Stats question

[amirpc]

I've started recently using PT and I've finally got a decent chunk of hands (24k) and having a hard time deciphering the stats to tell me exactly which portions of my game are the biggest holes...

This is all party .5/1

VP$IP: 23.34%
VP$IP from SB: 47.99%
Folded SB to Steal: 77.14%
Folded BB to steal: 41.33%
Att to steal Blinds: 29.35%
Won$WSF: 27.83%
Went to showdown: 30.47%
Won $ at showdown: 52.28%
PF Raise %: 11.0%

Also these numbers seem relevant although I'm not quite sure:

Big Bets Won Per 100 Hands: 2.29
Aggression factor: 1.37

I know I'm obviously winning at this limit, but I'm looking to move up to 2/4 and I'm not sure if I have very many of my holes plugged at .5/1. I think 2.29 BB per 100 at .5/1 is pretty low, shouldn't this game be beatable for much more? I was a winning player at 3/6 and a little 5/10 before but the reason I dropped down is because I had little to no stability with my bankroll (always pulling cash out to pay for some random expense)...I decided to force myself to grind one out at the 10 max limits on PP and as a result I have a very solid bankroll. I have my own ideas as to where my weaknesses are (tend to always put .5/1 players on nothing and do things like 3 bet with AJo out of position, sigh...)

Does the 23+% VP$IP indicate I'm paying off too liberally on second best hands? It just seems at this limit I ALWAYS have odds to draw to that random non nut flush, etc, etc...

Also just as an aside, I'm sure 24k hands isn't a huge amount but is this enough to be able to tell anything definitively?

Sorry if these are all dumb questions but I was unable to find good answers searching the forums.

[Gatts]

Hey amir,

I see you around at party, and I try to avoid you /images/graemlins/smile.gif

24K hands is not enough to determine your winrate, so you shouldn't really worry about it.

Your VP$IP is possibly too high, mine tends to stay at around 19. Not a huge deal. You're way too loose from the SB. You should be completing with any two suited, any pocket pair, and any two offsuit cards ten or higher.

Your PFR is fine.

Your agression is too low.

Post some hands your kinda iffy about around here in the forums, we'll be sure to help you out.

[John Paul]

Hello,
I have seen folks post these sorts of stats before and I have a couple of questions (newbie here):

1) What does VP$IP stand for?

2) Why do folks say that 24k is not a good sample size. I am a professional research scientist, and to me 24,000 data points seems like an immense sample - how big could your standard deviation be on a sample that large?

Thanks

[amirpc]

[ QUOTE ]
Hello,
I have seen folks post these sorts of stats before and I have a couple of questions (newbie here):

1) What does VP$IP stand for?

2) Why do folks say that 24k is not a good sample size. I am a professional research scientist, and to me 24,000 data points seems like an immense sample - how big could your standard deviation be on a sample that large?

Thanks

[/ QUOTE ]

Well I'm no expert as I'm obviously asking questions too but

1) Volume $ put in pot % I believe, basically how much of the pot is your money - This is probably only hands shown down? I'm not sure exactly.

2) Well I've had some losing streaks that lasted over a week, and I couldn't give you exact numbers I four table at PP for probably 6-7 hours a night (college student, lots of free time /images/graemlins/wink.gif) on avg....so thats a ton of hands I know when I check my stats on PP at the end of the night its around 1300+ hands. So an 8 day losing streak is already over 10k hands...I have had this probably twice in the last three months. This is pretty much why I was asking about the sample size myself because a losing streak like that can really skew stuff I'd imagine without a TON of hands.

[amirpc]

[ QUOTE ]

Your VP$IP is possibly too high, mine tends to stay at around 19. Not a huge deal. You're way too loose from the SB. You should be completing with any two suited, any pocket pair, and any two offsuit cards ten or higher.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yea I've always kinda worried about my SB completion rate. I tend to justify it by looking at the number of limpers and I think I'm probably getting odds to roll against aces with any two cards at that point. Its probably (read: definately) -EV to complete with things like 58o I should work on not doing that as much in a limped pot.

As for my aggression all I can say is that the problem I have I think is that at this limit (seems like I see this way more when watching/playing lower limits - correct me if I'm wrong) people have a tendancy to do things like call your bet on the flop and lead out on the turn. I've discovered this is almost always a feeler bet with middle pair or a semi-bluff with a picked up draw but I still normally just call down with TPGK at that point. I should definately start raising those guys more I think that would help my aggression tremendously. Perhaps folding my middle pair with an overcard kicker, and missed high cards a little bit more often on the flop would help this too as I'm sure calling with them is horrible for maintaining a certain level of aggression.

[flexus]

1) Volume $ put in pot % I believe, basically how much of the pot is your money - This is probably only hands shown down? I'm not sure exactly.


This is completely wrong. VP$IP stands for "volunteerly put mony in the pot". It is a percentage that tells you how many hands you put money into the pot with before the flop outside the blinds (also when you are not posting, which you should avoid in online games).

[Gatts]

[ QUOTE ]
Hello,
1) What does VP$IP stand for?

It's the percentage of time you voluntarily put money into the pot (BB and SB don't count)


[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]

2) Why do folks say that 24k is not a good sample size. I am a professional research scientist, and to me 24,000 data points seems like an immense sample - how big could your standard deviation be on a sample that large?


[/ QUOTE ]

Limit Texas Hold'em is a game of pushing your small edges as much as possible. As a result, the game is very high variance, especially with the very agressive style 2+2 preaches.

[amirpc]

[ QUOTE ]
1) Volume $ put in pot % I believe, basically how much of the pot is your money - This is probably only hands shown down? I'm not sure exactly.


This is completely wrong. VP$IP stands for "volunteerly put mony in the pot". It is a percentage that tells you how many hands you put money into the pot with before the flop outside the blinds (also when you are not posting, which you should avoid in online games).

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry if this was wrong but I was going off of the "Vol. Put $ In Pot" label on one of the columns in PT little did I know that Vol is the prefix to more words than Volume /images/graemlins/smile.gif Thanks for the information. This actually helps clear a great deal of things up.

[bisonbison]

If you mouse-over any PT column header (like VP$IP or PFR or whatever), the meaning will appear in the status bar at the very bottom of the PT window.

[detruncate]

VP$IP stands for "Voluntarily put $ in pot". In other words, its the times you see the flop when you're required to do more than just check your option.

I'm fairly averse to stats, and they return the feeling in kind. 24,000 hands sounds like a lot, and it's clearly enough to describe certain aspects of your game with a reasonable amount of confidence. However, he only played 1/4 of those to the flop and beyond, which obviously affects things.

Of those 25%-odd hands he plays, he's only played each one a small number of times, and even less frequently if you're taking position into account.

Add in the fact that hand strength is relative in poker, and it's possible to lose money with even your most profitable hands over a considerable number of occurrances, which means that your win rate (among other things) can fluctuate a lot over two similarly large seeming sample sizes.

You probably understand this stuff much better than I do, so I'll just leave it at that.

[SomethingClever]

RE: 24,000 seeming like a lot of data points.

This would be true if you always started with the same hand. But there are 169 possible starting hands. After 24,000 hands, you are likely to have only had the most common ones about 250 times or so. And the significant ones (like AKs, for instance), you've probably had less than 100 times.

So your variance on any given hand is still pretty high.

[amirpc]

Hah, that makes things a lot easier. Can't believe I didn't notice that. Thanks.

[detruncate]

Are you including pf aggression in your total aggression stats? If so, you're probably not as under-aggressive as people are assuming. Un-check the box under 'more details' in the general tab.

[amirpc]

[ QUOTE ]
Are you including pf aggression in your total aggression stats? If so, you're probably not as under-aggressive as people are assuming. Un-check the box under 'more details' in the general tab.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh wow I was! I didn't realize that, my aggression factor without preflop numbers in is 2.02.

Is 2.02 a happy medium or is that still a little on the weak side?

[detruncate]

Post the street by street aggression levels. You're probably on the low side. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't any misunderstanding. 1.3x looks really low when you're expecting a number in the 2s.

[PuertoKid]

Hey amir, I see you in the .5/1 tables frequently. I don't have a lot of hands in PT either, but my numbers are roughly similar to yours:

VP$IP: 21.85%
VP$IP from SB: 40.6%
Folded SB to Steal: 72.41%
Folded BB to Steal: 50%
Att to steal Blinds: 13.64%
Won$WSF: 28.18
Went to Showdown: 33.72%
Won $ At Showdown: 52.84%
PF Raise %: 5.47 (bad bad bad)

Big Bets per 100 Hands: 4.44
Agression: 1.65

[detruncate]

Your VP$IP is on the high side. People play profitably with numbers in that range, but I suspect yours has a lot to do with your SB completion rate. Try narrowing down the range of hands you play in the SB and see where that gets you.

Looks like you're more or less on the right track. Your post flop play will no doubt change if you continue to read and post. As we learn new things, we add them to our game. Over time, these changes are reflected in our stats. Your aggression will increase naturally as you hone your game.

Keep at it. A win rate of 2+ is nothing to turn your nose up at. Being a winning player over time is a lot harder than people make it sound. Don't worry about where you are in relation to others. Your bb/100 is probably as inaccurate as theirs is... and what does it matter in any case? You're presumably going to keep working to improve regardless.

Just focus on making good decisions. Everything else will follow.

Congratulations on your success to this point.

[Wahoo91]

Is 2.02 a happy medium or is that still a little on the weak side?

<font color="blue"> Very </font> weak! My comparative aggression is over 3.5.

Almost 4.00 on flop and turn and around 3 on river.

[btspider]

i'd say you are overaggressive for .50/1.00 before saying he's very weak.

i had a 2.3 aggression without PF and 1.56 with PF at that level.

[Wahoo91]

Seeing as my BB/100 is 4.5 at this level (since SSH) I would try high aggression and see what happens over a significant number of hands.

I used to have very similar aggression and win rate of the OP, but reading SSH convinced me of the value of very high aggression. My win rate has gone through the roof ever since.

[btspider]

i had a healthy 6.1 BB/100 winrate, but i doubt either of us have enough hands to conclude anything. aggression is great, but at .50/1.00 you are drawing to two pair, gutshots, flushes and OESD's on the turn often enough that you do call a fair amount.

[Wahoo91]

bt-
Very true on the sample sizes...

I find that I usually raise my strong draws on the flop, and then it gets checked to me on all other streets, keeping my agression very high.

Maybe I should flat call those flops to get the overcalls your win rate may suggest I am missing.

[btspider]

my winrate is pretty meaningless. i pump strong draws as much as anyone. i just mean that at .50/1.00 you have weak draws that are worth playing alot.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
2) Why do folks say that 24k is not a good sample size. I am a professional research scientist, and to me 24,000 data points seems like an immense sample - how big could your standard deviation be on a sample that large?


[/ QUOTE ]

Two answers.

As Amirpc notes, some people go through 1,000 hands a day or more, so 24,000 can be well under a month's time. Put in that perspective, 24,000 turns into an iffy number regarding your long-term win rate. It's still good for many other things. Some things, like your PFR and VPIP, can come up in the stats fairly quickly and reliably. Win rate cannot.

The other reason is that disproportion in the distribution of hands needs a long time to iron out, as do unusual results when you do get certain hands. 24k in hands is functionally smaller than it seems.

Let me illustrate with some concrete examples from one of my own databases.

A great deal of your money in poker is made just off of AA, KK, QQ, and JJ. Yet even in tens of thousands of hands, you will not wind up getting, say, AA all that many times.

In 52,870 hands, I've gotten AA only 248 times, 245 KK, 212 QQ, and 239 JJ.

Look how few times I got QQ compared to AA, KK, and JJ. That disproportion affects my profitability and stats quite a bit at 53k, and would affect them even more so at 24. These are the money hands; having too many for your sample size or too few really changes up your numbers.

I had one 10k sample where KK was a loser. I've had stretches not quite as long where AA was a loser. Ouch!

And then, there's how you do on those hands. Getting outdrawn on the river happens to all of us, and happens plenty. But sizing my 248 times getting AA down to the level of 24k hands, let's say I could expect a generous 120 times getting them at 24k. If I averaged out to $10 profit every time I got AA, I would have made 120 x 10 = 1,200 off AA.

But what if I had even a very tiny swing, losing just 10% more of those 120 AA's? Say, instead of winning $10 each time, I lost $5 just 10% of the time? Now I've got 108 AA x $10 = 1080, along with (12 x -5) = -60, for a total of 1020 won. My average win has now plummeted 15% to $8.5 and I'm down $180 in cash from where I would have been. That's quite a drop! What if my losses per hand weren't so trivial on those hands? Or if I had even more losing hands than a tiny 10% negative swing would represent?

24,000 junk hands don't matter too much, but what happens with 120 AA matters a lot. That's the sample size you care about. You may find a lot of people with databases whose entire profit can come down to an amount of money equal to what they've won on their aces alone, or darn close to it.

[Blarg]

Your aggression number may be the highest I've ever seen anyone post here, if not THE highest. I doubt many players, winning or losing, come anywhere near your figures.

[Emperor]

Disclaimer I am no expert. I have an excel spreadsheet that crunches my numbers for me.

What I can tell you:

24K hands is a small sample considering... Your short term variance is huge, add multitabling and it is Huge^4th

Your SD is usually around 9 to 12 BB per hour at one live table.. short term that goes up with multitabling but QUICKLY comes down as you reach "the long term" a lot faster.

So even if you are making 4BB/100 hands then you can still break a 300BB bankroll easily multitabling. I've done it.

whats all this mean? Variance is INSANE if your SD is 9-12 BB/hour.

So long term stats are necessary to have any confidence of any particular stat (TG Excel can calculate confidence levels)

Do a search or read up on confidence levels and you will see you need about 40K hands to start bringing those confidence levels to a point that they aren't outside of your SD..

It like the election polls... They say they are accurate within 3% or 4%, but statistically they are only accurate to within 33% at best... :P

[detruncate]

My winrate varies a hell of a lot. I have 10,000 hand samples where it's high, and 10,000 hand samples where it's negative. Not long ago, I had 2 100 BB drops within 10,000 hands. Does this mean I suck? Could be. Did I rule when I was putting up better numbers? I doubt it.

The upshot is that I no longer pay much attention to my winrate. It's finally sunk in during the past few weeks that the whole thing is virtually meaningless. I'm constantly trying to improve. I am where I am, bankroll wise. There's nothing more to it.

[xxSHARKYxx]

Strong numbers IMO. VPIP (Vol. Put Dough In Pot) i'm 21.8%.
Some guys like 19-20 but no biggie.

Good aggression and excellent pre flop raisin! (att. to steal you 29 me 18) like your number more than mine.

Possible Leaks - W$WSF you 27% (won $ when see flop) really low, i'm 36% and I think this is pretty good. May be giving up on some winners that you can take at showdown w/ace high or scare lags off by bettin turn/riv aggressively. I remember the no foldem holdem game you are playin so be careful.

Also think you may play your big blind to much (to a steal)
I think most of the pros on this site are around 50-58%.

I think you are in the wrong game. Move up to at least 2/4. You will profit at 2/4 or 3/6 with these numbers IMO. (proper BR, 250 BB)

I play 2/4 to 5/10 mostly 6 max

onlineshark

[Wahoo91]

I could be overagressive, I demand to be leading each hand I participate in. Very rarely do I ever call a bet. I either bet, raise, reraise, or fold post-flop (except on the river for very large pots like Ed talks about I will call to go to SD even if I *think* I am beat). This seems to be working for me, but this is a smaller sample size (only a couple thousand hands since SSH where I have been focusing on that part of my game).

My combined aggression is significantly lower (pre- and post- SSH).

I probably should tone it down a bit to become a bit more "normal". That level of aggression is actaully a bit of an experiment for me, and it has been working out very well so far.

BTW, my VPIP is about 18 and PFR is about 7. But once I like a hand post flop I usually "burn rubber" or get out.