New Player Stat Analysis Please?

Hello, I have just started playing online holdem and have some general stats that I wondered if I could get some insight on... I think I am playing too many pots and have a lot to learn.. these are my stats for the last 3 months. It is an aggregate of all my play I think from my tracker application, but for the most part I have been playing low stakes 2/4c and 5c/10c 9 player ring games. Also I play in various tournaments, but these are my ring game stats.

Month 1 - Hands:76, VPIP:49, PFR:19, 3Bet/F:17/0, Steal/F:14/60, AF:10.0, CBet/F: 50/50, WSD/W: 29/30

Month 2: Hands:1517, VPIP:40, PFR:18, 3Bet/F:8/30, Steal/F: 71/26, AF: 3.33, WSD/W: 32/34

Current Month: Hands: 773, VPIP:31, PFR:14, 3Bet/F: 4/21, Steal/F: 41/58, AF: 3.27, CBet/F: 73/42, WSD/W: 27/34

I also have a lot of data from my tournament games, and I would post those as well if someone wants to help or take a look at those. But just for fun I will put my current month tournament stats here:

Hands: 1468, VPIP:28, PFR:14, 3Bet/F: 7/39, Steal/F: 26/66, AF:2.61, CBet/F:82/56, WSD/W: 48/42

Any help or input would be appreciated, and if this is not the appropriate forum for this I am sorry but this is my first post!

tighten up a lot.

watch/study these free videos

101 Series Free Texas Holdem Poker Strategy Videos « How to CRUSH at Texas Holdem Poker | Free Strategy Videos

or if you want to invest some money take out a grindershool subscription and watch the micro stakes videos there. codered did a beginners guide to full ring and spenda did a beginners guide to 6max.

your VPIP and PFR stats indicate you are far too loose (playing too many hands) and far too passive (ie you are checking and calling too much, while betting and raising too little) although you seem to have tightened up since you first started. to be honest the amount of hands is too small and so the stats you provided could well be anomalies due to the small sample.

anyway, assuming that the stats are 100% correct, my first focus would be tightening up. this means limping far less, and tightening up your hand requirements for calling people's raises. that's a just band-aid treatment that should immediately see you losing less than you currently are. long term, post some hands here where you are unsure of how well you played and people will give you advice on what to do and (depending who it is) why that is a good thing to do. or link you to articles/strategy posts which cover concepts relevant to your hands.

good luck

edit: oh and in case you do choose to take the hand posting route, chances are this thread will come in handy. http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...le-190158.html

what are the 3bet/f referring to .....is that your 3bet and fold to 3bet % stats or is it 3bet frequencies . going by the steal/f numbers i'm guessing that its the former .....so fold to 3bets a lot more ......they are 3betting because they have a very good hand ...you are likely calling with dominated hand and having to fold or getting beaten at showdown.You should be folding to steals more as well as it just means you are likely playing crap hands out of position .
doesn't look like you are folding to cbets which i'm guessing is showing in your won at showdown being in the 30-35% region.

Thanks for the feedback, I am really happy there is a place for me to learn how to make my game better not just mindlessly give off my money. I need to grasp that it is a grind and tighten up more but here is an example of where I can get frustrated and confused.... meant to ask this in my original post.

Playing AA or KK UTG or on the BB. This happens to me all the time, usually I raise maybe to 20c (2/4c) and the whole table folds, or when I am on BB I will raise about the same and then everyone folds. Basically how do I get paid off on AA without getting in too much danger or should I just accept the fact that most of the time ultra premium hands may not make me any money at all. I end up making most of my money "fishing" for a set and getting lucky. Should I always be fishing for these sets even when I know someone at the table has raised to a point where I should just muck it? For example someone raises to 30c when I have 44? I usually pay to see the flop and then get folded out on the Cbet.

Again thanks so much for any info and feedback and I am watching those videos as soon as the d/l is complete.

-Whiz

Not enough info for a detailed response. How many players were dealt in? What reads do you have on them? How many limped? What was size of the pot when you bet 5xbb from the BB? Is this your standard pre-flop raise size in this spot? What is your image, specifically in the recent orbit?

In short, if the table always folds when I raise from the BB, then I do it more often. Getting no callers is better than getting 3 or more callers. Even facing a flop with 2 opponents here is a nail-biter.

If I'm making a profit from my AA and KK, then that's a good thing. AA and KK are hands that can tend to win small pots and lose big pots. They're hard to fold when I'm facing multiple opponents and wet boards, where AK or AQ would be an easy fold. They're hard for me to take a creative line on, because most of my creative lines are to represent these hands, and soft playing these pockets is usually not a good move, either.

Sorry, again I am new, and the videos "crushing online" were very eye opening. I will watch them a few times. The reason I have such small hand samples is I have been playing a single table, so tonight I am going to play 2 tables and see how that goes. I got a good idea on how to play my super premium hands from the vids, and I made 8.00 while watching the vids and playing super tight. Thanks for all the info and keep it coming! You are completely right about taking small pots with the pocket pairs pre flop, and not getting frustrated about it. I have been playing backwards. Any more vids would be appreciated. I think a big problem was I was playing one table and would run well then go on "boredom tilt" I would call it playing too many hands and opening leaks in my game. This forum is the nuts!

I am going to show an example hand that I made the biggest win on.. tell me if I played it right or took too much risk.

KK on small blind. Cutoff raises 4x BB (14c). I reraise to double his raise at 24c. BB folds, and he reraises to $1.04. I push all in with $4.34 and he insta calls. He had QQ, and it held up to net me $3.96. Now this worked out for me, but was it a proper play? I had him on my HUD as a fairly tight player, so I was sweating it out. Plus an ace came on the board, so if he had an ace I was a loser. What do you guys think?

Thanks a million
-Whiz

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TheWhizzard

I am going to show an example hand that I made the biggest win on.. tell me if I played it right or took too much risk.

KK on small blind. Cutoff raises 4x BB (14c). I reraise to double his raise at 24c. BB folds, and he reraises to $1.04. I push all in with $4.34 and he insta calls. He had QQ, and it held up to net me $3.96. Now this worked out for me, but was it a proper play? I had him on my HUD as a fairly tight player, so I was sweating it out. Plus an ace came on the board, so if he had an ace I was a loser. What do you guys think?

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You played it well - with KK you always want to get all the money in pre-flop if you can. It's unlikely he has AA, and you want to get the money in against QQ, AK or even worse like you did here.

When you made it 24c, you can bet bigger there. If you are going to re-raise a raise (called 3betting) you want to make it maybe 3-4x his raise, so between 42c and 56c here.

If he has an ace, then 3 aces are left in the deck. The chances of him winning by hitting an ace are about 29%, here's why:

If he has one ace in his hand, there are 3 aces left in the deck, and 50 unseen cards (you've seen 2 out of 52, your own cards). So on the first card off, the chance of it _not_ being an ace is 47/50, then for the next card it's 46/49 and so on.

47/50 * 46/49 * 45/48 * 44/47 * 43/46 = 0.714

That's the chance of 5 cards coming off the deck and none of them being an ace.

71% is an excellent chance for you to win the hand - if you have even a 51% chance to win the hand, you are correct to get all the money in pre-flop.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BorisTheSpider

When you made it 24c, you can bet bigger there. If you are going to re-raise a raise (called 3betting) you want to make it maybe 3-4x his raise, so between 42c and 56c here.

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This is exactly what I was thinking. I would never 3-bet less than 3x the prior bet amount. Honestly, on some tables, I go as high as 5x. I add 1x for each caller, too.

3x examples:
Hero in BB w/ KK. EPs fold. MP raise to 3 BB, 0 calls. (pot: 4.5 BB) Hero bets 9 BB. (3 + 0)*3BB.
Hero in BB w/ KK. EP min-raise to 2 BB, 5 calls. (pot: 13.5 BB) Hero bets 16 BB. (3 + 5)*2BB.
The '3' in the parentheses is the 3x (this is the one I make 4x or 5x sometimes)
the 0 or 5 is the # of callers
the last number is the current bet to Hero

I have started multi-tabling at the low stakes and things have turned around 100 percent already. Other than sitting at a single 25/50 nl game where I lost 18 dollars *hard earned dollars.... that I won't do again... I am showing an actual profit and my graph is climbing up on PT. The crush online holdem thing has really helped. Any other good vids out there about multitabling / lesson vids you guys can suggest... also.. what is about the best hands you would play from middle to late position while multitabling, and do you flat call them or raise them?

First, I'd advise not going mad multi-tabling. If you're just starting, 2 tables is probably enough. Any more and you risk not being able to properly pay attention. The first priority is to improve so if you think you can do that on 4 tables good for you, however I think you should try different numbers of tables from 1 to 4 and evaluate where you are best able to pay full attention to your play without feeling rushed.

Beware of being oriented towards results, when you say you've made some money, I don't want to be discouraging and it's good that you have, but you need to bear in mind that in poker you can play correctly and lose money, or play badly and win money in the short term, since it's not just skill but also luck. Over time, the luck evens out and the skill takes over, but the long run is _very_ long - until you have 20,000 hands you can't even really begin to draw any conclusions from your results, and to trust that any conclusions you do draw are reasonably accurate you probably need 50,000 hands.
If you start feeling good when you win and bad when you lose, you'll never improve, since you are using the wrong source of feedback for information about how you played. You must base your feelings about how you played on the quality of your own play and not the results. Of course, at first, you have little idea how to evaluate the quality of your own play, but you must try to develop this ability since otherwise you'll never know when you're doing the right thing or the wrong thing - the results you get will _not_ tell you.

For opening hands, a lot of people will tell you that you shouldn't use a fixed set of hands, but when you're just starting I think it's useful since you can't adapt yet since you have no base to adapt from. This: http://www.gamblingsystem.biz/books/2p2NL6max.pdf will probably be quite helpful, and if you look in the archives and sticky threads here in the Beginners Circle forum you'll doubtless find other similar guides.

Starting hand selection, when you are just starting and have no real handle on post-flop play yet, should be really really tight. You don't want to play "speculative" (marginal) hands, that require good post-flop play, since although you may be able to make some money from them later once you know how to play them postflop, right now you want to be playing hands that have good potential right away and don't need 2 or even 3 streets of postflop play to return a profit.

If you're playing full ring, you want to be even tighter than if playing 6max. At first, pick one and play only that, since it will help you develop a base from which to work without trying to learn too many different things at once.

For 6max, here is an OK (but doubtless very improvable) suggestion for hands you can open:

UTG: {66-AA,AK,AQ,AJ,KQ}
UTG+1: {22-AA, AK,AQ,AJ,KQ,JQ,KJ}
CO: {22-AA, AK,AQ,AJ,KQ,JQ,KJ,AT,JT,AXs}
BTN: As for cutoff, but if the blinds fold a lot when you raise, so you immediately earn the blinds, then you can add a lot of other hands like KXs, any ace, suited connectors like 89s/78s/67s etc.

I am sure that this can be seriously improved upon, but I suggest that you stick broadly to it since the first priority is to play tight. You can loosen up a bit later and play more hands once you have a bit of experience.

When you open, raise to 3bb. If you have AA/KK/QQ/AK and it's opened already in front of you for between 2 and 6bb, raise to 3 or 4 times whatever the original raise made it. For example, if you have QQ on the CO and the player UTG makes it 3bb, raise to between 9 and 12bb. If it's raised AND reraised in front of you, fold everything but AA/KK and either reraise to 2.5x the reraise (about 30bb in our example above) or just shove all-in. These are really coarse starting guidelines, but they're better than nothing.

You should almost always be opening for a raise, and rarely or never calling. When you open, you have the initiative and can take the pot down with a bluff later much more often than if you were passively calling preflop.

Hands it is OK to call a raise with with are the smaller pairs (say 22-99) so you can setmine - if you have 33, cold call with it and hit a 3 on the flop for a set, then you can start raising postflop, otherwise you are folding to any bets on the flop.

NEVER limp (limp means just call the big blind). You can call a raise with the smaller pairs, but if it's not already raised in front of you, raise with them.

Other than that, at first I would not cold-call at all. Raise or fold. With TT+ re-raise preflop.

Be aware of the absolute, overwhelming importance of position. It is more important to be in position (closest to the button and hence last to act on every post-flop street) than it is to have good cards. Position is everything.

It's good that you seem concerned about wasting hard earned money - do you have any idea yet about bankroll management? Because of variance (luck) you need at least 40 buyins at the level you are playing, so if you're playing 2NL ($0.01/$0.02) with a $2 max buyin you need at least $80 bankroll, I'd advise more - I use 100 buyins but some would say that is excessively risk averse. Lots of good players have busted out playing games too big for their bankroll, you must have a BIG buffer to deal with a bad run of luck.

^^^ Yes, yes, yes!

I advise you to start w/ FR and not 6-max. One reason is that the variance is higher on 6-max tables. Partly because (and this is huge) when 1 or 2 people sit out or leave, the table goes to 5-max and 4-max right away. The blinds are coming around to hit you much more frequently and your tight play will cost you more than it makes you. These are spots where you must know how to play post-flop because you have to get in there and fight for the blinds with marginal holdings. There is just a bigger skillset required, so save it for later. Focus on 1 thing at a time.

Right now, the discipline to fold ATo from early position is enough. The discipline to not get upset when the flop comes TTA is even more important. This is a source of tilt. Take every hand that goes to showdown and make notes on how every player played that hand. Use these as spots to ask yourself questions like: Could player A have bet more/less to achieve a better result? Could player B have folded there?

You'll get plenty of practice in marginal situations when you are checking your option on the BB. This is the time to learn about playing random hands OOP (You will quickly learn that even a hand as good as bottom 2 pair is tough to play OOP.)

Thanks for all the input, right now the lowest stakes I can play is 2/4c and I feel comfortable with 3 or 4 full ring tables. I am going to play out the bankroll I have, and not worry if I need to replenish it. I have played a lot of poker over the last 4 or so months live and online, but the multi-table thing is new to me, but helps increase the amount of hands I play and the video lessons that taught me to fold almost everything has helped alot too. I don't want to ask for a site here, but maybe I need to find a US friendly site that has 2nl instead of what I am forced to play at my current site, with good rakeback.

If you're rolled for it, or are prepared to reload, which really amount to the same thing, I don't expect 4NL is that much tougher than 2NL and is probably a decent enough place to start.

I hadn't really considered the issue of 6max vs ring in terms of what happens when people leave the table, but MMM is absolutely right - 6max does require a different style and might be OK if you only ever played at full tables, but the dynamic changes dramatically the moment anyone sits out or leaves, so I'd second his advice and say play full ring for now, as you're very unlikely to be less than 7 handed there, so the dynamic won't change anywhere near as much when the table isn't full.

As MMM says also, be wary of playing out of the blinds. It's a really tough position to play from so you want to play pretty tight (at least initially). No matter how well you play, in the long run you will lose money from the blinds, that is inevitable, but you want to learn how to minimise it.

A good range to play is to open from the SB the same kind of range you'd open from EP - if you get called, you're guaranteed to be OOP for the hand.

From the BB, if the SB limps, open the same range you'd open on the button - you have position, and the SB has limped so has shown weakness. Later, you can open any two cards in this situation, but for now your button range should be wide enough. This situation is a perfect example of just how important position is.

You probably NEVER want to cold call anything from the blinds for now. Literally never. Either reraise or fold. Only exception is if you're in the BB calling an SB open, since you'll have position, but you might still benefit from a reraise-or-fold attitude, since then you'll not only have position, but also have the initiative.

Honestly boris make shorter posts, nobody wants to read all that. Im not trying to be a cunt you obviously give a shit and that's cool but come on man
Tolkien got to the point faster.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kickass

Honestly boris make shorter posts, nobody wants to read all that. Im not trying to be a cunt you obviously give a shit and that's cool but come on man
Tolkien got to the point faster.

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LOL. I totally wanted to write a 5 page reply to this. But it's late.

I read the whole thing and totally appreciate any input, I really want to improve my game. So these are about 2,000 hands playing full ring 2c/4c. I know it is still too small a sample size but I still want to catch any errors in my play. I am really enjoying the input and if anyone can decifer these numbers for me and give me some tips I would greatly appreciate it! And I did read that long post and really appreciated it, thanks for taking the time to write it, any input is helpful the more the better.

Total Hands: 2,152
VPIP: 17.70
PFR: 11.06
Saw Flop: 343 times
Won When Saw Flop: 54.23
Folded SB to Steal: 81.82%
Fold BB to Steal: 79.17%
Agression Factor Pre Flop: 1.40
AF on Flop: 5.36
AF on Turn: 4.14
AF on River: 5.45
Total AF: 4.97

Money won: (-$5.40)

Also, I feel like I am playing pretty tight, but my AF is still through the roof, am I playing / bluffing at the board too much possibly? If I dont hit it TP/TK at least should I quit it?

Thanks again

-Whiz

Your WAS (won at showdown %) is high, but you're not winning in the long run... The simplest guess would be that you're not keeping the pot small when you're drawing, and losing a lot of bloated pots when your villains take initiative on later streets.
2nd barrels (bluff on the turn) and 3rd barrels (a bluff on the river) as stone cold bluffs: These moves are to be played only against villains who have a 50% chance of folding to them or more. If you've tried it, seen others try it, and it's not ever getting the villain to fold, then take it out of your arsenal against this villain. They're calling stations.

When you're in position (which is always, right?) and you get donk bet into on the flop, think about why you might fold these spots. I'm not saying fold, I'm saying now, away from the game, think of why you might want to fold those spots. List some reasons: Your JJ don't look so good on AK3 rainbow, or your AcAs seemed so promising before you got 3 callers and the flop comes 876 all hearts.

After you make your list, go through your HH (hand history) and sort it down to WTS (went to showdown) and look for examples off your list that happened to you already. Think to yourself, "man, what a donk I've been! Look at that! If I'd just thought about this, there's no way I lose so much here."
Then look for counter-examples and think, "Crap! I thought I had figured this out, grrrrr!"

Let me know what comes after that part, 'cause I'm stuck on a loop.. :)

those look far better than your first set of stats. i think you should probably be tighter when you are facing a steal from the blinds. granted, you'll be folding away your blinds a lot. but while you are still learning the basic skills it's probably better for you to be just folding preflop more often than playing a heap of pots out of position without the initiative in the hand.

Thank god for the new poker tracker beta, it has a leak tracker, and I am looking pretty solid through 8,000 hands now. My major leak is folding to flop bet. It is saying that I am folding way too much when someone cbets on the flop. Anyone else have this problem/leak or know why... if I whiff the flop, I don't see the point of putting more cash into the pot. The leak tracker shows I am pretty good with everything else.

Just 'cause you whiffed doesn't mean they hit. If they see that you fold to C-bets too often, they'll exploit you.

When you feel you're getting pushed around with air, push back with your bluff catchers once in 3 or so. You'll actually catch a pair 1 in 3 flops (sometimes the pair is on the board), so if the villain is pushing more than that, he's just pushing to exploit.