Thanks for your help

Awesome post; I'm still going through it and looking closely at my hands and stats.

One quick question - and I'll try to post a graph tonight: I have about 7-8K hands in, so small sample size. I've only been playing about a month, and the last few weeks my profit graph has been up, down, up etc etc. What does it mean if my red ev line is pretty closely tracking or trending slightly below my profit line?

Thank you very much in advance,

Great post Mpethy

we are talking about red line, so its really based on the opponent how we envision winning the hand and what the circumstances we see ourselves gettign to showdown. In some situations I want to win the hand preflop and believe I can apply pressure to their range. Other times I want to float them and take it away on the turn, then I may want more card strength/showdown value since it will be a small-medium size pot if we make it to showdown. Other times I may apply a lot of pressure on the flop/turn/river, which will be a very large pot, in that case I rather have hands that can make the nuts and not be dominated.

This might just be the best post ever!

...now please delete it

Excellent work Mpethy!

Ty, nice post.

Thank you for this. Excellent excellent post. Time to spend the next few hours at work finding the suggested marginal spots and identifying my play in them.

This is awesome. Thanks a bunch mpethy.

Fantastic stuff as usual Mpeth!

very interesting stuff esp for rather non - empirical players like me, good work mpey as always!

Thank you for the wealth of information. I'll be playing around with my filters for awhile to identify my red line leaks.

This stuff is gold Matt. Can't wait to do some research in my database.

Thank you, Ozymandias.

Just found out I'm a quality c-bettor. Shame that's not as good as it sounds.

This is a great post. I went through my stats for this month and found what appear to be two leaks for me. I'm losing .16 bb/hand cold calling from the blinds, still better than folding but I think I can improve it. I'm also losing calling 3-bets when I'm the preflop raiser. I'll need to study some hands to figure out what's going on but I just wanted to say thanks for posting this.

i have a question. I understand that optimal range of stealing in micros is 30-35% but i have found that it could lead to more sticky situations and maybe it could cause to lose more money by trying to steal. correct me if i am wrong

then I would say that you do not, in fact, understand...

A little too Zen to be helpful.

The point of this statement is that instead of saying "I want to steal 35% of the time," you want to examine each stealing opportunity and decide whether it is +EV or not to steal. If you are on the button and you have two players that will fold 90% of the time and won't adjust, you want to steal 100% of the time. If Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonious are in the blinds, you're going to want to steal far less than 30% of the time.

Over time, it might work out that you steal 35% of the time. However, your strategy drives your statistics, not your statistics drive your strategy.

As practical matter, everyone has a baseline of hands they'll steal with no matter how the blinds play (even nits will steal with AA or KK), and then add hands based on their opponents' play when they get better.

I will echo what split says. Stats should be the results of situations, not the goal.

Your stealing stats is going to depend on table and seat selection. Some people emphasis having two nits sitting in your blinds and then just stealling ATC. Other times, you will be sitting with villains who over defend their blinds, and you tighten up your range tremendously and win lots of pots post flop. So your ATS against that villain may be 5-15%, but your profitability could be a lot higher if you know how to exploit them.

We do tend to talk in short hand around here. In the stats thread. I have told a few people with an ATS below 30%, "you need to steal more," but I have made at least two posts in the stat thread where I lay out the thinking that *Split*, Venice and Sammy have just hinted at. So you could read those for more detail. I'm pretty sure I made them this year.

A few posts up in this thread, I emphasized the point that for the vast majority of stats, there is NO "optimal range." Novice players really, really need to get this point. You can be a winning player, especially at the micros, with a very broad range of stats. Conversely, at least once a week I am looking at a DB where the player's overall stats look drool-worthy in a 200k hand sample, but he is b/e.

My overall steal is 36% (sb 47, co 27, btn 39). Steal success is 57%. But my average profit from a steal is only 0.5bb/hand, half of what you suggested is a good rate (sb 0.27, co 0.55, btn 0.61).

When stealing: flop c-bet 68%, turn c-bet 36%, W$WSF 50%.

Have you seen any common problems related to low steal win rate? Should I be c-betting at a higher frequency to compensate for a weaker range?

Cheers.

this post is gold

Like you need it

After reading OP, I'm sorely reminded of how little I know about poker and how far I have to go just to reach mediocrity. Excellent article mpethy. Just cannot say enough to justify the thought and work you put into OP as well as the many responses to others.

Great post! Thanks.

Just to show a different angle:


As a part of an overall play style and game strategy you can lose a significant amount from the blinds (3b a lot LP, overall aggression increased from LP etc) to increase your win rate in other spots.

Other thoughts:Bet sizing on later streets has a huge impact on red line, especially when playing against players who adjust significantly to the sizing of your bets.(Having a positive redline is NOT always a good thing).

If you are on the river, IP and have the option of betting into a pot size of $50 you have to remember that if you bet $40 and your opponent always folds, you make no extra profit, if you bet $20 and he calls with 90% of his hands this is actually an increase in your winrate (but oh no, my redline doesnt go up!). It is all about finding that sweet spot in which you maximise your value from your opponents hand / get him to fold when you are bluffing.

Good hands readers will always make the most because they understand the strength of hands their opponents hold and are generally capable of making bet sizes that they think their opponents can call (when they want a call) or fold (when they are bluffing).