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01-15-2023 , 01:15 PM
I just ran 4656 hands through the analyzer and got 88.2 percent correct. I am NOWHERE NEAR a winning player. Is this normal?
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03-08-2023 , 07:22 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by murph69
I just ran 4656 hands through the analyzer and got 88.2 percent correct. I am NOWHERE NEAR a winning player. Is this normal?
What does 88.2% correct mean? There are a number of things which can effect whether you are a winning player or not. Let's assume you play NL Hold'em cash.

First, are you playing online or live? Online is a lot harder than live. Also, what stakes are you playing? If you are playing 1/2 online I suspect you need to play very well to win and 88.2% might not be good enough. If you are playing micro stakes online then you have to beat the high rake, which is hard. If you are playing 1/2 live then you should be able to beat that game being no where close to "perfect".

Second, how good is your competition? Similar to the first reason, online players in the higher stakes are much better than live players at similar stakes. In live games, game selection can have a big effect on your results. Also, in the higher stakes online, opponents might be using real time assistance.

Third, what kind of mistakes are you making in the remaining 11.8%? A small number of mistakes can have a large effect on overall results. For instance, there are more opportunities for decisions early in the hand, of which preflop decisions probably make up more than half your decisions. Most players who play half decent will get a lot of these decisions right, as most of the time you will be folding in either raised or unraised pots. Getting these decisions right over 90% of the time is probably not good enough by itself to be a winner. Also, you can make the wrong decision pre-flop and the subsequent decisions correctly and still be a long term loser in that situation over time because of the first mistake. The next decision point is the flop. Here, 90% is probably a good result. But the size of the bets are bigger and wrong decisions can add up. Turn and river mistakes can be very costly depending on the kind of mistakes you're making. Are you calling or folding too much? In a live game with very little bluffing, are you calling too many large bets? If you are out of position on the flop against the pre-flop raiser is a mistake you made betting when you should check or checking when you should bet? The former is more costly than the latter even though either counts as one error.

The bottom line is that you need to analyze the mistakes you make and estimate what kind of impact it has on your win rate. I would strive to get my pre-flop decisions as close to 100% as possible, as this is relatively easy to do, especially if you're not facing a raise. Get a pre-flop chart from a reliable source that's based on the stakes and rake you play. If GTO Wizard pre-flop charts are based on a 2.5X raise first in with no rake, but the game you play typically plays 5X raise first in with a rake, you should be folding more hands than recommended. After that, I would strive to get my river decisions as good as possible based on the tendencies of my opponents, since these bets are the largest.

In general, you make money in poker playing better than your opponents. Even if the 88.2% correct decision number was meaningful, that wouldn't make you better than your competition if they were all in the 90+ range.
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