What to do with my game?

Dirk_Diggler

Was playing some 50NL on GJP last night and had a pretty dire night - none of my hands were hitting the flops, none of my continuation bets were working, a couple of bluffs cost me too...everything that could go wrong went wrong. So I did the most stupid thing one could do in that situation - I opened up a couple of HU .50/1 tables. Made back what I lost on the 6 seaters but it was so stupid. Oddly enough though the two guys I was up against were so useless - is this normal in HU??

Anyways, the shame

I posted that earlier in the bad beats thread...

What do I need to do? Do I need to sit down for a good while and look at my PT stats and see what my losing hands are? Say I'm losing a lot with AQo, do I eliminate that from my list of hands to play? Do people have a lit of hands that they stick to?

I've got around 8000 hands logged in PT at the moment and I'm down around $300, which is crap.

Thanks for reading.

zuutroy

Well, 8000 hands is nothing for starters...I'd wait until I had at least 20k before going about changing much. I'm sure everyone here has 10k breakeven stretches in any given month.
Having a list of hands to play is a bad proposition. Just play every hand based on the situation at the table at the time. If the blinds are both playing 9/7 with 95% fold to steal then you can even play 72o profitably in that spot.

RedJoker

Dirk_Diggler wrote: »

Oddly enough though the two guys I was up against were so useless - is this normal in HU??

Yes . However, variance can be a killer.

Dirk_Diggler wrote: »

What do I need to do? Do I need to sit down for a good while and look at my PT stats and see what my losing hands are? Say I'm losing a lot with AQo, do I eliminate that from my list of hands to play? Do people have a lit of hands that they stick to?

Eliminating a specific hand because of an 8K sample would be pretty illogical.

Yes, some people use starting hand charts for each position which they stick to. It's fine for micro players trying to plug a leak like playing too much crap or playing too loose OOP but, eventually, you'll need to ditch it and start putting some thought into table conditions, image, etc. when deciding what to open.

The truth is there's no shortcuts to getting better. You need to post hand histories you had trouble with, reply to other people's hand histories, read strategy and participate in discussions.

Here's some useful links to get you started:
Micro Stakes Sticky
Small Stakes Sticky
Small/Micro Stakes Video Collection
Anthology

If you post screenshots of your general tab and position tab from PT I can give you more specific advice.

Dirk_Diggler

Yeah I suppose 8k is way too small to get any sort of idea. I'll post up a few screenshots when I get home later but this is just a summary taken from my blog earlier in the week.

Total hands : 5663
Amount won: -$393.32
$/100 : -$6.95
BB/100 : -4.96
Days played : 4

VP$IP : 16.93
PFR : 13.90
W$WSF : 45.83
WTSD : 27.55
W$SD : 50.48
AF : 3.08
3Bet : 5.69
Fold 3Bet : 62.87
Att to Steal : 26.91


Thanks for the advice guys.

pierce hard

You cant win every pot. Not all cbets will get through because people do flop hands every now and then.

Analyse the hands where your bluffs didnt work and see if your line made sense - taking into account things like the board texture and the stats of the opponant.

Just looking at your stats, your attempt to steal seems quite low, try opening more from late position. Post up your positional stats.

Dirk_Diggler

Yeah I'll post them up later. I do know that my VP$IP in UTG is half that of the button.

RedJoker

Not to be mean but what's the point of playing 6 tables if you're not beating the game? Play 2 - 4 tables and concentrate on getting better.

17/14 is very tight, my advice would be to loosen up and try to improve.

Here's some threads about loosening up in late position:

http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=7827947&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1

http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Number=5348855

http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Number=6073737

http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Number=3661078

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=658

I'd start there.

RedJoker

pierce hard wrote: »

You cant win every pot.

You can try though .

pierce hard wrote: »

Not all cbets will get through because people do flop hands every now and then.

If I was playing 17/14 I'd probably be cbetting every flop.

pierce hard

RedJoker wrote: »

You can try though .



If I was playing 17/14 I'd probably be cbetting every flop.

Fair enough, i try to play a more 22/19 style, so cbetting every flop doesnt work as much. Also, it doesnt work so much these days as it did a few years ago, as cbets are so standard now that people are calling/raising cbets lighter, so i think cbetting 100% is a leak.

RedJoker

pierce hard wrote: »

Fair enough, i try to play a more 22/19 style, so cbetting every flop doesnt work as much. Also, it doesnt work so much these days as it did a few years ago, as cbets are so standard now that people are calling/raising cbets lighter, so i think cbetting 100% is a leak.

Yeah, I agree with you.

zuutroy

RJ: You've always advocated playing loose, but is it not the case that anything outside the top 15% of hands are barely +EV if at all and that the only real value in playing looser is for deception which in truth isn't really that necessary to succeed at small stakes. I think its entirely possible for someone playing tight to be as big a winner as a looser pre-flop player. In fact several HSNL players have said that its possible to win with a tight style even there. Surely your ability to mix things up a bit post-flop and your hand reading skills are more important than opening a few more raggedy hands in late position.

Slash/ED

Whats your SN if you don't mind me asking, PM me if you want, just that if I've a decent enough sample on you in my PT DB I can go over the hands shown if you like and see if I see any obvious leaks? It'd probably be a small sample though.

RedJoker

zuutroy wrote: »

RJ: You've always advocated playing loose, but is it not the case that anything outside the top 15% of hands are barely +EV if at all and that the only real value in playing looser is for deception which in truth isn't really that necessary to succeed at small stakes. I think its entirely possible for someone playing tight to be as big a winner as a looser pre-flop player. In fact several HSNL players have said that its possible to win with a tight style even there. Surely your ability to mix things up a bit post-flop and your hand reading skills are more important than opening a few more raggedy hands in late position.

I'm not saying play 40/30 or anything. It's just that 17/14 is very tight and he could go to something like 20/17 very easily.

It's also true that you have a natural advantage playing X amount of hands from late position and you're throwing money away by not playing those hands.

I'm also of the opinion that you'll improve a lot faster playing a looser style, otherwise you go broke . I'm not advising him to do so though.

There are plenty of people who are happy to get to small or mid stakes, play 12 tables really tightly and take a pretty decent chunk out of the game. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that approach.

Mixing things up postflop just isn't possible playing 17/14, your ranges are too well defined and anybody who can hand read at all will notice if your frequencies are skewed. You'll get away with a lot more 3bets though.

I'm not presumptuous enough to say that playing looser is "better" then playing tighter, it's probably not true anyway. Both have their advantages and, as you move up, an ability to change gears and play both styles well will become increasingly important.

pok3rplaya

I disagree with RJ. I think if you're inexperienced and dont have a lot of the more advanced post flop concepts down then you're just going to increace the rate at which you lose money by looseing up. Also a lot of the money you make a low stakes comes from people making gratuitous errors, you don't so much need to trick them into making mistakes and the need to do that is partly the reason why people play loose. I would advise you to keep playing tight and work on your post flop game before you loosen up.

cardshark202

Not hard to work on a post flop game that consists of working out how much to bet with AA on an A36 board though. Loosen up little by little so you can encounter different post flop situations and that will force yourself to think about them and learn what lines to take

Hectorjelly

I think there is a natural ebb and flow as players progress between loose and tight. Most people start of winning by playing very tight, then get looser as they get more comfortable. They then get overconfident and play too loose, etc etc, this process repeats for years until you one day turn into Ray Zee

Dirk_Diggler

http://img179.imageshack.us/my.php?image=stat5cv3.gif

There we go.

Dirk_Diggler

Read this on 2+2:

"When he has a flush, we are behind, but we have outs to improve to quads or a full house, namely we have 1 K, 3 7's and 3 2's to improve on the turn and 3 more outs if we don't make it on the river. Quick head math gives 4 (turn outs) + 2 (river outs) = 4*7 + 2*3 (so we don't double count) = 35% to improve to the full house and win."

What are the 4 turn outs and 2 river outs? This is simple I know...

pierce hard

wikipedia

Basically, on the flop (ie with 2 cards to come), the percent chance of hitting one of x outs is about 4x.

On the turn, the percent chance of hitting one of x cards is about 2x.

These are just approximations, and i think thats where he is getting the 4 and 2 from above.

Dirk_Diggler

Could we throw in a 4th out for the river since the turn might bring a Q, and then for the river we have a Q, K, 3 and 7?

Also, what does he mean by 'double count'? This is probably why I was crap at statistics in college.

pierce hard

thats what he is doing.
On the flop we have 7 outs. we have a 4% chance of hitting each of those cards by the river = 7x4% = 28%
On the turn, if we miss, we pick up a further 3 outs, with a 2% chance of hitting them = 3x2% = 6% ~=34/35%.

Or an alternative way of looking at it is:
On the flop we have 7 outs, with a 2 % chance of hitting by the turn (ie just seeing 1 card) = 7x2% = 14% to improve by the turn.
On the turn, we have another 3 outs, so we have a 10x2% =20% chance of improving by the river, which in total is the same probability as before.

Dirk_Diggler

But what about the 4th out I mentioned?

pierce hard

Dirk_Diggler wrote: »

But what about the 4th out I mentioned?

The "4th out" is the extra 3 outs you pick up on the turn if you miss. You pick up an extra 3 outs not 4.

Dirk_Diggler

Ahhh, me so stupid. Thanks for clearing that up!

I know it's basic stuff here but I need to start applying some things to my game rather than the old 'I've got top pair, probably have the best hand, call whatever'.