[microcrusher]

Sorry to say, but you are way off base with your statements.

People don't just raise 20BB preflop and everyone calls and gets all in every hand. You must have no experience at these levels. I have thousands of hands at Stars and UB at these levels, and the play is bad, and there are some crazies that just shove, but that's great. Wait for a hand that's better than their range and call. Make sure you have 20 buyins, although I'd recommend more, and you can take some beats. When people say 'it's not poker' then what is it? You make decisions based on the players and the cards, how is that any different. Just because it's not how you want to play, don't say it's not poker. I built a free $10 deposit on UB to $450, 4 tabling 2NL until I got to about $100, then buying in short at 10NL (they have no 5NL). I ran around 9PTBB/100 for several thousand hands at 2NL. I had some bonus dollars, so that helped, but the bottom line is that 2NL is beatable, even with the rake. I'm working my way through 10NL, and I'll be jumping up shortly to 25NL.

On Stars, I followed some (bad advice similar to yours) and got my money down to $3. I've since turned that into about $120 playing their .01/.02, where the buying can go as high as $5. I would STRONGLY recommend that you start there more than anywhere. Deep stacks, bad players, plenty of opportunities to win, and the rake is better than a lot of other rooms (FT and UB). I'm running at 16PTBB/100 at that level. I moved up, took some beats, and dropped back down, but I have the stats to prove that it's beatable and safe.

Contrary to popular belief, there are some decent TAGS at the smallest of stakes, they just may not have the means to deposit 500 to start out at 25NL and instead got 10 bucks from a friend and are working their way up.

I took the advice up a buddy at played $ 5 SNGs with my original $100 deposit. It was gone in no time. One bad run and you are done with only 18 buyins playing SNGs (don't forget that .50 rake).

Playing HU with 2 buyins? That's irresponsible, and MTT's have too much variance to put 5 dollars into each of 20 MTTs.

Why would you give such poor advice?

Also, anyone that recommends split pot games or limit is crazy. You can get solid 5PTBB/100 winrates at the micros playing 6max in a 20/15 TAG style. Why play a game where only a few rare people can manage a winrate of >2 PTBB/100? If you did a poll of people's PT DB's, I'm sure there are way more people with winrates at NLHE > 5 than with split pot winrates >2.

Sorry - I didn't quote the original post I was referring to - the one from I Love Poker...