Hi all

Just going through some poker tracker data on my positional play. I only have about 5600 hands logged, including some pretty horrible sessions, but I am trying to tease out some leaks in my game in terms of position.

I note that my BB/hand in all EP, MP and LP seats is positive. This is typical, right? My LP seats, predictably, have about twice as high a PFR% BUT i note that they do not necessarily show a higher BB/hand average. My best seat (after 5600 hands) is 6 off the button, and my button, CO and 2 off the button seat averages are lower than my averages in the first three seats. My button and CO averages are in fact among my worst. My PFR% in both these seats is 6-7%. My average PFR% is about 4.5%, so I am not much looser with my raising here. My VPIP in these seats are 15 and 18% respectively, my average VPIP outside the blinds being about 12-13%. These numbers seem OK to me. So, any ideas why my results in the LPs might be so poor? I'm thinking to push my BB/100 up towards 20 (it is a little under 15 currently, I have stats from 25, 50 and 100 NL games logged in this period) maybe I need to start playing the last two seats a bit better somehow. Or is this just as likely to be a short-term fluctuation? I don't believe 5600 to be a particularly big sample in NL.

My other major question is, I am a net loser in both blinds (about 0.13 BB/hand in BB and 0.22 BB/hand in SB); this would be about normal, right? I am pretty conservative in the blinds BUT I will call a minimum raise with just about any two vaguely playable cards in the BB, and complete the SB with a lot of hands - my VPIP in SB is about 33%, and I complete the SB in unraised pots nearly 40% of the time. I'm thinking this is too loose, and my 0.22BB/hand figure could be reduced by tightening up here. Thoughts? What cards will you complete the SB with? My feeling is that I'm relatively tight here, but these stats suggest otherwise. My BB/hand when I saw the flop is -0.18, when I fold it's obviously -0.25 (BB being big bets as defined in PT, being double the big blind). So I do better overall when I call than when I fold. However, perhaps as this includes ALL hands (even premium ones) I should be doing better than improving my BB/hand by a tiny amount when I call, and I could do that by calling less hands. As I go down my SB stats, I see a lot of crap - T7o is one hand that stands out (called once), along with the likes of J3s (probably not +ve unless there's a world of limpers), T5s, 84s. Potential leak?

Anyways, having fun not playing the big games, and just going through some of my PT stats and making some posts here. Let me know if you have any ideas on my PT stuff.

Thanks,

Monk
xxxxx

I used to complete the SB every time. My justification was "I'm getting a chance to flop the nuts against the whole field for a pittance.".

But obviously those kinds of flops are amazingly hard to find, and more often than not I'd end up getting overly interested in the hand when I flopped a little something.

Now I only complete when I would have limped anyway, even if the entire table has limped before me. The way I've started looking at is yes, there are attractive pot odds to call, but then you're also looking at having to beat a large field.

Mind you, I did find it exciting completing the SB - when you flop 772 holding 72o and someone (inevitably) jokes "who says 72o is a bad hand lol" you feel pretty damned good.

Just my (relatively) inexperienced 2p.

I think the inevitable problem with calling the SB with garbage is being badly out of position, and the fact that hands that are utterly uncallable anywhere else (the T7o I mentioned for instance) do not suddenly become winning propositions if your only real ways to win are to hit 2 or 3 perfect cards on the flop (odds probably in the 1-2% region) if you're calling 1/2 a BB to see a flop and unlikely to get someone's stack in an unraised pot. For someone to call off an entire stack on any sort of semi-decent table you'd need him to have a high pocket pair or a better flopped hand than yours in most spots. So yep, it's time I tightened up on the SB i think.

Otherwise, I notice that I'm a loser on a few hands of note - the main one being JTs which I limp from most spots. Going to have to start to lay that down I think, and it's ugly sisters like QTs, J9s, which I often limp with in MP and LP in unraised pots on passive tables. I just don't think they're worth the money, borne out by the fact that QTs, J9s and 98s are losers for me outside the blinds, with QTs being the worst culprit. I have a VPIP of 33% for each of those hands outside the blinds. Not a major leak but perhaps I should tighten up on these holdings.

My one quandary also is that IF I tighten up a few marginal hands that currently show losses in my PT, will my VPIP (currently just under 16%) drop to hopelessly low levels and make me appear the biggest rock on the planet. Perhaps a slight negative expectation on these hands is worth it to keep my image away from total rockiness. Anyways, much food for thought.

Monk
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Just throw in a raise with a few different kinds of hands (that you might be folding now) now and then to make up for not playing JTs. I personally hate JT in NL.

I think the percentages per position are probably not very meaningful with 5.5K NL hands (eg I have 3.5K hands in my current database - NL50, 100, and 200 - and randomly have -ve EV in UTG+2 but my highest +EV in UTG+1 etc etc ... also that's my excuse for my pitiful 11BB/100 hands compared to your 15+BB/100 hands!)

One difference I noted was that I was +0.02BB/hand in the big blind, which could obviously be a statistical fluctuation, but one of the things I made an effort to do when I started my current database was tightening up and not calling min raises out of position ... a quick look suggests suited connectors, suited aces and premium hands only, without a definite read on the raiser - overall I have 9% VPIP in the BB ... are you too loose (or am I too tight and just lucky...)?

I also suspect the losses with JTs etc are just an anomoly (or an indication of flop misplay?!): I have +1BB/hand with QTs, JTs, and J9s, and I'm actually too loose with them.

Interesting figures, thanks for sharing ... I think I'm way too passive pre-flop ... I have about 4.5% PFR in late positions, 3% in medium, and 2% early.

Al

ps 16% VPIP - that *is* tight. Anyone else average such low VPIP? (I fluctuate around 20% ... I get an insulting little mouse icon when I go below 20% to encourage me to loosen up and get the enigmatic question mark icon back again!)

(edit) pps For what it's worth, I think a really important thing about SB completion is minimising the chance of flopping a big loser ... eg 72s is bad because bottom two pair or low flushes are quite hard to play, K2s is much better since you get top-and-bottom and 2nd nut flush etc etc.