I just passed 5,000 hands with PT and would like some experienced input. I play mostly at Party and Poker Stars at limits of .25/.50 to 2/4.

I've played 104 hands of NL with the rest being limit. These are my numbers:

VP$IP= 11.54%
VP$IPSB=27.29%
FOLDSB TO STEAL=88%
FOLD BB TO STEAL=66%
ATT. TO STEAL=26.34%
W$WSF=34.98%
BB/100HANDS=2.12
WENT SD=30.89%
WON$ SD=59.23%
PFRAISE=5.07%

On the more details page:

first action of flop after PF raise:

Raise=11.81%
Bet= 59.84%
Call= 1.97%
check=5.51%
Check/raise=1.97%
fold=1.97%

Total aggression factor=1.87

flop agg.= 4.20
turn agg= 3.99
river agg=2.88

check raise 2.29%

Something must be wrong here because I think I should be winning at a rate of 3 times what I am. Party poker has the worst players I've ever seen, and it seems to me that the monkey/fish should be writing me checks.

Thanks in advance for your responses!

VP$IP= 11.54%

This is what stands out to me. 11.54% is extremely tight, which is where your low BB/100 hands is coming from. If you loosen up a bit and move up to ~25% VP$IP, you should see an increase in earnings. Simply put, there are a lot of 'playable' hands which you aren't seeing flops with, therefore, if you increase the VP$IP with playable hands, you should see an inrease in your BB/100 hands.

~Roy

Godlike
Are you saying he should strive for 25% VIP???

annoyed,

I think your stat numbers are very good. A few folks here will say you need to be entering more pots and if you play extremely well post flop they are probably right but not many more in my opinion. Your BB per 100 hands is fine. How many tables are you playing at a time?

Your flop turn and river aggression are pretty high at least compared to mine but I don't know if that is a good or bad thing. Mine after over 100K hands are at around F 2.5 T. 2.5 R 1.8 and I think I am generally pretty aggressive so you must be really turning up the heat.

As bad as the players are there is no way even at these limits you can sustain a 6.5 BB/100 rate. In B & M settings you will get about 35-40 hands an hour and if you are decent player you can expect to make about 1 BB/hr so extrapolating that to 100 hands somewhere in the 2-2.5 range is certainly a very exceptable goal particularly when multitabling. For the VERY best players when multitabling I would expect them to have a BB/100 in the neighborhood of 3.5-4 BB/100 and very few people achieve these rates.

Whatever you are doing I would say continue on in the same manner while always thinking how you can extract an extra bet or two instead of autopiloting a quick play without thinking it through. Continued good fortune.

Piers,

Thanks for taking the time to reply, I appreciate it. Maybe my expectations are too high given the small edges that holdem affords a solid player, not to mention the random luck factor.

As far as aggressivesness, I think I have been a bit too aggressive considering that at the limits I'm currently playing at it's rare to find a player good enough to consider laying down a hand in which he might be beat. I've toned down my aggressive turn and river play and it seems to be yielding better results, i.e. less variance.

Bobby speaks very highly of you and because of that your thoughts mean a great deal to me.

Thanks again and best regards,

Brian

You're very welcome. If you ever have any specific hands or thoughts you would like to address fire away on the limit section and I am sure you will get some solid input from the limit crew.