Quote:
Originally Posted by AussieHoldem
I am a small winner for the year but want to have a better 2009, where do you see areas I could improve?
pele was correct about your blinds--your SB loss rate is .02 higher than what I normally like to see a player sustain, and your BB loss rate is the max I am willing to see people sustain. Your stats are the reason why--if you don't get these lower, you end up being a winning player, but just barely, who loses back most of his winnings to the blinds. You are winning .41 ptbb/orbit in the other 7 positions, and then losing back .35 of it when you post the blinds.
So definitely work on winning back maybe .05ptbb more per orbit. That really means winning an additional 1 or 2 pots from the blinds per 100 hands.
The other problems I saw:
You limp too much in early position. These are usually -EV, especially at $100 and $200, where you are basically playing your hand face up when you limp/call in EP. Better to start folding small pockets from EP. This change should change your vpip/pfr from 15/10 to 14/11 or 13/11; don't be surprised by this change if you decide to follow this advice.
Your button win rate is too low. Your vpip, and, therefore, your ATS, look to be on the low side of ok. The problem here is with your post flop play--it looks like you are not minimizing your loss and maximizing your wins on average on the button.
Win rate problems indicate a post flop leak, so there is really not much I can help you with from these stats. All I can say is to go back through your button hands. Look for hands you won that you checked on the river--ask yourself, "could I have bet this river for value?" You had a reason for checking; maybe a draw got there or whatever. Just review these hands and look for missed value. Similarly, look at the hands you lost and ask yourself whether you should have lost less. This is a lot of hard work, but there is no choice if you want to improve your button win rate.
To tell you what you are aiming for--solid TAgs often, maybe even usually have a win rate that is at least double, or even triple yours. You are losing A LOT of value on your button.
The combination of your went to showdown (22%) and your W$@SD (50.something%) is far too low. For a player seeing as few showdowns as you are, the W$SD% is more usually 53 or 54%. This indicates a propensity for weak/tight post flop play. Specifically, I believe you need to take a net of maybe 1 or 2 more hands per 100 to showdown. This doesn't sound like a lot, but when you consider that you only vpip 15% of the time, it starts to look like a huge change in your game.
Your aggression numbers are good, except maybe the river, which is one of the reasons I suspect your WTSD is low. With a river AF >2, I begin to suspect that you are folding to some river bets that you should call. Remember, a river call needs to be evaluated by pot odds, not by whether you think you are ahead in this hand. if the villain makes a pot sized bet on the river (which rarely happens) it is (marginally) profitable to call even if you think you will lose 49% of the time. But with a WTSD of 22% and a W$@SD of 50%, you are both getting to showdown 2nd best too much, and you are folding the best hand too much. Again, this means that you should play maybe 1 or 2 hands per 100 differently; don't all of a sudden turn into a river station and look everybody up. But these are typically medium to large pots, so losing a little less in one and winning another will make a huge change in your results. study your hand histories and look for possible mistakes of this sort.
If you don't have it, you really need to download the free version of PokerEV and use its filtering capabilities to evaluate your river play.
It looks like you play the hijack really well.
Your EP win rates are pretty good; other than not limping, I don't think you need to change anything there.
One sort of hidden possibility I want you to look into. As I said, your post flop play indicates a bit of a propensity to fold to any aggression. Your AF numbers look good, but don't make sense with your W$@SD or your W$WSF%, both of which are low. If I am correct about this, then one possible hidden leak you should look for is your play with suited connectors. I would not be at all surprised to see that you are losing money in pots where you called a raise or limped behind with suited connectors. If this is the case, then you need to reevaluate the way you are playing them. Since you should have position in these hands, you need to be looking to steal an occasional pot when you miss the flop. If you are +EV in this spot, disregard this paragraph, but, tbh, I would be a little surprised if you are +EV in that situation. Another possibility that suggests itself from your aggression factor is that you are playing suited connectors too aggressively postflop, and losing more, on average, than you might otherwise have to. So just study these hands in PokerEV and see what turns up.
That's about all I can think to say at the moment in terms of potential leaks, but I have two other points:
1. The quality of your play has certainly changed over these 160k hands. If you want to post your last 50,000 hands or so and get me to look at those, I'd be happy to do so.
2. The fact that you have played so many different levels complicates my analysis. I'd really like to see your stats from what you consider to be your home level. $50, $100 and $200 play very differently from one another in some ways.
Oh and 3.--Don't read anything into the fact that you have won at $100 and $200 but lost at $50; it could mean almost anything or it could mean nothing at all.