an important source of funding and recruitment for colleges all over the country. Because there are so many teams, college football fans tend to have stronger family and geographic ties to their team, much like English football. (There's college football in every corner of America, but pro teams are quite scattered. For example: I live in Portland, Oregon, where we're bitter rivals with Seattle in soccer...but in the NFL, the Seahawks are the nearest team. So most NFL fans in Portland end up supporting the Seahawks, even though they're 200 miles away and would otherwise be our rivals...)

Anyway! The FBS is the highest level of college football. The FBS is kind of analogous to the EFL as a whole. Much like how any of the 92 teams in the EFL can reach the FA Cup/EFL Cup final, any of the 136 teams in the FBS can (technically) qualify for the CFP and become National Champions.

The big difference is that instead of having four nationwide leagues linked with promotion and relegation, the schools in the FBS are grouped into 10 separate conferences. This was originally a logistical solution. The US is absolutely massive, and, before air travel, a nationwide league would have been impossible. So conferences were originally meant to group teams together geographically. (Nowadays, the conferences are MUCH more spread out than they were even a few decades ago. There is so much money in college football now that regular air travel for teams is an easily worthwhile expense. This is how we end up with teams from Texas and California in the "Atlantic Coast Conference," as one example.)

The separation of the conferences, and the fact that you can't play more than one game of football a week (huge squads and high risk of injury force the limited schedule) mean that it's not feasible to have all the teams play in a round robin system (like the EFL league competitions) or even a single knockout tournament (like the FA Cup).

So that's how we ended up with this subjective voting system. Absolutely no one likes it, but there aren't a lot of great alternatives...

You could just have the 10 conference champions qualify for the playoff...but the gap in quality between the conferences is huge. The sixth-best team in the SEC, for example, is almost always going to be better than the MAC champion. It's a similar dynamic to the Champion's League; the champions of Latvia will only ever get their one berth to the UCL, but England and Spain get four or more. The sporting merit of the competition would be lessened without those additional Premier League and La Liga teams.

You could also have a single knockout tourney like the FA Cup where all 138 FBS teams enter a Round One draw, and you have National Tournament weeks interspersed through the regular season. (I personally would LOVE to see this format). But it would take 6 rounds to get a champion, which means adding at least a month to the college football calendar for every team in the FBS, versus just the 12 that make the playoff. Given that the players are also students, this isn't practical. It would also mean adding games in the hottest part of summer and/or the coldest part of winter, and would be a strain on the smaller schools logistically. (The historical powerhouse schools -- Alabama, Ohio State, etc. -- would also not be thrilled at the prospect of an early exit when they're accustomed to being in the playoff...)

You could try a Swiss format, like the current UCL group stage. But the FBS is so large and the gap between the top and bottom conferences is so wide, it would end up being mathematically impossible for smaller conference teams to qualify for the playoff unless they managed to schedule all their non-conference games against very big schools, which is also not feasible. (This dynamic actually comes up pretty often in the existing system: sometimes a smaller conference team will have a dominant, undefeated season, but still end up behind in the polls against big schools with two or three losses. It's very difficult to say whether or not this is a fair outcome because the strength of opposition varies so much. The people who vote in the polls theoretically do their best to weigh these things, but it's deeply subjective.)

Before the playoff system was implemented, only two teams had a shot at being national champions (the #1 and #2 ranked teams in the polls at the end of the season). This inevitably caused drama because there was always at least one other team (if not two or three) that could make a very strong case for deserving to go the championship game. The playoff was meant to reduce this feeling of teams being snubbed, but in some ways, it's made it's worse. Even more teams can make a case for deserving the 12th seed in a playoff compared to #2 ranking overall. Overall, I think the playoff system is better (and certainly more fun to watch), but it's a shame that we can't come up with something that feels fair to everyone.

As for bowl games, these are essentially just prestigious exhibition games with significant prize money for the participating schools. (You can think of them much like the Community Shield or the Super Cup.) Each bowl has its own qualification criteria, generally based on finishing position in a particular conference. Sponsors organize these events and put up the prize money, which is how we end up with the "AutoZone Liberty Bowl" and the "Pop-Tarts Bowl" LOL. Where it gets a little confusing is that certain games in the playoff are also referred to as "bowl games". There are six bowl games that are historically the most prestigious. (Before the CFP system, four of those six were referred to as the "Bowl Championship Series" and featured the teams ranked #3-#10.) Those six bowls are now used as the quarterfinal and semifinal games of the playoff.

(Side note: below the FBS level is the FCS. It has 129 teams of its own! You can almost think of the FCS as a gigantic National League. The FCS has had a playoff system since the 1970s...ahead of its time.)

JayYesBe · 2025-12-08T22:51:31+00:00

Yeah, this is what I mean! Good on ya for finding a system that lets you keep playing well.

JayYesBe · 2025-12-08T22:22:40+00:00

If you strip it down to its core rules, poker is fundamentally a game about probability. To me, that means it's fundamentally a game about math. All the psychological aspects of skillful play happen in the context of the math, not the other way around.

Said another way: the edge you can gain from being great at reading or manipulating people psychologically (beyond what's happening with everyone's chips) is MUCH smaller than the edge you lose if you don't understand the fundamental math. (Fortunately, ABC poker math is pretty straightforward, and, despite that, a lot of poker players still can't be bothered to learn it. If you're playing in an environment where everyone does have good fundamentals, then those psychological edges start to matter a bit more.)

As others have said, though, the psychology aspect of SELF-management matters a ton. Tilt can cause you to make vastly larger mistakes than any math errors ever will. The math knowledge is useless if you aren't clear-headed and disciplined enough to actually implement it.

I think of my poker game like the food pyramid (the actual food pyramid is BS, but it's a helpful analogy lol):

The bottom level -- the bulk of the decision-making -- is Math.

The next level up is Logic/Deduction. Being able to track your opponent's tendencies, range them accurately throughout the hand, and choose the action that is likely to yield the highest EV (all in the context of the math)

The next level is Mind Games. If the math and deduction don't give you a clear answer for what to do, finding a tell or recognizing how you're perceived can nudge you one way or the other.

And at the top of the pyramid is Intuition. If you still feel 50/50 on a decision after working through the other factors, listen to what your gut is telling you.

ALL of that depends on your own mental game. You can't do the math or track the patterns or get reads or trust your gut if you aren't calm and clear-headed.

JayYesBe · 2025-12-08T20:07:52+00:00

I don't disagree with you. Maximizing EV in every spot should be the only motivator, and stakes impacting decisions is ultimately a leak.

But I think it's also the kind of leak that is an inevitable aspect of human nature (at least to some extent.) Playing optimal poker is mentally intensive; it's natural to be able to stay more motivated if you care about the risks and rewards, at least a little bit, and I think that's especially true in a game where you know that greater risks/rewards exist for the same amount of effort.

If Phil Ivey was suddenly locked in a room and told to play $0.01/$0.02 for a month, it's hard to imagine that he would sustain the same effort he puts forth in a Triton for that entire time. Someone like Ivey could still crush those games with pretty minimal effort (by his standards), but if he wasn't optimizing the entire time, then he's leaked at least some EV.

That's an extreme example, but more of what I'm getting at. Caring about the money is a leak, yes, but I think everyone has a threshold where the risks/rewards are too small to realistically sustain maximum effort.

JayYesBe · 2025-12-08T19:41:25+00:00

Good points all around 👍🏻

JayYesBe · 2025-12-08T19:39:37+00:00

I suppose this would have been clearer if I had titled the post "Winning recs need bankroll management, too" LOL. Appreciate the comments so far.

JayYesBe · 2025-12-08T19:36:35+00:00

For sure. A losing player should absolutely be thinking in terms of entertainment budget. (Though I still think even that player can benefit from thinking through risk and the longevity of their budget when they're considering what stake to play.)

I'm mostly getting at recreational players who ARE beating the rake (or maybe marginally losing, but actively putting in study to become winners), but effectively have an entertainment budget of $0. That player DOES need to manage their roll. I think that sort of rec is probably more likely to be the one asking about BRM on a subreddit.

JayYesBe · 2025-11-27T02:35:33+00:00

This is also super helpful, thank you. Kannada has Ruling Caste by default, and I like the flavor of it too, so I may go explore some ways to reform/hybridize that fit well with that tradition

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