I’d like to categorize my errors/misplays, structured by what I did instead of what I should have done, and then when this misplay tends to happen for me.

Preflop:

• Call; should Fold
  • getting pot odds in the SB (gotta consider playablity of the hand)
  • calling behind limpers (not sure if I do this inappropriately or not)
• Call; should Raise
  • raising hand in late position
    • but not if they are limp/callers
    • maybe suited connectors/pairs are better for raising against limp/callers?
  • With better than average hand in a blind battle
    • Ed Miller says raise crap hands, especially when limped to in the blinds because they have no flop value
• Folding; should Raise
  • when against weak limpers who will fold
    
• Raise; should Fold
  • rare, I think. Possibly blind steal against loose or aggressive blinds

PostFlop:

• Call; should Fold/Raise
  • weak bet at flop w/no strong draws for me
  • weak draw, stabby or weak opponent
• Check Flop; should Bet
  • positional stab at pot that no one is interested in, especially with flush draw (too obvious to get money later) or gut shot or underpair (unlikely to hit)
  • decent draw OOP; acts as blocking bet or could win immediately
• Check Turn; should Bet
  • Trying to keep pot small with a marginal hand, but playing against aggressive or non-thinking players
  • Forget to bet when a flush/straight draw on table
    • even if not drawy board, may have 2 pair draw
• Bet/Bet; should Bet/Fold
  • stabbing at middle/bottom pair; should fold if unimproved
• Bet or Raise; should Fold
  • marginal hand when the opponent is not weak/tight
  • low stacks
  • against calling station and without good hand
  • against an aggressive player who will challenge/reraise
• Check raised
  • I think this is only good for pot building against most of my opponents

Obviously these patterns are geared towards the level of players that I usually play against these days, but it can carry on. For example, in the forum tournaments I made a few weak plays in some of these categories, like limping an otherwise raiseable hand behind a limp or throwing away a raiseable late position hand.

I think overall the errors tend to be calling errors where I’ll call preflop or flop/turn bets when instead I should be mostly folding and sometimes raising. (Seems funny to say that. That’s exactly a Dan Harrington statment, one that I understand, but one that makes so much sense to actually write in this situation) Less frequently the error will be over aggression and I’ll bet/shove against calling stations or when I’m behind and I don’t believe that my opponent has something, but these result in more spectacular crash and burns. The calling errors result in more frequent but smaller chip leaks, as well as more difficult decisions later.

Right now I’m having most of my poker fun playing my $1 Turbo SnG project. 24 of 40 done, ITM 17 times; a 71% win rate. Cost including rake of $30.00, profit so far $22.20. In other words for every $1.25 it costs to play, I average 0.95 profit.

It will be interesting to compare to the Bet/Raise/Fold exercise when it’s all done. The differences will be 1) real money verses play money, 2) no restriction of actions, 3) turbo verses regular, and 4) site. So far the most interesting aspect is that I’ve already ITMed 17 times in 24, whereas the earlier experiment I only ITMed 20 out of 39 times so I’m actually finishing in the money more often I did with the play money experiment.

Having said that, I wonder how many beginners would read that and think, hey, I’m a winning player at play money. This means that I can win even more with real money!

In my opinion this is not a correct conclusion to draw because the first 3 differences are big. “2) restriction of actions” in particular meant that I was playing handcuffed in the Bet/raise/fold experiment. I have poker skills beyond what I was using in the play money project, and I am allowed to use them in my current project. A play money player who can match my play money results won’t get the same results that I’m getting in the $1 project. If you read this and plan to try anyways, please leave me a comment and let me know.

I’m somewhat curious as to the degree that turbo/non-turbo is a factor as well, but I don’t have the time/patience to play a regular length SnGs these days. I’m pretty sure that the pressure of the turbo blinds causes problems. People probably panic after a few orbits if they’re down a bit, and I’m pretty sure some of the weak, weak play I’ve seen when the blinds go up is due to lack of understanding. Last game SB limped AJ into my BB when the table was 4-5 handed and the blinds were high. Later HU he did the same thing. Mind you, he’s -$128 after 101 games.

There still seems to be a lot of calls, even preflop, but all I can recall are calling shoves and then allowing myself to call when it gets heads up. Mind you, I play a lot of hands when it gets heads up as you should, so the sheer quantity of hands may be a factor.

(Apparently a file this wide won’t display as readable. Click on it to view in proper size; much more readable )

Pretty standard increased VP$IP, raise, and win % as position improves. I like the 0.11 Cold Call PF%. Those would be heads up calls of raises plus maybe one or two of my own shoves against big stack shoves.

In case you’re reading and wondering, this is a program called PokerTracker. If you run it with another program called PokerAce it will display stats for play money but it will not import play money poker for analysis. What I did is edit each text file for each tourney and changed it to a $1 tourney and then the import is fine. I created a new database just to help keep these results separate from everything else.

Finishes:

1. 6
2. 7
3. 7
4. 6
5. 4
6. 2
7. 3
8. 1
9. 3

Plus one that I only seem to have a few hands and not the complete tourney. ITM 20 out of 39 so 50%. It would be nice to see that higher as these are play money players and the restriction of not calling shouldn’t degrade my finishes too much. I can see 2 where I sat out; they’re easy to spot as I get blinded away. One I finished 5th and the other 2nd. I’m not sure how that affects my stats. Maybe my fold PF rate is slightly higher, but I don’t know that it affects the overall aggression rates since I’m neither raising nor calling.

I just realized there are a lot of calls after PF raises. Some are shoves in the early/mid stages (either mine or the opponent’s), but most should be when I allow myself to call when we get to heads up. But, that’s a lot; 7.85% calls after PF raises. Mind you, as I said, I play almost every hand when I get to heads up so that will affect the stats. It still seems like a lot, but I don’t think it’s worthwhile to investigate.

(Click to view full size)

This is interesting; my VP$IP goes up nicely as does the PFR% as the blinds increase (= table gets smaller, value of the blinds increases). But there is an interesting negative net when the blinds hit 100. This is the point when I and others start looking to steal blinds/shove to stay alive, yet my VP$IP does not take a jump. The only thing that does increase anomallessly with the negative net is the preflop aggression, while the flop and turn aggression levels decrease slightly. How can that be? How does the PRF slowly increase while the preflop aggression jumps?

~

So, I tried my first $1.00 + 0.20 real money SnG using this exercise, finished 3rd. I will try a few more, but I may have to up the stakes as the early going was badly played, like the 2,000 play money buyin. You’d think this was one of those points satellite freerolls where, because it’s a freeroll and because it’s a satellite (only 1st place wins), people shove early and often trying to get ahead.

Playing cheap real money SnGs this way shouldn’t hurt the bankroll too much, and PokerTracker should help me keep that play separate from any other playing that I do so that I can kind of keep track of it separately. Hopefully the play at the cheap SnGs isn’t so bad that the players don’t understand raises, which is what happened when I tried the 2,000 play money buy in once or twice.

I should pull my stats on this before I quit. I suspect that I’ve ITMed around 50% of the time, but I’d be interested to see what my VP$IP is at various blind levels. My guess would be 4% at 20, 5% at 30, 7% at 50, 10% at 100, 15% at 150, 22% at 200, at least cumulatively, all with the same percentage for PFR.

It’s reinforcing patience. In the early stages of a tourney it’s recommended that you play tight and allow the loose and weak players to knock each other around while the blinds are small. On top of this I cannot play unless I raise, and since there are lots of limpers both where I’m running this experiment and where I normally play real money SnGs, I play even fewer pots. Often by the time the blinds get to 100, the point where I normally start looking to steal blinds, my stars are often something like 9/9/3.

~

You also avoid marginal hands, like limping 87s and pairing the 8 on the flop, but you also miss flops like 887. I told myself that I would allow calling only if calling a short stack push or to slow play a monster, but after some 30 or so SnGs I have yet to flop a monster that I can slow play. If I raise AQ and the flop comes QQ8, it’s hard to hide that and get much value. Since I can’t call I don’t get to limp or call with 22/33/44/55/66 and hit nice hidden sets either. And I’m not going to raise 87s in the early going because that goes against the “stay out of trouble” philosophy and is going to get all kinds of callers. The only slow playing I get to do is in the very late stages like heads up, where I often also forget that I’m supposed to be not calling because I get so focussed on trying to manage the flow of the game.

~

It is not, however, helping me to focus on the players better. Because it’s so formulaistic and because I play so few pots early on I often don’t even bother watching the table until the blinds get to 100. Maybe that’s not so bad as the bad players often get knocked out by then anyways, plus players like myself should be changing up their game at this point anyways.

At some point soon I should consider running the other experiment; the one where my cards are hidden under a post-it note.

A friend of mine was given the advice, “if it’s good enough to play, it’s good enough to raise”. Good advice for a lot of players, especially anyone who limps preflop with almost all of their hands. (FYI, I think it has been suggested that your preflop raise percentage should be 75% of your VP$IP, so if your VI$IP is 25% your PFR% should be 19%, see the Useful Links on the sidebar if you don’t know the abbreviations).

It’s fun to look at my stats during these experiments and see VP$IP of 18% and PRF of 17% (I do forget once in a while, plus I need to call preflop shoves when appropriate) even fairly late in the tourney.

But I think the reverse is more useful for me; if it’s not good enough to raise or re-raise, it’s not good enough to play. The exceptions would be pairs or suited connectors with good pot odds or implied odds, but otherwise I think I can cut down on the limped/cold called hands that I play by taking this into consideration before calling. In a way this is another interpretation of Sklansky’s Gap Concept. It also reflects Phil Gordon’s approach where he asks himself, bet/raise, fold, or call, in that order so if he decides he cannot bet/raise, and cannot fold, then as a last choice he will call.

And there are other considerations. Calling a raise from a loose player when in position may be +EV if you’ve got the balls to take it away from them on the flop or turn by coming over the top. Calling a weak post flop player if you’re going to get them isolated is +EV, although these players often call raises as well so you’d be better off raising to make sure they are isolated.

Basically, I’m finding all sorts of ways to avoid calling as a result of this experiment, and I’ve taken some of my learning to my regular games. The play money bankroll is still on a slight increase, and my other project has hit a new high; my bankroll is up over the original freeroll win amount for the first time since just after I started.

I know that I have a tendency to complete too often from the SB, often simply because of pot odds. If there are two limpers you almost have to complete with almost any hand simply because you get 1BB+1BB+0.5SB+1BB= 3.5BB pot to 0.5 to complete, or 7-1 odds to call. If you assume the limpers have one of the top 50% except AA/KK/QQ/AK (assuming they at least would know to raise these hands) and the BB has a random hand, even if you are in the SB with 72o, the worst hand in poker, it wins 14% of the time, or 5.7-1 (the random hand of the BB has a 25% chance of winning). This is assuming they get to showdown.

Limper1: TT-22,AQs-A2s,K2s+,Q2s+,J4s+,T6s+,96s+,86s+,76s,65s,AQo-A2o,K5o+,Q7o+,J7o+,T8o+,98o

Limper2: TT-22,AQs-A2s,K2s+,Q2s+,J4s+,T6s+,96s+,86s+,76s,65s,AQo-A2o,K5o+,Q7o+,J7o+,T8o+,98o

BB: Random hand

So, you get pretty good odds to complete with almost anything, keeping in mind the fact that on the flop pairing your K is not going to play the same when you pair a 7. Because I throw almost everything away from the SB if someone bets since I’m OOP, I try to stick to hands that can catch something strong like A or K suited or gapped middle connectors.

Even still, I get the impression that I’m saving chips by folding almost all the time from the SB (since I don’t want to raise and can’t call).

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you’ve got limpers, especially from late position, how good of a hand can they have? From either of the blinds it’s not a bad play to raise almost regardless of the cards you hold because the other players have said they want to see a flop but they don’t have a great hand. The problem arises in the low levels that players will limp/call, and continue calling if they catch bottom pair or a gutshot straight.

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I’m also having a bit of success making laydowns. I think that I made a few yesterday, but the only one that I can remember was reraising a small raise from the button 4 handed when I was in the SB with AQ. He pushed, I folded, and he showed his TT and I said I had AQ (I’m a 43-57 underdog ignoring flush domiations). He said that if I reraise him I should be ready to go all-in and I told him I might because I’m not allowed to call. It’s the only table so far that I’ve told what I was doing, which I’ve been dying to do to explain my play.

And my play money bankroll is going up, for whatever that’s worth.

~

Compendium of instructional posts:

• No Limit Hold’em; another beginners strategy, Preflop hand selection
• Playing AK Big Slick
• Fear of raising preflop; Post I of a four part series
• Calculating Odds and Outs, Post I of a four part series
• Tight/Passive/Aggressive
• Freeroll Strategy, a two part series
• Choosing an on-line poker site