Stats Post

[death_blooms]

What can I do to better my game? I notice my VPIP is low and keeps lowering the more hands I play.

[drzen]

Play a few more hands. Fold a bit less. Good luck.

[mojoyoyo]

Here are my comments:

You are a winning player over 10K hands. In and of itself, this is a good thing. You are experiencing a downswing in the 100BB range. You don't mention your experience level, so I am going to take a stab that since you play .50/1, 10K is pretty close to the whole thing.

1. Statistically, a 100 BB downswing full ring should be viewed as a *common experience*. I look at my last 25K hands and they include at least 4 distinct 100 BB downswings, a rough 12K sideways swing with at least 5 attempts to pierce the top, and many smaller downswings. I did a post a while back that showed with a year's play and a sample size of 10K players, you would expect a 7% chance of a 200 BB downswing and almost a full percent chance of a 300 BB downswing, this is not to mention the poor s.o.b. who gets the honor of having the 500 or 600 BB downswing. I recommend wholeheartedly Mason Malmuth (2+2's book) called "Gambling Theorey and Other Topics" - in it he shows how damning the standard deviation can be in the short/medium run. In my simulations, the good news is that winning players win money at the end of the year despite significant downswings.

2. As a computer scientist for 20+ years I can say that the proper way to debug a situation is to change at most 1 variable at a time. You are obviously in a situation in which you do not know what to change, and are looking for advice. I would suggest that it is at least feasible that you shouldn't change anything right now. If you change one thing or two things right now, you might get 5K hands down the road and find that the changes are for the worse, that the changes had a positive effect but are incorrect which will hurt you in the long run, or some other insidious combination which throws off your baseline play which you are playing right now. I would start by reading and re-reading SSH. Look for things that you can tweak (I use the word tweak very specifically, I view poker play that is a key that has been cut, and errors in play are a burr on that key - fixing errors is a process of small tweaks, not large adjustments (most times)) that are *clearly* correct. For example, a while ago I noticed that I was a loser with the weaker offsuit hands, namely KT QT JT KJ QJ. I reviewed all the 2+2 material I could find and decided I was misplaying these hands. Now, I rarely play these hands outside of the blinds, and when I do, it is late. Another area you might want to look at is the number of raises you are calling. SSH recommends playing small pairs for 1 or 2 bets in a lot of cases - but there is a big difference between being the 7th person to put 2 bets in a pot and being the first person right after the raiser to put 2 bets in the pot.

3. Be careful of internet advice (including this post) as a lot of it is just plain wrong.

4. Be careful of 6max play. I am not saying don't do it, but understand that if you are a 1.5BB/hr 12BB stdev player full ring, your stdev might reasonably go to 25BB/hr 6max. If you have a 300BB roll full ring you might find you need a 600BB roll 6max. If you don't know the difference between ABC poker and Attack and Defend poker, and how to identify which mode the game and/or hand is in, you will most likely not have a pleasant 6max experience. If you don't know how relative card values change when going primarily heads up (hint: pairs and high card strength go way up in value) you will most likely not have a pleasant 6max experience. 6max play can be useful but I would make a wager that most people don't know what they are getting in to. There is a lot of incorrect information on 6max. Ed Miller says you should not play looser or more aggressive 6max, its just that your blinds have more equity - yet the 6max starting hand guidelines *on this very site* recommend raising utg (mp2 6max) with KT!!! KT is a marginal hand full ring and an awful hand 6max (except perhaps very late). You will find misinformation like this all over. In any endeavor 50% of the people will do better than average (by definition), so remember that a lot of people succeed *despite* what they do not *because* of what they do.

I would suggest signing up for the 200 hand exchange and review thing on this board, if someone looks over some of your hands, you might get a perspective on things you hadn't considered.

I would suggest essentially playing on unchanged for now. Look for specific holes that you want to plug and address these systematically. Remember that even though (at this point) the downswing seems to have come out of nowhere and all of the sudden you are down 100BB the turnaround will be gradual and filled with failed attempts. Grinding it back is a slow and sure process. Have confidence in the things you have done to get you to this point - playing outside your roll and/or making large random changes to your game will probably have the results that you might imagine. Be glad that your downswing came after a winning stretch especially if you are just starting, now you have the motivation to learn and re-learn whereas the other way around it would have probably been just frustrating.

Good luck.

[milesdyson]

[ QUOTE ]
4. Be careful of 6max play. I am not saying don't do it, but understand that if you are a 1.5BB/hr 12BB stdev player full ring, your stdev might reasonably go to 25BB/hr 6max.

[/ QUOTE ]
no

[ QUOTE ]
If you have a 300BB roll full ring you might find you need a 600BB roll 6max.

[/ QUOTE ]
not really.

[ QUOTE ]
There is a lot of incorrect information on 6max. Ed Miller says you should not play looser or more aggressive 6max, its just that your blinds have more equity - yet the 6max starting hand guidelines *on this very site* recommend raising utg (mp2 6max) with KT!!! KT is a marginal hand full ring and an awful hand 6max (except perhaps very late).

[/ QUOTE ]
i just opened up the hand chart thread located in the small stakes shorthanded forum, and it recommends raising KTs 3 off the button and folding KTo 3 off the button. it recommends raising KTo 2 off the button (in the hijack). this all seems fine to me.

[mojoyoyo]

I stand corrected on the KT thing.
But in my defense, I did say that things on the internet (including this post) are often wrong. ;>

What do you recommend is a valid stdev for 6max play? Its more variable than longhand, so does saying "you might find you need double" strike you as wrong? If so, are you saying that no more of a roll is required (therefore that it is not more variable)? If you say that it is more variable then a bigger roll is needed, are you saying 2x is not a reasonable suggestion whereas 1.5 or 1.3 or 1.7 would be reasonable? I didn't get a whole lot of info from "no" and "not really".

[Octopus]

[ QUOTE ]
I stand corrected on the KT thing.
But in my defense, I did say that things on the internet (including this post) are often wrong. ;>

What do you recommend is a valid stdev for 6max play? Its more variable than longhand, so does saying "you might find you need double" strike you as wrong? If so, are you saying that no more of a roll is required (therefore that it is not more variable)? If you say that it is more variable then a bigger roll is needed, are you saying 2x is not a reasonable suggestion whereas 1.5 or 1.3 or 1.7 would be reasonable? I didn't get a whole lot of info from "no" and "not really".

[/ QUOTE ]

It depends on your style and, especially, the style of your opponents, but I have found my SD at 6max to be only marginally higher than at full. Most people seem to see around 17%-20% at 6max (and 14%-17% at full).

[Shillx]

Major symptoms of someone who plays weak-tight. Can't say for sure b/c the WTSD stat can be misleading but it looks like you fold too much, don't play enough hands, etc.

[death_blooms]

Im playin lots of suited connectors 67s and up when a few people call...playing the high cards and suiteds when position calls for them to be played....playing pocket pairs like i think should (generally opening middle position 66 and up, calling pocketpairs with 2 limpers in)....How can I play more hands? Are there hands that are commonly folded that should be called?

[RcrdBoy]

[ QUOTE ]
How can I play more hands?

[/ QUOTE ]

In this thread there is some good advice.

It's easiest if you view all in flat mode and scroll about 1/5 of the way down and look for some stats post from Guthrie. It goes from there.

Also, if you haven't, check the stickies in this forum. There is usually info about this type of thing in links posted there.

GL! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[NIX]

[ QUOTE ]
How can I play more hands? Are there hands that are commonly folded that should be called?

[/ QUOTE ]
First, don't go overboard adding too many hands at once, but there are some areas you can look at. Things like limping some multiway hands (suited aces, QJs/JTs type stuff) in addition to pocket pairs in EP if you have generally loose/passive tables. Isoraising more in LP can up your VPIP as well. Someone limps and it's to you in the CO and you have A9 or KTs or something, raise it up and try to get heads up with the limper. Your better postflop play (if you are better postflop) and position can make things like this profitable in the long run. Finally, as you gain confidence, you might be able to steal more liberally or defend a bit more too.