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Message: [QUOTE="stomper33, post: 5955360, member: 164811"] I couldn't agree more with this notion. Most of the paid content out there is not very applicable to the microstakes. When I first started grinding micros, I adhered to the GTO concepts taught by the paid content. However, the vast majority of players play far from GTO, making exploitative rather than fundamentally sound poker way more profitable. You will still be profitable playing GTO, but I found the variance to be much greater as bad players are willing to play for stacks with marginal hands. I wouldn't completely discredit paid content for micros though; they can be good for nailing down your own ranges while teaching you good strategies for exploiting players' tendencies. However, you can find much of the same information for free online. IMO microstake MTT's are only worth playing if your objective is to learn tournament play, such as how to play different stages of the tournament with different stack sizes, and how to exploit different player types. They can give great experience in the tournament format while risking very little, while also teaching you how to beat both the fish and the regs. However, if you are looking to make even a somewhat reasonable profit/hourly rate, micro MTT's can be quite the struggle. Say you're an absolute crusher with a 50% ROI at the $3 stakes. You've honed in your fundamentals and can now play 8 tables at once. Your average tournament lasts 4 hours (this is just an estimate). Your hourly rate is only $3/hour. Of course, you can still build a bankroll with this, but it will be a long and hard grind. One other thing to note about MTT's, which OP mentioned in his post, is the player pool size. The more players in the field, the higher the variance. They might provide for a higher ROI, but they can easily provide a lower ROI if your sample size isn't large enough (1000+ games). Try to find games with smaller player fields and a cash overly (i.e. $3 buy in, $900 GTD, but only 250 players register). You can often find a few tournaments that repeatedly have overlay for a few weeks before the site realizes they're just giving away money. Despite the low hourly rate, I do think it is worth playing microstakes until you know you can beat them before moving up to small stakes. If you jump up in stakes too soon, you will just burn away the cash that you spent weeks building up. You need to be confident in your ability so that you can maintain a steady headspace through the downswings (which will be larger at higher stakes). A winning player can quickly turn into a losing player if they tilt after a few bad beats. Micros can train your stamina to persevere through these swings. If you're looking to build a bankroll at the micros, I think cash games and SNG's/STT's are a much better way to go. There is way less variance at cash games and slightly less variance at STT's while providing for a greater hourly rate due to a shorter game duration. STT strategy is fairly simple after you get down to 6 people or less if you put in just a few hours of studying these spots. But they can also be a bit dry and monotonous. My biggest recommendation for MTT and STT is to not focus on your cards that much and instead focus on your strategy for the overall game. Mark who the fish are and who the regs are. Both are beatable, but in their own way. Focus most of your study on preflop ranges (these can easily make or break your ROI), exploitative adjustments, ICM (this is where players punt the most money, so if you have a sound understanding of ICM, you will crush), and your strategy for each stage. And to OP's last point, I think it is best to try to maximize both profit and enjoyment. If you don't enjoy cash games, don't play them (I don't). There's no point making a couple of bucks an hour if you're not enjoying it. Studying can be a bit laborious and dry, but it will easily make the games more enjoyable as you start to see results from your hard work. Best of luck to you. [/QUOTE]

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