Monday, December 03, 2007

November's in the books

The obligatory pictures:



The swings were severe, and unfortunately I ended on a little bit of a DS, which has actually extended into December...almost 7BI in under 3k hands. My play through it was pretty spewy (I've posted some hands), but I've also had a number of times when my reads were right and the money went in good. I've got 5 hands just in this DS where my money went in as a >66% favorite and yet am losing just over 4 BI on those 5 hands. But that leaves a bunch of other pots where I am putting in one bet too many a lot of the time, I think....or maybe it just feels that way because I am losing.

The thing with 3-betting light and making a lot of c-bets in general is that you are relying on a lot of fold equity, and if your opponents pick up hands or have you figured out (and at 100NL I think the former is way more likely than the latter) you are going to have a tough time. What I have definitely not figured out to my satisfaction is when to keep applying pressure for FE, when to just get to showdown cheaply, and when to give up on the hand altogether. At least I have the "when to extract more value" scenarios down pretty well ;).



Looking at the high level stats, while I am looking forward to opening up my game a bit, I apparently have some more work to do in basic TAG mode as well. At 19/15, I may be overlimping or cold calling a tad too much, but hopefully it's just the situations. Since I try to table select decently, a lot of times I'll find myself to the left of a really loose player, and if they are also really aggressive preflop, I have started to cold call a lot of medium suited connectors and higher suited one-gappers...moreso than I used to do. I used to pretty much only cold call with pocket pairs for set value, but I am expanding that.

I'm reasonably tight in blind defense, and my attempt to steal is OK (I shoot for >30%), although this could be higher. That said, I enjoyed no love whatsoever stealing this month:


You can see right up on the top of the bad list is stealing with AA. I've looked over some of these hands, and what I've seen so far looks like coolers, although I might post a hand or two later. The thing is, you've got to love stealing with aces if you are an active stealer, since you get no credit for a hand. So if an aggressive defender plays back at you, I just can't see folding them, and that's precisely what happened a few times (and by the way the money went in good there). Anyway, if you are not making money with your steals, it's going to be damn hard to post a good win rate. So, I'm actually a little bit happy being in the green seeing how much blind steals actually hurt my win rate.

I'm getting to showdown a decent amount of the time (22%), but only winning 47%, which is too low, IMO. I'm not sure how many hands it takes for winning at showdown to mean anything more than how hot/cold you are running, but 47% is way low for that WtSD, and I need to look at how much of it is due to me calling down poorly, or perhaps being too easy to read in my own play so that people can profitably get to showdown with their marginal hands. The fact that I'm winning 45% of the time I see a flop tells me that at least I am not giving them a free ride to showdown. I'm OK with my aggression numbers, although I would like the turn and river to be just a tad higher....again maybe from not getting more aggressive with betting, but maybe a bit more selective with my calldowns.



From a positional awareness standpoint, I give myself a C+ or B-. The good thing is that my button VPIP is more than twice my UTG VPIP, but the button and CO VPIP in general is a little light. That could just be luck of the draw, but probably not. My profit (loss) from late position is terrible...again, just can't be making money if you can't win from late position. On a positive note, I'm profitable in the SB, and in the BB, I'm losing a lot less than if I just folded it all the time.

Next time, I'll recap how I did against my November goals and set some for December.

5 comments:

Bazclef said...

Nice stats, and good amount of hands in. I think your positional stats are pretty solid. Need to open up more from the CO/BTN, but most people do. :)

Would be interested to see your PokerEV to see how bad you're running.

GL for December!

losbert said...

Nice analysis and considering it was your 1st month at 100NL it was a decent start although I guess it was a bit frustrating at times.

If you keep getting your money in when ahead then things will turn round in no time.

Good luck.

Marc said...

I stopped using Poker EV a while ago...I think that there is some good psychological benefit to seeing how poorly you're running in a DS, so that you have confidence you're getting the money in well...but it doesn't measure how often you get coolered (by that I mean your money went in bad, but it was still a good decision because you are playing against his range). But, I dug it out to see what the grapsh looked like. Unfortunately, it expired, and rather than take the time to go get it, I'm making this comment instead :).

FWIW, I don't think that I ran particularly poorly over the month, but did to close out the month, to some extent. But, I think that I am also probably spewing some, even when hands don't showdown.

Bottom line, I don't feel that I ran particularly well or poorly for the month as a whole, but rather made some poor plays in spots. I'm 3-betting a lot more than I used to, so my postflop mistakes will be bigger.

I didn't mean the wrap-up to sound like I felt that I ran bad. Even during the last week, when I did run bad, I could have really minimized the damage with better (less spewy) play, and could have finished the month up several buy-ins, instead of just one.

RakebackFAQ said...

Great amount of hands in Marc. It was a topsey turvy month for you but you have to expect it to be more of a challange. Keep the work up and your months ahead will be all in the green i think.
Good luck with december

Anonymous said...

Great stats, and great analysis Marc. It takes a lot of self-reflection to be able to realize some of the mistakes you realize you're making. I have no doubt you'll correct them, and in the end they will just be inexpensive learning lessons. Keep up the good work.