a leak- overly loose small blind play

[britspin]

I was just checking my stats today.

One thing that astounded me was how high my vpip was for some truly awful hands- over 10% in some cases.

So I filtered for horrible hands (all offsuit card worse than A9/KT/QT/JTo as a random line for horrible) from the small blind. I found I'd played these hands about 120 times from the SB.

I then went through and tried to exclude hands where I was making a move of some kind- (folded round to me in SB, and I raise with rags sort of hand).

Disgustingly, after giving myself every excuse possible, I discovered I've played hands like K6o, 96o, T8o, J8o - as well as the slightly less terrible but still poor T9o, 98o, and 78o in the SB with one or two limpers. I've not done it often, maybe 40-50 times in 7k hands, but often enough that it's probably cost me about 15-20BB overall - a fairly significant chunk of winrate- almost 0.2bb/100?

So this is just a warning. Filter your pokertracker for offsuit cards in the small blind. You'll find some horrors lurking.

The shame alone might improve your play!

[Guruman]

this is the value of actively looking for leaks. I'm personally fairly tight in the sb, but I make it up to myself by allowing for the occasional loose steal. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

the problem with sb completions is that you so often find yourself oop with a crap hand against an auto bet from the button. Why bother? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

I'd rather steal with K4o from the CO than complete with it from the sb after 3 limpers.