Where do your profits come from?

Here is a little excercise for any of you with PT3/HEM and a large sample (50k+ hands).

• Take your total Amt won for the limit in question.
• Then take your total Amt won for just AA&KK together over that sample.
• Divide that amount by total winnings and express here as as a percentage. (Note if the total for AA&KK exceeds net winnings then the number would be greater than 100%).
• Then take the total winnings for AA KK QQ JJ TT AK combined and express that as a percentage of total winnings.

I am at work but will post my results this afternoon.

Once you do this you will know where the bulk of your profits come from. Is is from big pocket pairs & AK or is it elsewhere?

Hopefully then everyone can discuss results.

I am fairly sure most people are going to be losers even when you take out just AA...

Over 100,000 hands I have won 3.2 times as much with AA+KK than I have in total. I have won 5.2 times as much with TT+, AK than I have in total.

I am not sure where you are going with this as most of the losses from the other hands will be from the blinds. If we take the blinds out of the question I have won around 50% of my total with TT+, AK...

Thanks so much and I cannot wait to get home and check my stats.


If this is, in fact the case for many players, it may in fact be the most staggering indictment against playing anything but nitty poker.


Think about it. If you make lots of money with big hands but lose with all the rest then why are you playing those cards?????????????????????????????

To me it is starting to crystalize in my mind that the goal of playing big hands like TT+ & AK is to make money.

The goal FOR EVERY OTHER SINGLE HAND YOU PLAY REALLY ONLY HAS TWO OBJECTIVES:

1. Steal the blinds
2. disguise your range. After all if you only played 4% of your hands then everyone could just safely fold every time you opened or raised.

Other than that you are just playing these hands to cut into your losses.

So maybe the optimal strategy for an experienced player is to figure out the range of hands that they show a consistent profit from then add a portion of hands that are just below that range which you are essentially playing as semi-bluffs. I.e. if you make money from 8% of total hands then play those 8% for profit and then play somewhere between 4 & 8% of the next best hands as semi-bluffs to steal the blinds and occasionally make a nice pot.


Comments?

The problem with playing nitty poker is that when you get to the point where people know you're a nit, they can adjust by just not giving you action and playing hands with good implied odds against you as well as other things

This may be true when they have position on you but if the have a hand they like and you 3bet them how many times will they want to peek at the flop?

Furthermore, say players mostly fold when you open raise from UTG. Do you think they are going to fold QQ/JJ/ TT/ AK/ AQ? Unless they are really observant they will call a lot of raises thinking "Hey's he's tight but these are goooooood cards" So you are less likely to have a bunch of callers with 76s or 33. In fact you may get players to play the dominated hands that they should fold and fold the big implied hands like 76s that they might call with. Furthermore if you only ever collected the blinds from Early Position you would be way ahead. Of course most players don't know how to fold so well,so.....

Furthermore, if someone calls your UTG raise and they have a very small call PFR (say under 4%) you are likely being set mined so against these opponents you can check on dry flops so they can't stack you if they flop a set.

Lol Fx.

You've found the secret, only play the biggest hands well played. However if you don't want your graph to look like this:



You need to learn to steal properly, and defend your blind properly (minimise losses). None of that even takes into account when people start to adjust against you and then your graph will look like this:



To avoid that yes, you need to disguise your range by playing more hands but we do this with hands that should show some form of profit anyway if you're playing them correctly.

I strongly believe that this game comes down to how you play the button and the blinds. That's pretty much it. You need to steal enough to minimise all your folding in the blinds. You need to play well enough in the blinds to make as many hands as possible at least neutral EV. Then you need to use position to get as much value from hands as possible, whether you make them fold or call.

That's poker. It's not playing TT+ because those hands for you are +EV. Eventually they won't be very +EV at all and they won't be enough to make up for all those folds (see graph 1 and 2).

Excellent! SO like I tend to think about how I will expand my game: Nit for 4 seats, TAG for 2 and LAG for 3.

That will work at the micros, pretty much.

Once you move up you need to disguise your UTG and MP ranges because people just won't play against you incorrectly otherwise.

Here's a concept. If you only ever play AA UTG and your opponent knows that, then AA will become a very marginal winner and maybe even a loser.

Now if you play 22-AA, chances are, AA will become a massive winner, enough to cover 22-99 and then some. Do you agree with this?

Yeah, for this to be meaningful, you have to subtract out the cost of paying blinds. So take your profit from AK/QQ+ and subtract out 0.25bb per hand played if you're playing 6-max.

Silly thread is silly.

Do you despise nits because you think they leave profits on the table or because you don't like them like some people don't like Brussell Sprouts?

you're winnings already account for the blinds.

No because now all hands (other than KK+) that were once profitable to play from the blinds now get folded so you lose.

ok,

numbers:

65,370 hands at 5nl Pokerstars

Amt won: $ 77.05

Amt won from AA& KK: $ 202.09

percentage of winnings from AA & KK: 381%

Amt won from AA KK QQ JJ TT AK: $ 367.52

percentage of winnings: 477%

no, I wouldn't fold a hand that was profitable. In fact I am pretty aggro from the blinds. I still owe you my 3bet stats by position so will post on fx.

I think the point of this is not to fold everything but TT+/ AK rather I think it is to understand that you should not go broke with speculative hands. Let the Big guns make the bucks and play enough other hands to stay ahead of the blinds and disguise your range. But what is a money loser is playing weak hands that win small pots and lose big ones, like dominated Broadways.

Then don't play big pots with them, but you should still play them.

But if I make money with KQ I should still play it right? Just checking.

Fx you don't seem to understand alot about position.

If you look at KQ from the blinds, it should be profitable (IMO) but if you look at it OTB it will be a lot more profitable. The same an even be said of AA.

You don't even have to make money with hands you play from the blinds, just lose less than you would if you always folded them.

Yeah I know, you want to make as many hands as you can neutral EV. The point I was making that overall a hand might be a slight loser, but in different positions it could be a winner. Also you could just be playing bad in the blinds with certain hands. There's so many different variations of situations that a hand can be played.

Lots of wise advise in these comments...hope I can remember most of it. Wally

So you always have QQ+ AK in the blinds?

here are my stats (nit mode) for profitable hands for the Small Blind, The Big Blind and then 3betting & RFI stats by position. I'm hardly folding alot from the blinds.

Attached Images

swb.jpg (102.4 KB, 111 views)

bwb.jpg (88.5 KB, 111 views)

rfi3b.jpg (46.6 KB, 111 views)

what about donkey players like me that dont have 1010 or JJ in their top 5 hands


i need nit training

probably a small sample issue

You wanna see a REALLY relevant stat? Look at your profits when you raise vs when you call a raise. Initative is a mutha****er!

ya I think of this a lot when debating whether or not to flat with AK to "keep dominated hands in."

I've looked at this before. It was such a huge leak for me that I basically stopped calling preflop raises except with 22-99, AQs AJs.

Over the past 29,566 hands I have only called a preflop raise 398 times (1.3%). My results: Won $ 5.38.

When I raise preflop:

Amt won: $ 244.17


btw: When I 3bet my BB/100: 205.28

Bet/ Raise or Fold.

Calling is double plus ungood.

You could sweat one of my sessions. Or I could give you all the nit training you want.

Call OTB and float vs. people who c-bet too much and never DB, which should be most people at NL25 and lower.

This doesn't work as well as you might think at 5nl (and works even less at 2nl).

But since you brought it up why not walk through some flops vs some villain types and talk about some good float opportunities.

I think in general there are two types of villains to float really wide IP.

1. The ones who can fire a single barrel with A-high on a raggy board but give up. A lot of people can cbet but firing 2 OOP is tougher and something most low stakes regs simply can't do. Similarly, someone who is tight preflop may fire at an A-high flop with JJ but gives up quickly. In general I think many will give away their strength by the size of their cbets.

2. The ones who will c/f to any scare card on turn. I.E. PFR cbets pot on T98 two-tone board. This is a great spot to float and represent everything that comes on the turn, which is going to be at least half the deck.

other opportunities:
1. Paired boards with face cards. A lot of low stakes players will always slowplay a strong hand like trips on the flop so a c-bet here will mean they don't have it (there are few nut combos they can have anyway on a QQ3 board) and will expect you to slowplay, your smooth call on the flop will represent a slowplayed monster.

2. Tight PFRs who have very little Ax in their range and c-bet/give up on A/K high boards.

I'll play along.

Winnings from AA & KK: 64%
TT-AA & AK: 118%

I play heads up, so you can't really compare these numbers with someone playing 6-max or full ring. I didn't filter by stakes so this includes data from 50NL to 400NL.

I'm glad you posted this question, you inspired me to go through my database and take a look at my starting hands. It's been awhile since I've done that.

lol that might be my favorite of all the FX Spoilers

Frampton rocks

Did you even read the whole post?
Answers in bold...