WSD Percentage

[waynethetrain]

Everyone here seems to believe that a WSD% in the 50%-58% is ideal. My own is at the lower end of that range, but I've been working on getting it a little higher because I thought I might have been giving up a few bets here or there with top pair when I had been raised on the turn.

Here's the question.

In most cases, the pot odds are vastly higher than even money on a river call. Granted that sometimes we know we have the nuts and that portion of the whole sample contributes heavily to the 50+% net. So other than the nuts or other super strong hands, we are lower than 50%. However, is is possible that we are all playing a little too tightly on the river and giving up some value.

I had a couple of hands today that I thought were very marginal to call getting close to 10-1 and was dumbfounded that I had the best hand. I am wondering if anyone has tried loosening up on the river just a little bit to see if it adds value.

[Shillx]

I have a new theory about this topic: WTSD and W$SD don't have as much to do with each other as you think.

Let's say that you played in a game where everytime you won, you took it down pre-showdown. In this case, your WTSD and W$SD would both be zero. So my feeling about this is that some people probably play to strong with their good hands and force everyone to fold before a showdown. When they do goto showdown, they end up having average hands that sometimes win and sometimes lose. I remember playing a hand the other day where I had AK against his QQ. The flop came K62 and the action went Villian bets-Hero calls on both 3rd and 4th (I raised his river bet). Had I raised him on the flop, he probably would have folded and my hand with a 90% chance of winning never would have gone to the end.

So the best way to increase your W$AD is to take good hands to showdown. If you get everyone to fold on the flop everytime you flop TPTK, your W$SD will suffer. This is something that I feel like people are overlooking when they talk about stats. People equate "calling down to much" with "a low won $ stat". What you should really be asking yourself are these questions:

a) How many hands have I played were checked down? You will lose a lot of these hands because everytime you have something good you won't be checking.

b) Am I playing properly in way ahead/behind situations? By this I mean let's say that you have a frequent bluffer betting into you on the turn. By raising him now you will get him to fold and you won't showdown your hand that has a 100% chance of winning. By calling him all the way, you increase your W$SD.

c) Am I doing too much bluffing on the end when I know I will be called? Likewise am I trying to snap off too many bluffs?

And so on and so forth...

Brad

[waynethetrain]

You made a lot of good points about how you play the hand influencing those stats. I'm going to have to think about them some more. Your game level is way ahead of mine. I'm still working on more basic problems. /images/graemlins/blush.gif

I feel fairly certain that I've had one big leak in my game that I need to work on.

1. I have a tough time releasing TPTK. I think I call down even when raised on the turn way too often. That has been hurting my WSD% and I guess my results. This is a strange problem because I think my other problem is that I don't bet the river for value enough. Funny right, I am very willing to call down when I'm probably beat and but don't bet often enough when I'm probably ahead. /images/graemlins/confused.gif

At the same time, in many hands where there wasn't much aggression after the flop, I win the pot with just a decent hand way more often than I would have estimated. So I wonder how many winners and how much money I've left on the table because I folded.

Your point in the AK vs QQ hand is certainly a good one in how various styles can impact those stats. I am one those guys that likes to end a hand as quickly as possible. I can't stand giving up a hand on the river (maybe because I'm running so badly right now and it's happening so often). So if I can shake a guy off the hand, I just do it. I have to have the nuts to allow it to go to the river unless I am certain I have my opponent right where I want him. That style would certainly lower my WSD%.

In any event, I think it's well worth thinking about how some of these stat can be the result of style and how it's possible to leave bets on the table even though your stats seem to be "within the appropriate range".