2. Minor League

The good player can garner worthwhile income from lower stake games. But more importantly, he uses the lower-stake or minor-league game as—

• a pool for selecting new players for higher-stake games
• a place to break in new players (many players who never intended to play in a higher-stake game will gradually accept such a game after becoming accustomed to or bored with the lower-stake game)
• a proving ground to test and develop new plays, concepts, and modifications before deploying them in higher-stake games
• a game in which poor players who will never play in the higher-stake games can conveniently lose their money to the good player
• a resting place for players dropping out of higher stake games. (Lower-stake games provide a place to hold valuable losers who are driven out of the big game. Without a lower-stake game to fall back on, those losers might quit poker completely. With a lower-stake game, they can continue to play and, in time, they usually recover their confidence, nerve, or finances and return to the big game.)

When playing in several different games, the good player must carefully plan his schedule in order to budget and invest his limited time into the most profitable situations.