Micro stakes need advice
 

Just wondering if ne one has some advice on what time of the day (or night) it is best to play poker online... i play .5 .10 nl holdem on FTP....

Also i have a bad habbit of losing my stack after an hour or two of hard grinding too bring my 2 dollars up to nine....any thoughts on when i should shut er' down for the night?
some advice would be a life saver for my BR [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Re: Micro stakes need advice
 

First up, if you are short-stacking (which it sounds like you are), you shouldn't really be hanging around after you have doubled up. Once you make a certain amount of money above your buy-in, get the hell out of Dodge.

I would also say that any time of day should be fine at those stakes. However, as always, you should practice good table selection if you are playing Taggish ABC poker (well you should always practice good table selection, but even more so as one of the above). So don't look for a time of day as much as a kind of table, or better kinds of opponents that you would like to face.

That said, however, the most players tend to be on during the evenings, thus more opportunities for practicing good table selection.

Re: Micro stakes need advice
 

If you're buying in for $2 at .05/.10, stop it. Get $100 in Pokerstars and play .01/.02 or .02/.05, it will give you someplace to start where you can play with $5. Shortstacking and ratholing the megamicros is no way to improve your game. Invest a few bucks and do it right.

If you lose money for a while playing bigger stacks while you learn, oh well. Honestly if you can't bankroll yourself for those limits, well then you can't really afford to play anyway.

Re: Micro stakes need advice
 

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Shortstacking and ratholing the megamicros is no way to improve your game.

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I don't really agree with the advice to avoid playing shorstack. I think they have the theoretical advantage in cash games. Every bet must defended with some probability. Deepstacks defend out of their stack against each other and thus must play more cautiously when there are more than one of them. Shortstacks don't suffer this problem.

And to the original poster's question. What time is best to play? Don't play very late at night; don't play when there aren't many people on the site. This is when people who make their living or such tend to play and also the better players often drop down from higher limits because lack of players (or bad players) at those limits.

Re: Micro stakes need advice
 

IMO, improving your game means maximizing your expectation, and short-stacking is NOT the way to do that. And of course deep-stack poker requires more finesse, more caution, et cetera. This is why the best players play well on any stack, from short to deep.

These deep stacks aren't really there to take advantage of the short-stacks anyhow, they are there to take care of other tall stacks that play worse than them. In the meantime they can swallow a few short-stackers while they wait.

Re: Micro stakes need advice
 

[ QUOTE ]
I don't really agree with the advice to avoid playing shorstack. I think they have the theoretical advantage in cash games. Every bet must defended with some probability. Deepstacks defend out of their stack against each other and thus must play more cautiously when there are more than one of them. Shortstacks don't suffer this problem.

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I didn't suggest that shortstacking can't be played profitably or that there weren't strategic advantages (pretty much everyone has read GSIHE), I said that it's not a good way to develop your game.

Shortstacks also thrive only in certain environments anyway. Those advantages vanish HU, for example. It's really a parasitic approach to poker, and frankly it's kind of boring. There are players of course that do this at all limits, but IMO you'd be better served just learning how to play.

You have to be able to to handle a full stack at uNL, especially if you're looking to grind. The potential winrates are much higher for competent deep stack players compared to shortstackers.