Micro stakes have a reputation for being easy, and it is half right. The players are worse than at any other level. But rake at these limits is proportionally the heaviest in poker, so much of the edge you win from your opponents goes to the operator before it reaches you.
That changes what "playing well" means here. A strategy that prints at mid stakes can break even at NL5 if it wins many small pots and few big ones, because small pots are where rake takes its biggest proportional bite. What follows is what actually moves the needle, in the order it matters.
Why the field is soft and why that is not enough
The typical micro-stakes pool is loose and passive: too many preflop calls, too many flop calls, and folds on the river when a scare card lands. They rarely raise without a strong hand. Against that population your money comes from betting good hands for value repeatedly, not from elaborate bluffs.
But softness and profitability are different things. A pot that goes to showdown for three big blinds returns you noticeably less than three big blinds once the rake is taken. Two players with identical strategies can end the year on opposite sides of zero purely because one was getting rake back and the other was not. Treat rake as part of strategy, not as an administrative detail — it is why the advice below leans toward fewer, larger pots.
The preflop skeleton that does most of the work
Preflop is where the largest, cheapest gains sit, because it is the street where the field's mistakes are most systematic.
Open around 15–18% from the cutoff, 25–30% from the button, and tighter than instinct suggests from early position — roughly 12–15% from UTG at a full ring table. At these limits an early-position raise routinely gets three cold-callers, and offsuit broadways lose most of their value four ways while suited connectors and pocket pairs gain. Build the early-position range from hands that survive multiway.
Facing a raise, stop calling with hands you plan to fold on most flops. Cold-calling with KJo out of position is a slow leak: you flop a pair often enough to feel involved and rarely enough to be profitable once rake takes its share.
Against the loose-passive opener, 3-bet linear rather than polarised. A polarised range is built to attack an opponent who folds or 4-bets; micro-stakes openers do neither, they call. Against a caller your bluffs stop working and your value hands get paid, so the range is simply your strongest hands widened downward — 88+, AJs+, AQo+, KQs, and further as their opening range widens.
Value betting against players who do not fold
Once you accept that the pool calls too much, postflop strategy simplifies. Bet your good hands. Bet them again. Bet them a third time.
The most expensive habit at micro stakes is checking a strong-but-not-nutted hand on the river for fear of a raise. Against a passive population a river raise is almost always the nuts, which means you can bet top pair with a good kicker into a player who called twice and simply fold if they raise. You collect a lot of bets from second pair that would otherwise have checked behind.
Size accordingly. Against players who call by default, use larger sizes with your value hands: two-thirds to three-quarters of the pot on the turn and river rather than a third. A small bet does not make a calling station call more often — they were calling regardless — it just wins less when they do. Larger sizing also builds pots faster, which matters because of the rake cap: once the cap is hit, the extra chips in the pot are yours to win untaxed.
Bluff sparingly and with a reason — a scare card completing an obvious draw, on a board where your line makes sense. Multi-street barrels into someone who has called twice are money set on fire.
A worked hand
100bb effective, 6-max cash. We open KdQd from the cutoff to 2.5bb, the big blind calls. Flop is Qs 8h 4c.
Big blind checks. We bet 33%. The board heavily favours our range — we hold far more strong queens and overpairs than a big blind defending range does — and a small size lets us bet almost everything on a flop where they have very little.
They call. Turn is the 2s, they check again. Now size up to about 70%. The flop bet was a range bet and wanted a small size; this is a value bet from a hand beating every pair except a set, and against a wide caller the larger size collects more from 8x and pocket pairs while setting up a river bet without an overbet.
River is the 7h. They check. Bet again, around 70%. We are still ahead of the calling range. If they raise, fold — and note their name, because in apps without tracking software that note is the only record you will have.
Where rake decides the outcome
Rakeback is not a bonus at these limits, it is a component of winrate. Play enough hands and the percentage coming back can be comparable to the edge you generate at the tables — which is why serious low-stakes players care more about their arrangement than their preflop chart.
The other half is game selection. An hour at a table with two obvious recreational players is worth more than a marginal strategic improvement applied everywhere. Look before you sit: if nobody is playing badly, the money has to come from somewhere, and after rake there may not be enough of it.
What this looks like in our clubs
We run clubs across five mobile poker apps, and low-limit tables are where most of our players live. Two things are consistently true there.
First, fields differ by app in ways that change strategy. PPPoker tables run loose and passive, so the linear 3-betting and heavy value betting above are close to optimal. Suprema's Brazilian pool plays looser and more aggressively — more multiway pots, more thin-value-or-check decisions. The same chart does not fit both.
Second, the players who complain about running badly are usually playing every hour of the day rather than the hours their game is soft. Prime time in a club is not the same as prime time in a classic poker room, and it is worth asking your agent when the good games run.
Frequently asked questions
What is a realistic winrate at micro stakes?
It varies enormously by pool, format and volume, and anyone quoting you a guaranteed figure is selling something. What is fair to say is that the edge available at these limits is largely determined by how much of it survives rake, which is why the rakeback arrangement matters as much as the strategy.
How many buy-ins do I need to play these limits?
For no-limit hold'em cash, around 40 buy-ins is a workable floor at soft low-stakes tables, more if you tilt or move up quickly. PLO needs considerably more — 100 buy-ins is not excessive, because the variance is much higher even when the field is worse.
Should I move up as soon as I am winning?
Only over a sample large enough to mean something, and with a bankroll that supports the next level without stress. Moving up after a good week is the most common way players give back a month of profit.
Is it better to play in a poker room or a club app at these limits?
At low stakes the negotiated percentage available in a club is usually the bigger factor. A room gives you more tables and better software; a club gives you a better deal and a field somebody polices. Many of our regulars do both.
Where to start
Fix preflop first — it is cheap and permanent. Then push your value betting harder than feels comfortable, since the pool will not punish it. Then look hard at what you pay in rake, because that is the part most players never examine.
For a sense of what a proper arrangement looks like at these limits, message @supremaunion with the format and volume you play, or compare the fields across the club apps we run.
18+. Play within your means.