Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome into the last episode of the month.
It may be my last episode. Sometimes I do a
surprise Christmas episode. We'll see how that goes. But as
of right now, this is my last planned episode for
the year twenty twenty five here on the Free Public
Podcast episode, and it's gonna be a good one. We're
going to be talking about a very simple, straightforward ten
step list to get you crushing low stakes hold them.
This actually was not my idea. This was somebody sent
me a question and we're asking me if I could
put into a list form ten things they should keep
top of mind and just repeatedly try to do to
win at the game. And I'm like, yeah, sure, I
can work on that, and then ultimately that evolved into
this podcast. So that's what you're getting today. It's a
good list, and you know, I think so we'll see
how it turns out. You can be the judge. I
will quickly say that if you wish you could get
this podcast every single Sunday, you can for five dollars.
It's probably the best deal in all of poker training.
I can't tell you how many people send me messages
that just just from the Sunday podcast improve their game
and become winners, and I hear it all the time. Now,
obviously we do the whole full blown training thing over
on Patreon that you can join for more than five dollars,
and I'll try to help you just crush the game.
I'll do my best. Rarely does the spot come open
and the coaching tier, so you can check that if
you want some one on one coaching. But those tiers,
those those spots don't come open very often. But all
that's at low limit cash games dot Com, which I
will save to the end of the podcast to talk
about more in detail with you. So here we go
ten steps, a ten step low stakes, no limit hold
them strategy. All this is targeted and crafted specifically for
playing low stakes games one, two, one three, stuff like that,
or if you're in some of these weird places that
do two three like I just recently went on a
six thousand mile trip across America and I played in
a lot of poker rooms and I played some two
three out in Arizona, out in California. So but basically
a you know, three dollars blyying level and lowers what
we're talking about. So here we go by the way
this tense. This list of ten will be posted down
in the information section of the podcast, so you can
refer to it there if you'd like. Let's get on
with it, shall we? Number one? Play tight pre flop?
I mean, is this the first thing anybody should do
if there, If you're a losing player or you don't
know how to play, just play tight pre flop. Now,
I'm not saying be a knit You're not going to
sit around and just wait for aces and kings and
queens and ace king. You'll play more hands than that,
but you just need to play tight. Focus on playing
only strong starting hands. This is even more important when
you're in early position. So when you're first act under
the gun, under the one, you should be played really
really tight and folding weak hands almost always. Typically you're
gonna be folding around eighty percent of the time. The
number one thing you'll do at a poker table if
you are a winning player is fold It's not raised,
it's not three bet, it's not bluff, it's not hero call.
You know, those things happen very rarely. The number one
thing you will do at a poker table if you
are a winning player is fold around eighty percent of
the time at a full table. Now, I'm not going
to get into full blown range charts about what hands
to play. There's so many sites out there that offer
hand charts for free. You can't go wrong with any
of them. I would say the gt O ones are
even fine if you're trying to become a player. They're
going to make you be a little bit more tighter
than normal, and they're gonna have some like bluffing three
bets in there that you probably shouldn't be doing all
that much at low stakes. But any of them will work.
And so just go find you some range charts. But
if you can find ones for cash games, use those,
But just get started on it. But I can give
you an overall synopsis of what you basically look into play.
You want to be playing pairs, you only playing Broadway cards.
You will be playing suited connectors and suited aces and
stuff suited connectors and small pairs. Later in position like
on the button and cut off a lot more under
the gun. You will fold deuces a lot. You'll fold
pocket threes a lot. So you know this is a
general rule for you. Rule number two two out of
ten raise or fold when you're first to act. When
you are first to act, what does this mean? So
you got somebody post the small blind, you got somebody
post the big one. If it gets to you and
nobody other than the blinds have put money in the pot,
then you are first to act. And when you are
first to act, you should either be raising or folding.
That's it. Don't do anything else. If you look down
in your hand and you go, well, I want to
play this hand, but I can't raise it, well, then
fold it. If you look down in a hand and
your first act, no nobody's acted before you, and you
can't raise it, you're like, man, I want to play
this hand, but I can't raise it. It's not good
enough to raise, then fold it. You should be raising
or folding. You should not just be calling the blind
ever it's called limping. Just don't limp. Just don't do it.
It will it will do crazy impressive things for your game.
I promise you instead either raised whether your selected hands,
or folded. If it doesn't meet your criteria for a raise,
just that easy. Again, make sure that you know what
hands meet the criteria, like, don't try to figure it
out yourself, but you know if you don't have a
range charge. You haven't studied it, you haven't memorized that,
you don't not even memorize it. You just don't even
have a loose concept of it. And you look down
in a hand. Just ask yourself, can I raise this hand?
And if you can't raise it, fold it. Number three tips.
Stop calling raises with bad or marginal hands. Stop calling
raises with bad or marginal hands. Somebody opens for a raise.
Just say you're in a one three game. You have
like three hundred dollars in front of you, and somebody
opens to fifteen, and you know, you look down at
like nine four suited or something, and you're thinking about
calling it because it's suited. Just fold it doesn't not
a good hand. You should only be calling raises if
you have a strong hand and you have a specific
reason for the hand. Now obviously really strong hands, you
should be three betting a lot at the time. Other
hands that fall into the range of hands you'll want
to play can bey calls. Although I would say this
should mostly be laid in position if you're going to
be calling open raises, so buttoner off. I would throw
this in here respectfully, kind of using the if you're
first in, you need to be raising or folding. Rule.
If you will apply that to hands when somebody else
has raised and say I ain't it need to be
three betting or folding, it will greatly improve your game.
Now is that perfect strategy. It's not perfect strategy, but
I promise you it's a hell a lot better than
probably what you've been doing. Now it clarifies in you
in your mind how good of a hand you have.
If somebody raises to fifteen in a one to three
game and you look down at your hand and you're like,
I just she snow, way I can three bet in
this hand. This hand is not good enough to be
three betting. It is so bad fold it. Don't call,
but it folded. I promise you this. I'm reminded of
a call I had with somebody in the one on
one coaching tier. Now, this person has been in coaching
with me for two and a half years now, and
they are just a crusher. They just crush the game.
They understand the game as well as pretty much anybody
I ever talked to. But two and a half years ago,
me and this person was doing our first coaching call,
and I don't remember if it was the first call
we did or the second call, but it was for
sure one of the first two calls we did where
I said, hey for the next month until we speak again.
When you look down at your hand when there's a raise,
when you look down at your hand, you can only
three bet it or fold it. You can never call
with it for the next month. That's the rules. Don't
break them. And the reason this guy is a crusher
is because everything I've ever suggested that he do in coaching,
he did it. He didn't ask questions. I mean, he
might have asked questions to understand it better, but he
didn't question me about oh I can't do that. Here's why. No, No,
he did it, and that's why he's a crusher. But
it will clarify for you how poorly you've been playing
when you see how many hands you should really be folding.
So when there's an open raise, if challenge yourself for
the next month, when you get when there's a raise,
look down in your hand, you can't come up with
a reason to three bet that hand fold it, all right,
Number four, You need to be value betting relentlessly against
these weak fishy calling station passive players until they give
you a reason to stop betting. You should just be
betting most the stakes. Opponents are just gonna call too
often what hands they shouldn't be calling with. They're not
going to fold, and they don't care what your bet
size is. Let's say the pot is thirty dollars pre
flop and you're like, oh, I'm going to bet ten
or fifteen. You know you got top pair, top kicker.
I promise you if they will call fifteen, they will
call twenty five when you have a strong value hend.
If they'll call fifteen, they'll call twenty five. If they
do call that bet on the flop, then you for
sure should be continually to relentlessly bet them for value
on the turn and the river until they raise you
until something bad happens. Keep betting these weak players, extract
the most amount of value you can out of them
when you hit a top pair hand or better. I'm
not even though I could talk about kickers, because you
really shouldn't be playing too many hands hardly at all. Ever,
that make top pairer that don't have a good kicker,
So that really shouldn't be that much of a problem,
all right. Number five you should be punishing these overcallers
and these type players. So you got these players that
just overcall, right, this is pretty bad. It's something you
shouldn't be doing, but you should be punishing other people
for doing it. So use bigger bead sizes to charge
these loose passive players who just always chase draws and
they don't fall. This kind of goes hand in hand
with number four, but it's slightly different. So against type
players who just don't buff. Right. So when you're in
here with these type players and you know they're not bluffing,
and they probably have a really good hand, maybe even
an amazing hand, sometimes they don't even raise a lot
for they for sure number three bet I guess the
player like that. You want to be betting for value too,
but you want to be betting smaller and then against
these really loose passive players that just don't fold, that
have all kinds of bad rains and hands and stuff,
but bigger against them, extract a lot out of them.
Against these tight players, yeah, when you have a value hand,
for sure, bet against them, but you don't want to
bet as big and you sure want to be able
to get away from the hand when the time comes, right,
So just understand the type players you're in hand with
and whether you should be punishing these people just overcall,
and then how to react to tighter players. All Right,
we got these concepts called continuation bets, double barrels, triple barrels. Right,
this is something that people mess up a lot. I'm
just gonna give you just some sill, really loose rule here, right,
So we're not going off of the d bend, right,
but you should double barrel, which means bet to flop
and bet the turn, you know, when you've raised three
flop or three bet pre flop or whatever, which you
should almost always be doing when you're entering a plot
and you're against these passive bad players at these low
states games. If they call your flop bet, you should
follow up with another bet on the turn always. Now,
you should be doing this when you have like good
semi bluffs. Right. So let's see, you got two overs
in a flush draw, or you've got to open in
a straight draw with two overs, like really strong draws
and stuff that you're semi bluffing. And I understand that
this is gonna sound a little bit counterintuitive given to
the advice that I've just given you about betting these
players and betting them heavily with value all the way
to the river. The difference is is that they will
call you a lot of times on flops with pretty
weak hands. It will fold the urns a lot of times.
And so you know, let's say you flopped them open
into the two overs right, and you did bet the
flop is a sea bet. You should always follow through
with them, almost always follow through them on turns. But
now if they call you on the turn, you just
got to shut it down. Like we're not triple barreling
off unless we make our hand. The good news is
is when you do make your hand right, let's say
you double barrel it, and then i'd open end their
hits on the river. If they've called your flop in
your turn, they are not folding this river and you're
just gonna get hat So again, this isn't just in
there bluffing with as high and stuff I'm talking. I
know when you have really good hands, right, really good draws,
these are semi you're semi bluffing with really strong hands.
Your strongest of draws, not every draw, just your strongest
of draws. All right, number seven telling about three betting. Obviously,
when you have big hands, you want a three bet, right.
If somebody raises and you got aces, you should be
three betting. Somebody raises, you've got king, you should be
three betting, and on and on we could go, and
this depends a lot on the players to how far
down the list of hands you go. But we should
be three betting light and position, you know, a decent amount, right,
So occasionally we three bet on hands like suited connectors,
suited aces, hands like this for when we were against
like these these players who you know have pretty well
defined ranges, right, so they're not knits, so that you
don't want to be doing this again knits knits that
only open raise aces and kings and queens and that's
kind of it, or just aces and kings and that's it,
or just aces and that's it. And you see players
like this a lot, you just don't want to be
three betting them, right. But against these players that are
you know, a little bit on the tighter side but
not knitty, but they have like more solid ranges and
they're like playing more closer to decent poker, you should
be three betting them light a lot in position when
you're in like the button or cut off. Right, I'm
talking about with junk hands, but I'm talking about what
your suited connectors. You should throw that in with your
today says you should throw it in sometimes, not a
lot of the time. I'm not saying you should be
in there three bat and people light all the time
when you're in the cutoff or button, but it definitely
needs to be a part of your game. Now when
we're getting into this number seven here, right, I'm going
to clear up this a little bit more in another step,
so I don't want you to get crazy with it,
but just understand if you got seven eight suited on
the button and you know this cut off. And I'm
not about late position razors too. I'm not talking about
one under the gun raises under the only one raises.
I'm talking about when like hijack raises or something and
you're in the cutoff or you're on the button and
you have seven eight suited. Sometimes you can call with it,
but you need to be mixing in three bets with
a fair amount. One you'd be surprised at how off
and you just win the hand like they just folt
two even if you get called yeah, position on them
and you have a hand that can play well across
multiple streets, and on what the fought looks like. And lastly,
sometimes they just come back over in four bet you
and you just get to fold it and throw it
away and you're done with a hand. And so it
makes playing your hand that much better. So again we'll
talk a little bit more about this idea of you know,
semi bluffs and three betting light and stuff in another
and coming up in another number. But let's move on
to number eight now. So this is just a general
rule of poker. This is how poker works. You should
be playing way fewer hands under the gun than you
do on the button. Position is king and poker position
is more important than your cards. You can win hands
with no cards in position. It is very hard to
win hands with no cards out of position. It's just
very hard to do. So position is definitely better than
getting a hand always, So you should be playing more
hands in late position. I'm not talking about playing every hand.
I'm not talking about being crazy and betting like eighty
percent of hands or anything. I'm just saying, whereas you know,
under the gun, you might be opening six center hands
or seven percent of hands or eight percent of hands,
and we could find a number that works for the
game you're in or whatever you know on the river
we should be playing, you know, depending on the circumstances
and what happened before it got to us, as many
as fifty percent of the hands that are possible. So
actively seek to play hands when you're sitting on the
dealer button or even in the cutoff right. Acting last
gives you so much information and control over the pot.
It gives you control over the size, gives you more
opportunities to bluff. Just a lot of good things can happen.
You get to perfectly size your bets because you get
to better know what kind of hands your opponent has.
And so there's a lot of great things come from
being in position. All right, number nine is going to
go back. I told you I talk more about seven
and not getting crazy with it. We're going to address
this here, number nine. You need to be exploiting the
weaknesses of your opponents. And part of that means you
don't bluff a lot. It doesn't mean you don't ever bluff,
And I'm not doing a podcast on bluffing. And so
look if you're not winning, and I say this all
the time, if you are a losing player at one
two or one three stakes, you should never bluff. You
don't need to. What is our number one goal. Our
number one goal is to get you winning. Our number
one goal is to get you from losing twenty five
dollars an hour, or losing twenty dollars an hour, or
losing fifteen dollars an hour, whatever it is that's happening
to you. Our number one goal is to move that
to neutral or positive so that you're breaking even, or
you're making seven dollars an hour, you're making four dollars
an hour, you're making something. You are now you know,
beating the game for some amount, whether it's small, small,
or largin or whatever. And you don't have to ever
bluff to do that. If you look at everything that
I mentioned in one through eight and just do those
things repeatedly and with a lot of discipline, you are
going to beat one two and with three doero limit.
You don't ever have the buff now. Once you start
beating it and you start doing well simple things like
playing time range is pre and opening to good race
sizes from good positions and three betting and doing all
those appropriate other things and heavily value betting, especially against
calling stations, and all these things that get your win
rate up. Then you can start thinking about bluffing, right,
And that's what we're talking about, number one. So exploit
the weaknesses that your opponents have. And a big part
of this is not bluffing too much. Bluffing should be
very limited, because what do we talk about earlier, We
talked about taking your opponents to value town. When you
bet and they call and you have like top pair,
thought kicker, or you have two pairs, or you know
you've got a strong hand or whatever, and you bet
and they call, they're just calling because they don't fold.
They just don't fold nearly enough. Now, let me ask
you a question. Should you be bluffing a person like that?
Should you be bluffing players like that that just don't fold?
Hell no, No, you need to be taking them to
value town. You need to be waiting until you have
a hand and you bet them and get them them
call down to the river. So bluffing should be very limited.
These opponents they just call too often. Only bluff when
you see very clear signs of weakness and avoid fancy
play syndrome and elaborate moves. I know that stuff looks
good on TV. It looks good when you see it
on the World's Aeries of Poker. All that stuff looks amazing,
but you ain't got to do it, and you shouldn't
be doing it. Now. I'm going to give you one,
just one example of when you can bluff, and it's
a very safe bluff and it works very well. Let's say,
for whatever reason, you're on the button with a hand.
I don't care what the hand is, it's irrelevant, but
you're in the hand, let's say with two other players.
So it's you and two other players in the hand
and you're on the button, and it doesn't matter where
your hand is. But the flop comes, you don't hit anything,
you have nothing. But the flop comes and it checks
to you. Well, you don't have anything, and these people
are calling stations, so we're not betting right, So we
check all the turn comes and it could be any card,
but let's say especially it's a higher card. So let's
say that the flop was like nine high. And then
on the turn of king comes and now they check
to you again. But it doesn't have to be a
king kind of be anything. But now they've checked to
you twice. This is why position is so important. When
you get checked to twice in position against a couple
of other players, one or two other players. This is
one of the easiest low variants, low complicated bluff spots ever.
Just that like two thirds of the pot, and you're
just gonna win almost always because they just don't have anything.
So you can still bluff occasionally, but you should be
picking these really really easy, easy bluff spots, easy to spot,
high percentage of working, and you don't need to do
fancy play syndrome. You don't got to do any of
that because your opponents, what do they do poorly? Well,
they just keep calling with bad hands. And when you
start trying to bluff people who keep calling the bad hands,
you are not playing good poker. Right. What do you
do against opponents that just call too much with bad hands?
You bet the hell out of them when you have
a good hand. That's how you beat them, That's how
you crush them all right. Finally number ten, Right, finally
number ten, And look, this is a thirty thousand foot
view type thing, but don't underestimate it. Don't underestimate it.
You need to be using logical, systematic decision making at
every point pre flop flop turns. Rivers always be analyzing
the situation you're in. Right, think, think, think, think the
number one thing that I see happening at a poker
table that just really is bad with these players as
they don't ever think. And you'll know this is the
case at one two, p one to three on ared limit,
because when it's on you, if you have been acted
within like a second or two the dealer's leg it's
on you, sir. I'm like, yeah, I know it's on me,
but I'm taking more than two freaking seconds to think
about what's going on in this hand, and I don't
say it like that. That's what that's the inner monologue.
The outer monologue is, yes, sir, thank you, give me
a second. Analyze the situation you're in. What's your position,
what's the action before you? What kind of a player
are they? What are their tendencies? What does that mean
I should do given this spot in this hand for
this amount of money, with these stack sizes, like put
all that stuff together on every street and every hand
you take ten or fifteen or twenty seconds. Now, don't
take twenty seconds to just fold an obvious fold. Don't
take twenty seconds to raise an obvious raise. Right, you
can do that quicker, but don't feel bad and feel
pressured when you want to take your hand and think
through the spot you're in. So stick to the plan
and don't let emotion affect you. Don't let till to
affect you. That's another huge one, right, don't let it
the emotion of the game bug you at all. I'll
give you another great example that happened to me early
this morning. So I'm traveling. I'm currently in Louisiana in
parts unknown. Went down and played a session this morning.
It's like three three hours or something. I think it
doesn't matter what I want. It was a winning session,
but it doesn't matter what I won. What matters is
I get into this hand where I have King Queen
and the flop comes like Queen Queen ten deuce or something.
I don't know. I bet it. The other guy calls
the turn is an eight, so it's like Queen ten
eight eight deuce or something. It's a pretty meaningless card, right,
it's uh, you know if he has jack nine. I
mean I guess he's got a straight. But I'm not
too worried about the jack nine all that much. But
I bet, but I bet a little bit on the
smaller side, and he just calls, and then the river
comes a nine. I think it was a nine. It's
a nine or a jack, whatever it was. It just
put this whole straightening thing out there, right. And he
was a short stack and he I mean he had
like fifteen dollars behind or something. I mean, no, he didn't.
That is dead is completely wrong. Nope. On the turn,
I was going to bet, if I remember, I was
going to about sixteen dollars on the turn, and I
sized up his stack and it looked like he had
about fifteen dollars more so he had around seventy five
or something. So I just took one hundred dollars stack
and put it in the middle, which put him all in.
That's what happened. That happened on the turn. The river
comes and it was either a jack or a nine,
you know, which just makes a little kind of straits
get there now. But anyway, I immediately table my hand
and he looks at his cars and he's eh. He
looks at his cars and I swear to you, thirty
seconds goes behind any tables as straight. That was a
slow roll. He did it on purpose. I just laughed
and said, good hand, buddy. I think I said good
slow roll, good hand, but not in the snippy way.
He didn't hurt my feelings. I didn't get all bent
out of shape about it. Whatever. Man, if you want
to slow roll me with the nuts, I mean, congratulations.
If you have the nuts, I'm losing. Whether you slower
on me or not, it doesn't matter. I'm not gonna
change the way I play because of it. I'm not
gonna start coming after you and all this kind of stuff.
Interestingly enough, I played. I played either three or more
hands with that man and the rest of the session,
and I beat him every single hand. And every time
he told his buddy he was in like seat five
and his buddy was in a seated seat nine. Every
single time he would look over his buddy and goes, boy,
he's coming after me for that slow roll, isn't he.
I don't you know. I didn't say anything whatever. I mean,
it's it's fine, but keep emotions out of the game, right.
And then another great thing you should be doing is
when you are in a hand, and I get it.
Taking nand notes is hard. It's not easy to open
up your phone and open the note app and try
to punch in what just happened in a hand. You
gotta remember who was in the hand. You remember the
pre flop sides. You gotta remember what your cards were.
You gotta remember what the flop was. You gotta run
the turn, you gotta remember the river was. You gotta
run with the bets on all the streets. Where all
I canna tell you is the more you do it,
the easier it to get. Can't never could, as my
dad used to say. That was one of my dad's
favorite sayings is can't never could. If you say you
can't do something, yeah, you'll never be able to do it. Uh,
just get in there, start doing it. I promise you'll
get easy. But when you're in a hand where you
felt lost on the flop, or you didn't know what
to do on the turn, or you know, you have
questions about the river, and it could be a handy
one big or you or you lost big or whatever,
it's mainly about how you felt like you just didn't
know what to do at some point in time, and
you're like, oh, I just don't know about this, Like
take notes on that and then find you a friend
or come join us over on the Patreon where we
have a hand Histry channel where you get my personal
detailed reviews on your hands. As a matter of fact,
I almost always just do an audio reply, so it's
you get anywhere from a from a two to fifteen
minute voice reply. Like there's been hands that have been
on there that were so complex and had so many
lessons in them that I get like a fifteen minute
voice for bly to them. But you know whether you
use me, or whether you send it in to Bart
Hanson video show, or whether you have a buddy at
the casino that you figures all good a pretty good player,
and you say, hey, can I ask you some keep
hands review them yourselves, and then try to ask other
people that are better than you are at least as
good as you, better than you at poker about what
happened in the end, and try to learn and grow
from it. All. Right, there you go, pretty comprehensive episode
of the pod to close out of the year. I
mentioned it briefly there, but we'll do it again. Look
lowlimit cash Games Dot com is should have a little
bit issues with a provider lately, so I don't know
if this forarding is going to keep working, but it
should take you to my patreon. Now, if for some
reason Lowlimit Cash Games dot Com doesn't take you to
my patreon, you can just go to Patreon and search
low Limit Cash Games and you should be able to
find me. You'll see that all familiar green logo and
all that type stuff. But we have to fight dollar tiers.
So for five bucks, so you can get these, so
it's you know, like this every single Sunday. I appreciate
you for that. For twenty five bucks, you can get
full blown training, like I don't know how many thousands
of hours of video and audio I've got up there now,
but it's a ton of course. That gets you access
to the discord where you can talk with other people
who are either winners or crushers or aspiring to be
winners or crushers. And then you get me, and I'm
very spun responsive in there. I just had another message
the other day with somebody messages me, he goes. I
just can't believe how fast you reply to people in here.
It's like you're always in here, I'm like, well, I'm
not always in there, but I always have my phone
and when I get the notification that something was posted
or some comment was made, I try to go immediately
look at it and see if I can respond. And
then obviously the coaching tier. If you want someone on
one coaching step it up a notch. There's not often
a spot open there, but you can check either way.
No matter what you do, make sure you join for free,
Like you don't have to sign up and pay me
anything to join my Patreon for free. If you do that,
I'm doing free content you know, about once a month,
sometimes twice some month over there, so it's free additional
content to help you cross these low states games. All
of those links and all that stuff will be down
in the information section below wherever you're getting this podcast.
And thank you for being here. If I don't talk
to you again until the new Year, I hope you
have the best holidays. I hope you have a happy
new Year, and we'll talk to you soon