Running in circles

I need advice/help.

I am a 2/4 limit player, playing mostly on Party skins. I use PokerTracker using standard (BisonBison) autorate rules, and have found myself over 11000 hands to be a TA-A player. I feel like I have a good command of the game.

However this feeling is obviously not substantiated by my win/loss as I have actually LOST about $200 over this amount of time.

I am confused about what could be wrong with my play. Again, I assume that as a TA-A I am must be better than most players out there, considering all the fish and loose players on the site.

Anyone have advice on what I should be looking for to explain this? Or is it a product of no-fold'em holdem tables?

[DawnToDusk]

I use PokerOffice (I need to get PT /images/graemlins/frown.gif ), but its easy to look at your results (IE statistics, graphs, all that good stuff that comes with PT) and say "I think I play a good game, but my results say differently." Its easy to get discouraged when you run bad, but don't let that be the case. Look at your game as a whole. If you are making +EV moves in every situation, you will stand to be a long term winner. In one of the articles of this months online magazine it talks about this.

If you are a proven winner (you don't have enough hands to show that you are a proven winner), you shouldn't worry about your results. If you proven to win in the long run and stand to make 2BB/100 hands and play 500 hands of $5/$10 and left that table -$200, what did you make for that one game? Even though you lost, you theoretically made $100. This is because you are a proven winner over the long run.

Now I wouldn't get down and low right now. You haven't played a lot of hands per say to say you are a proven winner. What I would do is do some self-evaluation. I would look at your speculative hands closely and see how much you are making with those. I thought I was playing a good sound game but couldnt figure out why I was down some over a large base of hands (11k isnt nothing, but I thought I was doing good over 7k hands) and found out that I had a leak in these hands.

I hope this helped a lil.

[ErrantNight]

sample size

[michaelp]

How much time do you spend analysing your play v's letting poker tracker do it for you?

Its not your current position that important but how you got there!

Honestly critic your own game for yourself after each session. I don't reckon PokerTracker can be doing much more then extrapolating your personal stats into common labels. Perhaps I am wrong. This won't account for your opponents and therefore isn't situational.

Could very well be sample size. I am a decent winner at 1/2 over like 40K hands, but am just a little over breakeven my first 10K hands at 2/4. I have to tell myself it's sample size, I think you should to /images/graemlins/grin.gif. Though never hurts to work on your game. Go examine all your hands, read on the SS board here and compare the way you play to the way others suggest. We all have leaks in our game.

[Argus]

Sample size is definitely a possible reason for your results. But, tight and aggressive preflop is not enough (http://archiveserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=&Number=1816735&page=0&vie w=collapsed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1). You should evaluate your play by posting hands, posting replies to hands and seeing if the majority agree with you (or the smart minority), and looking for leaks in PokerTracker. Look for medium strength hands that should be winners but aren't, check that you aren't coldcalling too much, that you are winning enough when you go to showdown, etc.

[MyTurn2Raise]

My database shows lots of these players (moneybags who lose). Maybe not lots, but more than I would expect.

Mostly, it's due to variance. I've had level 10000 hand stretches.

However, when I investigate some playes, it's poor postflop play. The autorate rules are general. They cannot analyze every hand. I see some moneybags playing horrible post flop, overusing a 3-bet to isolate pre-flop raisers, and cold-calling preflop too often with good (not great) hands that make second best holdings.

[MyTurn2Raise]

my phrasing does suck LOL

[Harv72b]

It's possible for you to just run bad over 11k hands. But given that these 11k hands are apparently coming near the beginning of your poker career, it's more likely to be postflop mistakes.

You don't have a big enough sample size to really pin them down, but take a look at your Went to Showdown and Won $ at Showdown numbers. Those two stats are a great way to check and see if you're paying off too often with second-best hands (or folding too often before showdown). Then you can go back through the hand histories & try to find cases where you could have played better postflop (and post hands you aren't sure about on here).

Generally speaking, you should be going to showdown somewhere around 30-33% of the time, and winning at showdown between 51-55%.

[SmileyEH]

[ QUOTE ]
sample size

[/ QUOTE ]

If this is his first 11k hands, that is (with about 90% certainty) not the right answer.

-SmileyEH