Help me find a leak.

[GooperMC]

Thanks for the response muse.

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First of all, forget about the relation of W$SF to winning sessions. I think this is just a symptom of the distribution of hands. This seems obvious.

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I agree. I was just trying to show that if I can increase my W$SF I am very likely to also increase my overall win rate.

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Looking at your numbers (and that's all they are, cold numbers) my opinion is that, if you have a problem, it is in your post-flop play.

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Totally agree

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I'm just much tighter and that's the way it is....

B.S. 90+% of your opponents have no clue how tight you are. They are watching porn while they play.

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LOL. I agree that most of my opponents aren’t paying attention I was just thinking that most of my opponents will draw without odds too. That could explain why they are winning more hands.

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Bad run - Possible, but seems like a cop-out.

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Agree.

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You are tighter that almost all of your opponents, thus you are playing better cards. Yet, you show them down less often. What? This is a bad plan.

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That really wasn’t my plan [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] and I think you hit my concern on the head. If I am more selective pre-flop I would think that my W$SF should be higher then everyone else who sees flops with any 4 cards.

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So, you need to promote those superior cards into winners more often.

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I was interested in what you and greg were saying about the aggression so I updated my database and ran the numbers.

Players in my database: 12,691
Hands in my database: 134,386
Players with more then 750 hands: 125

Here are how my stats compare to those 125 players.
Total Agg: 111 of 125: top 10%ish
River Agg: 119 of 125: top 5%ish
Turn Agg: 113 of 125: top 10%ish
Flop Agg: 110 of 125: top 10%ish
PFR: 100 of 125: top 20%ish
W$SD: 82 of 125: top 33%ish
WtSD: 7 of 125: bottom 5%ish
W$SF: 9 of 125: bottom 7.5%ish
VP$IP: 17 of 125: bottom 10%ish

I think that greg and you are right that I could use a little more aggression in my game but I don’t think that is the cause for my low WtSD and W$SF.

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Are you only aggressive with the nuts? Do you pull when you should push and vice versa? If you are aggressive with the nuts, but passive with borderline hands you may be doing things backwards.

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I would like to think that I have a decent grasp of the general idea of HL. I think that I can push at the right times, and pull at the right times, and I never play passively with a borderline 2 way hand. I will always play aggressively or fold.

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You are also probably too afraid of getting quartered,

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Against my opponents I don’t worry about getting quartered. Unless I am in the hand with a total rock I will almost always raise an empty nut low on the river if it will not scare players out of the pot.

I am still making money playing this game (about 2BB/100) but I think that I am still missing something. There has got to be a reason (hopefully that I can remedy) that I am in the bottom 5% of WtSD AND the bottom 10% of VP$IP.

[GooperMC]

Here is another hypothesis: my low VP$IP is actually causing my W$SF to be low. Meaning that because I am voluntarily entering the pot less often proportionally I am going to be forced to enter the pot more (in the BB).

The averages of players in my database with > 1500 hands:
Saw Flop All: 37%
Saw Flop No Blinds: 24.6%
Percentage of seeing flop not in the blinds: 68%

Mine:
Saw Flop All: 27%
Saw Flop No Blinds: 15%
Percentage of seeing flop me not in blinds: 55%

That means the amount of times that I see a flop with hands that I want proportionally is less then the average player. In fact if I bump my VP$IP up to the average and maintain the same amount of W$SF when not in blinds (this can’t be done but I will assume it can for example purposes) then my W$SF would be above 26. I can show this calculation if anyone is interested.

Mystery solved? What do you guys think?

[muse21]

I'm just as tight (VP$IP 18.75) and my W$WSF is 28.84 with a WTSD of 33.51. Wouldn't I have the same phenomenon?

By the way, I'm working on another idea.....

I think the tight, defensive style we have all been tought is right on for loose, passive games. I've been looking at the stats and hands from some games I data-mined from 2-4 up. There are a couple of players who just crush these games on a regular basis with the exact opposite style. VP$IP around 50, super high aggression, and from 7 to 12BB/100. This fits with the "tight in a loose game, loose in a tight game" idea.

I'm going to play with my Turbo Omaha and see what I learn before I start shooting it up in the 4-8 half kill, though [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[bygmesterf]

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There are a couple of players who just crush these games on a regular basis with the exact opposite style. VP$IP around 50, super high aggression, and from 7 to 12BB/100. This fits with the "tight in a loose game, loose in a tight game" idea.

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You people are obsessing about numbers way way way too much.

Here's the issue in a nutshell.

1. You are beeing too tight preflop, and not rasing enough preflop when many people are in. Hands that need short handed action must be dumped from EP, not played for a raise from EP. Your goal is to raise 5 people with A236 or KKAJs etc.

Otherwise limp along, especially with high hands. A broadway wrap vs a board with two paints and low card is a gold mine as you soak the chasers.

Imagine that your goal is to set up an massive overlay on the turn with one card to come. This is what all your work preflop and and the flop is about.

2. You are defending your BB with crap. The pot odds are illusory.

3. You are not jamming enough on the flop with your good hands/draws. As a result you not 3/4ring some pots and frankly the pots you do win tend to be somewhat smaller.

3.5 Raise if you might be 3/4ing the person in front of you, otherwise only jam the pot when you have draw and something extra. Omaha is a game of quality.

4. You are tagging along on some weak flops where you shouldn't, and not tagging along on weak flops where you should. Basicly, don't chase high on lowish flops.

5. You are not agressive enough on the turn when you have a high hand made and a low draw is possible.

6. Your sample is too small.

7. The people making serious money, are the people who jam multiway pots preflop from late positions, and then hit a good flop and jam it up some more.

[gergery]

OK Goop, here is a really long post with a bunch of random thoughts for you.

1. Does it really matter? If your W$SF is low and you’re winning a lot, that works, ya? But I think you can improve on 2BB/100 however, so maybe it does matter.

2. I agree with you that a big driver here is the fact that you are so tight preflop. I looked though my database and found some other players with VPIP around 18%. They are typically seeing Saw Flop All Hands around 26%. This makes sense since VPIP means you are playing 18 of 100 hands voluntarily, which means at a 10-handed table you’re getting 10 freeplays in the Big blind. So 25% of the hands in your W$SF denominator are not selected by you. Given that you are going to showdown rarely, your W$SF # will certainly be skewed. I think this is probably the most significant factor of all.

3. If your SawFlopAll hands really is about 26% and your Went to Showdown is 28%, and your Won at Showdown is 64%, then I think you can multiply those numbers together to find that you are winning about 4.65 hands at Showdown out of every 100. AND, if you see a flop about 26% of the time and Win When you See Flop 23% then you’re winning ~6.0 hands per 100. So you’re winning only 6 out of 100 hands, and 4.65 of those are at showdown and thus by subtraction 1.35 of them are before showdown. Change that 23% to 20% and you basically lose 0.8 of those 6 hands. Which means that you are basically winning a little over 5 pots during sessions you have losses but win 6 pots in sessions you win. Given that you have to pay the “entry fee” of all those bets on the flop thru river, 1 extra pot of profit above entry fees makes a big difference. Remember that you play 50 hands per hour or so, so this is only a swing of winning vs. losing 1 hand per 2 hour session, so short-term variance does skew things here.

4. This might suggest that W$SF is purely the result of distribution of hands. And I’d agree if you looked at just individual sessions. But taken in aggregate I think it is quite meaningful. There is a reason it is the single most highly correlated metric to winrate out of the 100+ pokertracker metrics I’ve reviewed.

5. I actually think you are too aggressive. I’m sure me suggesting that has you pulling your hair out, since I suggested the opposite before! But this is all part of the scientific inquiry process, lol. There are just too many times in O8 where you have a very strong one-way hand with some chances for the other way where good judgment is required to know whether you should be calling since your hand is too unlikely to win the weak direction vs. raising since you have chances or can generate folds. The fact that you are in the top 5-10% on aggression suggests to me perhaps you’ve taken it too far.

6. Also, my database of play on $.5-1, shows that the top 25% of winning players, taken as an average, are about the 75th percentile of the entire database for aggressiveness. You have to take data with a grain of salt, but that suggests that a healthy dose of aggression is good, but that too much aggression is bad. There is a reason that Flop, Turn or River Aggression Factors are NOT in the top 10 most highly correlated metrics with Win Rate.

7. I posted the results of some of the above analysis at my website www.o8poker.com under the tools section, in the “differences by level” link if anyone wants to go fondle some data.

8. The PLO8 guy comment was dickish, but c’mon, it was funny wasn’t it?

9. I agree with the other guy – you are too tight preflop. Against the loose players you face, you are giving up winrate.

10. I don’t agree with the other guy. Paying attention to the numbers helps you identify where and which hands to review to improve your play. Data is not the answer; but data points to the answer. However, no one has any idea where to go or what to do after reading something like, “you are tagging along on some weak flops where you shouldn't, and not tagging along on weak flops where you should”

11. People playing with VPIPs in the 50s in the higher games with high aggression and 7-12BB/100s winrates will have very high variance. You are almost certainly seeing just a snapshot of their performance, and not seeing their big downswings, and are missing the big downswings their identically playing twin brothers are experiencing at the same time. They also tend to be good readers, and a) avoid paying off when beat, and b) call down when they manage to catch part of the pot. It is a difficult style to emulate.

-- Greg

[GooperMC]

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Does it really matter? If your W$SF is low and you’re winning a lot, that works, ya? But I think you can improve on 2BB/100 however, so maybe it does matter.

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I am happy that I am winning consistently but there is always room for self analysis and improvement.

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I agree with you that a big driver here is the fact that you are so tight preflop. I looked though my database and found some other players with VPIP around 18%. They are typically seeing Saw Flop All Hands around 26%

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I am actually reversing my opinion here. I have been looking through my database and I have 30 players with > 500 hands that have a VP$IP between 15 and 20 and their average VP$IP is 25. Also for the tight VP$IP to really be affecting my W$SF I would have to have a W$SF of more then 22% with the hands that I would add. That may be the case for hands between VP$IP of 18 and 26 but I don’t think it is enough to really boost my W$SF to the average.

That being said I do think that I am going to make an effort to push my VP$IP up above 20.

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This might suggest that W$SF is purely the result of distribution of hands.

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I agree for a specific session that is the case but I think that 15K hands is a large enough sample for W$SF to be approaching it’s “true” value.

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I actually think you are too aggressive.

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LOL! I actually like my current level of aggression. I think it may be hurting me a little when playing .5/1 but I think that is it helping when I play 2/4 and will help as I continue to move up.

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The PLO8 guy comment was dickish, but c’mon, it was funny wasn’t it?

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Ya the naked chicken wire this was very funny, however I got the feeling that the post was an attempt to disparage me instead of giving me advice. If he posted something like “I think you are playing too tight, you should loosen up a little …” Then go into the chicken wire bit I would have appreciated it a little more.

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People playing with VPIPs in the 50s in the higher games with high aggression and 7-12BB/100s winrates will have very high variance. You are almost certainly seeing just a snapshot of their performance, and not seeing their big downswings

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This I totally agree with. If you notice players with VP$IP in the 50s are also the largest losers. I would be surprised if you could find more then a handful of people with a significant amount of hands and a VP$IP of 50+ that are making money.