View Single Post
  #9  
Old 08-10-2005, 10:13 PM
Harv72b Harv72b is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Baltimore, MD
Posts: 1,347
Default Re: Crapping the bed through 4,657 hands at .5/1...

Small sample size blah blah blah.

Your stats scream "weak/tight" to me; you're not playing enough hands overall, you're not completing enough from the SB, you're not raising enough preflop, and you're folding too often after the flop. While we're at it, you aren't defending your blinds often enough and you're not trying to steal the blinds enough either.

I think the point made above about not getting paid off on your big hands is somewhat overstated, considering the limit you're playing on; I don't give the average .50/1 player credit for paying enough attention to notice that you're only playing premium hands. This will be a problem if you try to take your current style of play up to higher limits, though.

A very quick & easy fix to your VPIP would be to add the following hands:

-Play any pocket pair from any position if the pot is not yet raised. On .50/1 this should be profitable because your opponents are not going to be raising preflop often enough, and even when someone does raise you'll get enough coldcallers to give you implied odds on your set. And when you do flop your set, you'll get paid off by multiple opponents quite often.
-Add suited connectors 76s & above when 3 or more players have limped in ahead of you and there is not a raise. Again, it's less likely the pot will be raised behind you than on higher limits, and more likely that you'll get paid off by worse hands when you hit a flush or straight (or two pair/trips).
-Complete with any two suited cards from the SB when there are 3 or more limpers ahead of you and the pot is unraised. You're getting excellent pot odds there to try and flop a flush draw (or flush), and one more time, you're likely to be paid off when you do hit one.
-Same as above with any two cards ten or above. You just have to be careful about hands like KTo, KJo & QTo, as these can be tricky to play from out of position. In fact, leaving KTo out of the mix until you get more comfortable with postflop play would be quite alright.
-Play any suited ace behind 3 or more limpers.

Just using these guidelines should get your VPIP up to a healthy high-teens rate. But you'll still need to work on upping your preflop aggression and staying in a few more pots with draws (a quick way to improve this skill is to go through the hand history posts you see here and calculate what the pot odds were that each person was getting on the flop, and determine if it they were getting proper odds to call if they were drawing; as you do more and more of these, it will become second nature to you and you'll be able to quickly tell if it's worth it to continue when you're on the tables).
Reply With Quote