Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Cbetting at Micro/Nano Levels

Ive recently been helping some players of the lower rungs of the 6max cash games with some decent success. One of the leaks I have noticed at the micros 10nl and the nano 5nl / 2nl is the use of cbetting on missed flops. Cbetting in itself is a profitable play most of the time. But I believe this is for 25nl and above.

CBETTING(Continuation betting): Leading out on the flop after you were the raiser preflop

The micros and nano levels are full of calling stations. They are ripe with players that will call you with middle pair, bottom pair, gutshot draws etc. This means that the range of hands that will call you are wider than the higher levels. In turn this means cbets, when missed, are less profitable. Players at these levels are level 1 thinkers. "What have I got and what is on the flop". Not many of them think what has the other player got and am i way behind here.

ABC poker is the key to winning at these levels. Tight, aggressive and no fancy play. You have to realise micro/nano level is not real poker. This will come at not so higher levels. Down here is for bankroll building from small amounts. Its for the casual player that has $5-$200 online that is probably not reading this blog and has no idea about the winning style of play.

At micro/nano level you will get paid off in the long run on your good hands.
You will lose money on bad beats. (this is a good thing)
You will lose money on bluffs and missed cbets.

10NL and under - Cbet when you hit not when you miss. Try it.

Any thoughts ?

4 comments:

DubsPoke said...

Even at the micro levels, I do believe there is a place for cbetting without hitting. With that said, I agree it should be done much less frequently than what I've seen at other levels.

Boards need to be extremely dry (like K72 rainbow dry). Anything with a draw, two faces, etc will be getting called. Have you noticed any differences between 10NL and 2NL/5NL?

Ryverrat said...

I agree that there will be situations where you can use it when you miss but these are rare and K72 rainbow is an extreme dry board.

Another situation you can use cbetting when misesd is where you see their fold to cbet% above 80%. This obv requires pokertracker and you wont find many at the nano's with that statistic.

I cant think of any real differences between the levels. I believe the same strategy will beat all 3.

I wonder what % of players at 10nl and below have pokertracker ? It would cost 8 buyins.

DubsPoke said...

I do have PT but have been limiting my use of the HUD so that I pay more attention to the flow of the game. But as I up my tables to 4, I've been struggling.

I absolutely CRUSHED 2NL and 5NL but barely running at 3ptBB over 10k hands at 10NL. I've been playing way too loose plus tilt monkey has been running rampant (yesterday for example, started down 3 buyins, went up 2 buyins, ended down 3 buyins. most of it to blame on myself for being way too aggressive with weak holdings).

Have revisited this post and will be putting some more of it into practice. What's your thoughts on cbets at a beginning of a session? Do you believe this micro/nano players pay attention to table image (should avoid tight-passive image?)

Thanks. Enjoying your blog immensely.

Ryverrat said...

I firmly believe that there is hardly any thought at 10NL needed to win. You do start to see a few regulars but they are far outweighed by the bad players to not even have to think about any other strategy than TAG.

Cbetting or doing anything at the beginning of a session only works if people are paying attention. I dont think 10nl contains those players. I think its a good idea at some higher levels say $.50/$1 and above but wasted at lower levels. There is a good video on CardRunners in the past month (I will find it if you need it) where he sits down and plays LAG straight away to set up for future hands and I think it was $1/$2 or $2/$4.

You have to be 1 level ahead of your competition, being 2 levels ahead can lose you money. I think 95% of the competition at 10NL is level 1.