PokerMicro stakes games are not beaten by advanced plays. They are beaten by not giving money away. After grading hundreds of thousands of decisions from NL2 to NL25 hand histories, the same seven leaks come up over and over, and every one of them is visible in your own export if you know where to look.
1. Overfolding the big blind
What it looks like: a raise comes in, you hold something reasonable like K9 suited or a suited connector, and you fold because "it is not a premium". You already paid the blind; against a normal open you are getting a price that justifies defending far more hands than feels natural.
How to check: filter your hands to the big blind facing a single raise. If you are folding much more than roughly 55 to 60 percent of the time, the blinds are quietly your biggest expense.
2. Open-limping instead of raising
What it looks like: limping in first with hands you like "to see a cheap flop". Limping invites the whole table in, caps your winnings with strong hands and puts you in guessing games out of position.
How to check: count how often your first voluntary action preflop is a call rather than a raise. At the micros, the answer for a solid game plan is close to never.
3. Calling preflop out of position, then giving up
What it looks like: flatting raises from the blinds or early position with medium hands, missing the flop (which happens two times out of three), then check-folding. Each individual hand feels cheap; the sum is a steady drain.
How to check: look at your net result in hands where you called preflop out of position and never raised later. For most micro players this number is deeply negative.
4. C-betting every single flop
What it looks like: you raised preflop, so you bet the flop, always, on any texture, against any number of players. One opponent on a dry board is fine; three opponents on a wet board is burning money.
How to check: compare your continuation bets on dry boards heads-up against wet boards multiway. If the frequency is basically the same everywhere, texture is not part of your decision yet.
5. Chasing draws without the price
What it looks like: flush draw or straight draw, someone bets big, you call anyway because the draw is pretty. Draws are only profitable when the pot odds (plus realistic extra winnings when you hit) cover the miss rate.
How to check: collect your calls with a draw facing a bet of two-thirds pot or more. Grade each: did the price plus position justify it? A pot odds refresher and ten minutes with an equity calculator settle most of these forever.
6. Flatting your strong hands preflop
What it looks like: QQ or AK facing a raise, and you just call "to keep the pot small" or "to trap". You let dominated hands see a cheap flop, and you arrive at the flop with no initiative and a pot too small for your hand's strength.
How to check: filter QQ+, AK facing a single raise. Count how often you re-raised. If 3-betting these is the exception rather than the rule, this leak is yours.
7. Tilt volume: the sessions after the bad one
What it looks like: nothing in a single hand. It lives in the calendar: the long, late, unfocused sessions that start right after a losing one, where your usual discipline is missing and the stakes sometimes mysteriously go up.
How to check: compare your winrate in the first hour of sessions against everything after, and your results on days following a big losing day. If there is a sharp gap, the leak is not a street or a position; it is scheduling.
Finding all seven in one pass
Everything above can be checked by hand in any tracker with enough filtering patience. If you would rather have it done for you: PokerInsights grades every decision in your hand history export and its Leaks report groups exactly these patterns by position, street and board texture, computed on your own hands, with the spots that cost the most turned into trainer drills. Either way, check all seven. Most players carry at least three without knowing.