Quitting Micro Limit Online - UPDATED

8/31/2005

My original post is at the bottom.

I'm currently playing at even lower limits right now and am happy with my decision to do so. I thought moving up in limits would increase my win rate, and it did for a short period of time, and then I went broke again. The more I play, talk about, and read about playing online, the more I realize most of my earlier ideas about online poker was false. The problem wasn't with other players, it was leaks in my own game: specifically not adjusting to different types of players, making too many decisions out of frustration, and playing outside my bankroll.

Here is a post I found on the 2+2 forum that sums up what I'm talking about:

"How do I deal with all these loose players sucking out on me with terrible hands?
A common complaint is that the players are so bad that it actually prevents you from making money. New players often feel that if they could just go to a game where opponents "played more reasonable hands", "respected my raises", and "didn't chase all the way to the river" they would make more money. This whole notion (to quote SSH) is absurd. Poker is a game where you profit from the mistakes of your opponents. If your opponents make more mistakes you will make more money. Loose, passive limit Holdem games are highly profitable for this reason. It is as simple as that. Focus on winning the most money, not the most pots. "

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ORIGINAL POST
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I have officially quit playing micro limit online. I got tired of having the best hand just to get sucked out on the river by someone who should have folded preflop. It doesn't do any good to complain about it, let's just say I took enough runner-runner suck outs to drive a person insane. So what I realized is that it made no sense to try to beat micro limit. It just gets ridiculous when %70-80 of the table is limping in and willing to chase straights and flushes or hoping to pair that A or K on the river.

Tonight I moved up to 2/4, not that much higher, but high enough to see a difference in the way people play. What I noticed was the majority of people play better, but there were still 1 or 2 maniacs at the table. The key is to not get involved with maniacs on sketchy hands, but hope to get them in a pot when you've got the nuts and they don't have much of a chance of sucking out on you.

It took me a month or so to lose $100 on partypoker.com playing tight at .50/1. Tonight I sat down with $50 at at a 2/4 table, played the best I could, and tripled up within an hour and a half (making back what I lost playing micro). So now I'm back to the beginning and hoping to be more succesful (less frustrated) at these limits. Tonight was only one night, we'll see how it goes from here.