Darkened Poker

Was doing some coaching for a friend with some screen shots from his poker tracker database.  In the last post about his stats it was identified that he was not respecting position nearly enough.  In this screen shot we can see that all the money he is making with his good hands he is then loosing on High Card ( Pre-Flop, c-bets, draws ) and One Pair hands.

Final Hand Stats

How to fix this massive leak:

High Card

• From his last stats we know he is not the aggressor enough so he can not c-bet and take enough pots down on the flop.   This means he is playing hit to win poker and that is causing his high “Fold Flop %”.  He needs to raise more, get heads up more so he can c-bet and take down pots.
• He has a pretty high “Fold Turn%”, either people are pricing him out of the draws or he is giving up his c-bet on the flop and people are taking the pot away from him.  More aggression pre-flop and on the flop would fix this for him as he would either get free cards from other players on his draws or he would not be in be in this situation to begin with.  This also likely means he is playing out of position to much and people are betting after he checks the flop.
• 32% “River Fold” means he is folding 7% of his total hands on the river, that is about right 1/2 his draws are bound not to come in.
• 11.61 % WTSD ( Went to show down ), what is interesting about that is it is the exact number of hands that he gets to the river with so he is never bluffing on the river at all with a hand that can not win a show down ( or only 18% of the time will ).  He should be throwing in some good river bluffs so people do not get in the habit of calling him down with small pairs any time there is a draw out there as they know he will give up on the river.

One Pair

• 41.36 % W$SD ( Won money at showdown ), this is really bad, at the river you should have the winning hand a majority of the time or it is impossible for you to make money.  He really needs to work on his hand reading skills and get away from 1 pair hands earlier when he is beat, if he is playing multiple tables he needs to stop and focus on the action at just one table until he recognizes all the patterns.
• The “Fold Turn & Fold River” % are a little high they should only be about 18% if he fold anytime a draw got there.  Most likely this means he is not realizing his pair is beat on the flop and only figuring it out on the turn or river which is very expensive.
• The “Fold Flop” % is most likely way too small since we know VP$IP is on average 22% and that means he is playing a lot of non top pair & top kicker hands against multiple opponents.  If he his not going to play more flops heads up his fold # needs to be closer to 60%, if he is playing flops heads up then his fold % with One pair should be closer to 15%.

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Darkened Poker

It is clear I have a problem with this style other than the last 4,000 hands were I was just plain running bad.

Red line = win or loss before show down

Blue line = win or loss at show down

Green line = total win or loss

My hand reading is working and I am showing up at the river with the best hand like I should be.  But why in the hell is the red line such a major bite out of my profit.

That red line is way bigger than just lost blinds and failed c-bets.

It is either:

• Getting moved off to many winning hands before showdown.
• People are re-stealing too many pots against my bluffs.

It is interesting that the red line kind of flattened out when I was running really bad and kind of tightened up.  During that point I was just paying blinds and only pushing my good hands.  Kind of leads me to believe that my problem is most likely people are re-stealing pots to many pots against me when I am playing my normal game.

Will have to drop down to 1 or 2 tables and start taking detailed notes until I figure this out.  Too bad there is no software that can read your hand histories and give you stats on how often your bluffs failed.  Might just have to write that soon.

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Darkened Poker

Over the years I have read a few of Dr. Paul Ekman’s books on body language, some of it has been useful at the poker tables and work.  But I did not realize how bad I was at recognizing facial expressions until I ran across his web site and took the METT Demo.  I was unable to tell the different between angry and disgust or happy and frightened at the micro tells speeds.  It explains a lot of bad and expensive mis-reads in the past.

METT Demo

After running his software for awhile and I am picking up a lot more information than before.  I now see a lot of conflicting tells were people looked slightly happy on a flush making river card but had little micro flashes of sadness or disgust just before it.  This is brilliant software that will help shorten the years of trial and error learning micro tells into just weeks.  Best 20$ I have spent in a long time.

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Darkened Poker

Although a solid game with stats of VP(voluntary put money in ):20 PR( pre-flop raise ):5, AFq(aggressive freq):33 will make you money in the lower stakes, it will get exploited as it is to easy to read in the med stake levels were people are really paying attention.  So I decided to work hard on to trying to push my stats up to VP:25  PR:15 AFq:45 figuring that would get me more action on my good hands and it forces me to steal more.  With stats that high I figure would get played with a bit more and need to call down a little lighter some times to pick off people trying to re-steal pots.

Great theory, I reset my poker track database dropped down a few levels to the .05 / .10 stakes to play 10,000 hands and see how it was working out, sadly I found these stats.

Opps

What the hell is wrong here I am loosing money with 3 of the Texas Holdem bread and butter hands.  Not only that my over all win rate with them is pretty good, 60 – 70 % for a non paired hand is ok, anything over 50% is above average.  The W$WSF ( Win money if see flop ) is not great but better than the min 33% it should be for a non paired hands.

Last two stats then, WTSD ( Went to show down ) & W$SD ( % won money at show down ).  My WTSD is about right as it should be between 33% and 48%.  But my W$SD rate is terrible 2 out of 3 are below 50%, opps hard to make money when your wrong > 50 percent of the time!

Ok is my theory just wrong and the play style can not make money.  Pretty sure it can, so I looked through the 200 individual hands and it is clear that I am thin value betting to much and not getting  played or called down light as much as I thought I would.  In fact even though I am raising 20% of the time pre-flop I am still winning most hands pre-flop as well.

Originally I moved down so I would not loose to much money while trying out his other style, but in this case I think I moved down to far where people do not notice or adapt to this level of aggression enough to make it viable.  Lesson learn, this level is good for cheaply practicing the first part of my plan which is ramping up the aggression and stats.  But I think I need to move up closer to my normal level to practice take advantage of the results.

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Darkened Poker

So 8 post later we have all the knowledge we need to produce this chart, interesting 2 pair wins the most pots in Texas Holdem Poker over all.

Hand type win

Heads up is completely dominated by 1 – 2 pair hands, the 2 pair line is a little misleading as ~=30% of the time that 2 pair is created with 1 of the pair being on the board.  Only ~=20% of the time over all will someone have 2 pair using both of their hole cards.

In a full ring game it is a pretty even split what will be winning that hand, this is what makes full ring games challenging, your hand reading skill really need to be developed as it is about as likely someone has 2 pair as a flush.  Also you really have to be comfortable with thin value betting as most of the time you will be betting when it is quite likely someone could have a better hand than you.

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Darkened Poker