The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

Do yourself a favor and read this post, you have already spent all that time reading so many books that you should read this post and understand why those books are coming up short.

here is a conclusion i came to recently to illustrate how a good 2+2 player who understands postflop play can break even.

run this very simple filter to see where you stand..

in the filter window select "not a blind"...a good player will win .07 bb/hand outside the blinds, so if you are there or above that stat..well done..if you are below then you have some work to do.

please read on

now go to the positions tab and look at your bb and sb positions. if you lose more than (.20) from the bb and more than (.09) from the sb then you have some work to do. chances are if you make .07 in the other filter but lose too much from the blind positions then you are probably playing too tight from the blinds.

here is where i blow your mind...


lets say "Joe" plays $2-4 and has played 50k hands so far in pt. he makes .07 outside of the blinds (which is 77% of your total hands played). so he has made $10,780 outside the blinds. now from the bb he loses (.28) per hand. that means he lost $6440 from the bb and lets say he loses (.11) from the sb = $2530.
so his profit is $1810 over 50k hands which = 0.90 bb/100
that is not a good average.

now lets take "Joe" and improve his blind play alone.
he still makes $10,780 from outside the blinds, but now he only lose (.16) from the bb. thats a loss of $3680 and he loses (.07) from the sb for a loss of $1610. now his total profit is $5490 which is now 2.74 bb/100 !!!

thats a big diff. huge
and that is how alot of good players continue to get break even results. (the dirty little secret is that miller never talks about blind play in his book and THAT is why so many good players cant reach 2bb/100)

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

A lot of people aren't going to take you seriously because you're new here, but I think your post is well reasoned. The only thing I'm not so sure about is whether it's Ed's "dirty little secret."

I think blind defense/offense isn't dicussed much in SSHE because in most live small stakes games you rarely have to worry about it. Online 2/4 is much tighter, and so this skill becomes much more important.

Fwiw, I win .08bb/100 hands outside the blinds, and lose .21 in the BB and .12 in the SB.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

yeah i get your point about ed, im just tryig to drive home how millers book wont give you all the tools you need to make 2bb/100 online

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

This is an interesting post. There is still plenty of other areas your game needs to be improved in order to make 2BB/100 I believe. FWIW, over 50,000 I am only at 1BB/100, outside the blinds I am at .07 p/hand, on the BB I lose .19 and the SB I lose .10. Looks like I am doing something else wrong

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

That's crazy. I only make .01bb/100 more outside the blinds, lose more in the blinds, but make more than twice as much as you per 100 hands (from a total sample of 49k at euro, but that includes 20k 1/2 hands).

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

i have a .06 outside the blinds and a -.23 in BB and -.11 in small blind, so whats your advise?

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

Edit : Nevermind, had it filtered for September.

-.15 out of the big blind, -.10 from the small, and .09 from outside. There we go.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

whooohooo! .09bb/hand outside the blinds. -.17bb/100 in the bb, and -.03bb/100 in the sb. i rule! minus downswing [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img].

nice post man, but yeah, i dont know that not discussing blind play is a "dirty little secret". its just something that is overlooked i suppose. small blind play is especially tricky and hard to convey in a book i suppose?

rj

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

That's really good. How many hands and what limits?

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

How did you come up with these numbers?

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

10k hands at 3/6 6m. i havent decided if im good enough at limit yet, but im getting used to it.

rj

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

bohdi- I have no idea what that means and I certainly cant prove it but that leads me to believe that these numbers arent really based upon anything and should not be used as a performance guide

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

122,000 hands 5-10 6 max

(.16) from the BB
(.05) from the SB
.10 BB/hand

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

Interesting...

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

in 6 max, you will always make more bb/hand outside the blinds. .11 is common for a winning player. i guess its because there are a lot of loose idiots out there.

remember the blinds come around faster too.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

Man, I'd love to hear Ed or David's response to this.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

Interesting point, it would be nice to hear others thoughts on it.

FWIW I have 0.07BB/hand with (0.15) from BB and (0.10) from the SB

damn him
 

for only helping improve the vast majority of my game

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

.07
(.14)
(.25)

work to do?

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

Out of curiosity I would still like to hear from the OP about where these specific numbers came from

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

interesting comment, although i don't see the extension to miller's book.

miller's book is about low limit games with lots of callers so things such as stealing/defending blinds aren't an issue (i think you mentioned these things, sorry if i'm confused).

miller has a starting strategy for blinds, and then he goes thru playing second pair on the flop as that's the type of situation that blind play gets you into (i.e. play marginal hands and they hit part of flop).

but sophisticated blind play seems more applicable for higher level games which miller's book is NOT geared towards.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

What tool are you guys using to come up with your stats outside the blinds and in bb and sb position? Where can I get a tool like this? Or do you just keep track of this on your own?

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

a pencil and paper
































or poker tracker. whichever you find easier.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

I agree the how you play out of the blinds has a large effect on your win rate, but I don't see how this relates to SSH.

Also, the exact amount you should lose from the blinds is going to depend on the blind structure and the game texture. Your guideline of .2 and .09 should not be generalized to all games.

As games get more aggressive you will lose more in the blinds. You will also lose more in the 2/3 blind structure than in the 1/2 blind structure. You will lose even less in the 1/3 blind structure that they use in 3/6.

I would be carefull about defining these standards.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

Interesting post, by the way.

[ QUOTE ]
lets say "Joe" plays $2-4 and has played 50k hands so far in pt. he makes .07 outside of the blinds (which is 77% of your total hands played). so he has made $10,780 outside the blinds. now from the bb he loses (.28) per hand. that means he lost $6440 from the bb and lets say he loses (.11) from the sb = $2530.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is fine, but the unwritten assumption is that Joe plays in games that average just under 9 people per table. If he only every played on full tables (10 people), then he should be taking 80% of his hands outside the blinds - likewise for full 9-max games, he'd be taking 77.8% outside the blinds.

This makes quite a difference - especially for some of you guys posting your 6-max results. You're taking half as many hands outside the blinds as people playing full 10 player tables (4 vs 8). For the 6-max guys, your bb/hand outside the blinds should be much higher (probably not quite twice) and your losses in the blinds should be a bit smaller than someone with the same win rate playing only full tables.

I'm at work, so I don't have PT here to look through, but if there's a way to get the average number of players per hand, then that would help make comparisons more meaningful.

Edit: Also what MaxPower said

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

2/4

.09 BB/Hand
.17 SB
.20 BB

I fold SB to a steal 82% of the time.

Not sure what causes this relatively high SB number - something to think about though. I guess the BB is borderline.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

[ QUOTE ]
lets say "Joe" plays $2-4 and has played 50k hands so far in pt. he makes .07 outside of the blinds (which is 77% of your total hands played). so he has made $10,780 outside the blinds. now from the bb he loses (.28) per hand. that means he lost $6440 from the bb and lets say he loses (.11) from the sb = $2530.
so his profit is $1810 over 50k hands which = 0.90 bb/100
that is not a good average.

now lets take "Joe" and improve his blind play alone.
he still makes $10,780 from outside the blinds, but now he only lose (.16) from the bb. thats a loss of $3680 and he loses (.07) from the sb for a loss of $1610. now his total profit is $5490 which is now 2.74 bb/100 !!!


[/ QUOTE ]
If you're trying to show that improving your blind play will help your overall earn, then I agree.

If you're trying to show that the best way to go from .9 to 2.74 BB/100 is to improve your blind play, then I think your logic stinks. You propose that Joe goes from (.28) to (.16) in his BB earn in your example. In other words, Joe really sucked bad in his BB play. Even if Joe did nothing with his BB play except follow SSH's starting hand requirements, I'd expect Joe to do better than (.28).

Additionally, it's not at all clear to me that Joe should be working on his blind play in the first place. He gets 4 times the value by improving his non-blind play (which also helps his blind play). So, Joe would get the same value as you show in your example by only moving his non-blind profit from .07 to .09, which should be a heck of a lot easier than reducing his losses in the blinds by .04 and .12 respectively.

The reason Ed doesn't spend a lot of time on blind play should be self-evident. It doesn't come into play that often, especially at low limit. And it doesn't have near the impact on your earn rate as improving your overall game does.
[ QUOTE ]
and that is how alot of good players continue to get break even results. (the dirty little secret is that miller never talks about blind play in his book and THAT is why so many good players cant reach 2bb/100)

[/ QUOTE ]
There are way, way more players that don't make a good earn because their overall play is poor than there are good overall players who don't make a good earn simply because their blind play sucks.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

I think this is a nice observation. I just read SSHE again this weekend. I never realized how many examples are from you raising in the button in that book. I think that book is great and does a great job really getting one to notice specific concepts and understanding why one play is superior to the next, but it is a book and limited in size and scope.

I think that poker is so situational that without the forums I would be clueless in many situations that the book neglects. Like I said, to no fault of the others, the book would be endless. It would be impossible to demonstrate every situation from every chair. That's what the forums are for. The book alone is not enough to make someone a winning player. Practice and analysis make up for that.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

I agree SSHE sucks. I think I bought the last copy anyways so don't bother looking for it if you haven't read it yet.

Play Poker Like the Pros on the other hand might as well be a recipe for minting money.

To the OP- How many books have sizeable and groundbreaking discussions on improving blind play? I can't think of one... Ed Miller et al did more to impove your play from every position, including the blinds, than any other book yet published. The point of SSHE is that there is typically so much money on the table on any given hand that building pots and maximizing your chances of winning big pots is where the money is. Do you really think an extensive examination of blind defense was germain to the type of game they were teaching us how to beat? If holding your blind loss to a minimum is the difference between being a big winner or marginal loser you aren't playing in the games they are describing or are misapplying what they taught you.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

I don't think it sucks by any means. I think it is instrumental in understanding certain concepts in limit hold em. I think it is great in teaching a new player when a c/r is appropriate to face the field w/ two bets, when to wait for the turn and get a bigger equity edge, when you want overcalls, etc.

I just noticed that almost all the hands are two limper you raise on the button, or something of that variety. In reality many instances occur when you are not in this spot. And like OP points out, there is little attention to playing from the blinds.

Like I said, that is what forums are for.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

.08bb/hand
(.26bb/bb)
(.11bb/sb)

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

[ QUOTE ]
2/4

.09 BB/Hand
.17 SB
.20 BB

I fold SB to a steal 82% of the time.

Not sure what causes this relatively high SB number - something to think about though. I guess the BB is borderline.

[/ QUOTE ]

2/4

0.08 BB/Hand
-0.17 SB
-0.16 BB

Looks like I am horible in the SB. So is anyone willing to suggest from the following where I might look first?

Hands in SB - 2600
Overall VPip - 18%
SB Vpip - 29%
Fold SB to steal - 88%
PFR overall - 9.5%
PFR in SB - 6.5%
Won $ WSD in SB - 30%
Went to SD in SB - 28%
Won $ SD in SB - 48%

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

[ QUOTE ]
Looks like I am horible in the SB. So is anyone willing to suggest from the following where I might look first?

Hands in SB - 2600

[/ QUOTE ]
I think you have to be very, very careful when analyzing win rates based on 2600 hands.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

Yeah, I know it's not many - but this is 3 months SB play for me.
I don't want to wait six months before looking into my SB play. I just wondered whether anything lept out as being a probable problem.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

[ QUOTE ]
yeah i get your point about ed, im just tryig to drive home how millers book wont give you all the tools you need to make 2bb/100 online

[/ QUOTE ]

The claim was never made by Ed or anyone that knows what they are doing and has read the book that SSH gives anyone all the tools they need.

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

Help!
I'm getting raped in the blinds!
And they aren't being gentle either!

NB .06
BB (.25)
SB (.19)

about 10,000 hands.

Does anyone have an idea or book where I can find some blind help?

BTW!
Great post!
A real eye opener!

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

Outside: .08 BB/100
SB: (.10) BB/100
BB: (.23) BB/100

2/4 Limit Holdem. Again, someone mentioned this above but the limit and the blind structure matters a lot here in determining your blind BB/100 numbers. Also, you need a lot of hands to accurately determine your blind play. In a 10k hand sample, you only see the SB around 1k times. We all know the amount of variance in 1k hands.

I've found that most of my losing streaks are caused because of higher then average losses in the blinds.

Lozing

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

your stats when you are not a blind are too low also. Improvements in your postflop play should improve your blind stats as well. Most people get .07 or .08 BB/100 outside of the blinds. a .02 BB/100 x 70 hands (or so) ends up being 1.4 BB/100. I think you're losing a lot of money on your postflop play.

Lozing

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

[ QUOTE ]
I've found that most of my losing streaks are caused because of higher then average losses in the blinds.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, I just checked pokertracker and was unable to confirm this. Comments would be appreciated. It always seemed this way to me but I couldn't find the stats to back it up that easily.

Lozing

Re: The dirty little secret about Miller\'s book for players with PT
 

[ QUOTE ]


I've found that most of my losing streaks are caused because of higher then average losses in the blinds.

[/ QUOTE ]

That would do it.