If you want to crush small stakes No Limit Hold’em games, it all starts with your strategy before the flop. Unlike the other decisions that you have to face occasionally, you make preflop decisions in every single hand that you’re dealt into.
So, if your preflop game has some leaks, even if they are small ones, they’ll add up over time, causing you to lose money.
In this article, I’ll give you my top three tips to crush low stakes Texas Hold’em cash games, presuming you’re playing 100 big blinds deep and without factoring in the rake to keep things simple.
As a general note, though, as the rake gets introduced or becomes higher, you should be tightening your ranges and get involved with fewer hands before the flop.
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Tip #1: Raise or Fold When First In
When it folds to you, or you are the first to act, you should raise or fold. You should never just call. Calling allows others to see the flop for cheap or for free (if they are in the big blind).
By just calling, you’ll be allowing the big blind to see the flop with all of their marginal holdings that they’d have to fold in the face of the aggression. So, you’re allowing them to realize their equity for free, which is not good.
If you ever feel that your hand is not strong enough to raise with, it means that it’s certainly not strong enough to call with in an unopened pot, so you should just fold!
GTO charts show you what hands you should be opening from different positions at the table, and you should learn these by heart.
Now, GTO charts presume everyone plays perfectly, which is probably not the case in low stakes games. So, you can go a bit wider. For example, a hand like KJo opens about half the time and folds half from a lojack. But if you wanted to raise with this hand every time, that’s fine.
Similarly, you can open with hands like Q9s, J9s, etc., which are just outside of the GTO range. You can profitably go a bit wider, but certainly not much wider than what the theory suggests.
Even on the button, where our range is much wider, there are still hands that are not good enough to open with, such as 65o and 87o – so if it folds to you and you have one of these hands, just throw your cards away and move on to the next hand.
Tip #2: Stop Calling Raises With Weak Hands
In most poker games, when people raise before the flop, they will usually have a strong or at least a reasonable hand. This means that when facing a raise, you should only be continuing with strong hands yourself.
Keep your calling range strong and hands that have the potential to flop really well and beat strong starting hands.
If you are in a hijack and facing a lojack raise, you can see on the chart below that we are folding a ton. Even hands that seem strong, like AJo, KJo, and QJo, are pure folds in these situations.
We are only really continuing with some of the suited aces, a few suited broadways, our strongest ace-highs, and stronger pocket pairs (mostly 66+).
Once again, in low stakes games, maybe you can get away with playing a little bit loser and including some of the marginal poker hands into your calling range, but you can’t afford to go much wider. If you do, you’ll be bleeding money.
When you are playing from a small blind specifically and facing a button raise, even though their range is wide, we have to stay on the tighter side as we still have the big blind to act. A lot of offsuit hands are folding, and even many suited hands like 98s.
Tip #3: 3-Bet With a Polarized Range When in Position
You can’t 3-bet only with your best hands as even at low stakes, you’ll become too easy to play against, and other players will pick up on it.
The way to balance this is to also use some of your hands that are not good enough to call with as 3-bets.
Once again, looking at the hijack vs. the lojack dynamic, you’ll notice on the chart that we are re-raising our best hands, i.e. QQ and better and then some suited kings and suited aces that are not quite good enough to call with, a few suited connectors and small pairs.
All the offsuit stuff is not calling or raising, as these hands are generally not good enough to play against a raise, and your best option with them is to just fold.
On the button and facing a cutoff raise, we are 3-betting with a few more hands that have good properties, but, at the same time, these are hands that we can easily fold if we face a 4-bet, such as KQs, KJs, and A8s.
A lot of people hate the idea of 3-bet folding with a hand like AJo, but you have to realize that your range is very well protected with strong hands like pocket aces, kings, queens, and AK.
So, your opponent can’t 4-bet wide, and when they do, they are likely doing it with a type of hand that has a hand like AJ in trouble.
These are my top three preflop tips for low stakes games, and if you take them to heart and incorporate them into your strategy, your results will improve. And, of course, if you really want to crush and move up the stakes, the bonus tip is to study the game a lot and get ahead of the curve!
