Adjusting and re-adjusting in poker

There is one fundamental reason why many players cannot make the move to higher level poker and it isn’t often to do with not being able to accept the swings that come at higher levels. When you play micro-stakes and low-stakes levels then you can make money by simply doing ABC things and playing in a very automatic way. In fact there are a large number of players who play this way and make a very good return doing it.

The strategy is to offset playing lower levels by playing online and playing more tables to compensate for the lower stake levels. So ten tables at NL100 is the same outlay as one table of NL1000 except of course that you are very unlikely to lose $1000 at NL100 ten tabling in one swoop like you can with one hand at $5-$10 games! But as you move up then your opponents will become more and more sophisticated and this broadly falls into two avenues.

This is that their default game will not just be more sophisticated but also more multi-layered as well. Also these players will watch you far more closely as they will understand also that the key at higher levels isn’t to play set strategies for all situations but individual strategies tailored for each opponent. Your ABC style is simply the style that you execute when you do not have any information to go on when you first sit down at the table. But you should be watching your opponents very closely because they will be watching you very closely as well.

Also do not make the mistake of thinking that you need to be involved in a hand with someone for them to know what you did. If you triple barrel bluff the same opponent after raising pre-flop and win the pot both times then do not think at higher levels that this betting sequence has gone unnoticed. Making a betting sequence of raise-bet-bet-bet twice in succession is going to stand out like a beacon to the entire table. You may get credit once for being at the top of your range and even twice but by the time you make the third attempt then expect to get raised or called by bluffs and marginal hands.

For me then this is the most interesting part of playing poker and is an area of the game that is lost when you multi-table as you ideally need a simplified strategy. I have played both styles and I must confess to preferring to single table at higher levels than multi-tabling lower levels looking for fish. The former just feels more like poker to me than the latter even though the latter is often an easier way to make money. But also you need to be careful multi-tabling levels like NL100 as well because players can be very solid at this level of play.