I said 5.71ptbb/100 was "solid," but not "great." Nobody suggested 5.71 was "not that good."

Baller redline, very nice. Your WtSD stat is too low at 20. I'm the same VPIP as you and mine is 25. You should stick some more stats though, c-bets %, blind steal, postion etc.


Oh dear. Blinds or no blinds, anyone losing this much is non showdown pots has some major leaks.

Ok
If my WR is 5ptbb all positions
and 13ptbb/100 positions less than = to 7 does that mean I am losing 8ptbb/100 out of the blinds?

Not exactly, because you'll have different # of hands played from the blinds vs. other positions. But that's probably not too far off. Remember that if you fold every hand from the blinds you're at -100bb/100 in the BB and -50bb/100 in the SB. So -16bb/100 isn't that bad. HEM can easily show you your winrate by exact position, isn't there a way to do that in PT?

I have been trying to build a roll based on the $5 new a/c bonus from Pokerstars. I have been playing 2NL and here is the stat and graph so far since 1/Feb

Simple question, when i post graph for non show down and showdown, should I always filter out the blinds? Because if I put blinds on, my red line is in the negative, but when I filter out the blinds, my red line is in the mid positives. Thanks

Generally people leave the blinds in, but filtering them out can help us determine how your blind play is.

To start things show your graph WITH blinds, you are definitely not alone if your red-line is negative, about 95% of this forum has the same situation

check HEM to see if all the cold calling you are doing is hurting your win rate. Otherwise, your stats look good.

Also, you are probably running hot, so don't panic if/when the win rate drops from 32bb/100.

Actually I have the same question too, I realize if I took both SB and BB stat out of the graph, my non-showdown winnings are quite good

Here is the stat of my cold calling a PFR, I realize my blind defense actually hurting my win rate. So how aggressive should I go about to defense my blind in uNL?

Just someone post if they have plz even a 5+ ptbb winrate at 25 or 50 nl over 100k+.


C'mon all these sharks and no one has this wr?

I have almost 75k hands at 25nl/pl with a winrate of just over 5ptbb/100

Your cold calling looks good, except for the BB. You should go through the hands you are cold calling with and start folding any categories of hands that ou are calling with that are losing money. Otherwise, keep doing what you are doing.

In the BB, unless you have a premium hand, you should generally defend mostly against steals, and then only against stealers who have a high ATS% and a reasonable fold to 3 bet% Defend with a 3 bet a lot of the time. Call with hands that are good, but would be dominated by the villain's range of hands that would call your 3 bet.

You can't play fit or fold postflop against a stealer with a high ATS; you are giving up too much to his positional advantage. So plan on check raising, call/bluffing and leading into him a fair amount of the time you miss the flop.

My winrate is pretty impressive when I filter for hands I won.

The red line itself is NOT IMPORTANT. If it is negative, it is a CLUE that maybe you are leaking (or maybe not, as a negative red line is normal for a TAg). You can have a negative red line and not be leaking anywhere. So all you do with the red line is check to see if it is negative. If it is, then you filter out the blinds. If it is positive, then if you have a leak, it is likely the blinds. So then you go and look at our blind loss rates. If they are high, you are leaking. If they are low, you are not leaking and you can thereafter ignore your red line as long as its slope doesn't increase.



My winrate at $25 for the year is 35ptbb/100

So I am officially one of the biggest winners you've seen over a decent sample at 25nl (ive only seen zerga do better fwiw)?

My NSD slope is clearly decreasing. My blind play is good.

My NSD slopE is still negative, but like you said thats standard for TAG.

Yet I will get destroyed if i move up just 1 limit?

Contradicted. Confused. wat?

You should never have someone with a 5+ptbb/100 over a significant sample at 25nl, people should be moving up once they reach the 20 buy-in requirement.

see post 1217 for >5ptBB/100 @ 25nl over decent sample

I don't know why you are on a mission to sharp shoot what I say, but let me reply to what you have said:

"So I am officially one of the biggest winners you've seen over a decent sample at 25nl (ive only seen zerga do better fwiw)?"

Yes; 5.71ptbb/100 is one of the 5 highest win rates I have seen at $25. As I have said all along, it is a solid win rate. But as Teddie implied, this is like getting the gold medal in the special olympics. Most players who CAN beat $25 at >5 choose to move up before they actually DO beat $25. I don't, however, recommend that you move up.

"My NSD slope is clearly decreasing. My blind play is good."

There has been a decrease in the slope of your red line. Whether you will sustain that decrease or whether it is short term variance is still an open question. Based on your position stats, it is clear that your SB play is good and your BB play is borderline leak/not leak (you are .01ptbb/hand on the "not leak" side). Overall, your blind play is not a leak, but you could definitely benefit from working on your BB play. There is some other additional explanation for the slope of your red line, most likely a leak related to what I recall to be a W$@SD that was too high--57% or so, iirc.

For example, if you were to post your graph with the blinds filtered out, we would probably see a positive red line with a somewhat shallow upward slope--this is most likely, but it is also possible that we would see a b/e or slightly negative red line. If that turned out to be the case, then I would point at it and say, "see, that is why your W$@SD is so high--because you are not winning enough hands before showdown--either you are giving up where you are good or you are not going for value aggressively enough." there's only so much I can tell by looking at the graph itself; to determine exactly what you are doing wrong I would get into your betting lines and their frequencies and things like that.

"My NSD slopE is still negative, but like you said thats standard for TAG."

A negative red line is standard for a TAg. But the slope is usually much shallower than yours. Just as a for instance, not as a brag or anything, here is my red line at $50:



On my red line, I am losing 2.74ptbb/100. On your red line, you are losing what appears to be 6ptbb/100. My red line loss rate is a little high for a TAg, which is indicative of the fact that I am kind of borderline nitty/TAg, playing between 12/9 and 13/9 in this sample. Yours is really high, as I would expect from a loose passive player who folds unimproved in a lot of smallish pots (which I suspect is a leak you have).

So, while a somewhat negative red line is standard for a TAg, you are not a TAg. You are not even close to being a TAg. You are loose passive preflop/aggressive postflop. And a negative red line is standard for nits and loose passive players as well. But the label doesn't really matter; you are doing a good job of exploiting the field at $25, and as long as you are content to stay at $25, there is really no reason for you to make major changes to your game.

"Yet I will get destroyed if i move up just 1 limit?"

This is not what I said. Here is what I said: "All of my suggestions were geared toward moving you up. Your current style will be exploited far more often at $50 than it is at $25, and you will not have a positive win rate at $100 playing the way you are now."

I stand by this statement. You will be exploited far more often at $50; your style is easily exploitable. The field at $50 is significantly less likely than the field at $25 to pay you off when you have a monster, and it is far more likely to bet you off the decent hands you have a lot of the time but are currently apparently refusing to take to showdown. Moreover, the field at $50 is going to attack your blinds far more aggressively than the field at $25, and you have little margin for error before your blind play becomes a leak. You may have a positive win rate at $50 (there are droolers at every level I have played), but it will decrease dramatically, and there is no way you will beat $100 as a 17/4.

"Contradicted. Confused. wat?"

It should be clear by now that nothing I said about red lines in general contradicts anything I said about you or your style of play. But, in case it is not clear, let me sum up:

In general, a negative red line is standard for a TAg. If the slope is sharply downward, it indicates a likely leak. That leak is usually losing too much in the blinds, but it is possible that it is other things. So we look at our red line without the blinds. If it has a decent upward slope, then our leak is almost certainly the blinds. So we go examine our blind loss rates. If they are cumulatively -0.34ptbb/hand or better, we are reasonably satisfied with our blind play and do not consider it a major leak (obviously, the closer we are to -0.34ptbb/hand, the more room for improvement we have).

When I saw your red line without your position stats, I concluded that you were leaking in non-sd pots. I guessed that its slope was primarily due to excessive leaking in the blinds. You posted your position stats, and it turned out not to be the case that you have a leak in the blinds--as I said, your SB play is good and your BB play is borderline on the not leak side of the border. Thus, you fall into the category of people whose red line slope indicates a different leak. In your case, it is likely to be that you are either not value betting enough or that you are folding the best hand too often, but I am again stressing that I do not have sufficient information to have a firm opinion, and that I am guessing, pure and simple, based on my experience analyzing a lot of players' stats. And I can think of at least three other things that it might be, including a lack of positional awareness and your preflop hand selection. To have a firm opinion, I would have to filter by betting lines and starting hands and lots of other stuff in your database.

Look, it is clear to me what is going on here. You have a solid win rate playing an unconventional style, and as you said earlier in the thread, you think you think on "a higher level," than the rest of us. So I don't really expect to convince you of anything, and this reply is not for your benefit, as I am pretty sure you are going to be sitting there thinking, "I have a 5.71ptbb/100 win rate; how can this moron think I have ANY leaks?" I'm replying to you primarily to convince the other people reading this thread not to play your style, because it is easy to exploit and will develop bad habits that will be exploited as folks move up through, and out of, the micros.

Thanks for the lengthy reply I appreciate your point of view. By the way, I never intended to irk you in anyway at all. I do, however, have some thoughts to add.

Your analogy is humorous but incorrect. This isnt a conventions of ******s tossing money away. Its a grind, a big time grind. And in no way shape or form is 25nl easy to beat. Are you under the impression that there are donks just giving away their stacks? Sure, you might find one of those every once in a while. But the majority of these players are not ******ed.

It takes elaborate play to acheive the results I have put forth. If were any close to as easy as you say (special olympics) more people would be achieving my results - or close to them at least. And if their style way truly a better stlye (and by better I mean "more winning") why doesnt their winrate reflect that? They should have winrates higher than mine, but they dont.



This is not short term variance. You can see no skill increase until hand 88,000. The line stays at a constant slope until that point. At that point, 88000, I realized my NSD play was atrocious and I dedicated myself to improve it. You can clearly see this. My NSD has become substantially better since I first started. At this point, ive improved my game to the point where its approaching breakeven. With a little more work it might get there.

As far as 57% W$SD is concerned, its not a leak. A winrate that high can only be accomplished by excellent play and hand reading abilities. Why would I want to lose value and have that decrease?

You agreed with springsteen that

"The fact that's it's so high means that you only go to showdown with ultra-strong hands. This is also reflected in your red-line being negative.

Nutshell: You are playing really passively and will only showdown with really strong hands. You are likely folding many hands that are strong, but not Nuts-strong before the showdown.

If you were to be more aggressive with borderline strong hands you would raise your red-line, but you would also end up at showdown with some less premium hands occasionally (because your opponents will play on their heels).

This will cause your W$SD stat to drop (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but you will be winning more without needing to show your cards."

What you two are saying is that I would make more money by showing down with less than premium hands. But what I am saying is I make more money by going to showdown with them. I get more value than you do by exploiting my opponents for more money on all streets. If I were to take some of these pots down before show down, I would be losing value. Sure my NSD line would increase, but not enough to offset the decrease in my SD winrate.

Per your request,


First of all you picked all three possible cases to try and prove this? Of course my NSD rate without blinds will be positive, breakeven, or negative.

The thing is, my W$SD is so high not because I dont win enough hands before showdown, I give up when im good, or because I dont going for value agressively enough.

Its because I make excellent reads. I use these reads to get more value out of my opponents, hence the high winrate, by expoiting them on all streets. And like I said earlier, I get more value out of my hands by taking them to SD instead of picking up the pot NSD.

You are right. Im not a tag. My style exploits tags and lags. I play hands and pick spots that win more often in the long run and minimize risk in marginal situations.

Do you really think I haven't learned to deal with this over 140k hands? People try to exploit me all the time for playing my style. But i know what they are doing and use that against them. I reverse exploit them. Its actually a huge part of my game.

I know you are laughing and saying some nonsense to yourself about what an idiot I am. But this idiot wins more than almost anyone. There is no way, that playing a style that wins less than my style at 25nl, will somehow win more than my style at 50nl. Outplaying people is outplaying people. Its not just the people I outplay, its their style of play itself - LAG and TAG. I beat them both - consistently. And not just moderately consistent, but better than almost anyone you've ever seen.

/MG

edit:

And of course, im interested in your feedback and appreciate it. I know some of this came off as cocky, ignorant, or pompous... but im really not that great with words and expressing my thoughts with them exactly as then run in my head. Please excuse that and any "irking" that I may have caused.

/MG

interesting discussion above, i must say i play in a very similar way to miracle grow and it seems to work in the very low stakes (im currently at 5NL) it's interesting to see that it works at 25NL still, i'm not actually too happy about playing such a way, because it depends on being able to read your opponents really well, and it is only at the really low levels that they are so transparent, and also where you get to see loads of flops cheap cos they are so passive. I would have thought the aggressive nature of the higher limits would more or less eradicate that. Let me know how it goes when you decide to move up to 100NL, miracle grow.

OK, I am going to take your edit at face value and assume that you have not intentionally come off as arrogant and know-it-all as I have been reading your posts as. So this is a completely 100% serious reply:

First of all you picked all three possible cases to try and prove this? Of course my NSD rate without blinds will be positive, breakeven, or negative.


Read what I said again. I said that it was likely it would be a shallow upward slope, break even or a shallow downward slope (I think I said shallow downward--I certainly meant to). Which was to say that I expected your non blind non-sd line to be in a narrow band around B/E. Which turned out to be the case. I mistakenly assumed that you would be at the upper end of that narrow band, but you are solidly in the middle of it. Having a b/e red line with the blinds filtered out is an enormous leak. It is giant. It is gargantuan, and it is primarily a preflop leak, imo.


"Your analogy is humorous but incorrect." I agree. Teddie's point is valid and what I would have said had I thought to say it--one of the reasons you see so few people with win rates as high as yours at $25 is because they go ahead and move up to $50 and accept a lower winrate in exchange for a higher hourly. And I was serious when I said that I do not think you should take a 17/4 style to $50, as it will be more easily and more often exploited.

I have a lot of respect for the solid LAgs and TAgs that are building their rolls at $25. But it is a way station for them, and the fact that they can crush it is as it should be, and certainly nothing to brag about. Because while $25 is not a collection of Jerry's kids randomly pushing buttons, it is a pretty soft level full of a lot of new players trying to improve and a lot of people who are bad, but don't care to spend the time to improve their game; people who look at a buy in as an entertainment expense similar to going to a movie or a sports event--money they willingly give away in exchange for some fun. It is not a level populated by a significant number of good players. Depending on who you talk to, you won't find that until you get to the mid-stakes or higher.

As far as 57% W$SD is concerned, its not a leak. A winrate that high can only be accomplished by excellent play and hand reading abilities.

Thinking this is the only significant leak I have seen for you so far. Your W$SD is far too high. I want you to think of three classes of hands:

Example 1: You are in the hijack with 99. Two players limp ahead of you, you limp behind, and the button limps behind you, the SB folds and the BB checks. 5 players see the flop and it comes down AJ4 It checks to the button, who bets pot, and everybody folds and the button takes it down. You lost a small pot, no big deal. Right? Wrong. A TAg in your place would have won that pot a high percentage of the time. A TAg would have done so by raising preflop, driving out most of the people who limped, and then firing a c-bet in position, a line that is highly likely to win this pot. You took a 1bb loss, but a TAg is going to realize a 9bb win most of the time, and an occasional 9bb loss, for say, a .7ptbb win rate overall.

The difference shows up in the red line. You have a tiny downward blip, a TAg has a significant movement one way or the other. This is one of the main ways TAgs have a shallower red line than you do. Note that there is nothing here that would detract from your blue, show down, line. This is a hand where your preflop decision led to a small loss where most TAgs would realize a net win.

Example 2: You are in the CO with QTo. A 46/4 drooler open limps in the hijack. you limp behind, the button raises to 7bb, you and the drooler both fold. Again, a tiny downward blip on your red line, nothing to worry about, right? Again, wrong. A TAg on the CO against that villain is going to raise to isolate the drooler, just as a TAg on the button actually did exploit you and the drooler a high percentage of the time this happens to you. Maybe you call his raise? In which case he has you right where he wants you, playing a raised pot OOP, maybe even squeezed between him and the drooler. Good luck extracting a profit from that goat **** of a situation. Again, a TAg in this spot wil have a swongier red line that you do, but he is going to net a profit from his iso raise where you net a loss from limp/folding.

Example 3: You are OTB with TT. A TAg in MP raises to 3.5bb and you flat (I know you flat becase your 3 bet stat is @2). The flop comes AQ7r. The TAg c-bets at you. I KNOW you are folding this spot a lot of the time, more or less automatically, realizing a 3.5 bb loss, give or take a few tenths of a bb. It's tough spots like this that separate the TAg red line from the nit/passive red line. First of all, a 3 bet preflop is probably a defensibe play, and the TAgs who make it are going to have a swongy red line--losing 12bb most of the times they get 4 bet, winning 3.5bb preflop sometimes, sometimes winning or losing a big bet preflop. A TAg who is flat calling most of the time in this spot is going to float people, raise some others and get this hand to showdown far more often than you do, and win some of those showdowns, reducing the 3.5bb loss that a nit/passive player more or less automatically takes in this spot.

Now, you are going to argue with me on example 3, claim that you will make a read and make a play or not based on that read. Fine. You may do that on occasion. But you don't do it enough. How do I know you don't do it enough? Because your W$SD is at 57%, when every single good player whose stats I have analyzed--hundreds of them--is significantly lower than that. This is why I agreed with Springsteen that you are folding the best hand too often or maybe not value betting enough--because it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to be playing marginal situations with sufficient frequency to maximize your earn in those spots and also have a W$SD at 57%. Are you keeping your losses to a minimum in marginal spots? Yes, you absolutely are. But by usually folding in marginal spots, you are guaranteeing yourself a small loss in marginal spots. Good TAgs realize a small profit from the same class of situations you are taking a small loss in, and which I have described in the 3 examples above. Your strength is not superior hand reading skills, it is having the discipline to fold in situations you cannot continue in profitably. This is what is separating you from the losers--you are smart and talented enough to recognize the marginal spots and cut your losses, whereas the losers lose a lot more in marginal spots.

"My style exploits tags and lags." No, it doesn't. It is probably true that your style is successful against calling stations and droolers who will pay you off even when you obviously have a monster hand--which is to say pretty much any time that you are betting rather than folding--but it is unlikely that you are exploiting TAgs and decent LAgs. I also think your style would be pretty excellent against the players we refer to as aggrotards--people whose stats are like 22/18/8, and who will fairly frequently value town themselves without ever slowing down to consider what it is you are calling all 3 streets with. But again, I doubt you are exploiting the TAgs. A solid TAg is going to run right over you--preflop for the most part. I have no doubt that you are exploiting the worst players extremely, extremely well--you didn't get a 5.71ptbb/100 win rate without extracting big money from somebody--but I doubt it is the TAgs or the decent LAgs (if there even are any at $25--they are very thin on the ground at all micro stakes, imo).


"What you two are saying is that I would make more money by showing down with less than premium hands. But what I am saying is I make more money by going to showdown with them. I get more value than you do by exploiting my opponents for more money on all streets. If I were to take some of these pots down before show down, I would be losing value. Sure my NSD line would increase, but not enough to offset the decrease in my SD winrate."

This is nit think, to be honest, and it will cost you money at the higher stakes (and is probably costing you money at $25, although it is less noticeable.

We are not talking about just winning more of the pots you win at showdown before showdown. You are right, doing so could possibly cost you money (but not necessarily). The chance that you would move some sd winnings to non-sd winnings is a side effect of generally upping post flop aggression--it may or may not have a negative effect on your overall win rate. We are also talking about winning hands you are currently losing, as I described above.

To explain to you what is wrong with your red line, I need you to forget about the hands you currently take to showdown. OF COURSE you are winning most of those--that is exactly the problem. You are losing the 3 types of hands I described above from somewhat to far more often (depending on the example) than TAgs are doing. The difference between your W$SD at 57% and that of a solid TAg at 52% is those hands. Let's just make up some numbers. Suppose you are losing those hands 55% of the time. A TAg is losing them, say, 50% of the time, but losing far more of them at showdown, rather than on the flop, as you are, and is realizing either a small profit or a small loss from them.

It's really simple. Suppose I have TT in the situation I described above. The player c-bets at me. Sure, I will fold a lot of the time. But a lot of the time--far more often than you do-- I will raise him. They fold a lot when I do. If he calls the raise, he usually checks the turn, and I check behind a lot. He fires a blocker on the river. Sometimes I call, sometimes I fold. When I call, I win some and I lose some. Or sometimes I will float him, and when I do he checks the turn, I fire and he folds. Or he calls, and we check the river. The key is that I am getting more of them to showdown than you are and hoping that as a minimum, I am cutting my loss in the long run from the 3.5ptbb loss rate I would have if I folded to 100% of c-bets in that spot (in fact I make a modest profit in spots like these). But I lose a lot of these hands at showdown, probably more than half of them. But the pots I win are, on average, bigger than the ones I lose, and I manage a small profit, even though my W$SD goes down.

I understand that thinking that you can win at show down too often is counter intuitive, and it is a hard concept to understand. But it is the truth. Think of it this way--if you had a W$SD at 100%, it would mean, by definition, that you only ever showed down the nuts. I guarantee you that a player with a W$SD of 100% would be ridiculously exploitable--I would just shove every hand in which I was HU against him.

The point of that extreme is to demonstrate that it is actually logical to think that a W$SD can be too high. Having established that it logically CAN be too high, it falls to empiricism to illuminate the lowest figure that IS too high.

I have analyzed stats for a lot of players--hundreds of them. Your W$SD is higher than the W$SD of any winning player that I have ever analyzed. This means, a. that you are the best hand reader of all of those hundreds of players, or b. your W$SD is sub-optimal.

I know which I believe. Your W$SD is too high. It is probably too high because your preflop passivity is causing you to lose a bunch of -0.2bb spots where a solid TAg would net a .2ptbb win, but I couldn't say for sure until I spent a couple hours in your DB.

I am at ~3.5ptbb and my W&SD is 55-56 over 250k is this too high for 25nl and 50 nl?


Whats the solid range for a 13/11 tag style at these micros?

Obv above 52 but below what?

75k is close, but I'm going to take a guess and say you haven't had a significant downswing during this sample.

I don't know why everyone is hating on 5.71ptbb guy...


I play 50 and its virtually the same except the regs get a little more tricky/fold to your 3b and 4b all the time pf.

But dude, this guy would ****ing clobber 50nl if it works at 25. think -1ptbb loss at most, theres just not that much difference in the players, many regs and fish play them interchangeably lol.

That being said I think mpethy makes several good points that you can learn from, after all, optimally we should be learning every limit.

The spot w/ pps is essential and there is no way that taking a more aggressive line here will damage your wr, and it will make your stats seem a bit more reasonable in every area.

You have 5.71, shoot for 6 lol

But seriously good job.

I played ABC tag and only had 3.5ptbb you are a champ, but I probably wont have to make as many adjustments as I move up.

In the OP I said something like I like to see W$SD between 51 and 55 or between something like 46 and 50. A lot of it is also the relationship between your WTSD and your W$SD.

So, for example, a WTSD of 26% and a W$SD of 52% is usually more profitable than a WTSD of 20% and a W$SD of 57%. As you can see if you think about this for a moment, this assumes you are a good hand reader and a good bettor, and the pots you win are, on average a bit bigger than the ones you are losing.

you are right on the border. If your W$SD is 55% and your WTSD is between 20 and 22%, you are probably a tad on the high side. But, if your W$SD is 55% and your WTSD is >22%, you are probably just solid.

In a case case like yours, I let the W$WSF% decide. If it is between 36 and 40%, you are doing fine, more or less. If it is 35%, you are almost certainly leaking by not winning enough hands, but for people at 35% or 36%, this is normally only a problem in the blinds. Below 35% and you have a big time leak in non-blind positions, too--either you are folding too much to aggression or you are playing too passively. If your stats are 13/11-ish, then the passivity is most likely post flop, whereas if you were, say, 11/5, it would be preflop passivity causing you to lose too many hands.

Either way, I guarantee you have bigger leaks than this one to worry about, as this is for you, at worst, a tiny leak probably confined to a small tendency to play the blinds too passively.