Please help me analyze this graph - showdown vs. non-showdown winnings

I realize this graph is seriously unimpressive. That aside, can someone explain the implications of the widely diverging Showdown Winnings and Non Showdown Winnings lines?

Obviously most of my winnings have been at showdown and most of my losses have not been at showdown, but what does that mean? Am I playing way too tight, mostly hands that will win at showdown, and giving up too easily before the river with other hands? Not 3-betting and 4-betting enough? Not stealing enough?

There's a graph in the September results/October goals thread that has almost the opposite results, so this can't simply be a typical graph.

Also, can someone explain how the All-In EV line is determined and why it follows the Winnings line so closely?

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You're likely not going to SD enough with some of your more marginal hands. Post your stats for this sample including SD stats (WTSD and W$SD). I know that when I'm playing my best my NSD line is almost straight across and above 0. When I play my worst my NSD exceed my SD because I bluff too much and call too much.

Read the entry I posted on my blog (link in sig) last night about this very subject for a few graphical examples.

what stakes do you play?

Can mean a lot of things. Maybe you don't value bet enough so you get to showdown too often with good hands because you let villains get out cheap. Maybe you fold too much to aggression and let villains bluff you out of pots. Maybe you don't steal enough. Maybe you don't cbet enough. Impossible to say without a full set of stats.

Here is my reasoning, and it is likely really wrong; keep in mind I am a tourney centric guy.

Non-showdown winnings (in this case losses)

This suggests you are not going to showdown often enough. You are not getting respect at the table so folks are betting you out on the river. And I'd guess often they see you as 'bluffable'. Try an experiment and take 1 or 2 more hands (per hour, or session) to showdown in those marginal situations where you think you might be good. An increase of just a little could change the respect offered you on the felt. Add in a few more C/R's per session, again not a huge shift in strategy, but an increase in aggressiveness. Both of these might help in gaining you some respect and cause your opponents to think one more thought before challenging you. Often that one more thought will be 'don't'.

Also consider that with small pots, it is sometime good to take a hand to showdown even believing you are not good. This can help in several ways;

-fairly often you will find you were actually good when you thought not...
-you will get them thinking you are game....leading to
-you might get more action on your monsters.

If you add the Showdown and non-showdowns together you show a profit, but at the table few will be able to do this.

If you are ring oriented, feel free to ignore all of this as I have no clue about it's ring game relevance.....

Just for the record, in ring games we don't play for respect, we play for $$$...

I have never seen Roundcat in ring so I am not sure what her graphs represent.

But your take on respect interests me. I have seen you in a ring game (ok, a drunken ring game) and it didn't take long for me to learn to disrespect your game. No diss on you but it was interesting.

Can I take it that you show no one any respect on the felts? Or does it play out very differently in ring. Or were you being facetious?

Also let me state, for the record that we tourney folks also play for $$$. While probably less ev on average, it will be the tourney folks who find life changing poker wins. Not saying this is a good or bad thing, and trust me I would love a good ring game, and am willing to grind it out day after day, but at this point I trust my limited liability tourney game over my ring game.

Pretty sure Belgo has it right, probably some combination of those. It seems you're either not taking down many pots or are folding with alot invested in them.

The ring game you saw me play was the 25nl 6max game with cardschat members only, right? We were all crazy aggressive there (apart from Fredrick).

And btw, even though i played crazy lag in that game, i only lost 3 buy-ins because of bad luck in all in pots. My all-in EV was actually break-even by the end of the game, which is a great result considering how much rake was taken out of the table as our average pot was about 60bb.

I usually play a lot tighter than that, tbh. Something like 20/18 at 6max.

But the thing is, in the rings, I don't care if people respect my game or not. If they do, then i'll bluff them off pots. If they don't, i'll value bet the hell out of them. Either can be quite profitable.

I think SD vs. NSD winnigs is based on style. I've seen graphs flipped (C9 the biggest one), I've seen graphs with semi-even NSD, and I've seen graphs where both NSD and SD winnings are about half each of the winnings, and several in between.

fwiw my graphs usually look somewhat like roundcat's. I don't think it's a bad thing. Basically raising your NSD winnings usually means folding less before SD. Whether this means continuing and firing 2nd and 3rd barrels more often or calling down lighter, it's going to decrease your SD winnings. Obviously we want to maximize the sum, we really don't much care about each individually. So I've quit caring that much about it and instead focusing on the W$WSF (won $ when saw flop) stat. When I'm playing well that's up ~43-45%. When I'm not making any moves and just playing fit or fold it's down around 35-37%.

But back to the analysis, other people could very well be right, but I'm going to come out and say that without further information they are simply shots in the dark. I could very easily see a graph with high NSD winnings and say your value bets are too big, you must be folding them out too much when you could have gotten a call and won more at SD. I could say you're calling too much because generally you want to be folding when you are beat. Until we see some details it's hard to judge but I don't believe that graph in and of itself is a bad thing.

Can you please elaborate on what it means to have respect for someone's game and why we want people to respect ours? Not quite sure exactly what you mean by respect in this context and don't want to make bad assumptions.

I don't disagree with anything you're saying here Zach, if your winning $$ it doesn't really matter how you're doing it. Having said that I feel that for me personally to maximize my winrate my NSD winning should be basically flat. It's been the only real indictaor of my sucess or failure since I started playing cash games. For me it's always bluff/call too much or bluff call just right (probably because my natural inclination is to bluff/call too much). As a result I've never had any sort of sustained period with negative NSD winnings.

Wow, this thread got me to look at my Showdown winnings stuff from all my FR hands and I'm kind of shocked actually. Not really sure what the hell has been happening the last 35k hands or so, but I feel ive been playing better than ever so who knows

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OK, here are my recent stats (filtered to remove limit games). I think I'm probably not 3-betting nearly enough and folding to raises too frequently. The second chart below is where my whole 3-betting range has been -- way too narrow, yes??

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RC: Yes, you are not going to showdown enough. Most of the reasoning has already been said here. So I'll just add that you can try to see flops from the blinds with marginal hand, attempt to steal the blinds more often, and use your position to bet out at dry flops.

BW: Get that sht outta here! We know you are running like a god! If your "not sure" statement was serious, the comparison of the 2 graphs is simple. You will always have a negative non-showdown winnings graph line because you will correctly fold when needed. But her green winnings line is near flat and yours is way up. Plus her non-SD winnings almost equal her SD winnings. Your non-SD is about 1/5 of your SD winnings. That is the key imo.

Thanks for the analysis, everyone. BelgoSuisse, I actually saw you at one of the tables where I was playing the other night. I'm just starting to get serious about NLHE cash games and working on my performance there, and I know all the information presented in the stats and graphs is amazingly helpful but I'm still trying to get a grasp on how to use it.

Roundcat, what are your cbet stats?

For the .10/.25 NLHE stats highlighted above, flop cbet = 68.1%, turn = 80%, river = 25%. So, I'm giving up on the river too much??

indeed, i have 33 hands of yours in my database. Must have been while I was experimenting with stacking 6max tables two days ago.

And from what I see, you do lack preflop aggression for 6max. I got 3 hands on you where you're in the BB, a loose passive 71/8 fish open-limps on the button and you just check with decent holdings (54s, T5s, K6o).

Also, you're not going for value enough on the river. (villain is 71/8 fish)

Full Tilt, $0.10/$0.25 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
Hand History Converter by Stoxpoker

BB (roundcat): $26.25 (105 bb)
UTG: $28.15 (112.6 bb)
MP: $26.05 (104.2 bb)
CO: $25 (100 bb)
BTN: $26.15 (104.6 bb)
SB: $27.60 (110.4 bb)

Pre-Flop:
3 folds, BTN calls $0.25, SB folds, BB checks

Flop: ($0.60) K A K (2 players)
BB checks, BTN bets $0.25, BB calls $0.25

Turn: ($1.10) 2 (2 players)
BB checks, BTN bets $1.10, BB raises to $3, BTN calls $1.90

River: ($7.10) 4 (2 players)
BB checks, BTN checks

Results: $7.10 pot ($0.35 rake)
BB showed 6 K (three of a kind, Kings) and won $6.75 ($3.25 net)
BTN mucked and lost (-$3.50 net)

These are 6-max stats? If so do not listen to me. I suck. Reverse anything I've said and you'll probably be fine.

Seriously, you should probably be looking to be a little more aggressive preflop (especially with position) and value betting / calling a little more often on the river. Also post some hands in the HA forum. Your bet sizing could be off and that could effect both your NSD and SD stats.

SD and NSD winnings depend alot on style. For TAG players in general you should expect to see a loss in NSD winnings, and for TAG FR players you could probably expect to see quite a loss. Anyways you need way more hands to come to any remote conclusion.

Look at it in combo with your W$WSF and WTSD%. You want a WTSD% of ~24-28% i'd guess and your W$WSF kinda depends on how you play (but needs to be at least over 40%). My W$WSF is really high at almost 47% average over 6 max and i am positive in NSD winnings. But by the same token, i know for a fact that this comes at a bit of a cost to my SD winnings (because you are obviously going to get caught bluffing on the river and lose at SD at times). So it is just about finding a balance that works with your style.

Typically i'd expect a "greater than desired" loss at NSD to be mostly attributed to
-not stealing enough
-not cbetting enough
-cbetting, but then not firing a double barrel vs light flop peelers

I was thinking my preflop raising was OK, but I do sometimes tend to hesitate to raise limpers without a big hand -- definitely need to fix that. I'm comfortable open raising but less confident when someone else has already entered the pot.

It was terrible not to get in a value bet on that river with the kings -- thanks for posting the HH, BelgoSuisse. I don't recall whether I was thinking I'd check raise, or if I somehow went of the deep end being afraid he had a better king (unlikely).

So, more aggression, more value betting, more calling down on the river. I hope to get in a lot more 6-max ring play soon so hope to post better results in the future!

Oh, and one more thing... I haven't been cbetting as much recently as I used to because it seems like everyone is aware of cbets these days and likes to pick them off. It sucks to cbet only to get raised or check raised and have to give up.

Then you need to watch cottonseed's (Kyle Hendon) tutorial video on cbetting on stoxpoker. I think it's still part of the few free videos there.

You can cbet/steal a very high % and few players know how to counter it properly at 100nl and lower (and mb higher). You just have to know who to cbet/steal vs, how often, and how you should play the turn/river when you don't win the pot on the flop. For example, I know that my steal% is a little exploitable, but i adjust when playing vs somebody who is able to play back at me and just hammer away at ppl that don't/can't.

Where do you get all these stats. on your game. THIS IS INFORMAtION i AM MISSING AND NEED.

The graphs above are from Hold'Em Manager (www.holdemmanager.net), and you can get similar stats using Poker Tracker (www.pokertracker.com).

I'll check out the Stoxpoker cbet video if it's among the freebies. I have a CardRunners membership but not Stox. And you're right, feitr, it should be easy to cbet into certain opponents and play more carefully with others.

For some (me included) this little piece of info/wisdom is a hidden gem.

Respect in the sense I used it there is that situation exists where a villain has/ or has not shown poker smarts as I perceive them. Either I end up believing they know wtf they are doing, or I believe they don't know wtf they are doing. And I act accordingly.

On the flip side, have I played in such a way that my villains believe I have a clue or not? If I raise do they give a shit, or are they gonna play me like I was not there. Have I caused him grief or joy. Or does my villain care.

The respect aspect deals with how you will play particular players, and as I believe you know, much of the time you will play player x different than you will play player y.

But perhaps the notion of respect here doesn't play as large in ring as it does in tourney. Especially late in a tourney, where it behooves one to know whats going on. In ring games there is no bubble, approaching bubble or change of gears with the implications there are in tourneys, so I, as a tourney guy, might be more inclined to give the respect notion any credence.

As it works out, Roundcat clarified OP and is asking about ring play. So my original response is much less valid.

Possible the place where respect is most valuable is in bluffs, and steals. If my villain respects my game, he is more likely to either fold to my steals, or raise with what I would normally expect to be a real hand.

So to clarify, when I'm playing my typical super-lag tourney game (I like to think I know wtf I'm doing, maybe you disagree ) would you then give me respect? It just seems you're using the term good player and tight player interchangeably, and I disagree that these are synonyms.

Here's a new graph, just for tonight's play. I like this one far better!

It should be noted that the original graph included all files that were imported into Holdem Manager, including some limit games as well as pot limit. This one is for $25 6-max NL only. I know one session isn't a real indication of anything, but I'm working on some of the points discussed in this thread and hope to keep the upward trend going with both the showdown winnings and non showdown winnings.

Oh, and I experienced no guilt whatsoever when stacking other players tonight.

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Congrats on the nice session.

Does this section of that graph look like it should be pixelated to anyone else?

rc.JPG (http://www.cardschat.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=13948&d=1223466863)

Looking back at your first graph, maybe you actually bluff too much and just don't do it very well or get yourself into tough spots in big pots with marginal hands? If it was more related to stealing/not cbetting enough i'd expect that the line would look a little "straighter" as it decends. As jagged as it is it looks like you are losing, and occasionally winning, decent pots in NSD, which you'd typically think are bluffs/double barrels gone wrong or you calling down too light on flop/turn and having to fold river or calling 3Bs and 3Bflop too light and having to fold turn.

idk might be wrong just an idea.