why “schooling” makes micros unbeatable (for you)

You are never losing as a result of all the fish you play with. Fish give you the unique ability to get full value on hands without need for deception, without need for image plays, and they make mistakes without you needing to prompt them to. Winning is elementary playing pure ABC poker because of their ability to suck, keep sucking, and not pay attention to or care how much they suckThat said, there are many reasons that believing in “schooling” opens many leaks that are of large enough size to prevent you from beating even these idiots. Remember what is considered to be a good BB/hour or a good BB/100 hands, and then examine the gaping leaks created by assumptions built around the idea that fish will always suck out on you.1. Lack of Value Betting: This is the biggest leak created by belief in the schooling phenomenon. You simply must bet the best hand at every opportunity. Preflop, on the flop, on the turn, and again on the river. Remember that the ideal type for a micro player is tight-AGGRESSIVE. Micro is a game of value betting, plain and simple. To give this up is to give a huge break to the fish in your game. By assuming you’ve been sucked out on the river is a disaster for your earn. Allow me to demonstrate: You have TPTK, and 2 opponents chasing with lower pairs or TPWK. There are 6 cards that don’t pair the board that hit your opponent’s kicker and beat you. As a result, you lose about 6/47 of the time when you see a blank fall. A “schooling” player will check the river due to that chance to OH NO, LOSE THE POT AND LOSE THAT BET!!! A good player will not shrink away and will bet it. Let’s get the expectation for that bet: (-1 BB*6/47+2 BB*41/47)= about 1.6 big bets. That’s ½ of a good hourly earn right there. Don’t let that slip through your fingers, it can turn a small winner into a big one, a small loser into a small winner, and a big loser into, well, a small loser. A bet saved is a bet earned, but it also goes in reverse; a bet saved that costs you a greater amount of bets earned is a loss. 2. “Zero Expectation Bets”: Related to the need for nearly fearless value betting on all streets, this is an adjustment to the craptitude of the players you face at the micros. This concept is cited too often when discussing bets on the end and is very correct in better games, but the weak players are given too much credit and value is lost at micros due to misapplication of this concept. They won’t fold if they’re beat. They’ll call you because they’re fish and they can’t help but call you. In a tough game, don’t value bet the river when that 3rd heart hits and the opponent may have a flush. At low limits, you can go ahead sometimes because while his chance of having the flush is similar, his chance of folding on the end because he missed his draw or was drawing to an inferior pair is far far lower than that of the decent player. Don’t go crazy with this concept, but remember it when deciding what action to take on the river. The zero expectation bet is because they will fold if they don’t have you beat. Do you really expect these people to fold?3. Poor Starting Requirements: The “schooling” phenomenon leads people to believe 56s is better than AA. It’s still not. Limit hold’em is a game of big cards. Low limit hold’em is a game of suited big cards. Don’t start playing hands that don’t have a big enough share of the pot just because they were suited, or connected. With a cap on the amount you can win coupled with the difficulty of picking up a profitable draw, don’t get enamored with drawing hands, top pair good kicker rakes a large number of pots, and sizable ones if you are betting for value properly. It is not strictly the looseness of the game that brings drawing hands profit, but the passivity of it too. Play it in position with a guaranteed number of callers, and when you won’t be facing 3 bets on a flop. Don’t say 67s plays better in multiway pots; it plays better in multiway pots with the hands that competent people play competently. Look at the ways your hand can make the best hand, and the difficulty of making those hands, and you’ll see that even playing vs. the whole table, KQs is better than 45s despite 45 making twice the number of straights. Don’t fall into the trap of playing every drawing hand to cross your path; make sure you can play them profitably before expanding to them. Your implied odds are finite and your ways to win are limited; blindly playing suited or connected hands, low suited connectors that stop themselves, and suited connectors out of position without knowing you’ll have a profitably big pot is still a leak, even in these games. Drawing hands pick up value, but that doesn't make them always profitable.4. Surrendering in big pots: The pot is 20 BB. I have 5 callers. My top and bottom 2 pair has no possible way to be good. Why should I call another bet? With 5 dumb fish in the pot, it has to be extremely obvious before you dismiss the pot odds. To fold a winner is a giant disaster; calling is at worst a fraction of a bet. With 4 others about to call that bet (because they are fish, and they can’t help but call), you get 24-1 odds. You need to be best 4% of the time. Call it. You’ll be pleasantly surprised as everyone turns up middle pair, 2 kicker, busted backdoor flush draws (but they had A high!), and the like and a monster pot goes your way. Saying “someone has to have me beaten” that deep into a pot is bankroll suicide.5. Tilt: Beats happen. Idiots draw out. It’s why these levels are so beatable, because everyone in the world is taking shots at you with inferior hands. Getting cracked is part of the game and why there’s still fish around. Don’t let it make you start running bad. This is a game of supreme discipline and patience, and one that strictly rewards good decisions made over time. Just because “any 2” did it for someone once doesn’t mean you should regress to their level and join the school of fish.6. FPS: You are smarter than these people, you are better. You can outplay them. The problem is that people don’t understand what “outplaying” the loose bad players is. They make mistakes because they don’t know what proper play is. As a result, they will not be fooled by deviation from proper play, which is what bluffing and slow-playing are. Don’t operate on a level your opponents cannot appreciate. Outplaying these people is a matter of folding the worst hand when the odds are against it, calling when you have the proper odds to chase, and betting In conclusion, play well but play aggressively. Micro limits is a game of value management, discipline and control. Concern about individual pots or individual bets will reduce your earn. You get paid for every correct decision; focus on doing that.

The most exploitable fact about the 'fish' is that they feel overly commited with pots where they hit anything. For that reason, the more players in every hand the merrier. Rarely do they raise preflop. For that reason, when you have 9/10 people seeing the flop on average, you can bet with your cards for incredible draws (or flopping the nuts), top two pairs, or sets exclusively - and it's justifiable. The cost of the big blind (which is virtually always all you'll have to pay to see the flop) is so small compared to what the pot is built up to for the typical hand because people do go on such terrible draws (and call with mid pair at the river, with no kicker with 5 people remaining). You dont ever want to be calling in these games. Your play should almost always be either bet/raise, or fold. What would be a pretty good hand in a game with 3 people seeing the flop is now crap (top pair with shit kicker), which is what the fish dont realize and what you should.

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