I come out a winner, but a small one... help?

[UATrewqaz]

I'm relatively "new" to poker, been playing seriously for about 9 months now. I've read alot of the major "important" books (TTOP, SSHE, WLLHE - jones).

Obviously I started out God awful but over the past 4 months I have won over $1500 playing low limit hold em on Party Poker (.5/1,1/2,2/4). I also fair pretty well in small buy in SNG NL tournies.

Anyway... i've played TONNNNNS of hands to win this money, I mean tons. My BB per 100 hand win rate is pretty sad, but at least enough to make me money, but my question is simple...

I obviously have leaks, alot of small ones, maybe a couple of big ones. What is the best way to identify these? I can never move up in limits as long as I am a bottom feeder pulling in a few bucks off of morons.

What is the decent new player's most frequent leaks?

[CallMeIshmael]

Do you have poker tracker?

[GrekeHaus]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you have poker tracker?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you don't, then get it. Check your agression factors, VP$IP, and preflop raise. These are the most common things to correct.

[mtdoak]

A new players most common mistake is taking marginal hands too far and calling with dominated hands too often. Hands like A10, KJ, QJ, and J10 are TROUBLE. Get poker tracker. Its a Godsend.

[Pokey]

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What is the decent new player's most frequent leaks?

[/ QUOTE ]

Off the top of my head....

1. Choosing tables as though it were a B&M casino. You don't have to go on the list and take the first possible table -- take advantage of your power. Look around, check out four, or five, or eleven tables and see which one(s) are juicy (read: high VPIP). Sit at the good ones, close the bad ones. On a related note, when your table turns sour because the fish swam away and the sharks have settled in, stop posting blinds and move on.
2. No adjusting to the "hit-to-win" style that soft low-limit tables require. Pure bluffs won't get you too far against most players at these tables; you've got to have SOMETHING. That doesn't mean you need three of a kind or better to win; it just means that you can't expect to buy many blinds with balls alone.
3. Chasing. Every day, when I sit down at the tables, I remind myself "chasing is losing." Obviously there are times when you're getting pot odds to call, but people at the low-limit tables have a tendency to think "all I need is an ace and I win this pot," and use that to justify calling all the way down. Check your outs, check your pot odds, and fold when appropriate.
4. Keeping players honest. The best way to keep a player honest is to bust his ass when you've got him dead. When you've got JJ on the button and the UTG limper/caller bets out at the AKQ flop and gets two overcalls, let it go. You can swear at the monitor -- heck, it's encouraged -- but just let it go. So often we feel that we're entitled to win with good hands; the sooner we learn to fold our A /images/graemlins/heart.gif A /images/graemlins/diamond.gif to a single bet when there are three spades on the flop, the healthier our bankroll will be.
5. Slow playing too often. Many books address this, but at low-limit games it's especially important. Five see a flop where you've got AK. The board reads A-9-7: that's top pair, top kicker! Better yet, the mouth-breathing imbecile on your right just bet it. Time to check and get all those sweet, sweet chasers. WRONG. Raise it up to drive out the fishermen with their 98, T7, KT, etc. You don't want people to see the card that kills you. If you win it right here, don't be dismayed -- a guaranteed 5.5 BBs beats the heck out of a 25% chance at the 18ish BBs you get when you check all the way down. Just think how sick you feel when the turn comes a T, 8, or 6 and some fish wakes up. You don't want that to happen.
6. Not paying attention. Do you have a TV on while you play? A radio? A book open? A website (or two, or three) running in the background? Do you occasionally have a lil' ol' drink or two? These distractions make it much harder to give the game the concentration it needs so that you can play your best. I suggest you single-table until you start feeling really comfortable, then gradually introduce other tables when you can handle them without killing your (new and improved) win rate.
7. Finally, as previously mentioned, get Poker Tracker (http://www.pokertracker.com/) . I put it last because, having played heavily for four months, I assume you already have it. If I knew for a fact you didn't have PT yet, I'd make that #1, 2, and 3 on my list. Maybe #4, too. Once you've got PT up and running, make sure that you adjust your play based on the reads -- you can bluff tighties more often, you can fold fish raises more often, you can loosen up against calling stations, you can fold to TP-P pre-flop raises, you can re-raise maniacs to go heads-up with good (but not stellar) hands. You'll get a better idea of when a blind attack will work, when a blind defense is called for, when a raise means "GET OUT," when a river bet can take down the pot, and so forth. It's a bargain at ten times its price.

I hope these hints aren't too low-level for you, but you didn't give us much to go on, so I went with the most obvious mistakes that novices make.

[UATrewqaz]

Yes I've been using PT for about 3 months and my stats have improved drastically over time.

It's only got 13K hands in it and it's really like a tale of two players. The first 7-8K are pretty bad stat wise, the last 6K pretty solid.

I was like 28% VP$IP, my last 7-8K or so I'm at 18% (my overall down to 21%).

Likewise my aggression factor early on was gay, now it's pretty good.

I'm also in the midst of changing my style the last month to a more aggressive one. I just recently finished TTOP and SSHE and the most common thing I was doing wrong in most situations was checking when I should bet. I am winning TONS more pots by getting everyone to fold, however I now get carried away sometimes betting when I shouldn't (the overall result has been a big positive though, thx Mr. Sklansky!).

My 5 most unprofitable hands, in terms of BB are...

98s
AJs (why do I play this? everyone says it's bad and it's #2 on my bad list....)
JTs (another overrated hand I can't not play /images/graemlins/frown.gif )
KTs (I see a pattern)
A3s (?)


Suited connectors I'm at - .05 BB so basically break even... these should be profitable so I'm doing somethign wrong.

Small pairs (2-7) I'm at + .15 again pretty break even.

Medium pairs (8-J) I'm at + .73

Big pairs (Q-A) I'm at + 1.38

Ax suited I'm at - .01 again totally even but should be + .. without AJs it's postive.

What other numbers are good to look at?

My win % at showdown is 51%... which I always thought was crappy but people say that's pretty normal.

[ArturiusX]

Feel free to post your stats then.

[Harv72b]

You can't read very much into individual hand stats after only 13k hands. You especially shouldn't try to read into the win rates with individual hands this soon--all it takes is a couple of a monster bad beats (or overplayed hands) to swing your win rate by a huge margin.

My own sample size is too small (~44k hands over many levels), but FWIW, AJs is 5th on my list in terms of winning percentage and BB/hands (it should be lower, but not a whole lot lower--AJs is a very good hand, if played properly). JTs & KTs are also winners for me thus far, while A3s is a slight loser. 98s I haven't done well, but I remind myself that these are all of my Party hands, going back to my first few sessions at .50/1.

Pokey's post is excellent advice, but I would like to add one more item to his list: playing mediocre hands out of position. This is likely to be one of the major reasons your suited connectors are overall losers--you're limping with them too early in the order, or else with too few limpers ahead of you. Suited connectors like a large pot, preferably 5-handed or more, and they absolutely hate a raised pot. The same goes for AXs.

Some other numbers you should take notice of are:

-Went to Showdown. This should be somewhere in the low- to mid-thirties. Much lower means that you're folding too often, costing yourself some pots. Much higher means that you're paying off too much when the betting patterns should make it fairly obvious that you're beaten. Both of these can be major leaks.

-PFR was mentioned, but I want to stress it. Especially on the loose microlimits games, you should be raising your premium hands to get more bets out of the "any two will do" crowd. If your PFR is below 8, you aren't raising often enough (it should be even higher than that as you move up in limits, and the tables get tighter).

Keep one thing in mind, however--you're winning money overall. That fact alone makes you better than the majority of poker players, even if your win rate isn't as high as some of the ones you see posted on here. You're also asking the right questions on the right forums, and doing the right thing by reading good poker books. Keep heading down that path and your game can only get better.

[TheHip41]

Being a calling station.


Cold calling raises with KTo /images/graemlins/shocked.gif

[Wired Jokers]

[ QUOTE ]
So often we feel that we're entitled to win with good hands; the sooner we learn to fold our A A to a single bet when there are three spades on the flop, the healthier our bankroll will be.


[/ QUOTE ]

Routinely folding A /images/graemlins/diamond.gifA /images/graemlins/heart.gif for one bet on a three spade flop will eventually cost you money in the long run.

[Pokey]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So often we feel that we're entitled to win with good hands; the sooner we learn to fold our A A to a single bet when there are three spades on the flop, the healthier our bankroll will be.


[/ QUOTE ]

Routinely folding A /images/graemlins/diamond.gifA /images/graemlins/heart.gif for one bet on a three spade flop will eventually cost you money in the long run.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree wholeheartedly -- this is a vast oversimplification of the poker world, and you're right that hard-and-fast rules like this are money-losers. HOWEVER....

If you had to make a "general rule" to follow in this situation, which is better:

A. "Always fold A /images/graemlins/diamond.gif A /images/graemlins/heart.gif to a bet on a three-spade board."

or

B. "Always call A /images/graemlins/diamond.gif A /images/graemlins/heart.gif for one bet on a three-spade board."

I like the first rule better. ANY poker rule is going to be subject to a hundred exceptions, caveats, exemptions, notable footnotes, interesting counter-examples, etc. But here, your approach should start with "Fold unless...." rather than "Call unless...." In my own clumsy way I'm simply saying that hands that are "entitled" to win need to fold when they're beaten. At a low-limit table with multi-way pots and passive players (A.K.A. "a low-limit table") pre-flop "winners" turn into "begrudging losers" very often, and you need to be able to lay them down or your bankroll will die on you.