Am I costing myself money?

luv_the_game · #1 10-23-2003, 06:17 PM

Last week I experienced my first major losing streak in my young poker life (lost $400 in 24 hours) playing $25 and $50 buyin NLHE. Before that had been consistantly a winner (up $1200 in 120 hours of play). I just seemed to be taking bad beat after bad beat. After examining my game and reading posts here I decided that i was not playing aggressively enough when I thought I was ahead. I adjusted and started overbetting the pot by about 5-10% when I figure I am ahead. This radically changed my results. I went on to win back the $400 plus $200 more over the next 24 hours of play.
My only reason for questioning my results is I am winning a lot of pots without a showdown. In a recent session I won 5 out of 8 pots with a showdown and 50 without a showdown. People seen to call the first and maybe the second bet or raise and fold to the third. This strategy has really cut down on suckouts and bad beats, but I am concerned that I may not be maximizing my profits with my good hands.
I like the results, but I don't want play a non-optimal strategy based on short-term restults.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

1800GAMBLER · #2 10-23-2003, 07:46 PM

Either way if they call or fold you aren't going to see much winrate change. If they call they make money costing mistakes but they'll have a chance to either, make it less of a mistake, make it breakeven or make it a winning play on later streets.

What will happen though if you are winning a lot more without a showdown your variance will drop a lot. So you wont have to put up with those swings.

Your results are just short term results. A small change in bet size you wouldn't be able to analyse without a big sample before hand and after.

I think my next paragraph will probably kick up a fuss though due to the tournment thought process people will use.

On a 25th of your stack blind structure i would much rather have them call and on a 50/100th structure i would put rather have them fold, due to the amount of money left after my first bet they have to use to correct their mistake.