Just hang in there you'll be ok, just need to get the volume in. Just guesing but you probably ran good at the lower levels and not so much right now. Running good is a big part of moving up limits IMO.

yes it is normal that your red line is in minus. This is nothing to worry about. In fact, it will likely move into positive once you reduce your losses in the blinds.

to check the profitability of your isolation bets: click on filters. In main filters, under preflop action facing player, deselect everything except one limper. then click on the more filters tab, click on pfr = true. add this filter, save and close. go to the reports tab and go to the position page.

This shows you the overall profitability of our iso strat v one limper by position. If you have a big sample (several hundred hands per position), you can assume that your basic strat is profitable if you are green in all positions. the next step is to click on filters, go to more filters, scroll down to flop filters, and select saw flop = true. add this filter, save and close. back on your position page, you are now analyzing your post flop play in pots where you isolated and got called.

Once you are done with that, go back to main filters, deselect one limper, and select 2+ limpers. Go back to more filters and delete saw flop = true. save and close. analyze your overall strategy by position. Then go back into more filters and add back in saw flop = true to check your postflop play.

When you are looking at one limper and pfr = true, you should see a wr of at least 300bb/100 hands. You are probably making mistakes if you have a big sample of hands and you are below this number.

when you add saw flop = true, your wr should go up to about 400bb/100. If not, you probably are making mistakes.

I looked over the stats you posted. with two exceptions, they are very solid. The leaks I see from your stats are:

you are losing way too much money in the blinds. there are a few usual causes of this. The one that is most likely for you is that you are not winning enough of the BB hands where you get a free look at the flop. We like to try to win more than our share of these pots, and I doubt that you are. My guess is that if you add W$WSF to your position page, then filter vpip = false, saw flop = true, that you will see a W$WSF around 24% If so, that is a significant leak, and you should be aiming to increase this number to around 31%.

another possible leak you have in the blinds is cold calling out of the blinds. again from the position page, go to more filters and add filter did cold call = true. Ideally, this number should be positive. Realistically, though yours is likely to be between -50bb/100 and break even. The further you are from a positive number here, the bigger the leak. You should also run this filter for the SB.

The last thing I saw is that your overall W$WSF is on the low side, indicating that you may be a little weak tight. If you cross reference this data with the fact that in 3 or 4 positions you have a W$SD below 50%, it indicates that you are calling to showdown too much, rather than betting or folding, and the net result is that you are losing too many pots. Most of these are probably smallish pots, as you were below 50% in both the blinds. So under more filters, you should filter for "river call = true and river check/call = true" and carefully study the marginal hands you lost at showdown with, with an eye toward betting or folding on earlier streets.

Lastly, you were under 50% W$SD on the button. This is a big leak, and, again, it indicates that you are taking far too many low quality hands to showdown. these are probably your steals where the villain value bets the river. To confirm this, go to main filters, deselect everything other than "unopened" then go to more filters, add pfr = true and saw flop = true--these are your steals where the villain defended. You will probably have a negative win rate here, indicating that you are calling down too lightly with your steals. review these hands carefully looking for hands you should have folded instead of calling. If this number is positive, meaning that you are playing your steals profitably, then the next most likely thing is that you are losing money cold calling IP. If it is neither of these things, pm me and I will take a look for you.

I'm new to HEM and it's bazillion stats and the graph (which is awesome to have!).

I have two questions:

1. Out of the typical stats (VIP, CBet, %win showdown), what are a few of the other, very important stats to focus on when analyzing my game?

2. How important or useful as the "all-in EV" graph been for you? I'm still trying to figure out what it exactly means (although I'm probably making it more complex than it is).

vpip/pfr/af/afreq/3bet/f3bet/cbet/ats/cc/w$wsf/wtsd/w$sd for starters

all in EV is useful to the extent that you are using HEM to find leaks in your game. You should always display it while you are leak finding to control for variance to the extent that you can. More generally, it is nice to know when you are running hot or cold, so you don't accidentally make adjustments to your game that are not warranted, or move up stakes thinking you are a winner when really you just ran hot.

Hi guys, basically I have had an insane month so far. Last month I was up 60 buyins at nl100, then went on a 20 buyin downswing. So far this month I have been breaking even, and am starting to question my game. Some of my problems seems to have started when I began 20+ tabling on my laptop and cascading, and I have recently reduced the number of tables back to 16. I am having very volatile sessions have just dropped 1.2k in 5 sessions. Can you please take a look at my graphs and give me some advice, much appreciated.

Overall stats over last 77k hands :



Here is the overall money I have won this month, I am worried about the red line, I understand it is expected to be negative. But I am worried that it is too low.


Below are my positional stats. I am guessing that I need to make more money in the blinds?


Here the details from tracker, for when I am in the blinds.



I have also noticed that I am losing a lot of tiny pots. When I apply the filter in tracker to show only hands that were in pots of 10-20bb, I got the following:



Any help would be appreciated.

Z:

actually, your blind loss rates look ok. They are right on the border of what I tell people is a leak. You could bump your wr significantly without improving your blind play (although there is plenty of room for improvement).

The real problem with your WR atm is that you are not making nearly enough money in the last four positions. correlate your loss rates in those small pots in the CO and OTB with your CO and BTN wrs and W$SD and WTSD, and you will begin to see at least one of the problems. In fact, forget that and just look at your W$WSF from the CO and the BTN. You are SUPER weak tight in those spots.

Run the filters I described a few posts up for looking at your steals that see a flop, and your cold calls in late position. You have to be leaking in at least on of them, maybe both. You may as well check your isolation raises, too. You'll probably be positive, but make sure you are at least at 300bb.

TBH, it looks to me like your preflop aggression has outrun your postflop skill. So you are stealing a wide range in the CO and BTN 33/27, but when you get called, you are sort of lost, and either losing money or not winning enough (I'd be amazed if you are positive). You are only taking down about 33% of those pots; you need to be winning more of them--ideally, you should be up around 45%.

The other thing that bugs me about your stats is that your cold calling range is pretty static. You should be cold calling OTB at a higher % than you are cold calling elsewhere--start looking at using your position to get you into good, high implied odds spots with speculative hands.

I could point out a few more things, but, really, I just want you to focus on your LP play for now--those last 4 positions. Focus on trying to win more of those pots--maybe you need to c-bet more, maybe you need to add in a few call/bluffs, maybe you need to add in a few showdowns. From the stats you have posted, I can't really tell (pretty sure you need to get more showdowns OTB). You're going to have to do a detailed "session review" type review of your button and cut off play.

pm me if you want more help.

@ red eye troll:

forgot to say yesterday that all in EV is very simple: it shows the expected value of the hands you played where you got all in with at least one card to come. so, for ex, if you get all in for $100 as an 85% favorite and hold, you profit $100 (excl rake) but your EV was only $85, so your sd and total winnings go up by $100, but your EV line goes up by $85.

If your EV bb/100 is higher than your total winnings, you are "running bad," and if your total winnings are higher than your EV, you are running good.

Hi thanks for the reply. Basically I am currently mass tabling, I was playing mainly 20+ tables and now have dropped down to 16. What you say does make sense to me, as I noticed during my sessions that I would be folding/losing a lot of small pots and winning the occasional big pot from a fish. Plus I have been getting coolered a lot recently, and have not coolered many regs back relative to what I have received.
Generally on the button/cutoff I tend to raise the standard broadway cards/any pairr and any suited connector. I will then generally cbet approx 65-70% of the time, and if a scare card comes on the turn I will double barrel. But generally if a non-scare card comes, or a draw completes I tend to shut down. The reason why I do this is because a lot of times I would double barrel..I would get check raised on the turn and be forced to fold. Part of me felt that the sheer volume of these turn check raises when I double barreled did not make sense, but my only option was to shove the turn or fold. Generally at nl100 FR I have noticed that hero calling is very bad vs most opponents unless I have specific notes on a certain player saying they like to float etc.
Currently I am in two minds as to what to do, I understand board texture is very important, but I have had very bad experiences when mass tabling and firing double and tripple barrels. A lot of my losses 2 months ago would come from 3barrel bluffs/hero calls. Now it seems my losses are coming from not bluffing enough, and giving up too easily; or alternatively bluffing too much at the wrong boards, calling till the river with 1 pair and folding. I do not want to end up like some of the mega weak tight regs: Ariolis/Chiren/Wojtas...who raise and check fold if they miss.

mpethybridge:

Thank you for explaining the obvious. I'll take running bad if this graph continues...

Hi, is there any point posting stats for only ~13k hands due to the small sample size?
I'm just wondering if it will show any obvious leaks in my game at this stage.
Many thanks.

i think that is enough to look for most leaks, but of course anything winrate related will be pretty much worthless.

If there is anything I left out let me know

So this is where you are hiding out

I seem to be a little below the 300bb mark in my iso raises.

What would be a good place to start looking why that is?

something I did with Kurt when we did his database review: filter for your isolation plays and then start taking out good hands--watch your win rate. A hand that when you remove it causes your WR to go up is a hand you have been playing unprofitably; if your WR goes down it was a profitable hand. Play with this for 20 minutes or so and you will have found the entire class of hands you are isolating with unprofitably. Then, because you will have a small sample, you will have to apply some common sense--am I iso-ing too loose, or have I just got a collection of hands here where I lost? So you look at things like--if none of your ace rag isolations made you money, probably there is something about the way you are going about it is a leak. But if you see K9 is profitable and KT is unprofitable, you chalk that up to variance, most likely. get the idea?

I used to play and win at 200nl full ring on Tilt, 9-12 tabling. I stopped and moved on to 6max and HU a while ago, but I needed a bunch of stars points before the year so I started 24 tabling 50 and 100nl full ring there.

I'm down a bit after a large sample and I think it's mostly from doubling the number tables I play and going from a 14/12 style to a 10/8. Also I think I have run pretty badly, but everyone always things that so who knows.

Anyway, I'd like to be able to 24 table if the need arises so any help with these stats would be appreciated.





I know I'm losing too much in the blinds, and obviously not winning enough in the CO and BTN. I did some filtering to try to figure out the issues and this is what I found.

--------------------------------------------------
Isolation from late position, 1 limper, PFR = true:
CO: -$35, +27.15 bb/100
BTN: +$208, +101.5 bb/100

Iso from LP & got called, 1 limper, PFR = true, Saw Flop = true:
CO: -$69.7, 3.79bb/100
BTN: +$138, +99bb/100

Iso multiple limpers, 2+ limpers, PFR = true:
CO: +$42.25, +367 bb/100
BTN: +$83.55, +183bb/100

Iso multiple limpers & get 1 or more callers, 2+ limpers, PFR = true, Saw flop = True:
CO: +$39, +414 bb/100
BTN: +56, +171 bb/100

Calling from LP, Did Cold Call = True:
SB: -$265, -384 bb/100
BB: +$166, +63 bb/100
CO: +$17.35, -26.04 bb/100
BTN: -$138, -8.22 bb/100

Stealing, Unopened, PFR = True
CO: +$502, +71 bb/100
BTN: +$964, + 113 bb/100

Stealing & see flop, Unopened, PFR = True, Saw Flop = True
CO: +$16, +12 bb/100
BTN: +$490, +145bb/100
----------------------------------------------

So yeah thats a lot of numbers.

I saw a few things that might be a problem for you:

1. Your ATS is too low at 21%. You didn't have ATS listed on your position page, so I can't break it down by position, but you are probably missing stealing opportunities on both the button and the cut off. There is no magic number for what ATS should see, but most nitty tags are in the 27% range, and most tags are in the 30+ range. This is a definite leak for you.

2. Your fold to flop c-bet is sort of high. This is, at worst, a small leak, but you may want to look at your win rates with small and mid pocket pairs in cold called pots to see whether there is room for improvement there. This is a likely leak for you; I am reasonably certain you are leaking somewhere in cold called pots; if it is not small pocket pairs, it is probably some other class of hands, which usually means suited aces/connectors/one gappers.

3. Your W$SD is too low for your WTSD. This is especially true OTB, which is dragging down your button win rate. I suspect that you are getting too many second best hands to showdown, by a combination of calling river bets, bluffing rivers, blowing people out of pots before the river or going for thin value a tiny bit too often. This is a very infrequent leak--your stats indicate that you are making perhaps two to four extra mistakes per 100 hands you see the flop with. However, these pots tend to range from 30bb to 60bb pots, so even two "extra" mistakes can have a noticeable effect on your WR. This is a possible leak; I am only pretty sure that it is a leak for you. Unfortunately, I am unable from the stats you posted to identify it with any more specificity or certainty.

The iso numbers you posted looked ok from the cut off, but low OTB. You need to run some filters to find out if there is a discrete part of your iso range that is unprofitable for you, or whether your losses are scattered randomly across your range. I discussed doing this one or two posts up.

None of these possible leaks, if they exist, is a major contributor to your troubles. It's the blinds for you to an overwhelming extent. Working on these leaks while you are hemorrhaging money from the blinds is pretty pointless.

OK thanks a lot. Any particular recommendations for things that I can check out wrt blind play? More filters to isolate my leaks or something like that?

Thank again

Got it, thx!

Yeah, narrowing down your leaks is easy. Figuring out how to play differently to plug them can be really hard (I haven't figured it out yet; my loss rates are comparable to yours).

To identify the specific leaks from the BB, go to the position report page and:

1. Filter for PFR= true. You're almost certainly making $$ in this spot, we are just quickly ruling it out. Once you see a green number here, delete this filter and

2. Filter cold call = true. This is a tough spot. Any negative win rate better than -100bb/100 is technically preferable to folding. However, the goal when we vpip from the blinds has got to be to win enough to subsidize the 88% or whatever of the time that we fold. So we would like to see a green number here. If your win rate is less than, say, 16bb/100 hands, there are probably some unprofitable hands in your calling range. Identify them. Go to filters, click on hole cards, and remove one starting hand. Observe the effect on your win rate. If it goes up you were losing $$ with that hand; if it goes down you were winning with that hand. Rinse and repeat. Compile a list of your profitable and unprofitable hands. If there are candidates to be 3 bet in your unprofitable range, consider adopting a 3 bet or fold strategy with those hands. Certain hands can be grouped together; indeed, they should be. So if you cold call out of the blinds with suited connectors, look at them all together. Your sample is going to be too small for any individual hand to be close to being variance free, so just focus on the whether the class of hands is profitable or unprofitable. If an unexpected hand shows up in the unprofitable category, such as AQ or KQ, you HAVE to go through the hand histories to determine the cause of the low or negative win rate. Is there a legitimate cooler or suck out that is changing the win rate? If so, factor this into your decision on whether to move this hand out of your cold calling range. Bear in mind that, for the purposes of cold calling from the blinds, any hand that you can play better than -100bb/100 hands is a profitable hand. Once you are done compiling your lists of profitable and unprofitable hands, and deciding how you are going to play the hands going forward, delete all these filters (make sure you go back and select all starting hands) and then:

3. Go to filters/more filters/vpip=false/saw flop = true. This is a filter for you to examine your free looks from the BB in limped pots. You will probably see a negative loss rate in the neighborhood of -65bb/100 hands, a W$WSF of about 23%. This is going to be a fair-sized leak, simply because there are so many of these hands, and you are losing somewhere in the neighborhood of $0.65 per hand. This is the hardest leak to plug from the blinds. You have to figure out a way to increase your winnings in these spots. usually this means winning more of them. Basically, you will need to focus on putting limpers on accurate ranges and then fighting for pots with bottom or middle pair when your bottom or middle pair matches up well against the limpers' ranges. Auto-folding these hands on the flop is a big leak.

4. Examine the profitability of your 3 betting: go to more filters/did 3 bet = true and look at the results. It will be a green number; we are looking at whether it is green enough. This varies based on the percentage you 3 bet; the higher the frequency of your 3 bets, the lower WR you can tolerate (and expect, since you are 3 betting light more often). If your 3 bet % is in the neighborhood of 2.6%, in other words, a primarily value 3 betting range, then you should expect a fairly high WR in the vicinity of 400bb/100 hands. If your WR is lower than this, you ought to seriously consider going through the individual hand histories to attempt to determine what the problem is.

To identify your leaks in the small blinds:

1. Repeat step one above.

2. Repeat step two above.

3. Filter for the hands you completed from the small blind. there are a few ways to accomplish this, such as main filters/action facing player deselect all raises/ vpip = true. This will get you hands where you completed in a limped pot, regardless of whether the BB then raises. These are the hands you want to look at. Here again, technically, any loss rate better than 50bb/100 means that you are doing better than folding; however, we need to extract more of a profit from this situation than simply shaving a few bbs/100 from our loss rate. You can then go through the same process as you went through twice before, identifying the hands and classes of hands that are profitable for you to complete. If you find hands that are unexpectedly unprofitable, such as KTs or KJs, consider whether you would be doing better to raise those hands rather than simply completing with them.

4. repeat step 4 above. Your WR in the SB should be greater than your BB wr, because you should be 3 betting a slightly tighter range.

Could someone please explain these graphs to me?

I know I am losing right now, but what is that difference that in the lines that starts around December 2009?

Here are the three months all together, Oct Nov Dec 2009



And here is the last month by itself, Dec 2009




I plan to post stats too, but thought I would start with this first.

This is to clarify the question in the pots that I wrote above. Basically, I do not know which of the lines is showdown winnings, and which is not. Also, I am not sure if the change that I see in those lines is good or bad (although I am not losing as fast so I guess overall it is good).

When I select showdown winnings for the graph, the blue line followed the winnings line for a long time (further back than what I showd in the graphs). But then around late november or early december, that changed. The blue line lifted above the winnings line. Also, the red line (I think it is red b/c am color-blind so not sure) which had always stayed high, started to drop.

I believe this represents a difference in how I am playing, but do not completely follow what that difference is. Also, one of the two lines is showdown winnings, and the other is non-showdown winnings (I guess). But I do not know which is which, so I do not know if I am winning from getting to showdown more or from bluffing more.

Also, is it possible to got BOTH of the lines to go up, and not just one of them like I did?

What is a standard / good fold to 4bet % for NL200 fr ??

graph

stats

position


is is normal to have a positive red line playing fr? is the 3bet to high?
im not sure what questions i should even be asking because ive never analyzed my stats so any opinions are much appreciated

slatur

Popped in to just say thanks fot mpethybridge for all these tips! very helpful.

Still not entirely sure how im leaking so much from the BB but these have covered some other areas quite well.

Hi all:

Been on a see saw ride throughout my NL100 FR "career" at Stars, which only spans ~100k hands, and coming out a small winner so far.

Nevertheless I feel like I've improved slightly since my donkish days, yet I still have alot to learn in order to become a very consistent winner at NL100 FR.

Just found this thread and still absorbing the posts from mpethybridge; thought I would get some comments on my stats too.

Overall:


Overall (Basics):


Overall (Flop Hand Strength):


Overall (Position):


Overall Graph:





My latest downswing has been ~10 buyins, which isn't considered a catastrophe from what I have been reading on this forum, but I felt like I was doing something wrong, so I went through those sessions and found a few leaks., but hopefully you guys here can find more.

Overall:


Basics:


Flop Hand Strength:


Position:


Graph:



Hopefully I can fix a few more leaks.. thanks in advance!