Two Plus Two Newer Archives - How to use Poker Tracker.

Thanks for the positive feedback, everybody. Answering a few questions:

goofyballer said:
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If mine <winrate when attempting a steal> is insanely higher (83 bb/100) does that mean I should be stealing way more? I'm only at 10% right now. What range do you recommend stealing with in a typical loose NL 25-100 game?

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As I said, I'd consider anything less than 20% to be leaving money on the table. There was a great thread on the Poker Tracker forums (see it here) where a guy claims that your winrate on blind steal attempts does not diminish markedly as you increase your steal attempts from 10% up through 40%. That information was specific to a limit game, I believe, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if something similar applied to NL. If you get a chance to steal a blind once every three orbits (about my average over the last 16k hands or so) and you attempt a steal 10% more often, that means you're going to try to steal one more time every 300 hands. If your winrate on a blind steal averages 75 PTBB/100, that change should add 0.25 PTBB/100 to your TOTAL WINRATE. Sure, it's not earth-shattering, but a gain is a gain.

Nuprin said:
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When you are talking about stealing blinds - does that mean you're on the button and it's been folded to you or do you mean raising from the button with a few limpers too?

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Technically, a blind steal is when you are either in the Button or CO (one off the button), everybody in front of you folds, and you raise. Personally, I recommend attempting "quasi-steals" when one or two players have limped in front of you. If you've got at least a decent hand, your quasi-steals are going to be even more profitable: when they pick up the dead money preflop, it's more than twice as large as the usual blinds stolen, and when you get one caller you're still equally likely to win with a continuation bet or further aggression, but now the pot is triple what it usually would be. I'd be very hesitant to try this with true junk (K8o, T9o, that kind of thing), but if you'd normally limp, it's at least worth considering a raise instead.

scrapperdog said:
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I raise almost nothing pre flop. My pre flop AF is .11
Yet I have a 10.69 PT BB/ 100 winrate over the 54K hands in my poker tracker. Is pre flop raising really as important as people think? Obviously this translates to steals as well.

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There are a variety of reasons why raising preflop too infrequently will hurt you:
1. When you've got the best starting hand, you're most likely to have the best hand at showdown. The more money you get into the pot, the better.
2. Every raise and bet you make has a chance of picking up the pot immediately; why pass up a chance to take down 2 PTBB with a hand like 98s? If you have a large database, check out your PTBB/hand for various preflop holdings and notice how few of them win you more money per hand than the 0.75 PTBBs that are in the blinds alone. If you've got one limper in front, the pot now has 1.25 PTBBs in it. Picking these pots up is a serious bonus.
3. Raising preflop sets you up to win the flop VERY often with a continuation bet. OK, so you got called; that's OK! You've now got one opponent who limp/called into a pot, and the board fell with garbage. Your opponent has checked to you. When you bet the pot here, you're going to take down the pot at least 2/3 of the time, showing a VERY tidy profit. Even if you get called, your hand can improve on the turn, or you can take a free river card. The odds of you making money on this hand remain extremely high.
4. Raising preflop makes hand-reading MUCH easier. So you limped preflop with A3s and five people see a flop that comes 743r. Is your hand good? You can't even GUESS at what BB has, since it could be literally any two cards. Anybody who limped with garbage could have hit this rather nicely. However, if you raised big preflop and narrowed the field to heads-up, your odds of having the best hand on this flop are MUCH higher; it's hard for a stray 7 or 4 to have survived a preflop raise. You can narrow your opponent's holding down dramatically: he's usually holding either overcards (that missed) or possibly a pocket pair (that might be getting scared). If he check/calls your bet on the flop, you can start to narrow his holdings, assuming he's more likely to have a small pocket pair, either 22, 55, 66, or maybe 88 or 99. If a big card comes, you can bet again and easily fold out a stronger hand. Sure, it can backfire on you, but there's nothing more frustrating than having your JJ die on a flop of 733 when the big blind had 83o.
5. Raising more hands preflop disguises your big hands more effectively. If you raise 10% of the hands you play, then your opponents can narrow down your hand holdings extremely effectively when you DO raise. However, if you raise 50% of the hands you play, and you change it up based on table conditions, your hands will be MUCH stealthier. He raised from the button; is that 65s or AA? These are questions you want your opponents to have to ask. Not only does this boost the winrate for AA by getting these hands called more often and building them bigger pots, but it also boosts the winrate for 65s by concealing it much more effectively. Any gain you get from making your opponents' hands more easy to read is mirrored by the gain you get from making YOUR hands HARDER to read.

Again, I'm really glad people are finding this post useful; I've been thinking about writing this post for some time now, and after another flurry of "do these stats look right?" posts, I figured now was as good a time as any.