I'm not advocating open-folding or completing the SB when it's unopened, and I agree that unopened SB PFR should be as high as you can get away with. Let's look at how it normally goes for us when we are BU or SB

1) Someone opens in front of us. Here we will have a higher VPIP from the BU than the SB, as we can play more hands profitably in position.
2) One or more players limp in front of us. We will have a higher VPIP and PFR on the button here as we can isolate wider IP than OOP. I don't play FR, but if limping behind is a big part of your strategy I imagine you still limp-behind with a wider range IP.
3) It's folded to us. We might have a higher VPIP in the SB as we are more likely to be able to steal successfully. Nevertheless, it's usually not a huge difference.

For our SB VPIP to be about the same as our BU VPIP we either need to have it folded around to us so often that the difference in the width of our range when we UO-PFR or isolate is lost in the noise, or we are not playing with enough positional awareness in those scenarios.. either playing too loose in the SB or too tight on the BU.

Sure against nits you can use that range. lol wtf pokerstrategy open raising chart??...
If someone raises the SB first thing i look for when im BB is how much someone is stealing in the SB, its so easy to filter for position in HEM. And i guess every "decent" player nowadays will have the pfr filtered by position in a popup or whatever.
If a competent players sees you openraising 60% in the SB you will get owned postflop a ton, your range is soo wide and you will be oop he will call with everything nearly playable 3bet you to death and make your life hell postflop. Against a good TAG i would never raise that wide, like K2o...

Well, when I open from the SB, the first thing I look at is VPIP/PFR/3B and how they play postflop. So ... where is your edge?

FYP

That's not the tone I was going for ... I meant more as in "don't assume you're the only one that's making adjustments."

Obviously someone playing robotically who opens 60%+ of their hands is highly exploitable.

don't mind me, i had wine with dinner

I don't do it against good TAGs.
Indeed, I don't sit down at a table if a good TAG has immediate position on me.
With careful table selection and a little luck you can find yourself with one or two nits on your left and a fish or maniac on your right.
Obviously once you've got your seat, you start looking at everyone's stats and plan a way to exploit them. Sometimes I have to play really tight in the SB because I can't find a decent table, or I end up in a bad seat, but on Stars full ring there are so many nits and so many tables that it's fairly easy to find a good situation where stealing is really easy.

I have "FoldToSteal%" and "CallSteal%" on my HUD (I estimate I can calculate 3bet-vs-Steal% from this fast enough ...), and use that in deciding what to do. I have a personal tendency towards over-aggression, so fold when in doubt to contain that tendency.
BTW, at the micros, where there are a lot of reasonably knowledgable players these days, you'll often see crazy numbers if you break it down by position (default reading on the HUD popup). Some players 3bet 2% or more from the blinds, because they get all Fancy Play when they read they have to defend their blinds.
It means I will sometimes 4bet J8o against such people from the SB. I may still fold if I put less than 30% of my stack in.

I think the higher 3-bet % in the blinds is more to with the fact that it's more likely that someone has already opened the pot when the action comes round to you, and calling oop is never a good idea, so it's raise or fold. It's kind of hard to have a high 3-bet % if you're under the gun.

Hi all,

Quick question, how do I stop my non showdown from going miles into the red on nearly every session i play???

cheers guys.

Here is the short answer: Play fewer tables, focus on hand reading.

your oop i will always have an edge, BB will always have the edge if both players are about the same skill level...

Well, that's more or less exactly the the point (I meant 20+% rather than 2% there..). Calling OOP in the blinds is hard. I have honestly been struggling what to do with hands like AJ and KQ in the blinds vs thinking stealing-a-lot players. I have dithered between fold, 3-bet and call. I'm thinking now that these are good hands to call with, but it's amazingly close IMO.

What would be a good reason for the red line to be always in the loss side of things? playing to many mediocre hands?

The reason people have negative red lines is because:

1. They put money in the pot
2. They then fold

There are many, many ways that this happens. You need to figure out individually what the most common situations are for you.

Not necessarily ...

Not necessarily, as it's often right to fold hands like AK when you miss the flop after raising pre.
Before you get too worried about your redline, I'll point out that many beginning players have redlines that are downward slopes. In the micros especially, the bulk of your profits come from winning at showdown, and playing "fit or fold" on the flop can work fine, provided you get lots of fat value when you actually connect. If your showdown winnings are greater than your non-showdown losses, then you're making a profit overall.
How bad is your redline exactly?

Hi guys, been reading the forums a while, but this is my first post.

I have been playing poker for fun for about two years, not taking it very seriously and using horrible BRM. I decided to change that, since I figure I have the required mental capacity to be great player.

So I did quite a bit of studying in December, and then started playing 2NL in January, following proper bankroll management and playing well.

I was making a lot of small mistakes at first and losing lots of big pots that I felt I shouldn't have, some of the mistakes I was making were things like overplaying TPTK, cbetting the wrong boards, and other stuff like that.

Despite all that, over my first 15K hands or so my winrate was great.

I took a few days off to study hand histories and other things like that, and made some small adjustments to my game, although after that I felt like I was playing much better.. my winrate has been declining.

I was wondering if you guys thought that variance could easily cause this, or if I am making bad changes... I do feel like I am playing much better now than before, but my winrate not doing that great right now..

I will try to attach a graph below.
Any help/insight would be appreciated.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/821/2nl.png

@xrcode: You're doing pretty well with this high variance strategy. The graph doesn't tell us a whole lot about the way you play, other than your non-showdown winnings are often above your showdown winnings, so you've won a lot of pots without reaching showdown (either by bluffing to get a better hand to fold, or by betting too much to get calls from weaker hands). You've also run way above EV in all in situations, so a lot of your winnings have probably come from sucking out.
Post your positional stats (including post-flop stats for cbet, AF etc) if you want advice on loosening up or tightening up in particular seats.

This actually makes me think for a minute... I think I found a leak.
I think a lot of the problem is pushing my winning hands for value way too hard, maybe too much turn/river aggression... I am finding myself not happy with the amount of times I get called when I have the nuts, or near it.

I feel like I still have a problem folding queens/kings/aces postflop when I know I am beat. And I'm not winning as much as I should be with those hands.

Right now over that sample I am running 3.29 bb/100( was over 20 for the first 15K hands)

15.2 VPIP / 9.7 PFR / 5.8 3bet / 28.5 WTSD% / 2.81 Agg / 30.6 Agg%

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/109/positionu.png

Should I really be losing that much money from the blinds??
I seem to really hammer people hard from the button and lose a ton in the blinds.

For 6max, you're not playing very loosely on the button. Your VPIP in that spot should be getting up towards 30, not staying below 20, because you should be stealing often when it's folded to you in that seat.
Your BB stats are OK, but it looks like you're doing pretty badly in the SB. Since your 3-bet in SB is no higher than in other positions, and there's quite a big gap between VPIP and PFR in the SB (18/10), I think you're calling too often in that seat, and then you're having to play the hand out of position on the flop. The small blind position in particular is one where you should be raising or folding pre-flop. You can call and go set-mining with small/medium pairs, but you should generally fold potentially dominated hands (AJ, KQ), unless the raise came from the button, in which case you should raise to take the initiative. If you just call, you play a guessing game post-flop and have to check-fold the 70% of flops where you whiff and villain c-bets with any two cards.

I guess I failed to mention I play all FR.

Going over hand histories, I feel like tilt may be an issue too but maybe not in the traditional sense.
I find myself with very high winrates on sessions under two hours of 8-12 2NL FR tables, my winrate with less tables sucks, and so does my winrate in sessions longer than two hours.
I think getting bored with the super small stake, and not playing my A-game is happening a LOT more than I thought.

So I will try to limit myself to two hour sessions, and stick with 9 tables, that seems to be my magic number in terms of bb/100.
I will also try to call less from the blinds/not spew money from them.

I think I am being to aggressive also on the turn and the river, if not with the betting, with the bet sizing.

I still do feel like I am playing well most of the time, and can crush the lower stakes if I am playing my A game.
Do you think If I can get my winrate at 2NL/5NL back up to around 8bb/100 over 250K hands it would be a good idea to just deposit a nice chunk and skip a few levels?

What site are you playing on?
On some networks, 8bb/100 is achievable over a large sample size. On others (Stars/Merge) it's next to impossible.

I am playing on stars