which is the question?

those stats u told me about you stealing blinds are from 5nl?

youre wayyy too tight and not aggressive enough. I forget if this is FR or SH, but if its SH you should be playing atleast 20/16. With the vast majority of that 16% PFR coming in the CO and BTN.

Look on cardrunners and see if you can their open raising hand chart. That should help. Ultimately it wont mean anything unless you are able to read hands. You def need to join a training site to get some of the basic down.

This doesnt always work. Some ppl just wont fold pf esp at his stakes and you end up bloating the pot w/ some marginal hands and bluffing a ton. Its ok to limp in position sometimes and play a pot w/ the fish in position while controlling the pot.

EDIT: im specifically talking about iso raising. I agree w/ everything else.

when u feel its not +EV to play @ that table anymore. If your table selecting well youll be playing vs fish. I usually leave immediately after the fish does.

Yes, to an extent you are correct. However, let's say BB VPIPs 50%, but vs a steal he will call only 30%. If you raise lets say 25%, then your range is better than his when he calls, and you have position, and you have initiative in the hand, and you make money when your steal suceeds. That's too many advantages/ways to make money for you to pass up. You're leaving way too much money on the table by only stealing 13%.

Or look at it this way: Of the times you are in the button and everyone folds before you, you rate to have the best hand 33% of the time (b/c there's 3 ppl left in the hand). Of the times you are in the CO and everyone folds before you, you rate to have the best hand 25% of the time. So, you have the best hand between 25 and 33 percent of the time, BUT YOU ARE ONLY PLAYING 13% OF YOUR HANDS. You're throwing away half or more of your "share" of winning hands by folding so much in steal positions. And in fact your "share" of winning hands is even greater than 25 or 33 percent because you have position.

BB will call with Q3s or 54s? Good, your QTo and 55 just gained massive value without you even doing anything. But not if you fold them. It's even better if SB is a nit, because he won't get in your way as your valuetown the massive fish in BB.

Now, this doesn't apply as strongly if the BB is a 50/33/2 type, because he will reraise you and put you in tough spots. In that case, it is probably correct to nit-up and wait for good hands. But if he's something like a 50/7/1, then it will be easy to determine when you're beat and you should want to play many hands against him.

I'm a winning player at $.50/$1.00 NL and I steal around 40%. Maybe 40% is a bit too high for microstakes and if you're not too comfortable playing post-flop. But I am certain that 13% is way too low.

i c.. thanks for that

the problem im having is when one of these fish calls me when im trying to steal the blinds is when to give up.. i always end up losing a lot of money after the flop when my raise gets called by one of these guys

ok, but your stats show that you are W$SD 61% in your blindsteals, and you're only going to SD 13% in this situation. If anything it seems you are playing too nitty postflop in these steal stiuations. Are you sure that you lose money post-flop in your blindsteals? Or is it just a pschological effect because c-betting and getting raised off your hand two times feels like more of a loss than the amount you win by stacking a villain once?

I'm not sure what filters are available in PTIII, but maybe you could filter for hands where you blind-stole and there was a flop, and see if you are positive or negative in these spots. Granted the sample size will be rather small, but it will give some kind of idea where you stand.

I'll admit to having not much experience below NL25, but seriously, the following sequence is one of my biggest lifetime winners:

I sit on the button (or cutoff) with whatever. Some guy limps, I raise 5 bb. Everyone folds to limper who calls. Pot is 11 bb. Flop comes something. Limper checks, I bet 7-9 bb, he folds.

Now you need some reads for this. But there are a metric buttload of players who will call nearly anything preflop and then play fit or fold. You can see it in the stats (which I why have these on my hud): they play something silly like 55/3 preflop. Then on the flop they have AF=0.8, Fold-to-bet=70% or some such. These are fit or fold players. You can basically play the above sequence without even looking at your cards. I still look at my cards because if you do it 100% of the time, people will start noticing. So I use my cards to randomize my play.

I have seriously had occasions where I did this to people like 10 times in 5 orbits, and they just keep on folding, giving you 5-6 bb every single time. Well, they probably calle 2 or 3 times and I had to shut down unless I had flopped a real hand. Because they won't fold if they hit, as I have found out to my despair (I 3-barreled into bottom pair more times than I care to remember.)

Dont do this against guys that don't fold (you have to wait for an actual hand against them). You don't have to do this against people with a clue, because they don't open-limp.

(Also, you have to watch out who is behind you: thinking people there will figure out you're just iso-ing the fish with a huge range and will start 3-betting more. But I don't think you'll see much of that at NL10.)

well the past two days i finally started beating 5nl after not being able to do it consistently

i really feel that my blind steals get called a lot and they do not fold to my c-bets often enough to make it profitable.. i know im trying to setup a table image so i can eventually stack someone.. but at 5nl i dont think any of them are thinking players except for the select few regs that i see.. and 80% of them dont pay attention to table image

since i switched up my playing style two days ago ive been making 8bb/100 at 5 nl and am up $70

i then posted my graph and people were saying my redline needed fixing so i asked for advice from people (hence this thread) and ive been applying that advice for part of today

before applying the advice i was up a buy-in within about 20 mins.. now im down 2 buy-ins after two hours of "opening up my range" and i feel like most of the money i was losing came from people calling my c-bets and me losing money after the flop when my raises were called.. they slowly ate me away to down 2 buy-ins.. i didnt lose any big pots within that timespan

i feel like u guys are giving me good advice but i dont think it applies to 5nl where there are so many 30%+ vpip people at my table..

i also TRY to pick tables where there is a high percentage of people per flop meaning they are going to have high vpips.. maybe you guys dont do that so maybe if i were to go to tables with a lower avg players per flop.. say like 20-30% then this advice would probably work better.. but i always pick tables with at the very least 35% avg players per flop but most of them are in the 40's

im gonna go back to the way i was playing before since i was beating 5nl really well that way

thanks for all the advice tho.. im sure it will work in higher limits

my steal stat is from 5NL

What report is that? I can't find it in PT3.

no you dont u play 12/8. thats ridiculously tight.

yea but go on pokerstove and look at what hands are ahead equity wise of the top 50% of hands. its a lot, lot more than 8% of them

read my post a couple posts ago.. i was winning with a good winrate but now that ive tried the suggestions in this thread ive been bleeding money

i will try to steal blinds more but my 12/8 has been working for me at the tables i pick and when i try to open up and cbet more i slowly bleed money

yeah well stop cbetting then. u dont have to cbet every time. look at the board and how it might hit your opponent. if they peel once, think whether their range contains more draws or made hands. if its more draws, then barrel a bunch of blank turns.

u cant expect to start playing more hands and for it to be instantly profitable because you're being put in situations that you wont have been in before. but if u wanna move up at all then you're gonna have to play looser than what you do now.

o of course i know im gonna have to play looser when i move up.. i played 10nl a while back and its so much different than 5nl IMO and ya i know i need to loosen up then

Thank you very much for your advice fabadam, it's much appreciated. I open a little bit more hands from late position but i realize that i don't steal enough. I think it's because i don't see it as a worthwhile investment during play but most likely as the number of hands adds up so does the profit gained by these steals. I have lowered the number of tables at 5NL to 6-8 for the moment and i am focusing on extracting value from good hands and getting a feel for situations where i am beat so that i can use these aspects of my game to further myself while progressing through to 10NL and 25NL.

I'll keep updates regularly to get more advice from my fellow 2+2 players.

Thanks again.

Alex.

Hi everyone.

I've recently started playing online poker and I have just played my first 17,000 hands at 2NL SH and I was wondering if anyone here can help me analyze my game for leaks.

Well here's the situation... after my first 10K hands, I did a self evaluation of my game (probably not the smartest thing to do). I found that I was playing a pretty weak tight game of 23/12/2.7 with a 2.5% 3bet but made a profit of 8.5BB/100. So then I played an additional 7K hands where I played a tighter game and called less to lower my vpip. My current game is 16.5/12/3.6 and I also increased my 3bet to 4.3%. However, I noticed that my winrate is much lower (3.5BB/100). So basically, I am wondering what am I doing wrong.

Here's the stats from my first 10K set of hands.






Here's the stats from my second 7K set of hands after my self evaluation.





I think one of my major problems my current game is my blind vs blind game. I started to play my SB more aggressively... raising any Ax and Kx hands 4x bb. However, I am finding that I am getting floated on a lot resulting in me folding alot of my turns. I think I will have to reevaluate my blind vs blind game. But besides this, what else is wrong with my current game?

Any comments are appreciated.

playing like a nit at 2nl cant be wrong, but you should limp a lot of speculative hands, since everyone is so passive, and then value bet when you hit. you shouldnt play loose from the sb, since as you said they call everything and it will be difficult to play weak hands oop. just limp with weak speculative hands and start building a pot if you hit something good.

You're overthinking this. Alot. It's 2nl.

Seriously- at 2nl all you have to do is play any hand with any potential flop value from any position... When you hit- bet bet bet... When you miss just check/fold.

2nl doesn't teach you anything about poker. You can crush 2nl without having a single actual poker related thought enter or leave your brain. forget the word 'float' until you hit at LEAST 25nl.

Playing NL 5 6Max, First month playing 6max playing a LAG strat, Used to Short-stack but got bored. I'm a leggopoker member! Only a small sample I was 3 Tabling, Will 4 Table when I return to poker in the new year! In process of changing sites







Saw some huge improvement over the month, the 3 buy-in down swing on the last days were just incredibly fishy play paying to see cards when i knew i was beat!

I look forward to tackling NL5 in Jan 10 most likely on tilt, I was on titan but no players during Australian daytime so -EV

even if its 2nl.. there are still leaks that I can fix... I have tried moving up to 5nl after my first 10k hands.

After 8k hands at 5NL, i found myself down 6 buyins with about a -6BB/100 winrate while having the exact same stats (23/12/2.7).

So that's why I moved back down to 2nl, re-evaluated my game.. and tried a less weak-tight approach.

this precisely.

no1 at 2nl knows what the word float means... key to micro stakes is to value bet and thats pretty much it... playing a 16/12 game should be fine.. looking at your graphs you definitely give up too many pots... be more aggro an learn to barrel.. but dnt barrel mega stations... identify the weak tight players in ur game and pound on them, and recognize the stations so u know when to give up.

also ur last 7k hands when u were only at 3.5BB/100 as opposed to 8.5BB/100 isnt really a true reflection of ur true winrate.. 7k hands isnt enough to play out the variance so u could just be in a rough patch