So after throwing away a bunch of money I decided to leave the tables and do a bit of thinking. The reason was simple enough really – I’d got involved in hands where I’d air or weak holdings and painted myself into a corner. Inevitably either my river bluff would fail or my opponent would put in a raise that I felt pot committed enough to call, and then I’d watch my sweet sweet money disappear into their stack.

Ultimately the thing I’m doing wrong is making my FPS moves too expensive. They might work a lot of the time (honestly!), but I need to recognise when it’s going tits up and give up on that hand earlier while not bloating the pot further.

It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. In fact I’m too ashamed to post those hands here – they might make you laugh, but I’m not happy about it. However it did get me into the mood of delving into the analysis side of Hold’em Manager and see what it can give me.

I took two periods of my poker ‘career’. Both are NL10, and the first was from April to July last year where I could do no wrong and won $300 over 13,000 hands (21BB/100). The second was my latest 13,000 hands where I’ve won $90 at just under 7BB/100. Nothing wrong with 7BB/100 of course, and the first period looks like a big heater, but it’s still worth a comparison to see if there’s a significant difference somewhere.

I pasted the comparison into a single big image – 21BB/100 on left, latest hands on right;

The first set of boxes is my opening range UTG, MP and CO. I’m kinda pleased with this – I knew that my game has both loosened up and become more aggressive and I was worried that my range had actually become completely wild. It looks fairly well controlled though, and both periods show that I stick to my ranges very solidly (I have no concerns about the lack of balance – what’s the point at NL10 when I rarely play anyone for more than a few hundred hands! That’s also why I’m not worried about publishing it here either, it’s not as if my screen name is meteoric either). As expected my range has widened a bit, mainly at the top end although I’ve also included more suited connectors. The one funny extra is 72o – this is because Ultimate Bet has 72 side bet tables, and it’s worth a quick 3bet or flop cbet with 72o just for this side bet. (Edit – at least, it doesn’t look like it’s gone wild to me, but then I’ve little to compare against. Maybe I shouldn’t loosen up my early position as much as that?)

The rest of the tables compare various situations such as flopped hands, showdown hands and positional stats. Since 13k hands isn’t a huge sample I’ve tried to pinpoint only those areas where the numbers are extremely different. So, from bottom upwards (sorry, that’s just the way they were pasted);

Positional stats at the bottom aren’t much different, and that doesn’t surprise me. It’s been a while since I really came to understand the power of position, and I don’t think I’m spewing too much by playing OOP in the wrong situations.

The flopped hands shows one big anomaly. When I hit a top pair with weak kicker (and no draw), last year I lost about $100 (it’s not too surprising that this is a losing hand, it could easily be out paired on later streets and obviously out-kicked) – the later session though I’ve lost $343 though!  It’s the biggest difference in that table, so I need to see what I’m doing differently. I’m probably just playing them too aggressively and not controlling the pot enough. There are probably two situations – ace with weak kicker, and a low top pair (for instance, 9′s on a 923 board). I need to see which is the one I’m messing up. It’s probably more likely to be the aces I think.

Edit – I’ve just realised this is TPWK or worse, so this is including high card hands. I need to dig a bit deeper. It wouldn’t surprise me that I’m now floating overcards too much…

The river made hands seems to suggest that the first session did owe a lot to being a heater – I seem to make a lot more big hands then than lately. Not much I can do about that, unless of course I’m folding too early too often now. Kindof doubt that though.

Groupings suggest big aces have suffered the most lately. I’m putting this one down to variance too – there are a lot of AK pots which become flips, and so a slight shift in luck can result in a large monetary swing.

So final conclusion – top pair weak kicker = my achilles heel. Need to look into this some more…