News: 'Discipline is the most important skill' - Paxis (2024)

Congrats on the new Beginner's Guide to Low Stakes NL Cash. What made you want to create this guide?

Paxis: This is not the first beginner's course for the Big Stack Strategy (BSS). In fact, it would be version 6.0. It all started many years ago with a beginner's course for the full ring tables. However, as more and more short-handed games were played, the course was modified to take account of the dynamics at the 6max tables. This course was updated again and again, but as the game of poker has changed and developed so much over the years, at some point this was no longer sufficient and the course was outdated. It was then no longer held in live coaching sessions for a while. So there were more and more voices from the German community who wanted a new course.

Last year, I finally set about developing a completely new, up-to-date and significantly better beginner's course. I enlisted the help of Texas Hold'em expert Fallout86. His input was particularly necessary when it came to knowledge about GTO (Game Theory Optimal). This enabled us to optimize the preflop ranges in particular so that the beginners don't play too tight, but at the same time, there aren't too many difficult postflop situations.

A lot of new players are overwhelmed by all the strategy info out there, have you found they like a straightforward ‘this is what you do’ guide like this?

Paxis: Yes, as I said, we have years of experience with a beginner's course. In the German community, there is also one for tournament strategy and in the past we had another one specifically for sit and go. People strive for the path of least resistance and a course that tells you exactly what to do and when helps a lot. Ultimately, our aim is to ensure that as many people as possible either want to sit down at the tables for the first time or, as we read again and again in the German community, come back to the tables. If you work out and pick out everything yourself when you start playing poker, there is always the risk of adopting strategies that are not optimal for the small limits.

Often beginners concentrate on the wrong things such as GTO or playing with statistical values right from the start. My experience is that players who play according to our course do not fail as long as they stick to the guidelines and therefore move up the limits more quickly. For those who try to do it on their own, the opposite usually happens and they fail.

"Lots of newcomers and returning players use the course"

Has the guide developed from feedback from the German community? Is what English readers seeing evolved thanks to our many German members?

Paxis: Not directly. The German community and especially the community around the beginner's course is great and because it works so well, it is constantly growing. More and more newcomers and returning players are using the course as a template. But most of the guidelines from the course come from me and Fallour86. Preflop, I first created rough ranges for the various positions and situations. I then optimized these ranges together with Fallout86. Our experience with beginner limits and Fallout's expertise in GTO led to the finalized starting hand charts. As for the postflop defaults, 95% of them were already in my head before I wrote them down. Here, too, you have to use past experience as a reason.

I've been coaching for PokerStrategy.com since May 2008, I started coaching the Small Stack Strategy, but a few months later I was also coaching the Big Stack Strategy for beginners, at that time without a special beginners' course. As a result, I have been coaching beginners almost continuously for many years and have played the NL 2 - NL10 limits on various platforms. You simply develop a feeling for what works well and what doesn't. Apart from that, I also knew the guidelines I had used in the old beginners' course. All of this led to the postflop article in the new course. I then also went through the complete postflop part with Fallout86 in a live stream to get his opinion. He thought it was so good that there were hardly any parts where we changed anything. In the end, if I remember correctly, there were 3 situations where we changed something. But of course the preflop and postflop parts of the course were constantly shown to the community to get feedback and ideas. This also led to further minor optimizations.

The big difference, for me, about the ranges compared to GTO is that the tricky marginal hands (like low suited Ax in the early opening range) are missing. Is that the biggest difference?

Paxis: No, I wouldn't say that. The biggest difference is that as beginners we don't call 3-Bets Out Of Position (OOP). These situations in particular are very difficult to play postflop, without initiative and without position. In position (IP) we have a calling range vs 3Bets. The fact that we leave out a few hands preflop that an advanced player might open raise isn't that big of a difference, since we still have a raising range in every position.

"Not 3-betting enough is the biggest leak"

What leaks at NL2 and NL5 do these ranges exploit?

Paxis: As always, not enough 3-Bet is played. That's why we don't have to do much against 3-Bets and, among other things, we can afford to fold OOP against them often. Aside from that, there's also a lot of bad players playing with limps. Especially when we are IP, we often attack it with a raise. But it has to be said that we can exploit the player pool at the small limits much more easily postflop, this is simply because there is usually more money in the middle and postflop is more complex.

The ranges are for NL2 and NL5, at what stake level do you think GTO ranges become useful?

Paxis: Our ranges are already based on the GTO ranges and are not that far away from them in most situations. I think you can go even further into the GTO ranges from NL 10/NL 20/NL25. But you shouldn't forget that it can also make sense to play looser than GTO ranges suggest. Especially when we steal and know that the blinds fold far too often.

Some of the post flop advice is unbalanced (bet 2/3 as a bluff and 1/3 as value on paired boards) – is balance a waste of time at NL2 and NL5?

Paxis: Yes, balancing against weak players in general is a mistake and will result in missing value. There are a lot of bad players at the small limits and against them it's always about doing what promises the most profit in situation X. You need a certain amount of experience to know which exploit is best. That's why the beginner's course doesn't rely on playing MaxValue. To do that we would have to play differently all the time.

The course shows ways of playing that beginners should always play in the situation in which they currently find themselves. So that he gets a certain routine and rarely gets into difficult situations. But you also picked out the only situation where we so clearly distinguish between bluff and value, The course is actually much more balanced than would be necessary at the small limits, but this is the only way for a beginner to implement the already quite detailed and complicated requirements.

"Discipline is the most important poker skill"

Is hand selection and position the most important considerations at these stakes?

Paxis: One could debate this question for hours. The most important thing in strategy poker is discipline. After that, good table selection will significantly influence the win rate of a good strategy. It makes no sense to play at a table where there are no real weak players left. Only then do we get to the two most important factors at the table when playing poker. Initiative and position.

No matter how good or bad you are at poker, you will automatically play better if you have the position on your opponent and the initiative. With position and initiative you can put pressure on opponents and everyone is more prone to making mistakes when they are under pressure. This applies to all limits. Good hand selection is always relevant at all limits, too.

What would be your advice on where our readers should go next after crushing NL5 for their poker education? What areas should they focus on for study?

Paxis: That's a very good question because it's difficult to answer. I also get them again and again from our users. As soon as you have advanced to NL10, because you don't really have to deviate from the beginner's course beforehand anyway, you should think about developing your game even further. In the past, my recommendation has always been to start by dealing with static values ​​and integrating them into your own game.

With GGPoker there is now a large platform where you can't play with stats at all. In the German community, I always recommend watching Fallout86's videos in our video section. Unfortunately, we don't have it in English. I would then recommend looking at our partners at Raise Your Edge, where Fallout86 also offers courses for advanced players. Players on NL10+ must be aware that it is becoming increasingly important to play well against the other regs and not just against the weak players. I don't want to give any further details or focus tips here, simply because it is very individual where the leaks lie for players who want to become advanced players.

"The course will continue to evolve"

What has been your biggest success story of players using the guide? Do we have a 200NL crusher who started with it, for example?

Paxis: The current course has not been around long enough to be able to tell such success stories. But I know that there are players from the older courses who went on to play at higher limits. What particularly surprised me in the current beginners course was that user justice2007 achieved a win rate of 8.47bb/100 in 74,627 hands on NL2.

This clearly exceeded my expectations. We mustn't forget that he played from Germany and, due to German poker regulation, has to pay more rake on PokerStars compared to players from unregulated countries. Without this extra rake his winrate would probably be over 10bb. That's a win rate that would have been very high even back in 2008 for a player playing on a beginner's course.

Will this guide evolve further and how?

Paxis: My courses continue to be updated and refined. I would then pass on the corresponding changes to LemOn36 so that he can also update the English version. There are one or two rules of thumb that you could incorporate, especially for postflop.

I'm thinking about whether I'll write a third article for this, or whether I'll include this in the existing postflop article. But the most important thing is already in the course. The postflop article in particular was not as detailed in the old course as it is now. This of course means that implementation has become more difficult these days. However, the game of poker itself has become more difficult and it needs a far-reaching postflop article so that the beginner is able to achieve very good results if implemented well. Just like we can observe with user justice2007.

More about the 2024 Beginner's Guide

Want to get started playing NL cash games but have no idea where to begin? Look no further.

Two legendary coaches in our German community,PaxisandFallout86, have put together, refined, and stress-tested a 2024 Beginner's Guide to Low Stakes Online Cash Games.

Now, with the help of LemOn36, this guide is available for our English-speaking community.

This is a complete guide for NL2 and NL5 Big Stack (100BBs) strategy.

This guide includes:

• Preflop ranges designed to exploit the typical leaks at NL2 and NL5
• A complete guide to post flop play
• Approved bankroll management strategies
• Common leaks and how to fix them
• Post your hands for analysis in the thread

This has been a huge project and one you need to be a part of if you are serious about beating low-stakes cash games in 2024. Just check out the results of some of the German members who have already followed the guide below:

Read the 2024 Beginner's Guide to Low Stakes NL Cash Games