Evaluating my own plays...

[drudman]

After playing a large variety of games last semester at occasionally haphazard limits, I decided that I would use this winter break to do it by the book and grind it out. I've been playing 3 tables of 2-4, hundreds of hands a day, throwing them into pokertracker.

After about 5000 hands, I was averaging almost 4 BB/100. I expected this to go down of course, but it has gone down to 1.7 BB/100 over the last 2000 hands or so. So I'm wondering if I'm playing differently and it is affecting my rate. I'm trying to play as straightforwardly as possible, mostly interested in a steady rate, sacrificing maximization in exchange for smaller fluctuations.

This recent drop in rate and money has me a little alarmed, and I am wondering what I can look at with pokertracker to evaluate my play? After the 5000 hands, I looked at things like my performance with certain categories of hands, positions... I was up big in every non-blind position with the expected higher totals closer to the button. In the blinds, I'm down in both, almost exactly half as much from the SB, but w/o blind I would be up over a thousand alone in the BB, which I thought was a good stat. When I voluntary put money into the pot, I was up (or at least not markedly losing money with) in every single category and with virtually every specific hand.

Now I'm looking and I'm not down more than 1 BB/100 with any hand period, but it looks like most of my losing hands are suited cards. It's likely that I am not incorrectly playing a lot of suited cards cheaply, but I am going too far with them when I flop a pair with them.

My question I guess is, is there anything else I could look at to self-evaluate?

Thanks.

[Losing all]

I wouldn't worry too much about 2000 hands, that's a minor blip on the screen. Not that you can lock in your great results from previous 5000 either as that's also a fairly small sample.

It sounds like you're a solid player working hard to improve your game. good luck

[GuyOnTilt]

1.7 BB/100 hands is a very respectable earn. There's nothing at all wrong with that. That's over 1 BB/hr/table. You have nothing at all to be worried about. A lot of players who have good runs at the start of their record keeping get worried when their earn drops back down below 2 BB/hr/table, but that's where it should be. Anything higher than 2.5 BB/100 hands and you're looking at borderline unsustainable.

GoT

[MS Sunshine]

There is so much use you can get out of www.PokerTracker.com that you shouldn't just "toss" the hands in. I can tell you are trying to get the most out of it by looking for problems in your game first. Trust me they are there. For all of us. I use PokerTracker primary for the notes on players. After about 5 weeks I have about a 1000 cash game players, at least 50 hands, with really good notes. There are about 1700 other players with less than 50 hands. About 500 hand manual notes. The tournament players, 1100, are judged on whatever hands are available. These leaves me with about 2700 notes in PokerTracker, but I have about 2000 more on players not seen in the last five weeks which are unlikely to be active anymore. Below is an old post.

*********************************

As to what notes I want to see when scouting a table:

Preflop starting hand range and their playing style.

For ring games:

very tight(under 15%sf)
tight(16-21%sf)
med tight(22-26%)
med loose(27-33%)
loose(34-50%)
very loose(over 50%)
nutball(with the exact% in note)

very passive(never raises preflop)
passive(<3%pfr)
med ag(3-6%)
ag(7-10%)
very ag(11-15%)
above 15% I write very ag with %

Blind steal and Defense:

No steal(0% from CO and button)
low steal(under 20%)
avg steal(which I consider to be around 30% not taking blinds tightness into account is 20-35%)
High steal(40-55%)
Always steals(you get the idea)

I consider average BB defense to be a little over 50% in $15-30 to a steal raise.

No defend(well almost none)
weak defend
some defend
low defend
avg defend(50%)
high defend
always defends

The Party bubble hint feature will show about 20 characters when you pass the cursor over the yellow box. The above is what is most important to me anything else, which also is important, like stunts they like to play too much and their general attitude post-flop gets added below the above.

************************************************

There are many interesting numbers to look at in your past hands, but 5000 hands is still too few IMO. On the General info tab:

Vol put $ in pot

For a ring game this should be in the 16-20% range. Mine is 18%

PFR %(preflop raise)

Preflop raise and blind defense and attack numbers are sensitive to YOUR game selection criteria. I'm always looking for action games trying to be seated directly behind the big LAG and in front of tight players if possible. The range for a winning player is 6-10%, ring game, with mine at 10%.

Attempt to steal blinds

25-40% range for winning players with mine at 33%. This number is the combined steal % for Button and CO.

Folded BB to steal

I use this with Folded SB to steal to judge how well blind defense is, very important in the upper limits. I defend BB 63% in 15-30 and 50% in $10-20.

Went to SD

Mines is about 30%, but the only use I get out of this is LAG's that have a number here below 20%. Loose for pre and flop bets then tight for turn and river bets. YUM.

On the position stats tab there is your Vol put $ in pot for each position. Mine run 9% for UTG to 20% for button. When you click on a position line it will bring up hands that are played from that postion and you can double click to bring HH up which has a playback feature at the top. I look for weakness in the up front plays.

The last stat, when out of wack, I look at is the cold call % for mid-table play.

If you continue to win over 2BB/100 hands than you should consider moving up in limits, with the proper BR of about 300BB.

Hope this helps.

MS Sunshine

p.s. Any upper limit winning player is welcome to point out any errors that they might see.

[rusty JEDI]

Excellent stuff Sunshine. As soon as i get home im going to jump into my pokertracker a little further.

Thanks

[drudman]

MS Sunshine-

You enter all of those notes MANUALLY?!

Or is there a way to do it automatically with Pokertracker?

[MS Sunshine]

Yes

I go thru every player's hands from the day before. It takes about 1-5 mintues each for about 80 players. Welcome to my mornings.

MS Sunshine

[SwordFish]

MS Sunshine -

This is great information. Very well thought out and explained.

Thanks for sharing.

SF

[Stew]

I saved this thread as a favorite for your excellent explanation of your use of the PokerTracker info. This is by far the best post of the year and maybe ever as far as I'm concerned!

[Terry]

You are hereby informed of my official request that you immediately cease and desist from making posts similar to this one, and that you go back to your paper and pencil note system. Should you feel the need to make posts regarding using one’s computer to make money from poker, I suggest you start an affiliate site and spam the forum.

Poker is poker, and the fact that it is online does not make any difference. The power of the computer should be misunderstood, feared, or overlooked – it is not an appropriate subject for casual conversation on an open forum.

It is good enough to know that a particular player is “loose/passive - doesn’t defend blinds”. It is not necessary to know that he plays 37% of his hands, has folded a blind to a possible steal raise 93% of the time in 2418 hands, and has raised first-in on the button only with a pair bigger than 88 or with AJs or AQo or better.

Spending over an hour every day reviewing exactly how your opponents play their hands is ... is ... spit sputter ... wtf are you trying to do? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]


PS: How much would you pay to see S&M’s statistics for a few hundred hours of play?