My Glaring hole

OK, well if you don't know my recent history with poker, I moved up to 25nl about a month ago. I started off on an extreme heater, winning $200 in the first weekend. I proceeded to win at about 1 BB/100 since then as my entire total was under 3 BB/100 as of the other day. Now it's far worse, I'm not going to even look now. I hit the worst cooler ever recently. I lost 100+ in each of the last 2 days. If I see another rivered 2 pair against my overpair or another set over set I think I'm about to kill someone. But after my failure of a session today I began to examine overall what I was doing wrong. Even without this heater, I was winning at way too small a rate. I must have been doing something wrong. And then it just came to me. I was playing a hand AA, got one caller HU and he folded to my cbet. And I cursed to myself "whenever they miss, they get out and when they hit they get my money. A few hands later and my 33 failed to set and the winner had 3rd pair. And I realized the problem.

My strategy beforehand had basically been play straight premiums, raise preflop and cbet postflop no matter what. After that, use my poker sense and try to figure out the best move. Now people at 25nl are calling me with all sorts of crap even on my cbets, and sometimes it seems as if they call when they have me beat but fold when I have a monster (but I know it isn't true, just ended where this guy paid me with 88 against my top set QQ, no idea why he called my river overbet, maybe he had me on a bluff. I was trying to extract value from the TPTK type hand I thought he had).

So the problem that I think I've found? I'm playing way too passive postflop. When I miss I'm letting my opponents see showdown way too cheap and when I hit I'm playing it completely differently, betting hard the whole way. Now there are some complete idiots at this level, which explains why I was still scraping out a tiny profit. When someone pays off my monsters with an underpair, that's a bonus. But I need to be able to win even without those types of plays, and that wasn't happening.

One big betting pattern I just started using tonight which I think will be key is the cbet, and if called check behind on turn and bet the river if they check to me. In the past I've just checked down if they call my cbet, and once in a while they'll call that river bet, just because they want to see a cheap showdown. But if they check the river after I checked behind on the turn, they do not want an extra bet going into the pot, and likely I'll get a fold. This happened a lot the other way, when I wanted a call.

The thing (among many things, but this is what I think was a big one) was that I forgot the aggressive part of tight aggressive. If my big hands are not getting paid off, that means if I played a crap hand the exact same way, I'd pick up that pot without showdown. So if none of my big hands are getting paid off, the key is to start playing more hands aggressively. This will make observant players more likely to pay off my monsters and the unobservant players will continue to fold just as they did refusing to pay off my monsters. I confused cbets with aggression. I also need to start playing back at cbets when my opponent raised preflop, especially when I have position and 2 overs as I usually do. This most likely either buys me the pot right then and there or gets me 2 free cards, because after that raise my opponent will likely check the turn, whether he is legitimately weak or is trying to slowplay a monster. After that the river bet or check will tell me the strength of his hand. He wouldn't dare check in front after I checked behind on the turn if he has a monster, and he's probably not bluffing at this pot after I raised his flop bet.

So although when I started this post I was extremely pissed, because even with some holes I was profitting before this weekend, but now I've calmed down and figure it's almost for the best. I didn't want to be hitting $1k and then convincing myself I was ready for 50nl and getting destroyed. I need to rethink my strategy and see if I can get back to winning. Logging about 1,000 hands per hour, each BB/100 is $5/hour, so if I can even win at 5 BB/100, that puts me at $25/hour and thus only 16 hours to make $400 (I'm at around $600). This puts things in perspective and lets me know that re-examining my game and learning how to win properly will get me to my goal in plenty of time while also serving me a lot better in the long run. I'm going to try to log at least 5 hours of play tomorrow, working specifically on aggression. I also need to work on not paying off hands with my overpairs even to ragged boards. I had been doing really well at this, but recently I've found myself more and more stacking with an overpair vs. ragged boards. I can get away from boards with straight and flush possibilities, but I need to learn that although some people will stack with TPTK, most players at 25nl will be scared of a ton of action with only top pair. If I raise their bet and they come over the top putting in a bet that pot commits me, this usually means they have a hand, and it's usually better than a single pair. Of course sometimes I still stack with these for example if I think they're also on an overpair and there's a really low board (I'm not expecting him to have connected if we 4-bet preflop and the board comes 357 and I will stack with AA there, that's not what I'm talking about).

My short session working on those things went well tonight, but I'll be going to sleep soon. I'm really going to work on that tomorrow. I'll keep you updated.

Also sorry maybe I should have just posted this in my blog, it's a bit more related to me personally, but since I do think there are several poker concepts that people can learn from here (and perhaps respond and help me out with a bit), I think this should be fine here. I may repost this to my blog though (I know, shameless advertising ).

Nothing worse than having a glaring hole!

Excellent post Zach, You've done really well here in self analysis, looking at ways to improve and plugging any leaks, which is really commendable.

FWIW I'm in a similar situation as yourself. I'm on an horrendous downswing that has seen me drop around 20 BI's, 25% of my roll just in the last week. So much so that I have dropped down to 25nl. I have looked at some of the stacks I lost in PT to see if they could have been avoided, and TBH 75% were coolers or bad beats so they were pretty unavoidable. I haven't gone into as much detail as yourself (maybe a leak) but you know what Zach I've had these downswings before and I don't think there's anything you can do about it. There are ways to reduce it's affect, ie fold when your getting major resistence and stop going to showdown as often with tptk or an overpair, b/c these seem to get outdrwn a hell of a lot in a downswing, drop down in stakes or just stop playing.

Another point Zach, I'm not entirely sure about this, maybe some of the other cash games regs could pipe in with an opinion, but over a relevant sample of hands and with the amount of tables you and I play ( you 12 table, I 9-12 table ) I really don't think 5ptbb/100 is sustainable. I'll be honest if I could maintain a winrate of 3+ptbb/100 I'll be relatively happy.

Keep us posted about your results in the next couple of days, b/c I'm really interested in your outcomes here. I think we have pretty similar style's (Yep I know your FR I'm 6max, but pf were aggressive and post flop I think our stats maybe slightly passive ).

Anyways gl with this.

No, nothing worse than having a glaring hole and not knowing about it. Everyone has holes, and if you can find them and fix them you can become a much better player.

zach you've really helped me fill lots of holes in my play, and I'm very grateful for that. It must be really frustrating to be at your level of play and hit a downer, I do sympathise, but as people have said here it is inevitable, and coping with the downswings determines how successful we can all be playing poker in the long run. Hope your luck turns soon...

and that you can continue analysing where the holes are in your play (and mine), and fixing them...

Oh I realize downswings are inevitable, my main point though was just about how I didn't think I was doing as well as I should. I know it's possible to win at a higher rate, because I've seen chuck's graphs at 50nl where he was 8-tabling and winning at ~6 PTBB/100. Now I realize I'm not as good as he is, but the answer isn't just to say that and give up. If he can do it and I can't, he's obviously doing something right that I'm not. I'm going to have to work hard on my game and really examine my play and be honest with myself. Saying it'll be easy would be lying to myself, but I do think it's worth it.

I bookmarked this post so I could re-read it, as I really identified with it.

I'm almost in the exact same boat. I moved up the the $25 tables January 1st. I hit a heater for one week. I just kept winning and winning. I only had one suck out on a guy for a big pot, hitting trips on the river when all-in against a bigger over pair.

Then I had the Saturday from hell. I was at a table of fish who kept calling with junk. I lost five full buy-ins, losing just about every big hand when I was all-in with the best of it and they drew out on me. I'd have lost 7 buy-ins, but I won two big pots towards the end.



I've had a lot of ups and downs since then, but haven't been able to get a sense of steadiness. It seems that I can win a lot of small pots, but whenever I get into a big pot I lose, and I almost always have the best of it when I get all my chips in.

I think a part of it has been that when I moved up, I had no fear. I had a strategy (much learned from videos I found online, including some in the CC video section (http://www.cardschat.com/f53/))

Now I have fear. I've been weaker post flop. Just like in your case, I think that's tainting my profitability. I win, but not nearly what I should be winning. People see that I'm only pushing with big hands, and are able to bail when I get more aggressive.

I think maybe I need to take a few days off, and spend my poker time reading strategy and watching videos. Then I can hit the tables hungry.

You sound extremely similar to myself. I just hate that it took the massive cooler to get me to realize what was going on. Heaters and coolers aside, I was losing too many big pots and winning too many small pots. While I'm still in the camp of playing sets and other monsters very aggressively (well there are some reads involved, ie when I expect someone to cbet ATC I don't want to bet and have bad hands fold, I'll check and take the one bet with a check-raise if he missed and get his stack in if he hit), and I don't even think most of this is image-based. I don't think the people at 25nl overall (there are a few decent regulars) are observant enough for that. But even if every hand is against a new set of players every time, the point I was trying to make was that if I play a set a certain way and it doesn't see showdown, I need to know that I could have played complete crap that way and still won without showdown. They can't see your hole cards (for the most part) so if the people in general are playing scared, make them pay for that by giving you the pots where you both miss as well. Come over the top more, 3-bet more, double barrell more with draws and such strong hands but not monsters. I'm not advocating 4-betting a flop where you have 2 unders, but when people are scared to put all their money against you when you have a set, they're also scared when you have the flush draw, or when you have middle pair.

Obviously aggressive does not equal crazy maniac, but aggression also helps get a read on an opponent a lot easier. In just the half hour or so I played last night after coming to this realization, I was starting to make some great reads. It's a lot easier to put someone on a hand based on how he reacts to your aggression than how he reacts to your weakness. I'm also planning on loosening up a lot preflop. I had resolved just to play the absolute premiums, AA-JJ, AK, AQ, AJ and ATs in position, throwing in KQ once in a while with position as well. I limped a few suited connectors, and I always limped with smaller pocket pairs looking to flop a set. But based on the times I'm just picking up the blinds or taking the pot with a cbet I think I can go down to even the TJ or JQ type hands. I think I was trying to minimize postflop poker because that's the hard part. It's easy to just pick hands and basically formulize your approach and that's what I think I did. So I'm going to loosen up a bit, get much more aggressive postflop, and hope to turn this around. I may have to scale down on the number of tables, and perhaps that was my big problem. It's easy to 12-table when you have a formulaic approach. But poker is not just about an algorithm and I'm going to work on going beyond playing like that. We'll see how it goes, I'm just about to walk back to my room and probably play a few hours. I'll probably record it, I looked for a mic I could use but all I found was a $35 headset. Seems like a great time to try to give some commentary on my play, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be. I'm not paying $35 for a mic, especially when I already have some at home and don't really plan on using it other than commenting on poker sessions. Oh well, I'll keep y'all updated.

Do you use Pokertracker? If so, you should plug your database into PokerEV and find out how the green line relates to the blue line. This will tell you how "nitty" you are.

An important stat directly in Pokertracker is WonSawFlop%. This should be 40+ (unless you're a LAG), if it's not you probably give up too easily and don't bluff enough.

This sounds like a strange line. Why not double-barrel on the turn? You'd be surprised how often this takes down the pot for the simple fact that the turn bet will always cost significantly more to call than the flop bet.

If you raise and I call you in position, and my stats tell me that you c-bet a lot, I will extremely often call that c-bet with e.g. a medium pair but fold if you keep betting the turn.
I will also sometimes call that c-bet with absolutely nothing, just waiting for you to check the turn so that I can take it down with a bet.

Just make sure not to get too aggressive against a calling station unless you have a hand. No point in triple-barreling someone who'll happily go broke on second pair.

I don't know much about the play at NL25, but in general it's the other way round. If your overpair faces resistance on a dry rag board you're most often beat. If your overpair faces resistance on a draw-heavy board, there's a good chance that your opponent doesn't have a big hand yet or that he's flat-out bluffing.

If I check-raise you on a flop of 782hhc, I'll often have a hand like KQhh.
If I check-raise you on a flop of 952 rainbow, I'll very often have a set. That, by the way, is the reason why I won't check-raise you on a dry flop when I have a set, but a lot of players will.

Let's put it this way. My showdown winnings are over $800, my total winnings are under $100. Is that evidence I'm being too nitty?

39.08%

I guess that sounds right. I know how often my set gets a flop call but fold to my second barrel on the turn. I realize you would just check and take down the pot on the turn, but most people at 25nl aren't leading that turn if they check-called the flop. It's also useful to gain a free card and I can usually get a good read of hand strength based on river decision. I don't know which would be better in general to use, but I'll think that one over.


Actually that's a really good point. Basically I was thinking that like on a board of 952 rainbow, it could easily be an A9 trying to protect. Maybe that's a problem too. Anyway thanks for the input.

Absolutely. It means that you don't win enough hands that don't go to a showdown. The blue line minus the green line is your Non-showdown winnings. That's -$700, the goal should be to get this to break-even or better.

I'm not 100% sure whether you can fully break-even at NL25 because people may not be willing to fold often enough. But I think it should be doable.
TAG players will make most of their profit in showdown pots, so as long as you break even in non-showdown pots, you'll be in great shape.

You do this mainly by not giving up too easily, by bluffing a bit more and by not being afraid of double- and sometimes triple-barreling when you feel your opponent is weak.

When you called a preflop raise with 99, the flop comes K74 and your opponent c-bets there's generally no reason to fold just because there's an overcard.
Likewise, if you c-bet a ten high board with pocket Jacks, get called and the turn it comes a Queen or a King, there's generally no reason not to bet out again. If it comes an Ace, you should definitely bet out again because even the biggest calling stations tend to fold when an Ace hits, they don't have one and the other guy bets.

Don't become a calling station, but also don't give your opponents too much credit, especially if they have position. Even very conservative players tend to bet when you check to them twice, no matter what they have.

Sure, there's always multiple ways to play it, just mix it up a bit.

Yeah, I mean you shouldn't always auto-fold just because you face resistance. But you have to be very careful on those boards.
A9 will not tend to raise you very often on that flop, most players will just call.

The graph above is my first 9k hands at 25NL and I've never played ring in any serious way before. With all the mistakes of learning (and running KK into AA 5 times in the first 3k hands) I've found a decent way of playing in the last 5-6k hands which seems to be consistanly successful.

Essentially I'm managing the size of the pot where there is risk and letting donks make mistakes when they play back at me. I'm cbetting a lot (almost all the time) but not bluffing deep in a hand much (I have this in my arsenal from tournies, but it doesn't seem necessary here).

Main thing seems to solid hand selection and paying attention to my opponents so that I can classify their style. This goes beyond pokertracker which is of course a factor to taking notes on specific hands. I do wonder how far this is possible 8+ tabling (I'm 4 tabling here and taking lots of notes).

It feels to me as if the game is very beatable provided you don't get excited with big hands and try to milk them for more than they are worth.

Ill echo Rex's statements, I started at nl$5 and trashed though the limits until my win rate evened out on nl$50. Im beating nl$100 for 7.2bb/100 over 45K hands at the moment.

I mentioned it to you before Zach, I think your main problem is quite simple, and easily resolved. Your playing too many tables, really you killing your win rate, and you should be beating nl$25 for 7-15 bb/100. Just try it for a bit, you lose some incredible value playing so many tables, half them IMO.

I've definitely thought about doing this (especially when you suggested it ), but here's my thought process. Basically if I play 12 tables and win at 3 BB/100 it's equivalent to playing 6 tables and winning at 6 BB/100. If I can get my game to the point where I'm winning at 4-5 BB/100 then I think we'd both agree I should stick with 12-tabling. I don't know if this is possible, but I'm going to find out. If this doesn't work out I'll definitely scale back, and if/when I do move up to 50nl there's no way I'll be starting it 12-tabling, I'll probably start with 4 or maybe 6. 12-tabling right after moving up stakes would be suicide.

As for today, played 1063 hands, won $53.65 for a winrate of 10.09 BB/100. Now this means nothing because I ran well, there's no way I'm keeping that up (did have KK run into AA, but villain had about $6 in his stack to start the hand). But first off I have about $10 of non-showdown winnings and I felt I was playing pretty good poker. Gonna play some more but it's going well so far.

I readjusted my strategy today, allowing myself to stick my neck out when I *thought* I was making the correct decision.
A lot of it had to do with this thread, as I seemed to be in the same boat as Zachvac.

I two-tabled the 6-max $25 tables this morning for a short while, then two-tabled again for another short session a little while ago. I played a total of 213 hands and am up $78.80. I was on a heater.

Worked out nice. I finished a winner at every table, though I was only up $.10 at one.

Thanks everybody.

Oh man I wish I wised up sooner. My winning continues. Things have really turned around this weekend, pulling by bankroll to a record high.

I am SOOOOOO glad you made this post, Zachvac. Thanks again.

Great thread! One point to consider when playing online is player turnover at a given table. In a the fast paced online environment, playing more hands more aggressively to develop a more aggressive image may be a problem. With the quick player turnover on a given table, there is seldom enough time for a player to develop an image. I try to combat this by taking tons of notes on my opponents, but really don't see many of the same players again. There are obvious exceptions to this, and I am definitely not an authority on the topic. Just wanted to give another point of view.

Double barreling is better.

I have been doing that to the regs with amazing success. Also I have started c/r the flop from OOP against regs if the flop is low and they c-bet alot.

5-10ptbb/100 is sustainable. Go to 2+2 uNL and ask, most good regs average in that range.

Really? 12 tabling! Ive had discussions with some regs on 2 + 2 and they seem to think this is unsustainable, not totally convinced but I'll take your word for it.

Munchrs - just had a little look on some old threads on 2+2 and this is a qouted post from a well respected winning reg:

From large datamined samples, it looks like the best players at each level make around 4pt when they play at least 100k hands.

Spreadsheet simulations have shown massive graph variations over 200k hand samples.


It's safe to say that the good players move up before they attain a true win rate.

I would say aim for 3-4ptbb/100 and move up after 50k hands or so.

I'm not saying it's impossible to win at a decent clip, ie 5-10ptbb/100, but it's easy to get carried away with graphs and heaters and paint a skewed picture. I think for the majority of winning players and new ones who maybe reading these threads, that attaining such high winrates whilst multi tabling over a large sample of hands, is quite rare imo. Setting lower, achievable winrate targets would make more sense.

i stand corrected.

In my I think that's not the optimal way of getting to that stage of your gaming career. I think you'd be better off to concentrate on fewer tables to really study the nooks and crannies of the game. I think then you'll have a more intimate understanding, which you can *then* apply to a larger field of tables.

That is, playing 12 tables is reactionary (90+ opponents who pop in and out... yipes!), and it's best to build "instinct" (for lack of a better word) in an intimate environment which can then be expanded to more and more tables.

You *do* learn a lot 12 tabling, especially multi-table management. But I think table management is a distant second to the other schtuff, and I think that other schtuff is better learned at fewer tables, where you can watch hands that you're not a part of and really get a feel for what everyone is doing and why.
Once you're crushing 4 tables, move up to 6, then 8, then 12.

stuff?

I use that as an amalgamation of $h!t and stuff.

This is actually what I did, obviously I started my online poker career single-tabling, but since my last deposit I started 4-tabling 10nl. I destroyed it at about 8.5 PTBB/100. I then proceeded to add more tables at 10nl and although my winrate did go down, I've tripled the number of tables and I was way higher than the 3 PTBB/100 I'd have needed for it to be profitable (I ran about 5 PTBB/100). When I moved up to 25nl, I started out with just 6 tables. I had a settling in period, the start of which I was intimidated by the size of the bets (seeing raises to $1 preflop, it not being that odd to put in $10 through the course of the hand when that was my entire stack before, etc.). As I got more comfortable I started playing more and more tables until I hit 12 again now at 25nl. Now I was crushing 25nl at the start and continued to crush it at the start of my 12-table adventures. I'm up about $70 though after 2 days of play since I wrote this initial post (and that doesn't count the $2 million turbo takedown where I won $180 with an entry fee that was the equivalent of $100, but in FPPs), so hopefully I can keep this going upward.

Congrats Zach on the $2 million finish!

Thanks, and don't get me wrong I was happy to do that well (although I just hit the kind of hand that always doubles you up, AA vs. AJ flop comes AJx), but there was $300 for 2,000 and up and I got all-in AK vs. QJ. If the AK had held up I would have pretty much been guaranteed another $120, although I'm not really upset since we both played it the way we had to, it was a turbo, just very very high stakes.

Update:

After almost 6k hands after that last post, I've been running at 4.61 BB/100 and am up $136.60 not counting that tournament win. I'm very happy with that, it corresponds to about $15/hour. Obviously I know it hasn't been long-term, but I definitely haven't been on a super heater. I think I'm playing much better poker after concentrating on 2 main things. First off increasing my aggression and second off not paying off opponents when I'm probably beat. I almost didn't post this OP just because I thought it was a bit too self-centered, but it sounds like other people had the same problem. Hope it's going well for everyone else with the same problem (well, for everyone regardless of if they did actually ).

Those are the two biggest leaks I have. Not extracting enough value and not giving draws bad odds by btting to small in relation to pot size and not folding to aggression enough when I have a medium strengt hand.

We are very much alike except that I win at 18bb/100 over 25k hands at $25NL (<-- shameless self brag ). Note bb=$0.25

lol ouch. That one hurts

But in all seriousness good job, looks like we should both be moving up to 50nl soon, where I'm sure you'll outperform me there as well

Down 6 buy-ins over 6k hands in the 2 shots at $50NL ive taken.

Decided it better to sort my bet sizing and folding on later streets out at $25NL and then move up.

Maybe im just on a 25K hand heater?