volume looks good, have the fish left anyway...

[Chopper]

i am relatively new to 6max. please forgive the newbie question.

i have noticed that the volume numbers at Stars are still great after the US legislation, but it seems i have encountered problems. it's not that there are no fish around, they seem to be getting the best of me.

over my first 5000 hands, i had a win rate just over 20BBs. i huge rush, i know. however, after my next 3500 hands, i have fallen to 3BBs overall. talk about a downswing!! can i be experiencing variance? do i suck, and got lucky early on?

i know the swings are larger at 6max, but is this normal?

my PT numbers over both segments changed very little. maybe got a little looser. but overall, i am vpip 21%, pfr 11%, AF 2.20. only thing i can think of is i am a bit predictable with my solid TAG (TPTK) style. dont draw a lot, let alone chase when the odds are not there. fold a lot when bet at on flop, if i miss. on top of this, my pot bets (even slight overbets) are not getting people to fold, making it tougher on my TP to win a showdown UI.

could i be being bluffed at a lot more at 6max? generally, the showdowns i call have had the goods.

please help.

[jackvance]

I can only talk from my own experience but.. at below 100NL, I've never really noticed much of the supposed swingyness of 6max. It's just.. a steady upward win. I think it also depends on your playstyle. You can control the amount of variance by how you play also.

[Chopper]

thanks for telling me your results...

any tips?

[Tom42]

The variance is probably normal. I've run 11K hands with a winrate of - 2 PtBB at 50 NL and then 5K hands later i was at + 5 PtBB overall.

5K hands at 22 PtBB is almost cetainly an upswing, the drop the next 3.5K hands is probably a downswing. Some of it will probably be bad play on your part though. IMO one of the most difficult things is keep playing good if you're running bad.

Your stats look fine, I play 22 / 13 / 2.75 and have no trouble maintaining a decent winrate at 100 NL.

It's important to control the size of the pot with TP, especially if you overbet the pot early on. But it's difficult to give adcvice in general. Post some hands, maybe your postflop play needs work.

[Rondavu]

Don't read too much into it. It's only 3500 hands. 10xBB winner over 10K isn't bad.

[Chopper]

no, rondavu, what i was trying to say was that my rate had dropped SHARPLY to +3BBs OVERALL.

so, i have become a 3BB winner after 8500 hands. i know its not 10k hands, but i was a 4.25 BB winner at FR over 38k hands before i moved up to 50 and 100 FR.

i am trying to move to 6max because i hear it is more profitable, and FR was getting so rockish it bored the hell out of me.

[biondino]

It's more profitable because you play 50% more hands not (necessarily) because your winrate will go up. If you've moved up and your winrate has slightly fallen, well - you're playing better players, what did you expect?

[|~|ypermegachi]

pros go on 20k downswings. 5k is nothing. forget about your winrate. just play proper poker and the money will flow.

[Chopper]

It's more profitable because you play 50% more hands not (necessarily) because your winrate will go up. If you've moved up and your winrate has slightly fallen, well - you're playing better players, what did you expect?

the first part makes good sense.

the second part(...moved up...), i know that, but all i was saying was the game got so tight, that it got boring.

i have seen flop %'s at 6max tables in the high 40's all the way up through 200 NL. i figure if the flop %'s drop off a good bit at FR, but dont at 6max, then i must move to 6max to find fish at the higher levels. i want to move up to make more money, and if the fish are playing 6max, then i need to learn to play 6max, right?

but again, the first part of your quote makes a lot of sense to me. i should play more 6max to see if i can even beat the game i guess.

[Chopper]

pros go on 20k downswings. 5k is nothing. forget about your winrate. just play proper poker and the money will flow.

thats the hard part. i have been a VERY consistent winner...until 6max. and it has rocked my confidence a little. nothing i cant overcome, but just sucks to go through the "growing pains."

are your winrates roughly the same as FR, or did they go up? or, like the last post, do you win more because you play more hands in a given month?

[benny999]

I agree 3k or even 8k hands is just about meaningless when your new to a game. lower limits should be pretty low variance though, so you do probably have some leaks to fix. try posting hand histories - I think that'll help more.

fwiw, I broke even for 20k hands in full ring, then worked on many leaks in my game, started playing less tables at a time, and switched to mostly shorthand where I've had a crazy hot streak, double digit ptbb/100 for 40+k hands. there does seem to be more fish, and you get position on them more...so I think it's more $/hand as well as $/hr.

[Chopper]

will try to put some HH's together in a thread for you guys to go crazy on.

[|~|ypermegachi]

are your winrates roughly the same as FR, or did they go up? or, like the last post, do you win more because you play more hands in a given month?

i'm still new to NL ring (limit convert), so i haven't put nearly enough hands into make any kind of conclusion. i just know that full ring is boring as hell, so i just avoid it altogether.