100k hands of Microstakes poker...

[kom]

So i finished my session today and realised I've played 100k hands of micro stakes poker. As you can see my results are far from amazing, but I am beating the game. Since most people have moved upwards and onwards after this many hands you rarely see long term results from these levels so I figured some people might be interested. Also:

1. I am obviously looking to improve so would appreciate any advice/comments on my stats.

2. I've logged alot of hands lately so anyone who has played a bit with me, (kizza_om on stars) feel free to critique my game, or just say Hi.

3. Anyone struggling with 25nl or below, I can answers general question about these levels and give some basic advice. (This is not a well post, I am obviously only a small winner and obviously have some big leaks.)

[corsakh]

Nice.

[ama0330]

I love that your preflop AF is precisely the same over both samples. These look like pretty solid results, I'd say gg.

[2mb]

Could you post a graph? Looks like you're a solid winning player. But that amount of rake is huge, you ever considered playing with rakeback?

[Hank Scorpio]

Nice job. You'd have $862.65 in rake money won if you played at Full Tilt.

[cyg]

your stats look so solid, i'm at NL50 now and my stats are now way near that solid.
My AF is too low, I'd be glad if you could give me some advices on this.

[WarhammerIIC]

Very nice. I hope my stats look something like that after 100K hands. Of course, I actually have to move up from $10NL first.

[Pokey]

A few comments from what I've seen of your stats:

1. Loosen up from the CO. You treat the button as though it were a unique position, utterly different from every other seat on the table. It's not. Treat CO as though it were "almost the button" and your winrate would probably improve. Steal attempts from CO work nearly as often as steal attempts from the button, and they are therefore nearly as profitable -- something to consider.

2. Your AF numbers look strange to me; specifically, turn/river AF should not be so significantly smaller than flop AF. To me, this indicates a few potential causes, both of which I find worrisome: either you c-bet VERY often and then fail to make a followup bet, or you call down frequently against aggressors when you hit any piece of the flop. If it is the former, consider changing things up: fire second barrels more often if the opponent is capable of folding, and c-bet less often if they opponent is incapable of folding. If it is the latter, realize that your TPTK-type hands suffer from reverse implied odds when you are check-calling down, and either get aggressive with them (to the point of being willing to stack off against some opponents) or fold early. Important point: there's nothing wrong with calling down, or c-betting and giving up, or any other strategy, so long as you have a good reason for doing it. Over the course of 100k hands, I wouldn't expect to see such a stark contrast between your aggression levels on each street, and that looks to me like a problem.

3. Find those value bets. Another possible reason why your turn and river aggression is so low is that you don't fire the thinner value bets on the turn and river. With a hand as strong as TP2K I'd usually be willing to fire a value bet on at least two streets, and with a hand as strong as bottom two pair I'm often going to fire out bets on the flop, turn, and river -- against most uNL opponents I'd consider all three bets to be value bets. Those turn bets, and even more importantly those RIVER bets, are where your dollar values really multiply, and just one or two extra +EV river bet per hundred hands can add significant amounts to your PTBB/100.

4. Resize your bets. Just making a bet isn't enough to win more money -- it needs to be called. In looking at your Won $ When Saw Flop percentage it seems rather high -- resizing those bets a bit smaller might translate into a significant gain in your winrate. I have often recommended smaller flop bets for two reasons: it increases your pot odds for your c-bets and it is more likely to get your big hands paid off. Personally, I find 3/4ths-pot to be an ideal c-bet size at my level; experiment to find what works best for yourself.

This is just off the top of my head. You now have enough data to do a rather complete analysis of your play, and you should consider looking closely at specific categories of hands for help. A few other things that might prove useful for you to analyze:

1. Multiway versus heads-up when you raise. Are you raising enough preflop? Your goal should always be to try for a heads-up pot on the flop. If you find that your preflop raises are frequently multi-way, you should make your average preflop raise larger. Alternatively, if you find that you grab the blinds uncontested very often, you should decrease the size of your preflop raises.
2. Performance in the largest of pots. Considering your winrate when seeing the flop and your winrate at showdown, I'd say it's likely you're doing badly in big pots. When all the money goes in, how do you fare? Look at the very largest pots you have participated in -- those where you have either won or lost at least 80 BBs -- and see if you can find patterns. Avoiding mistakes in those huge hands makes a monumental difference in your winrate.
3. Medium pots. An often-overlooked aspect of your performance is how you do in medium pots. Specifically, are there medium pots that you're winning that SHOULD have been huge pots? Are there medium pots that you're losing that SHOULD have been small pots? The medium pots are the "gateway pots" that are neither huge nor tiny, and these are the pots where we often have the most control over size. If you consistently miss value bets on the turn and river, you will win far more medium-sized pots than you should, and far fewer giant pots than you should. That's not good. Similarly, if you make -EV bets/raises you can accidentally bloat pots to medium-sized that should have stayed small. It takes a great deal of effort to swim through these hands, but it might be worth at least a checkup, especially if my assumption is right and you're missing value bets on the later streets.

[bozzer]

Thanks for posting this. Congratulations on 100k.

Would it be possible for you to post the data for all your hole cards, or might that give away too much?

I'd just like to get a feel for what I might expect from KJ, 66 etc. long term.

[Sean Fraley]

Is 10PTBB/100 really that hard to achieve over the long term in the micros? If I have PT pull up all of my stats for the three levels of 6-Max NL I've played ($2, $5, and $10) my average winrate over all of the 6-Max NL hands is 12.36PTBB/100. Then again, I've only got about 30,000 hands in, and never play more than two tables. Should I expect this winrate to drop significantly as my sample size increases?