0 Strategies for Beating Small Stakes Poker Cash Games By Jonathan Little PokerCoaching.com 1 What’s Your Cash Game IQ? I created a short quiz as a companion to this book. Use this quiz to quickly test your knowledge about small stakes no-limit hold'em cash games. Take the quiz now at: CashGameIQ.com It's only 10 questions long. After you answer each question, I will give you a short analysis of the concept being covered. To get the most out of this quiz, I suggest you take it before you read this book to help you identify the cash game concepts you need to work on. Take it again after you have finished reading this book to make sure you have mastered every concept. Finally, keep taking this quiz until you get a perfect score. Take the quiz now and get your Cash Game IQ by visiting: CashGameIQ.com 2 Contents What’s Your Cash Game IQ? ......................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................................... 5 Free Poker Course ......................................................................................................................................... 6 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 7 Combating Your Opponents ......................................................................................................................... 9 Straightforward Loose Passive Players ..................................................................................................... 9 Weak Tight Passive Players ..................................................................................................................... 13 Straightforward Tight Aggressive Players ............................................................................................... 14 Good Tight Aggressive Players ................................................................................................................ 16 Maniacal Loose Aggressive Players ......................................................................................................... 19 Calling Stations ........................................................................................................................................ 21 Which Strategy is Ideal? .......................................................................................................................... 22 Preflop Strategy .......................................................................................................................................... 25 Preflop Raise Sizing ................................................................................................................................. 25 When the action is folded to you ............................................................................................................ 27 When your opponents will call large preflop raises ............................................................................... 31 When you get reraised ............................................................................................................................ 32 When the reraiser is tight ................................................................................................................... 32 When the reraiser is loose .................................................................................................................. 33 When there is a raise before you ............................................................................................................ 34 When a tight player raises .................................................................................................................. 35 When a loose player raises ................................................................................................................. 36 When there is a raise and a caller ........................................................................................................... 38 When there are limpers .......................................................................................................................... 40 When there is one limper ................................................................................................................... 40 When there are multiple limpers ........................................................................................................ 45 Limp-reraising ..................................................................................................................................... 47 When the limpers don’t fold to preflop aggression ............................................................................ 49 Abnormal Stack Sizes .............................................................................................................................. 50 Playing with a straddle ............................................................................................................................ 51 Postflop Strategy ......................................................................................................................................... 53 3 Heads-Up................................................................................................................................................. 54 When you have a premium hand........................................................................................................ 54 When you have a strong one pair hand .............................................................................................. 54 When you have middle or bottom pair .............................................................................................. 56 When you have a drawing hand ......................................................................................................... 57 When you have junk ........................................................................................................................... 59 Additional Tactics ................................................................................................................................ 60 Multiway ................................................................................................................................................. 62 When you have a premium hand........................................................................................................ 63 When you have a strong one pair hand .............................................................................................. 63 When you have middle or bottom pair .............................................................................................. 64 When you have a drawing hand ......................................................................................................... 64 When you have junk ........................................................................................................................... 65 When the pot is large .............................................................................................................................. 65 Overbetting ............................................................................................................................................. 66 Other Topics ................................................................................................................................................ 68 Tells ......................................................................................................................................................... 68 Bankroll management ............................................................................................................................. 70 Mindset ................................................................................................................................................... 71 Quiz Time! ................................................................................................................................................... 74 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 75 Resources .................................................................................................................................................... 76 Other books by Jonathan ............................................................................................................................ 76 4 Acknowledgments First and foremost, thank you to my wonderful wife, Amie, for always loving and supporting me. She inspires me to do my best every single day. Infinite thanks are also due to my business partner, Dan Stanley. He works hard to ensure our business runs smoothly. This book would not have been possible without the help of many of my students. On JonathanLittlePoker.com, they submitted numerous excellent questions that helped make this book as thorough as it is. I also asked some of my students to proofread this book. Thanks entirely to them, this is the cleanest book I have ever written. The proofreaders for this book are: Ken Adams Johanna Jäckli Suzan Baroni Thomas Weight Robert Piper Paul Friedman Michael Sully Eric Bianco Garrett Smith