Quote:
Originally Posted by tagWAG
Mpethy or anyone with good stats from BB
im running at -38 bb/100 over a sample of several hundred thousand hands of 6m 200 nl rush, and relatively speaking this seems like my worst stat by position.
Have tried some standard filters eg [did cold call = true excluding TT=, AQ+] and [did 3b = true excluding TT=, AQ+] and the results look not too bad at all. So im wondering if there are some revealing other tests i can try from the BB. For instance:
For good stats from the BB, how much do you lose from the BB:
- versus single raise from UTG
- versus single raise from UTG+ 1
- versus single raise from CO
- versus single raise from D
- versus single raise from SB
Any other filters you could recommend that might be revealing for BB analysis?
I don't track stats for the filters you list. the reason for not doing so is that even in a huge overall sample, you'll be dealing with sample sizes that are so small that they'll easily be subject to influence by variance.
When analyzing a player's blind play, there are really only two filters that are necessary to expose most players' major leaks:
1. Cold Calling.
In HEM, I go to the Holecards report. On the main filters page I deselect all non-blind positions, and under more filters I apply "did cold call = true."
With this basic filter on, I look for trends in the player's winning and losing hands. Common leaks:
a. Sub-optimal performance with broadway hands.
In full ring, it is very common for players to have a losing win rate with broadways, or to be losing with some and winning with others, dragging down the win rate with these hands below what is optimal.
In six-max, it is less common to see an actual losing win rate with broadways, but it is very often the case that the win rate is below what it needs to be.
If I see a problem broadway hand or two, I will go to the holecards HE tab and select AK down through JTo and check the overall win rate. If there are problems here, you have no choice but to do hand history reviews among this group of hands to try to figure out what problems you have playing these hands.
b. Ragged Suited Aces:
Do the same analysis; this is a particularly important group to check in six max.
c. Suited connectors:
Ditto
d. Calling with Small Pocket Pairs (22-66)
What you have to do here is go to the holecards HE tab and select pocket pairs. Then, on the holecards report, you look at two things:
i. Win Rate Analysis.
Look for a pattern. Some players are losing with 22, 33 and 44, but win with 5s and 6s. More commonly, players' win rates within the group are random, determined simply by which hands in the group happened to have been paid off or set over setted most often.
If your win rates with these hands are all similar, or appear random, just analyze the hands as a group.
What is your win rate with the group? Any win rate better than -75bb/100 hands is preferable to folding, and the higher the better, ldo. But you should actually be in profit with these hands, and if you have a big sample with them and aren't winning at a decent rate, you are probably leaking (variance is always possible).
Assuming you have a leak, you should try to narrow down the precise situations that cause you trouble:
ii. Frequency Analysis
Compare your calling frequency with small pockets to your calling frequency with middle pockets. You should see a SUBSTANTIAL drop off in the frequency with which you call with small pockets. If you are losing and you don't see a drop off in calling frequency, that's your leak right there, most likely.
Try to determine which situations are causing you the most trouble. Go back to the main filters page and select position of first raiser is "early" and go back to the more filters tab and add the filter "players seeing flop is exactly___" and make it "2."
Check your results. If there is a problem, look at individual hand histories to make sure that it made sense for you to be calling that person to set mine OOP in a HU pot.
Repeat for MP, CO and Btn.
e. ZOMG, Pot Odds!!!
This is a VERY common leak. Something like this happens: You're in the BB with T6s, EP minraises, two people call, and when it gets to you, you are getting something like 7.5:1 on the BB you have to put in to see the flop. So you call, because, pot odds, ldo, maybe I'll flop trips.
Theoretically, the call is maybe justified. But some players (myself included) don't necessarily have a big enough edge in their game to play marginal hands OOP in a multi-way hand for a profit, and this winds up being a
player specific leak.
If you have the tendency to call in spots like this, the clue you will see in your DB is a lot of random hands show up with low frequencies (just a few calls each) but amounting to a significant percentage of your calls.
The existence of a lot of these one-off calls in and of itself is not a leak. Some players have the edge necessary to make these calls profitably. If you see a lot of one offs with trash hands, you have no choice but to write down all of the starting hands you called with that fit the profile, go back to the holecards HE tab, and input all of them (because of the leak discussed below, you can't just run a filter for all hands other than your standard calling range).
So filter for all these hands, and check your win rate. If it is better than -.75bb/hand, your loose, speculative pot odds calls are justified, and keep on keepin' on. If your win rate is worse than that, one of two explanations is likely true:
i. Your sample size is too small to rely on.
An indication that this is the case will be if your winrate appears kind of absurdly high or absurdly low. This is a marginal spot from which we would hope to extract a small profit, or to suffer a small loss. If you're crushing or getting crushed, it is likely the result of run good/run bad. The closer your win rate is to break even, the more confidence you can have that it is accurate.
ii. Your skill edge is not sufficient to justify these calls.
If you have a decent sample of these calls and your win rate is, say, -1.3bb/hand, it is probably close to accurate, and you should probably take these loose calls out of your game until you have significantly improved your post flop skills.
f. ZOMG! a Fish!
This is another very common leak. basically, what happens here is that you overestimate your skill edge against a fish and assume that you can play trash profitably against them.
I usually just stumble across this leak in doing win rate analysis and hand history reviews.
If I were going to look for it specifically, I would filter for the group of hands that lies just outside your standard flat calling range, and look at the individual hand histories to see if fish are over represented in the sample of hands as the preflop raiser.
If they are, and you are losing with these hands, this is very likely what is going on--you just have a tendency to dip down too deep in calling against them. Tighten up a bit.
2. Three Betting Light.
The single most common 3 betting leak people have at 6 max is 3 betting the wrong hands against the wrong people. This gets them into all sorts of nasty, -EV spots post flop that exacerbates the leak.
Here is how you go about determining whether you have a 3 betting light leak:
a. Do you have a 3 betting leak (from the blinds, for this discussion)?
Go to the position report. then go to filters and add "3 bet preflop = true" Then go to the holecards HE tab, and select all cards, then deselect AA, KK, QQ and AK (both).
Look at your blind win rates. The following should all be true in a big sample:
i. You should have more raises from the BB than the SB.
ii. Your SB WR should be higher than your BB win rate.
iii. Your win rates should average about 1.2bb/hand.
Higher is better, lol, and the further you are below 1.2bb/hand, the bigger your potential leak (obviously variance is always a complete to partial explanation for any win rate in a small sample).
If you have a leak, here is how to figure out whether it is a preflop leak or a post flop leak. As I said earlier, the most common leak is 3 betting the wrong hands against the wrong people. So here is how you look for that one:
b. 3 Betting the Wrong Hand Against the Wrong People:
Basically what we are doing here is looking for your understanding of fold equity.
i. Filter for your pure bluff 3 betting hands.
Go to the holecards report and note all of the trash starting hands that you 3 bet in the sample. You know, the J5o, the 720, the 53s type hands that you 3 bet.
ii. Check your win rate.
If your win rate with these hands is below the benchmark 1.2bb/hand, you may have a leak.
ii. Do a Hand History review of these hands Analyzing Villain stats.
This isn't nearly as tedious as it sounds; it is actually kind of fun. In the hand display window below your stats, click on to highlight the first hand, right click on it, and click "replay all hands"
In the replayer, make sure villain stats are displayed from your HUD and then look at the fold to 3 bet and fold to flop c-bet stats on all of the villains (add them to your HUD if you don't have them on there already--if you don't have them on there already,
their absence is probably your leak!)
What you are looking for here is confirmation that your plan makes sense. Every hand you see where you 3 bet trash against a villain who didn't have a high fold to 3 bet or a high fold to flop c-bet is almost certainly a bad decision. You should see a a parade of players whose stats are high for one or both of these -- either he folds preflop a lot, or he folds postflop a lot, or you made a mistake by bluffing in a spot where you didn't have sufficient fold equity.
iv. Filter for your light value 3 bets.
Depending on your habits, this range is probably stuff like AQ, AJ, KQ, TT, 99 and 88, maybe a few more hands in that range.
iv. Check your win rate.
If it is a problem, you may have a leak.
v. Cue them up in the replayer.
Check the stats of the villains you played the hands against. Are they people who will call the 3 bet with a range that is primarily comprised of hands you're ahead of? if so, good, but if you see a lot of questionable 3 bets here, this is likely the cause.
An interesting and useful exercise (and this one IS tedious, sorry) is to do this:
1. Pick a villain OTB on a steal who you 3 bet for light value.
2. Note his steal % (let's say it is 40%)
3. Note his fold to resteal % (let's say it is 70%).
4. Note that this tells us he continues with 12% of starting hands (30% of 40%).
We can assume that he will 4 bet his premiums most of the time for most people, so we eliminate those from his range. The remainder of those 12% are his calling range.
5. Run it through Poker Stove against each of the hands in your light value 3 betting range.
If none of the foregoing analysis has disclosed a leak (extraordinarily unlikely) then your primary leak in 3 bet pots is almost certainly in your post flop play.
c. Finding Post flop Leaks in 3 bet Pots
The easy place to start here is to go to your position page. If they are not currently displayed, go to your stat selection box and add flop c-bet %, turn c-bet %, flop c-bet success % and turn c-bet success %.
I have to generalize here, because people play differently. But basically the idea here is to check the profitability of your c-bets. If your average c-bet is 60% of the pot, you need a success rate of 40% to break even on the c-bet. So what you will do here is to figure out a guesstimate of what your average c-bet is, and figure out what success rate you need for it to break even. Then you look at your actual success rates to see whether they are at or above what you need them to be.
Assuming your success rates are below where you need them, then this is the
explanation for why your win rate is not where you want it. But it is not the leak in your game.
To find the leak, there is no choice but to do hand history reviews, and look for patterns.
This is already tl;dr, so i won't go into that. But there is no short cut to improving your game; you just have to do the work and study the hands where you made mistakes. Maybe you are c-betting too much at people with low fold to c-bet percentages. Maybe you are value towning yourself when you catch a second best hand. It could be almost anything. If you are brutally honest with yourself, you'll probably already have an idea of what, if any, post flop leaks you have in 3 bet pots.
There is a TON more that I could write; this is maybe 1/3 of the analysis I routinely do for people who are leaking from the blinds.