Thinking of moving up to $5/$10: Comment on $3/$6 stats

[baronzeus]

Assuming you go to the right number of showdowns at the right times, your W$SD can never be too high. But since we all make marginal river calls where we are 20% or something to win a big pot, we expect our W$SD to be between 50 and 60 in general.

[wackjob]

I just started playing 5/10 again after playing 3/6 for 6K hands to rebuild my BR after I had need for a lot of cash. I win at both easily. Here are my stats

Last 6k hand 3/6 6max Party:
VPIP:24.25, AttSB:33.97, BB/100:2.49, W$SD:51.64, PFR:16.74

Last 25K hand 5/10 6max Party:
VPIP:26.43, AttSB:37.72, BB/100:1.46, W$SD:51.30, PFR:17.41

I've also been on a downswing at both levels in general for the last 5K hands or so.

Good luck.

[Monty Cantsin]

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Also, this is basically untrue. You don't make much money at 3/6 by getting better hands to fold.

/mc

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This is untrue. When you steal and autobet the flop w/ K2, J5s, T8s, etc, as much as I do, you do make money getting better hands to fold.

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I'm not talking about picking up the pot when you both miss and they have a higher card than you. I'm referring to your claim that you pick up a lot of pots by players folding middle pair on the turn or river in blind steal situations.

So, again, first of all, how do you know? What makes you think they're folding middle pair as opposed to, say, bottom pair, or, I don't know... 8 high?

And secondly, which of these statements do you think is more true:

When the pre-flop raiser bets a flop containing high cards...

A) The average party 3/6 player will fold middle pair.
B) The average party 3/6 player will call with nothing.

/mc

[Monty Cantsin]

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Yes, no doubt. But we we're talking what is optimal, so WANTING your W$SD number to be LOWER, just so your stats "look right" is just absurd. Ideally you'd never want to lose a showdown, but a couple of people seem so stat obsessed they are missing that point and for some reason seem to think losing showdowns is a good thing.

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I'm going to take one more crack at this.

Yes, a lot of 2+2ers are unproductively stat-obsessed.

However, there are situations where your stats can provide a very useful diagnostic tool for analyzing your game and improving it.

So when people say you "want" your W$SD to be within such and such a range, what they are actually saying is that you want your play to be correct, and if your play is correct your W$SD will necessarily be within such and such a range, and therefore you "want" your W$SD to be in that range.

It's a case of people "wanting" evidence for something because the thing the evidence signifies is desirable, despite the evidence itself having no value or even negative value.

You could take your argument and apply it to the human body and say "Why would anyone want to feel pain?" Well, because feeling pain is an indication that your central nervous system is in good working order. So, yeah, I do want to feel pain. Because if I don't something is seriously wrong.

I get that you understand this and are making a trickier, philosophical point, that if you could magically win every hand your W$SD would be 100 and who wouldn't want that?

But even this point isn't really valid because in the magical hypothetical fantasy world in which I win every hand Poker stops being a game, and after a month of socking away a bunch of cash I quit playing forever. And given the choice, I wouldn't take that option.

/mc