You don't have to sd 40% in 25c/50c. You will see MUCH more multiway pots at that stake than at higher stakes, and high wtsd is generally a result of many heads up pots (in case of a good player that is). At higher stakes, vs more aggressive opponents with whom you see many flops heads up, you will be pushed around if you don't show down light. At the micros and small stakes 40% wtsd is probably suboptimal.

Oh we totally agree that it is good high stakes training to open up from BB and I do think it is a good thing if you know what you´re doing postflop.
But you´re wrong about that you can´t win money at 15/30 folding your BB 60%. If you just changed that part of your game in your 15/30 games you can´t seriosly say to me that the impact on your winrate would make you a loser.
I think the reason why players that are tight from the blinds generally are not suceeding playing higher stakes, is that they are too tight or too bad postflop also.
By the way.Can you filter out how many times you encounter steals 5-6 handed in 10/20 and 15/30 games.Just for curiosity.

How do you start getting better at these spots? I mean apart from putting yourself into them? Doing the math? Lots of stoving? What approach do you recommend for improving in these situations? If you had to give homework assignments for a student trying to learn this part of the game, what kind of exercises would you give him?

Apanage

well 60 isnt 70 and yes if thats all he changes and doesnt change how loose he is EP and how loose he defends his blinds vs non steal raises and how loose he calls in the blinds vs a raise and a coldcall. Then yes I agree that in itself going from 40 to 60 or 70 wont make him a loser. But going from a 30/20/45/75/40 1.5/100 winner to 23/19/38/70/90 most likely will.



I have PT2. I am fairly sure I cant filter. So the "half to two/thirds" ratio of HU pots was pretty much taken out my ass based on experience.

Daiquiri


Well experience is the primary thing. The more you play marginal hands the more comfortable you get.

Another thing is to think about poker when not playing. Posting and debating here and at other forums and watching videos.

Debating with other good players at IM or MSN or whatever is also very beneficial.

And then there is off course math. I have quite a few spreadsheets lying around. So I have apretty good idea when to peel with A7o on QT4 flop and when not to. Or when to peel A5s on J76 and when not to. The problem is with such math that you cant do it without making some basic assumptions. But then thinking about how changes to the assumptions affect results will still make the math interesting and usefull - despite being only a partial analysis.

I don´t have PT2 in front of me at the moment. But as I remember you just filled in 5-6 handed and steal attempted against your BB. Then just divided it the number of hands you get with the total number of hands fom BB.

EDIT:

And by the way. I´m convinced that your current success is more a product of your talent and hard work than it is of your looser play.

For 10/20 its 7549 out of 112451. 6.7%

15/30 4271 out of 58184. 7.3%

20/40 1820 out of 23215. 7.8%.


So in a vacuum defending your blinds less or more doenst matter that much. However, being tight vs steals in the BB usually also means being tight in the SB and being tight vs non steal raises. When you add up all those you get it to be a lot more hands.

Another thing is that at mid stakes you play more 3-4 handed which makes HU pots even more frequent.


Well thats certainly also a possibility. But, and this isnt to put myself in the same stratosphere as Schneids, I seem to remember him saying the same about his game.

I firmly believe in the correlation between playing more hands and getting better postflop. But off course getting good postflop also requires some other things like talent and/or hard work.

As a general stats note:

There are leaks which are large in and of themselves, and there are smaller leaks which are often symptomatic of larger leaks. Being tight in blind defense doesn't always correlate to being weak-tight postflop, but very often it does correspond with a tendency to shrink away from marginal/difficult situations.

Under defending the BB is probably not a huge leak in and of itself (although the numbers Oink just posted do point to it becoming a larger leak as the stakes rise), but it often corresponds with a rather pessimistic appraisal of the value of one's hand.

I completely agree with this. I think it works best, though, if you're playing few enough tables to take a little extra time thinking through the new spots that you're not used to. Trying to open up your game while playing tons of tables isn't the way to get the most out of it. (Somewhat ironically, I've opened up my game a lot while 10 tabling in the past.)

Oh there is no doubt about that. And if you can play 35/25 having fun and win more than you do playing 26/20 why wouldn´t you?

I´m just fed up with the myth that a 26/20 can´t win money at 10/20 and above. Like Schneids and you couldn´t play 26/20 and be winners at 15/30.
It´s just absurd to see statements from guys like Leader (whom I still highly respect) that it isn´t a profitable style at mid-high stakes because no one in their databases win with that style.
No there aren´t any winners because the ones that can win money with a 26/20 style win more with a looser style, hence they play looser.
And another fact that torpedos their theory is Stox playing 28/20.

huh?

I am pretty sure you can win with 27/20 in mid stakes. Since when is it a myth that you cant? There are quite a few solid 27/20 players in my games who are certainly winning.

I don't think anyone's saying that 27/20 or whatever can't win money at mid-stakes. I'm pretty sure they're just saying that it's not optimal and that most players who are capable of beating those games playing 27/20 could win more by playing somewhat looser. I don't want to put words into anyone's mouth, though. I'm pretty sure that the range of preflop styles which can be profitable is broader than many people suppose.

Before this thread devolves too far into an argument about preflop stats, I'd like to mention WTSD, which is a considerably misunderstood statistic, imo.

I started off this year with a 31% WTSD. No question about it, I was folding the best hand too often. Then I started calling down lighter and got my WTSD up around 35%. I was no longer folding the best hand too often. In fact, I was probably making some rather poor calldowns in an effort to up my showdown percentage. But my WTSD was still so low. WTF? Well, my fold to flop c-bet was over 40%! Now, I wasn't folding the best hand that often on the flop, but I was folding too much equity.

At some point I started folding the flop 25% less often. This wasn't a conscious effort, but rather a by product of playing a lot of HU. I learned to peel. This meant that I was seeing more turns and as a result more showdowns.

So long story short (too late), if your WTSD is low and you're calling down Ace and King high when appropriate, it's probably because you're folding lots of flops. To that end, analyzing your folding habits by street is likely to be more effective than looking at such a broad stat like WTSD.

How do you calculate this in PT2? I know I've asked this before and I think it was Leader who answered it but I can't remember how to do it for the life of me. I know it involves using numbers from the more detailed stats page but it's not directly on there.

I really don´t bother searching through old threads. But I´m 100% sure respectable posters have said that there is no winning 24/17 :s at mid-high stakes. They also stated that because there aren´t any 24/17:s winning it isn´t a profitable style.It was even pointed out that it was a big losing style.

I also thought I recalled a similar discussion around 26/18:s and 26/20:s but I´m not 100% sure of it.
But It doesn´t matter.If there are solid 26/20 winners out there then there is no reason to think that they suddenly become losers because they remove 2 hands per 100 played. It is just absurd to think that.

Sorry Buddha. But I do personally think that it is important to tell low limit players that there is no need to loosen up to beat low limit games.
If they don´t beat the games playing 24/17 and folding BB 60% then their first priority shouldn´t be to defend their blinds more. But that is the by far most common advice they get when their posting stats. And it bothers me a lot.
On to other things.
I´m a stat nerd so I like this thread. Is it possible to make it a monthly thread? Because otherwise it it is just going to be huge pretty fast.

Dunno if anyone is interested but here are my stats from the last 250k hands of LHE.

Feel free to tell me if there are anything interesting i should worry about.


5-6 handed






3-4 handed

Yeah you should be worried about my head exploding of envy.

By request

Axo hands when folded to

UTG


HJ


CO

You seem to lose in CO with A3-A4, but you seem to run bad with them given your sd numbers and the sample is not large enough. Maybe given the metagame they are "winning" hands.

I have deduced that oink opened A2o in the HJ while playing drunken 50/100

Buddha, you refering to which stat that you used to fold too much? Below is the overall stats of my 6max. I'm analysing if this is a possible leak I have.

I was referring to the fold to flop c-bet stat, but that doesn't seem to exist in PT2. Except I'm pretty sure that you can put it in your HUD, so there must be some way to find it. I'm using HEM and PT3, so I'm not sure exactly where to find some of these things in PT2. Perhaps someone can help with this?

Things that jump out at me about your stats, though (not necesarily bad, but at least unusual):

1) Very high folded to river bet. Yours is around 48%. Oink posted one around 37%. Different game conditions, obviously, but I'm pretty sure anything too much above 40% is very high.

2) Weird relationship between folded BB to steal and folded SB to steal. 56/75. Now, mine's pretty weird around 30/80 (I could certainly defend my SB more), but if you're comfortable playing that many hands against a steal raise from the SB, it seems like you should do well by playing more hands from the BB. I would say to post your positional stats, but over a 11k sample they wouldn't be super useful.

3) Low WTSD. 33 is pretty much the lowest WTSD that you can get away with. I think you're probably folding the best hand too often on the river. But your W$SD doesn't really substantiate that as it's rather low.

So what use is any of that? Mostly it just tells you which hands to post and what spots to focus your attention on. It definitely doesn't mean that you should start calling down more willy nilly. Just look at some hands where you weren't sure if you should be showing down (particularly on the river) and post them. Also take a look at your BB and SB defense standards and figure out whether they're the best ones for you in the games you play.

What are good loss rates for the blinds at small stakes?

I'm at .16 and .12 per hand, just curious to see how my blind play is coming along.

Depends on how much your blind gets stolen. In super aggro games its tough to be much better than 0.1 and 0.15.

In more passive games you could prolly do 0.08 and 0.12 if you are really good.