Mid Stakes Poker Strategy
Starting out at stakes that are too high – If you can’t beat NL100, then perhaps you should move down to NL25 or NL50. Not dedicating enough time to strategy – You don’t have to pour over poker strategy for hours every day. But a nice ratio includes spending 1 hour on strategy for every 4 hours you play. In our cash-game strategy section you'll find a number of specific articles for all the nuances of deep-stacked cash games from Limit or No-Limit and the mid-stakes to the microstakes. Note, however, that most tips packed into our cash-game section can also often apply to any type of poker game! And this is too bad because not only does poker become a lot more fun as you move up the stakes and start playing for bigger amounts of money, but you can of course profit a lot more as well. A consistent winning player at mid or high stakes can make a very nice side income or even enough to replace a high-paying day job. Eventually, if you want to compete at mid-stakes or high stakes, you will have to loosen up and learn to play a lot of hands. The micro-stakes is actually a great place to start developing a loose-aggressive (LAG) strategy. The best tournament poker strategy is to recognize the three stages of any poker tournament and to have a distinct tournament poker strategy for each of the vital crunch times during a poker tournament. There are two approaches you can use when playing the early stages of a poker tournament. The first is the conservative approach.
- Mid Stakes Poker Strategy Tactics
- Mid Stakes Poker Strategy Games
- Mid Stakes Poker Strategy Odds
- Mid Stakes Poker Tournament Strategy
- Mid Stakes Poker Strategy Rules
Every cash game poker player strives to move up from micro-stakes to small stakes beyond. I have been playing for over 12 years and can shed some on the various stake levels as well as what it takes to beat them.
What is considered small, mid, and high stakes poker?
There are actually five different stake levels in online cash game poker:
- Micro-stakes – 2NL, 5NL, 10NL, 25NL
- Small-Stakes – 50NL, 100NL
- Mid-Stakes – 200NL, 400NL, 600NL
- High-Stakes – 1000NL, 2000NL, 5000NL, 10000NL
- Nosebleeds – 20000NL and up
Now that you know what the stakes are, let’s discuss each level in turn and find out what it takes to move up.
The Key Differences Between Cash Game Poker Stakes
The nature of each cash game stake will vary from poker room to poker room. However, in my experience, there are some fundamental commonalities of what can be expected at each level as you move up through the stakes.
1. Micro-Stakes Cash Game Poker
Micro-stakes poker ranges from lowly $0.01/$0.02 up to $0.10/$.25. This is usually either a place for recreational players to splash around or a proving ground for ambitious players who want to move up as soon as possible.
The games are typically characterized by looseness pre-flop with lots of limping and passive post-flop play. It is not unusual for there to be multiple players still in the pot when the river is reached.
Tips on Beating the Micros
It does not take a ton of skill to win at the micro-stakes. In fact, the winners are usually just the ones who are making the least mistakes. Here are a few tips:
- Play a lot of hands in position and very few out of position in order to capitalize on the fit-or-fold nature of many micro-stakes players. Acting last also gives you the ability to realize equity with a lot of your marginal hands
- Include holdings that can make the nuts or dominate your opponent when you build your pre-flop hand ranges. Making flush over flush or out-kicking your opponents is where a lot of the big pots are won at the micros.
- Throw out the call button and instead focus more on value betting and bet-folding your medium strength hands. Continuing with marginal top pairs by check-calling is a recipe for disaster against loose-passive opponents.
How much can a good micro-stakes player expect to win per month?
How much can be made at the micros is really irrelevant. You should not be looking to play at penny stakes more than just a few weeks or months while you learn the game.
Even so, there are quite a lot of players who are full-time regs at either 10NL or 25NL. Even with mass-tabling and uber rewards, it’s hard to make more than $8 an hour doing this.
My advice is that if you don’t have aspirations to be a poker “star” and are okay just making a few hundred every month playing poker, then work hard on your game and learn to beat at least 50NL.
50NL players are not that much tougher to beat than 25NL regs, so you owe it to yourself to study hard enough to at least break into the lowest level of small stakes.
2. Small-Stakes Cash Game Poker
Small stakes games include just two stakes, $0.25/$0.50 and $0.50/$1.00. This is where you first start seeing a large number of full-time or part-time pros eeking out a marginal living in poker. It’s not uncommon to find players who have been 50NL or 100NL players for several years.
The quality of small-stakes games can vary widely from poker site to poker site. For example, on America’s Cardroom small stakes are very difficult to beat except for even the most dedicated players. The level of play that was once only common at 200NL or 400NL is now seen on numerous tables daily on ACR.
On the other hand, softer sites like Ignition poker have soft enough small stakes games that even newer players have a chance of winning. I would say that 100NL on Ignition is comparable to 25NL on ACR. There are more rewards on the latter, which does narrow the gap a bit. Even so, it’s always much better to play the higher stake then rely on being a “
Tips on Beating Small Stakes
To beat small stakes, you need to have more than just a basic “tight is right” strategy. You have to also have at least a rudimentary understanding of some advanced topics that include:
Mid Stakes Poker Strategy Tactics
- Equity and SPR and how those concepts are implemented in order to maximize profit versus a wide variety of opponents.
- Game selection and profiling opponents.
- The ability to use a HUD effectively, if applicable, in order to glean the information necessary to interpret the tendencies of opponents.
Beyond these factors, you will need to be able to think on level two and have an elementary understanding of
How much can a good small-stakes player expect to win per month?
High volume small-stakes player with a reasonably high win-rate of 4bb/100 or high can expect to make anywhere from $15 to $25 an hour. It would not be unheard of to make between $2,500 and $5,000 a month, once rewards are figured in. Even part-time winners at 50NL can expect to make around $1,000 per month.
There actually are well-documented cases of 100NL professionals making over $10,000 a month after
3. Mid-Stakes Cash Game Poker
Mid Stakes Poker Strategy Games
Mid-Stakes includes $1/$2, $2/$4, and $3/$6 blinds. Online, these are the stakes where most of the best players on the site congregate. In fact, the only time most really good player will play higher than mid-stakes, is when there is a known bad player on the table.
For laymen, it’s impossible to tell the difference when watching a small-stake or mid-stake game side-by-side. For long-time poker professionals, the difference is usually profound.
The most striking difference that you start seeing at mid-stakes lies in the more nuanced bet sizings. People are a lot more of aware of potentially getting exploited, so they try to optimize their bet size accordingly.
For example, it’s not uncommon to still see 3x raises with a steal on the button at 100NL and below. You will almost never see this from a reg at 200NL or higher. They know they can accomplish the same thing by raising to 2.5x or even a min-raise, so why waste the extra money when they fold to a 3-bet?
Tips on Beating the Mid-Stakes
If you want to join the top 2% of poker players and learn to win at mid-stakes be ready to dedicate your life to poker, at least partially, for some time
In fact, it actually seems like a pointless exercise for me to give a list of tips in beating this level. This is because it’s like trying to explain the universe in one sentence and with 4 examples.
Nevertheless, here are just a few things you must master before even attempting to beat 200NL or higher (on most poker sites):
- Level 3 thinking is the minimum thinking level necessary to compete,
- How to build hand ranges in your head during play and evolve them to fit the changing dynamic as the session progresses.
- Being aware of how opponents might be adjusting their strategy based on you.
- A moderate understanding of balancing and how to avoid being exploited over time if you have out of line frequencies
The point of this article isn’t try and give you a guidebook to winning at poker. I understand that many people reading this won’t have a clue what I am talking about. That’s okay, but you need to be aware of just how big of a chasm there is between the poker mind maturity of a winner at micro-stakes and mid-stakes. A good analogy is for an average chess player to try playing a grandmaster.
How much can a good mid-stakes player expect to win per month?
For most online poker sites, mid-stakes is where you start to see highly skilled players emerging who can make a decent living playing professionally. For example, my win-rate at 200NL was around 8bbs/100 which gave me an approximate hourly rate just under 40/hr while 4-tabling.
4. High Stakes Cash Game Poker
Save for a few wealthy “whales”, most players will never experience what it’s like to play for average pots that exceed in excess $1,000 on a regular basis. Enter the high-stakes cash game poker professional.
High stakes poker games online include $5/$10, $10/$20, $25/$50, and $50/$100. While there are quite a few regs that play these stakes, a good number of them also still play mid-stakes as well. It’s not uncommon to see a skilled reg playing 400NL, 600NL, 1000NL, and 2000NL in the same session.
Basically, what typical high stakes players do is game select heavily and work hard to ensure that they have an edge in every game they play. In fact, often the skill difference between mid-stakes and high-stakes players mainly lies in their ability to manage their bankrolls and careers a bit better.
Tips on Beating High Stakes
To win long term at high stakes takes a dedication to the game and an ongoing commitment to keeping up to date with the latest strategy. Career management must be strong.
I am not going to give you a list of tips on beating high stakes. It’s actually pretty ridiculous to do so since only 1 in 100,000 players will likely even ever play a session of 1000NL or higher. Personally, I have never played a hand higher than 600NL and am not even qualified anyway.
What I will say, is that once you are beating mid-stakes you will already understand what it takes to at least some degree. Whether you decide to take a shot at high stakes will depend mostly on financial security in taking a shot.
How much can a good high stakes player expect to win per month?
For the few that do make it as a successful high stakes poker player, the amount of money you can win is pretty limitless. Even for part time guys that beat high stakes, 100,000 a year likely feels like the floor for them. Think about it, 100,000 is only 100 buy-ins of $5/$10.
5. The “Nosebleeds”
Stakes with a buy-in of $20,000 or higher are known as the nosebleeds. One of the most popular stakes for nosebleed players is $200/$400.
Let’s get one thing out of the way. Variance is insane at these stakes. Almost no one is actually correctly bankrolled to play the nosebleeds. Conservatively, you really need at least 50 buy-ins to be a regular at any stake. Even for the “smallest” nosebleed stakes, this is $1,000,000.
If you start talking about $500/$1000 stakes, $5,000,000 feels like a small bankroll when you consider $1,000,000 swings seem to happen almost daily for these players.
Beating the Nosebleeds
The nosebleeds are an interesting phenomenon that reached their height right before the fall of Full Tilt Poker. The volume of hands played at those ridiculously high stakes has never been matched since.
The truth is, it takes a special type of person to play at this level. You have to be a billionaire, a big risk taker, or have a huge ego to even think about taking on the nosebleeds.
Even so, the level of play at the highest levels is actually probably not as good as it is at even mid-stakes. The reason is that most strong poker players will not risk their hard-earned money without having a gigantic edge in the game. That’s why you’ll often seen players enjoying a higher win-rate at 2000NL or above than they have at 1000NL.
How much can a good nosebleeds player expect to win per month?
Since very very few many people solely play the nosebleeds, it’s more of an opportunistic or ego exercise for the majority of the player pool at any given time. Therefore, it’s not even worth commenting beyond just saying that fortunes are won and lost weekly and even daily in these games
Besides, it’s really hard to be a regular in those nosebleeds and get enough volume in. Like high stakes, the nosebleeds are more about taking shots for the vast majority of the players.
What Minimum Bankroll Is Needed to Play Each Stake Based on a 100 Big Blind Buy-In?
Assuming that each stake is your regular game and you are not taking shots, you typically want at least 50 buy-ins at a stake. Based on that, here are the bankroll requirements of each stake:
Mid Stakes Poker Strategy Odds
The Stake Levels in Live Poker
This article has mostly been about online poker. So, let’s briefly discuss the stakes in live games. Below is a list of the live equivalents in skill level.
Here are the live equivalents to online stakes:
- Micro-Stakes – No such thing since the lowest stake you typically find is 200NL.
- Small Stakes – 200NL, 500NL
- Mid-Stakes – 1000NL, 2000NL, 5000NL
- High Stakes – 10000NL and up
- Nosebleeds – This is more of an online term. A 10k buy-in or higher is called high stakes. 100,000 buy-in is generally the biggest “regular” game you see. This is the common buy-in we saw in the show “High Stakes Poker”, with $200/$400 blinds.
Keep in mind that you can only 1-table in live poker. This means everyone is presumably able to play their A Game. Also, live recreational players tend to be much worse live. This means 200NL
Final Thoughts
Now you know the differences between all of the stakes, both live and online. You also have some idea of what it takes to become a winner at every level.
If you are interested in taking a step toward building a poker game with a strong foundation, you might be interested in my full poker tutorial.
Thanks for reading!
Related Questions
Who are the most famous high stakes poker players? There are too many to name them all but the most famous high-stakes players of all time include Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Victor Blum (Isuldur1), Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Phil Galfond, John Juanda, Tom Dwan (Durrr), Doug Polk, and Ben Sulsky (sauce123).
Who is the best online poker player? Based on long-term monetary results the best online player of all time is Phil Ivey. Doug Polk is well-regarded as the best current online poker player.
What are the poker buy-in levels? There are three categories of buy-in levels in poker. Anything above 150 big blinds is generally considered deep-stacked. Anything below 40 big blinds is considered short-stacked. Everything in between is known to be a mid-stack.
Yesterday I discussed how to study for low-stakes games. Today I'd like to move up to the next level.
Studying for Mid-Stakes players
You learned the basics. You have a good idea of which hands you can play from each position, the standard betting sizes on each situation, and how to value-bet versus bad players, etc.
Now you want to move up and try to beat the mid-stakes, but things are not working as they used to at the low-stakes. The average player is better, and they won't pay you off with bad hands as often as they did at the low-stakes.
Ready to sign up for PokerStars? Click here to get an account.
What can you do to keep improving now?
Since you already know the basics, I recommend that from now on you focus on studying one single topic per week or even per month. If you try to study too many different subjects during a short period of time, you will probably not really get the full benefits of your studying time, and you will forget what you learned after some time. It doesn't matter how much you are learning now. What matters is how much you are retaining.
Regarding time management, you probably need to spend more time playing at this point if you have bills to pay, but I would recommend that you to spend at least 20% of your poker time studying, and if you can manage it maybe up to 50% of your time.
Don't forget that studying poker is a never-ending process.
I think that at this point two things can be introduced into your Studying routine:
• Using Poker Software
• Getting Coaching
Using Poker Software
Mid Stakes Poker Tournament Strategy
There are two main kinds of Poker software that you need to know about:
• Trackers/HUDs
• Calculators
Trackers will allow you to get information about your opponents and yourself. The calculators will help you figure out what to do with that information.
Trackers/HUDs
Holdem Manager and Poker Tracker are the two most popular Trackers/HUDs. These tools will save the poker hands generated from the PokerStars client and turn them into a database where you will be able to search for specific kinds of scenarios and have stats available while you play.
As for the heads-up display, I think that it's optional. There are many top players that play without it. However, I think that at this point the tracker part can be extremely helpful.
Once you have a database with some hands, you can filter specific spots of your game to find leaks, like checking how you are performing with each different hand by position, how your three-bets are performing, review a particular tournament or session, etc.
Also you will be able to see the hands that you played against a particular player and study the tendencies of your opponents in order to beat them. By doing this not only you will learn how to beat a specific opponent, but also opponents with similar styles.
These tools have a trial period, so you can try them out for free and see which one you prefer.
Mid Stakes Poker Strategy Rules
Calculators
There are many different calculators available, but I think that everyone should get PokerStove no matter what game you are playing since it's free and it is pretty good at calculating the equity that a hand or a range have against another hand or another range.
If you are playing tournaments, you should either buy a subscription of ICMizer, HoldemResources Calculator, or buy a license of Sit-n-Go Wizard.
These calculators allow you to do some complex ICM calculations that you would spend way too much time doing on your own and get a feeling of what are the best ranges for the most common situations. It will also map them out in a spreadsheet if you feel the need. You will also be able to study how different structures affect the play and that the exact same hand with a different tournament structure can be played in a different way.
After talking with some pros I get the feeling that sit-n-go players prefer ICMizer and tournament players prefer Holdem Resources, but they usually have some free queries or free trials, so you should probably try them all out.
If you are playing a lot of flops, I also like Flopzilla. It calculates how a hand or a range of hands will perform in a type of flops and how often they will flop a certain holding. This will let you understand better what to expect from each hand after the flop, which will lead to better pre-flop decisions. It will also help you understand how your opponent's range will perform in a certain flop or flop kind, and this will allow for better post-flop decisions.
Getting Coaching
I think that getting coached is probably the fastest way to learn. The obvious drawback is that unless you have a friend that will coach you for free, you will have to pay for it. So, I think that it's more adequate for mid-stakes players since at this point you will already have a bankroll, and you will be able to get a good return on the coaching investment.
You can ask friends or at forums or social networks who are the best coaches around for the stakes you are playing and then try to reach them through their webpages or Facebook/Twitter pages.
You will have to pay per hour, and most likely it's going to be some hours of your hard earned money at the lower stakes. This means that you should get as much value as possible from the time you spend with your coach, and to do that you should ask in advance what he thinks is the best playing plan and studying plan for you. For each coaching session, you should spend some time preparing questions about the topics you are studying and hands that you specifically want to review with your coach and that you couldn't review on your own.
A good coach will not only help you with your questions, but will be a guide. Last year during my challenge I had some coaching sessions with former Team Online member Andrew Brokos and I strongly recommend him as a coach.
You can watch for free some of our coaching sessions and not only learn from them, but also get a better feeling about how the coaching process works.
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQJQkWJgmm0
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3zKVIJFdQk
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDtyLJDU6UU
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1tzEtNVwMI
Questions to ask
How to apply what I learned while studying?
When I study everything looks easy, but then when it's time to play, I can't apply the concepts. How do I fix that?
How do I really absorb the concepts in the long run and not just forget after a while?