How can I analyze my swings? (NOT a downswing rant)

[PygmyHero]

I'm still very new to O8OB, so this may be a simplistic / n00bish question. I just started playing a few months ago, and I'm trying to improve my play by reviewing my sessions (among other things).

I ran pretty well over my first ~4,000 hands:


During this time I started learning more about the game by reading gergery's website, the section in SS2, Zee's book, and this forum. The result over my next ~4,700 hands was essentially break-even play:


I've played a fair amount of Hold 'Em, so I'm not by any means unacquainted with swings and variance. I also know enough about statistics to realize that 4k hands is not a lot.

That said, I do not want to just dismiss the above swings as a natural product of variance. I'm more interested in assuming that my play affected those results and then trying to analyze my sessions so I can make better plays in the future.

The problem is, being new to O8OB, I really have no idea what to look at. Some observations and thoughts:
<ul type="square">[*]My VP$IP dropped 8%: this may mean that I received fewer quality hands, but it's also possible that I tried to tighten up because I had learned more about the game. The result may have been folding +EV hands (since play at this limit is obviously atrocious).[*]If I had to guess what kind of hands I folded in the latter set of stats, I'd say danglers like KQJ5, big pairs like QQT7, and assorted low cards like 2356. [*]My W$WSF also dropped, which seems to indicate that I may have just run bad - if I took fewer (higher quality) hands to the flop, I would have expected this stat to rise.[*]I may have started trying to make 'good' plays like raising to promote my hand or increase my outs. While these may be good plays at a higher limit, they don't really work here. [/list]Here's the big concern in my mind: let's say that limping bad hands (i.e. the danglers and other hands listed above) and playing passively post flop (e.g. not promoting) are keys to beating this microlimit game, but are losing plays at higher limits. I don't want to learn bad habits which I then need to fix later.

So I guess I have two major questions:
1) How can I analyze my play from those time periods to see what I need to improve?
2) Could I gain bad habits from over-analyzing my play at this limit?

[Omaha8sPoker]

I'm more of a PLO8 player than a LO8 player but I'll just give you my thoughts on one part of your post...

"If I had to guess what kind of hands I folded in the latter set of stats, I'd say danglers like KQJ5, big pairs like QQT7, and assorted low cards like 2356."

Good for folding KQJ5 and QQT7, they are [censored]...You'll see people playing this crap and winning with it...I do when I play limit and it burns my ass up, but these hands are long-term -EV...Hands like 2356, I don't know about others but I always like seeing flops with hands like these (hands like 2357, 3457, 2358 not so much.) especially when sooted because I think they are good enough to peel off a flop with...I think playing a hand like 2356 maybe be neutral in EV or a little plus or minus-EV depending on the particular game...

I don't know others thoughts on this matter, especially the LO8 experts...But when I was first learning limit I was told for look for reasons NOT to play the hands because in Omaha you can always find reasons FOR playing 95% of the hands that are dealt to you...

Hope this helps a little...

[sfgiants]

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you, as I started at .02/.04 online to get a feel for the game. I think it's probably to your benefit for you to move up a level or two where the level of play isn't quite as atrocious. I say this because you might get accustomed to finding certain hands worth drawing to at the .02/.04 level which would slowly bleed you to death as you move up. In short, I tend to agree that you will learn bad habits at this level.

As for question #1, I find reviewing sessions and then running the numbers on twodimes.net helps a lot. Posting hands is essential as well.

Good luck.