Useful Micro Limit Poker Tips for Beginners - Part 2

Let's first have a look at the factors that are outside our influence, thus not really worth dealing with, although beginner poker players still spend plenty energy on them. 
 

This is a reoccurring issue among beginner poker players. They just can't get past the idea that sometimes they will be outdrawn by horrible players, and lose their money in unlucky situations. If you also feel stressed about this many times, keep in mind, that these fish are recreational players. They know they will be losing on the long run, but they want to have fun until their money lasts. Eventually, all their chips will be yours, but the price of this is, that you have to endure their 'stupid' decisions. Taking it one more step further, aren't you the one that is immoral? What do you want? Should the fish sit down at your table, quickly lose all his money and then get the hell out of there and not disturb you anymore? 
 

This is quite a selfish attitude, as in a game, everybody should receive the advantage they expect to (money, experience or fun), otherwise they will not play. If you learn to look at it this way, the whole thing will be much easier. Think about it this way: when you lose against a fish or because of bad luck, you pay the price of becoming a long-term winner. It is like the price of a ticket to a show. In the cinema, we are happy to pay the price of our ticket, when we sit in to watch the new mega cool 3D movie. 
 

An occasional mishap like that can only do us good, because it will make the fish lose much more next time. If he wins a lot, it reassures him in thinking what he is doing is good. It is not hard to see, that risking 80% of your stack for a 9-high flush draw is quite a big mistake and will prove to be a losing technique on the long run. 
 

And if the fish experiences something like this three times in a row, it will only be an incentive for him to play the same way next time and lose all his money as fast as he can. It is a common tendency, that if the magic card fails to turn up on the river, they will become aggressive. It puts them on tilt and soon enough, they will lose not only the money they had won before, but many times all the money on their account. 
 

It occurs with me (mrj) many times when playing HU CG, that my weak opponent starts the session 2-300bb plus, and stands up with something like 500-600bb minus, or even 800-900 sometimes. Maybe it is easier to bear getting outdrawn if we think that the money we just lost was only lent to the fish, who will be very happy about this, and will gladly return not only what he had won from you, but more. See the picture below as an example: 
 

It is also unnecessary to ponder about why we don't get dealt more good hands. This is something completely out of our control. Next time we'll be luckier, and that's it. 
 

This is also a very common complaint among losing players, that they flop sets much less often, that it could be expected (ca. 12.5%). Of course, this is a good explanation of our loss, but does not have real significance. If you only keep looking at the set%, you only deepen the 'downswing mood'. 
 

There is no need to think too much about this. If you, for example, lose a buy-in in a set vs. over set situation, you just need to stay calm and reload. Next time, you will be on the winning side. You have not made a mistake, and this is what matters. Concentrate on the next hand, because if you make a mistake there because you are still thinking about your lost buy-in, it can become a real problem.
 

There are poker rooms with good software, and there are some that are weaker in this respect. Again, this is something unnecessary thinking about. In certain poker rooms, the software is good, others have a weaker player base and others provide excellent rakeback. All aspects need to be taken into consideration. If you feel that the attributes of your poker room disturb you too much,  you don't have to play there. 
 

Same category as the question above. If it is not suitable for you, leave the given room. 
 

It doesn't do you good to meditate too much on this. Sooner or later, it will come, and sooner or later, it will go away just as it came. This is a part of the game. 
 

According to my experiences, most of the poker players spends horrible amounts of energy on pondering about these questions. It is important to know, that these questions arise in everyone, but you have to know how to get over it. 
 

Instead of posting bad beats or thinking about how unlucky we are, we should spend our time and energy on finding our mistakes to become a better player. If, at the table, we think about what the opponent mucked in a limp/call, ch/call, ch/ch, ch/call hand instead of thinking about the stupid fish taking all our money, it will be more easier to take his stack later on. (And remember, it is not your stack, it is his as soon as it gets to him!)
 

We don't aim for winning our money back; we aim for taking his whole stack! With calm, thoughtful and disciplined gameplay, mercilessly using all his mistakes and analyzing his stats, we can conquer our opponent. 
 

If we know that we are winning players, we have to accept that our graph of winnings is a strictly monotonously growing oscillating function. And the better we get, the better this can be seen (and we will get better not by watching our graphs, but by studying our opponents' gameplay).
 

It helps a lot (I have been doing this for long) if we don't keep refreshing PT/HM while playing. The thought itself, that we are winning (or losing) causes negative changes in the gameplay of most players. If we don't know about these, we can keep concentrating on the game and only the game. 
 

This is the end of today's part, check back soon for the next!