Working on Leaks

I've lost over 200BB ($100) this month and at least a few times I've wondered if I was really cut out to make money on the virtual felt.



However, when push comes to shove, the last thing I want to do is give up on this. I have a history of quitting dreams (mainly to focus on work) and it's time to make a stand!

The silver lining is that I've discovered some major leaks early on and I'm playing at a limit where I can afford the learning curve.

So what are the leaks?

First off, I've been showdown bound too often.

I dropped down to $.05/$.10 to work on WTSD and after 500 hands figured I'd improved my ratio and this limit was just too easy to beat. Staying at this level would not help me play $.25/$.50, would not build my bankroll fast enough and might even be detrimental to my overall game.



I moved straight back to $.25/$.50 and, after a couple of days adding small amounts to my bankroll, had another big losing streak!

Went back to the drawing board and realized a few more things:

• still trying too hard to win every pot. WTSD was still bad. W$SD abysmal.
  


• playing too many hands


• there was a $.15/$.3 limit below $.25/$.5
  

So I dropped back to $0.15/$.30 to work on my loose showdown habits.



My losing streak continued for a while even though the players were marginally worse and/or looser than the players at $.25/$.50. I found a few more things wrong!

• chasing draws (just completely ignoring pot odds for the most part)
• ignorant to the dangers of playing weak/junk offsuit hands
• playing hands too aggressively
  
• underestimating the advantage of position
• placing too many bets out of position
• playing too many hands from the blinds in multiway pots
• regularly playing super-shorthanded (2 or 3 players)
• bluffing too much! especially out of position
  

The list is in no particular order.

the main thing is, over the last few days I've made some progress. Still more work to do.

I'll stick at $.15/$.30 until I've built at least one buy in at $.25/$.50 (i.e. $25) as the players are sufficiently clued up at this level to mean you can't get to the river in a multiway pot with a poor hand and expect it to hold up too often.

PFR better than limping even when confidence is knocked

I started limping into pots over the last day or so because I've been having a hard time of it. However, running the stats through excel shows this was a bad move.



apart from revealing the clear benefits of raise vs limp (43% hands won raising vs 15% limping and a huge edge in won without showdown) this chart also may hint that I'm not folding enough on scary boards. For instance, apart from the Full House anomaly, I've been beaten more often than not at show down with everything from Two Pair upwards.

Just cant win at Hollywood Poker!

Wow! I've lost over $50 at Hollywood Poker so far this month - yes in just 3 days and 450 hands! Just can't break through at all!

I dropped down to the microstakes yesterday and I'm still losing at an alarming rate.

I don't get it - which is no doubt part of the problem.

I'm playing people with 60-70 VPIP, cold calling my raises and when they aren't flopping straights etc they are getting to the river and dominating my holdings.

Damn this is wierd.

It's kinda ironic though, whenever I feel confident enough to start posting observations about poker, I go into a nose dive.

Interpretting a low Aggression Factor

Last night I was playing on a table with a loose passive opponent seated to my left. In the first 50 to 100 hands, I ended up losing a fair amount of money to this player simply through failed bluff attempts.

It seemed like every time I raised to enter the pot, this player would call me (turns out he CC'ed 60% of the time). He'd then follow me to the river no matter how much strength I showed or how scary the board became (turns out he only folded on the flop or turn 8% of the time but was much more wary of calling on the river - folding 60% of the time).

Even with a VPIP of 60%, he was often getting to the river with a better hand than me and taking the pot down.

Unfortunately for me, for the first half an hour, I was playing this guy on the assumption that an aggression factor < 0.5 indicated a "weak" player and "weak" meant they would fold if shown aggression.

It took a 20BB downswing for me to re-evaluate this assumption!

I reminded myself that aggression factor is the ratio of checks and calls to bets and raises. This guy was a calling station, not a folding station.

he was cold calling a tight player with a wide range. He failed to extract any sizeable value from his strong hands (calling down top pairs, two pairs and even straights). He played pocket AAs like a maniac regardless of board texture or opponent behaviour. I could tell he was a bad player but my blinkered use of the AF stat led to spewing chips his way.

Thankfully I did adjust and claw a little back but it was hard to build big enough pots to make a full comeback and to add an additional complication, a solid regular (Dilan12) turned up later, sitting to the fish's immediate left. when I got up, I was still 14BB down on the session.

Results for April 2009

Results for april are in!



I'd hidden some sessions from the main database because they were soooo bad but earlier this week a results-oriented discussion at DeucesCracked helped me to open up and confess my sins. I've come to terms with the loss now and included it here.

Thanks to a good run at Everest I'm still up for the month with a respectable (?) BB per 100.

I've enjoyed this foray into 6-max. I was troubled by the loses from both the blind positions since I didn't remember this happening at FullRing but having now reviewed full ring results separately, it looks losing money from the blinds is common to both formats.

So far my BB/100 for $.25/$.50 6-max is almost exactly half my BB/100 for $.25/$.50 full ring over the same number of hands. I've had some horrendous tilted 6-max sessions though so I think the BB/100 could be closer with better play.