I play $25 NL Zone and $25 PLO. My overall winrate is 3.2BB/100, which I guess is alright, but I feel like I can do better. One thing I noticed is that if I'm not winning big pots I'm usually steadily losing, even if I'm not necessarily losing big pots. By 'big pot' I really just mean like, 40 BB or more. Anyway to confirm my suspicion I filtered on my database to see how I did in certain size pots. Here are the winrates I got:

Pot size: less than 40 BB
19bb/100

Pot size: greater than 40 BB
438bb/100 (!!)

(on each of these I filtered by VPIP = Yes, which is why the numbers are so high)

I feel like this is telling me I'm continuing too tight, afraid to lose big pots which I think is costing me a lot of medium sized pots. I might be too easy to bluff. But I'm not sure if this is necessarily a leak. Does anyone have any advice for what spots I should be looking at?

Isn't that normal? I mean most of the time I'm trying to breakeven in the small pots in between stacking people and winning big pots.

you should be thrilled you're running good in big pots?

wouldn't say it's "running good", this is a million hand sample lol

ultimately it would be pretty easy to have a huge win rate in big pots if you just nut peddle, which is what I'm afraid I'm doing. dunno if this can be an optimal strategy or if there's a leak in there

Very interesting question. I think it’s one of those playstyle things, similar to how some players have a pretty bad redline and others don’t.

Interesting. I'd have to filter my database to be sure but I kinda feel like I'm the opposite. My redline tends to stay fairly steady or positive depending on opponents.

It can be incredibly frustrating to be fighting for small pots, getting into blind battles, & doing a good job of gradually winning only to have it all eradicated by a cooler.

I do notice some regs repeatedly folding in spots where its incredibly obvious they have some marginal hand, but it's also quite unlikely that I have what I'm representing... yet they fold. They just don't want to make any kind of big call, with Ace high or a marginal pair type hand

My redline is stronger, I am jealous. Still going through a recent group of 400+ hands. That session was breakeven, but getting coolered, sometimes you need to make up with an occasional bluff.

one thing that stands out...when I look at my hand won %, it hovers around 14.5%, and I only play 6-max. so I'm winning a little less than 1/6th of the hands, I wonder if this indicates that I'm giving up on pots too easily.

sample? wwsf? w$sd?

I think your original post is very interesting, and I’m interested in an answer from someone who knows more about this sort of thing.

I don’t think it’s worth fretting about this one though, you can see this directly by looking at WWSF (and maybe by filtering out limped pots)

I've won 22.44% of hands over the last 75k hands of 6max. I play pretty loose though - VIP of 34 over that period. If I were playing against good players all those numbers would be lower. You probably are giving up too much, but it's hard to say for certain.

sample is a bit over 900k. wwsf = 42%, w$sd = 52%.

WWSF seems a little low. Try filtering out multi-way (or limped) pots and see if it changes. Might be artificially low if you see more multi-way flops

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/3...-flop-1737124/

https://upswingpoker.com/poker-hud-stats/#hud5

the wwsf suggests you arent playing aggressively enough postflop but that doesnt necessarily mean its bad against your pool

for reference in the last 40k hands i have both stats at 52%

and in 100k before that 49 and 52

in general all the redline blueline stuff is pretty overrated imo, winning poker is winning poker

filtering out multiway pots, it jumps to 48.9%. still a bit low but perhaps not that bad.

Yep. People can play completely differently & both get good results.

The general consensus used to be that, amongst players of a similar standard, the big pots will often be coolers - & even themselves out in the long run - so an edge is made from smaller pots. Often against good players, you have to fight for smaller pots to win big pots (an aggressive image helps u get paid). But even that is a over-simplification & none of us can give you an accurate diagnosis of this tbh.

Even posting big hands isnt necessarily a great way to judge someone's play; often u need someone to sweat a session

you sound like me - this worked for me till 25nl but 50nl i had to change as I had turned too weak tight - keep doing what's working till it is time to change

What is your WTSD,W$SD?, river call efficiency?

up your aggression, fight for small SRP a bit more

Bluff more esp Bluff/Stab small multiway pots where no one seems to be interested

Call down/raise more vs fish donks in common bluff spots OTF, OTT

That's not even all. If you're playing in incredible games, you're going to be more showdown bound. I play PLO nowadays but my wwsf is 32% and I'm smashing because most pots are 4+ ways to flop.

My wwsf at $25 zone was similar to op's fwiw and my wr was 7bb over 300kish hands.

WTSD% = 24.1%, W$SD% = 52.8%. River call efficiency is 1.39. I'm actually kind of surprised by that, I think Leakbuster wants that value to be around 1.7-2.5, which implies I'm calling rivers too wide.

Another interesting stat is that my Standard Deviation per 100 is 74.5...I think that's kinda low, dunno if that's necessarily a bad thing though.

yup - you have similar SD stats like mine too. !

your WTSD is tad low - that means you are folding out frequently before showdown and usually arrive showdown with goods

Expected your W$SD to be higher , coupled with poor river call efficiency - it means you are arriving river mostly polarized and making bad GTO calls vs your pool/opponent


I think you are perfectly happy to let people bluff you - you give up these spots knowing that you will take much bigger pots later on ???

Check your fold to cbets, fold to donk on flop, turn on paired boards, 3 to flushy straighty boards.

does that mean I should be calling river tighter? idk how to square a bad river call efficiency with the fact that I'm getting bluffed too much.

you most likely are quite a bit too passive on turn in late position pots, try barreling on cards that are better for you than your opponent