From personal experience I can tell you that the micro stakes sngs can be tough to beat. They’re different than the small to medium stakes. Players at the micro stakes don’t fold, dish out bad beats like it’s going out of style and the payouts are much smaller, making it harder for you to boost your bankroll and move up.

It’s frustrating.

But they are beatable, despite what you may think or what your friends have told you. I recommend reading my tips below and putting them into action right away. If you can do that, run good and stay sane in the process, I think you can make the jump to the small stakes before you know it.

10 Tips to Help You Beat the Micro Stakes Sit and Go’s

Micro-limit games are different to other forms of poker. The tactics that apply in deep-stacked, potential freezeout situations aren’t going to work when the stakes are small and players can top up quite easily.

1. Play ABC (SNG) Poker

This is worn out advice, for sure. But it works. Stick to the fundamentals and you can’t go wrong.

1. Small stakes, or low stakes poker, typically covers any cash game with a buy-in ranging between $50 and $200. Stakes below $50 are often referred to as “micro-limit” games, and sometimes stakes $5 and below are referred to as “nano-limit”.
2. Micro stakes tournaments are filled with inexperienced and poor players. Recreational players abound, tossing their hat into the ring for some fun and cards. The massive fields and peculiarly wild plays that are the norm in the low buyin tournaments can be frustrating for the aspiring poker student.

Why?

Nathan “BlackRain79” Williams is a poker pro with some of the highest winnings in online poker history at the micros. He is also a multiple time best selling poker author and writes about small stakes poker strategy on his blog: www.blackrain79.com. Taking control, playing a consistent micro strategy, and playing the long-term game are essential winning concepts. Dominating the micros is closer than you think. Creating real and lasting consistent profits at the micro stakes poker tables is something that ends up alluding most people. But it really doesn’t have to.

Because your opponents don’t know or care about the fundamentals. And doing the opposite of what they’re doing is often a good strategy.

So what is ABC poker, at least in regards to sngs?

• Raise when you have a good hand
• Bet your good / made hands
• Fold your unmade / worse hands
• Shove or fold with 10 big blinds or less
• C-bet, bluff and steal blinds less often
• Don’t slow play

If you aren’t using ABC poker strategy, and make the switch now, I’m sure you’ll see a noticeable improvement in your wins, cashes and overall hourly rate.

2. Learn Push/Fold Strategy

Push / fold strategy is key to being a sit and go winner, regardless of the stakes you play. But many beginner and/or losing sng players don’t know what it is, why it’s important or they cannot get over the awkwardness or fear of shoving random hands.

So lets cover those points briefly.

Push/fold strategy is shoving all in or folding when you have 10 big blinds or less. You don’t raise or call, unless it’s a tactic to eventually go all in. The reason why we push or fold at 10 big blinds or less is because a) you don’t have enough room to actually play poker, and b) whenever you commit chips with 10 big blinds or less you’re committing a large portion of your stack. It’s a mistake to call or raise, then fold with so few chips and so much money in the pot relative to our stack.

So that’s the basic idea. To learn push/fold strategy you’ll want to pick up a tool like SNG Wizard. This takes your hand histories, figures out the ICM and helps you figure out what hands you should shove and when, based on stack sizes, your opponents’ ranges and more.

3. Abuse the Bubble

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Abusing the bubble is a solid tactic in the micro stakes, because random players are really wanting to make the money. They’ve been playing for 30, 45, 60+ minutes, so they want to cash at all costs.

Constantly shoving over / into them is a great way to exploit that fear.

It comes with one caveat though — as I mentioned above, random/fishy players aren’t good at folding. So if a player calls you (light), you’ll want to keep that in mind for the future. That way you can adjust your range versus that player.

4. Don’t Continuation Bet Often

Because you have less fold equity at the micro stakes, I recommend not continuation betting very often. What will often happen is that you’ll c-bet the flop, the random player will call, and you’ll wonder what to do on the turn. You just end up spewing chips. So I recommend giving up more often than not if you miss the flop.

5. Raise Your Good Hands 4x-5x

A standard raise is between 2-3x, depending on the level. However, in the micro stakes you have little fold equity that you can get away with raising more with your good hands — like 4x-5x.

Don’t worry about your opponents catching on to your betting sizes — they’re not paying as much attention as you think.

6. Limp Small Pocket Pairs

I usually advise against limping your hands when you’re the first player in the pot. It’s nearly always better to raise, because you can build a pot, induce folds and so on.

However, at the micro stakes it makes more sense to limp your baby pocket pairs — 22s through 10s. This is ideal for a couple of reasons. One, many players will over limp, giving you multiple players to win money from if you hit your set. Two, it’s a small investment on your part if you’re re-raised and you have to fold. Three, since you can hardly c-bet, it doesn’t make any sense to raise and bloat the pot.

7. Don’t Isolate Too Often

I don’t raise too often to isolate limpers / weaker players in the micro stakes for the same reasons mentioned above.

For example, one mistake that I’ve made a few times is re-raising a hand like AJ or AQ from early position. I have the best hand often, but what ends up happening is that you get multiple callers after you that all have position on you. They bloat the pot, too, so you can’t c-bet without risking your stack. So it’s more cost effective to over-limp a hand like this from early position, and then just play the hand aggressively if you hit the flop.

8. Review Your Hands Often

Reviewing your hands often will give you the opportunity to see if you’re following my advice above. Are you shoving or folding with 10 big blinds? Are you getting out of hand with small pairs or AK? Do you play too much from the blinds? You’ll only know if you review.

9. Play Too Much in the Blinds

One leak that I had personally was playing too much from the blinds. I think I played from the blinds because I had a so-so hand and it was cheap to complete. The problem, however, is having a hand like K7s or A4o and catching a piece. You might have the best hand, but often times you won’t or will be outdrawn later. Being out of position makes the entire hand awkward, too. I recommend playing from the blinds only if you have a strong hand, or a suited connector or ace that you’re willing to fold even if you connect (think like weak pair or two pair).

10. Don’t Overplay AK or Pocket Pairs

Another mistake I see from beginners is that they will happily stack off with AK or their small pocket pair. The problem is that if you’re called (or you’re doing the calling), you’re usually a flip at best, and at worst, you’re crushed.

Sure, being a 51 or 56% favorite is still a favorite. It’s winning long term. But it’s a high variance play, meaning that you’ll see big swings in your favor and big swings not in your favor. Instead, you want to look for spots where you’re a 60, 70 or 80% favorite. That way the variance you experience (that many beginners cannot handle) are small, manageable and quick to get through.

When we talk about micro-stake poker, we can compare it to a great ocean. Some people, sometimes with a stroke of good variance, are able to swim effectively and move on to deeper waters. Others, simply can’t do it and either drift aimlessly or indeed even sink.

In this article we want to give you a little guide to be a winner in this immense pool called micro-stakes. If you follow these simple yet effective steps, your possibilities to win, and eventually move forward, will increase considerably.

Step 1: Bankroll Management

If you ever read a poker forum or asked advice from an expert player, surely you’ve seen or heard something about Bankroll Management. Bankroll Management means to manage your money in poker. And when we talk about “money in poker”, we mean the money you can dedicate exclusively to poker (that money is called your poker “Bankroll”). Bankroll Management should generally mean having at least 100 buy-ins for your chosen game however it can be different from player to player. For example, some people can use an aggressive Bankroll Management strategy, because they are less inclined to tilt, and so losing part of that Bankroll won’t cause them too much pain, and they can play easily with 30 buy-ins. Other people have much more difficulties in handling losses, so a “tight” Bankroll Management strategy is recommended for them (50 to 100 buy-ins is a good starting point at micro-stakes).

If you are unsure what type of game, and more importantly what limits (the buy-in cost of your chosen game) you should be playing, then you should seek some advice from more experienced players. A good way to do this is to post a question in a poker forum asking for advice. A solid Bankroll Management is the best way to avoid going broke, and it’s one of the most important concepts if you want to play poker seriously.

Step 2: Use Your Position

As you probably already know, your position in any given poker hand is one of the biggest advantages you can have, as well as having a great starting hand of course! Taking advantage of your knowledge of position means you can play a wider range of starting hands when you play from later position. As a contrast it’s usually best to play a tighter range from when you are in early position. Here are some reasons why playing in position can benefit your win rate:

• There are less opponents left to act. That is, you already know what (at least) half table did, and can act consequently.
• You will probably be the last one to act during the post-flop. Thus, you have the advantage to know what your opponents did before you take action.
• You can steal a lot of blind. Of course, this will be opponent-dependent. If you have at least one tight player, you can open almost any two cards and expect profit from your stealing.

Let’s answer this question as an example:

“Why is K6o going to be profitable in position against a loose passive opponent, but will not be when out of position?”

If you have position against a loose but passive opponent then you have the advantage of seeing his actions first. If he checks the flop this will most likely mean that he has not a strong made hand. You could bet here and take the pot down there and then or you have the extra choice of just checking back to see the Turn without having to invest any more money in the pot. This way it is more likely that you will get to the showdown cheaply and against your opponents’ loose range and it’s possible your K6o might be good enough to win.

Step 3: Value Bet

A value-bet is a bet where you expect to be called mostly by worse hands. The value bet is probably the strongest weapon in your arsenal. Micro-stakes are populated by lots of loose-passive players who are willing to see the showdown with a middle pair or even worse. When you have a big hand (2pair +), the decision is easy, and you just want to follow the path of bet/bet/shove to take all of your opponents chips.

Of course, the decision won’t always be so easy, because sometimes it may be you that is holding the weak hand. In this case proceed cautiously and remember that sometimes your opponent may just have the better hand. If they make an unusual action, like a check-raise for example, think about why they made that move and don’t under-estimate their actions. That doesn’t mean that you should avoid betting when you find yourself in a situation like this, it just means you have to be more cautious. How? Thin value-betting!

You thin value-bet when your opponent has a range of hands which either is beaten by or beats you. To make your bet EV+, of course, you need to decide if that the hands you beat are more plentiful than the one you’re beaten by. This is where good hand-reading skills come into play.

Step 4: HUD and Notes

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The fact that the micro-stakes field is so large and often you are sitting at a table against new players can lead you to believe that a Heads Up Display (HUD) is not so important. Of course it’s not necessary, but having one can help you improve your game in so many ways.

A HUD is a really great tool, especially if you multi-table. At the lower limits you don’t need a particularly complex HUD. It would be enough to have one that displays the basics information (like pre-flop, c-bet, 3bet, blinds and steal stats). Approved HUD’s, such as Hold’Em Manager and Poker Tracker, also give you the possibility to study your game after you play which is a habit to adapt.

In addition to the HUD, you can even take notes on the players, which helps you in a way the HUD can’t. Taking good notes can be very important for your game, because it allows you to understand better your opponent’s actions. For example, if you see a player always min-raising monster hands pre-flop, write it down and play your hand accordingly the next time you see it happen.

Step 5: Concentrate on the Basics

In other words, keep in mind the information you have already learned and focus on it. The basics are all you need to get through micro-stakes. You don’t need to study complex concepts like a raise all-in bluff on the river, because it is a situation that will happen so rarely that won’t affect at all your win rate. If you reinforce the basics enough, you will be able to be a winner at micro-stakes, and you will have a good starting point to move on to the higher levels.