Can somebody tell me if this is normal?

I've played 70000 hands NL5 this year since starting with PokerTracker 4. I took a few years out of the game before that (new job, new country) and find the game is much harder now. I've played exclusively on Stars since coming back.

I'm having a real hard time churning out a profit at this level. Most of my problems early on were stupid mistakes without thought and crying calls. Minimising these has been a help, but I find it hard to play well and properly when I'm not getting cards or hitting the flop for such long periods. Stealing and bluffing are hard when you get called down a lot at these levels, and when you are not hitting, its even harder!

Anyway, I track how often I hit the flop (with unpaired hole cards) and it's really bothering me how low this figure is. I don't know if it's my report, or if I'm wrong that you should hit the board 32% of the time on the flop. Can a few of you (who use PT4) please run this report over your last 70000 hands and share what your ratio is for comparison? I would really appreciate it!

My results below, and the report is attached.



Overall graph for NL5 (not including pocket pairs)



Typical example of hit flop ratio for unpaired hole cards and its effect on my blue and green line at this level (this is my most recent session).

Missing the flop 66% of the time is about exactly what should happen. I cant think of a source ATM but this can be verified. Interesting that your database almost perfectly proves that. I have holdem manger 2 and it shows me missing 42% of the time but that is over a lower sample. Only around 9000 hands.

I'm missing the flop over 80% of the time not 66%...

Start from scratch read some books. Your spewing and everythings going wrong. Suggest starting 2 tables.

^^ you do realise that graph is only non-paired hands right?

Does seem weird that your Hit Flop % is so low hashtag, like you say should be roughly 32%. The sample is reasonably large but I'm thinking this is just variance being a bitch, you hit 1942/10092 times and you wold expect to hit ~3200/10092 times, I think variance is such that this difference is possible.

Hey Micro, yea the graphs are unpaired hole cards only. Paired hole cards hit ratio is 8.5:1 so including them would skew the results. I have a separate report for them and that stat looks normal. I'm just above break even overall when including PP's so I'm thankful for that at least. It just seems weird that I'm consistently at ~20% hit rate almost all the time, was wondering was it my report or what.

Aces2w1n said:

Start from scratch read some books. Your spewing and everythings going wrong. Suggest starting 2 tables.

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Why do you say that he is spewing?

How does PT4 define hitting the flop?

I believe it is flopping pair, 2 pair, set, straight, flush or quads.

The raw figures for how often you flop a pair are just that - raw. The assumption that you should flop a pair about 1/3 of the time doesn't incorporate the context of how you play.

For example, if you like to call an opening bet with a hand like AT or Ax suited, the probability you'll flop a pair is less than 1/3 because the opener's range includes a fair number of hands with an A. So when he has one of them, there are only 5 cards left that can give you a pair, not 6.

nabmom said:

I believe it is flopping pair, 2 pair, set, straight, flush or quads.

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This is correct - stated on their website and in PT4 itself.

The raw figures for how often you flop a pair are just that - raw. The assumption that you should flop a pair about 1/3 of the time doesn't incorporate the context of how you play.

For example, if you like to call an opening bet with a hand like AT or Ax suited, the probability you'll flop a pair is less than 1/3 because the opener's range includes a fair number of hands with an A. So when he has one of them, there are only 5 cards left that can give you a pair, not 6.

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Not just a pair, pairs or better including flush, straights etc. Seems reasonable what you are saying, but the 32% does not change unless you know the cards your opponent is holding. Even then, taking A's out, that wouldn't account for >10% discrepancy over a long run. A lot of hands like KQ, J10s, 98s are well off the mark as well, so I can't say playing them differently would affect how often they are flopping.

That's pretty terrible luck. Maybe not 90 BIs worth of bad luck... I wouldn't fault you for playing badly when running that badly though. That type of downswing is hard to deal with.

hashtag said:

Not just a pair, pairs or better including flush, straights etc. Seems reasonable what you are saying, but the 32% does not change unless you know the cards your opponent is holding. Even then, taking A's out, that wouldn't account for >10% discrepancy over a long run. A lot of hands like KQ, J10s, 98s are well off the mark as well, so I can't say playing them differently would affect how often they are flopping.

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I agree it's pretty unlikely that this explains the gap of >10%. The probabilities do change however, based on you're opponent's range without knowing his exact holding.

As a simplified example, say you're playing HU and always call an open-raise with Ax. Let's arbitrarily say that hand with an A make up 20% of the opponent's open-raise range. The 32% figure assumes there are always 3 aces available to flop, but 20% of the time, there are only 2. So overall, you'll pair+ your A a little less than 16%, and thus flop pair+ a little less than 32%.

It would be nice to see his other stats, vs win/loss stats.

Post hands - not graphs - if you want to figure out why you aren't getting results.

Mr Sandbag said:

Post hands - not graphs - if you want to figure out why you aren't getting results.

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This.

The luck will even itself out in the end. Check back on it (if it means that much to you) with 500k hands. Look for holes in your game and things that you CAN fix/control.

obviously you pissed someone off that has connections.........

Post some stats. I'm assuming your WTSD is a bit too high and you Cbet/bluff in the wrong spots too often. Over the course of 70K hands, even with the worst of variance, I would expect a good reg to at least BE at 5NL.

I'm pretty sure you are spewing. Go to PT4 > $ > Statistics > Summary. Then post those stats here. Hands would help as well.