My winrate also nose-dived, which was then further compounded by a quick go on Rush which of course also crashed. I returned to two tables on Cake, and then had one of my worst sessions ever (in bb, had worse in $$$). I spewed a bunch of stacks, and then ran some more stacks into better hands, and it just kept going. In the end I’d lost 7 buy-ins in just over an hour. To make it extra humiliating, the results charts was a straight diagonal line from top left to bottom right – this wasn’t a winning session ruined by some lost stacks, this was pure fishbowl territory

My game is clearly a disaster. I might have learnt a lot about poker, and played a lot of hands, but I’m doing it wrong. Very wrong.

Yegor suggested LeakBuster (is he the only one who suggests anything to me around here?), and we had a play with the trial version and it looked useful. It analyses your stats from HEM, and points out areas where you’re deviating from what’s commonly held to be sensible. The trial version pointed out a few things, but I needed to buy it ($50) to get the full functionality. Since I’d just spewed more than that in an hour, the price didn’t look too bad.

I’m aware these are just stats though – I saw a quote on 2p2 that was made the point perfectly; ‘Solid poker makes good stats, solid stats doesn’t make good poker’

If I’m going to make this program work for me, I’ll need to be careful to understand how to change my game in response to what it’s telling me. I need to change my strategy, which will change the stats, not play to change the stats directly.

Unfortunately it was telling me a lot! Everything was out of whack one way or another. It was almost overwhelming and not clear what to tackle first. The big leak that seemed to be costing me money was W$SD & WTSD% – I was seeing showdowns too often, and usually with not the best hand. I watched their video on calling light, but it didn’t really help (combinatrics!).

Then I realised that it was also telling me these things;

a) My opening range was poor – too loose and too many problem hands.
b) I wasn’t cbetting enough
c) I wasn’t folding after being raised on the flop
d) I wasn’t folding to flop cbets enough
e) I was calling 3bets too light.

If I corrected all these actions, then that would mean more folding during the hand, and would reduce my WTSD%. Which would then make my showdowns a bit more ‘quality’, and improve the W$SD.

So I’ve gone right back to basics, and created (shock horror) a starting hand chart! I then dived into some nl5 Rush and held myself to that chart, cbet loads more, folded loads more, and generally concentrated like mad on those 5 points above.

It was tricky to remember other elements of the game while concentrating on those key points – my defending of the blinds virtually disappeared (not a big problem in the short term though), and I found myself only open-raising or folding pre (PP’s being the only hand I called to earlier bet). I managed 500 hands (didn’t start until late), and it was reasonably succesful. Perhaps two hands I should really have let go (JJ overpair calling down to see QQ was one), plus a couple of bad beats (QJ 2pair seeing AA all-in on flop, turn & river were both 5). My WTSD% stat improved, but sample size is way too small. I’m going to play sets of 10k hands and then re-analyse with leakbuster. Might even blog my progress if it’s not too dull

Turns out HEM has a bug – any time that I went out in the first round it was recording the match as a regular 2man HU match. So when I filtered my results on just 4mans those games weren’t included.

No wonder I was doing so well, but it explains I was getting frustrated that I couldn’t continue my 4man success when trying $10 single 2man HU matches. How depressing, it seems that I’m still crap at poker.

Update: It gets worse. I figured I’d experiment and see how far just value betting would take me. I’d still throw a few bluffs in, but just in obviously high FE spots.

Didn’t make any difference at all. It seemed to be an endless series of missed flops and villains with constant made hands.

In my last game the only hand I got that I’d consider ‘big’ was a straight, plus trips once was nice. The rest were weak pairs. My opponent got 2 flushes, 2 straights and also hit trips. It just felt like he never missed.

It’s felt that way all evening – I’ve played 11 games and only won 3. So I pushed all my opponents from today into one alias in HEM, and compared showdowns;

if straights+ are monsters, then they had 16, and I had 7. Obviously value betting isn’t enough, I’m going to need some kind of hole card spyware…

or, maybe I’m going to showdown too light? More to think about.

Just a little ($120) – that’s the first time since I had to take everything out to pay credit card bills and restarted from scratch. It’s not something I really want to do since every step backwards on the BR is time lost in getting to higher stakes, but there was a couple of things I wanted to get. Since they were poker related I thought it’d be reasonable to use some of my BR for them.

First thing was a HH review by a coach. ChicagoRy posts on 2p2 a lot and seems a smart guy. He plays $100s, has a good record and can certainly teach me something. The HH review was $40, and he was clear and it all made sense what he was saying – however to get the most out of it I’m going to have to send him at least one more and then maybe a sweat session. One HH review isn’t going to revolutionise my game (I guess it’s like tennis lessons – get an individual lesson and it costs about £20. It’ll improve your serve a little, but won’t turn you into Federer instantly). Several HH and a session will add up to a fair bit of $$$ unfortunately, but the time seems about right. If the rest of the week goes well I’ll send him a second HH and take it a step at a time. If the rest of this week bombs, then it’ll have to wait.

Second thing was Omaha holdem manager. A bit of a frivolous buy, but during the times when I don’t want to gamble too heavily (ie reg peak times of the US afternoon) I’ve been knocking about with $1 PLO husngs. Cheapest way of playing PLO heads up! Postflop I’m getting more confident, but I’m still clueless about preflop (is it ever worth 3betting?). My opponents seem more clueless though, so it’s hard to know if I’m thinking clearly or if they’re just spazzing out;

lol, to be fair when I chose that HH (mainly just to test if the convertor worked) I didn’t realise he had a straight. Maybe not such a spaz after all…

After 600 hands I was down $27 (NL10). I stopped playing and thought how familiar this was. Every 6max session lately has been a losing one. Not suckouts or bad beats either, just me being spewy.

So I went back to husngs ($10 ones – Monday’s always a bad day, so wanted to play for fun rather than pushing myself into $20s). Six games later I was still unbeaten. $57 from an hour’s play.

What’s the point in playing 6max? Obviously none at all. I’m down $180 this year playing that stupid game, while I’m up $460 playing husngs.

So, time to give up playing anything else other than heads up (well, apart from some MTTs just for the big event of it).

Previously I’ve mentioned that I was holding off on new accounts until I was at NL50 or NL100 so I could clear sign-up bonuses effectively, but now I can’t be bothered. I’m not rising up the ranks quickly enough in cash games to get to that point any time soon, while at the same time husng’s are mostly pulling in more cash than these bonuses offer anyway (well mostly, that $150 crash in my last post was pretty painful).

So far this morning I’m $100 up playing $10 games. The lobby’s not packed, but I rarely have to wait more than a minute for a game. Level of play has been pretty bad too, although not any more than Full Tilt or Pokerstars.

Interface is really clean and easy – I haven’t had a single misclick yet which is a good sign. Deposit and creating the account was all straightforward too.

The main reason I wanted a Cake account was for their hand tracking policy – no HUD allowed, plus you’re allowed to change your screen name once a week. HEM imports the hand histories fine though (almost – it made a mistake on the prize for a 4man shootout, although it made the same mistake for a Full Tilt shootout as well once) – the strange thing though is that it doesn’t record your opponent’s names. Everyone is called CakeSeat8 etc. Makes it hard to go back and analyse a particular tournament when you can’t remember which one it was, which I guess is the point. Notes you make on players in the Cake interface do stay with that player even if they change their name, so that’s useful – essential even.

I’m happy so far (certainly while the new signup boomswitch is on!). Apart from I think I’ve put the tv remote into the washing machine with the bedding…

Update: The remote comes out of the washing machine looking incredibly clean. And it still works! (once it had dried out). I’d recommend it to anyone with grubby remotes…

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…

Spot the other difference? That graph is from Hold’em Manager – I watched a video where this guy was doing some nice analysis with HEM and I figured I ought to splash out and try it.

After trying it for a few days I’m hooked! It’s way better than PokerTracker. The interface isn’t as pretty (grey isn’t a good colour), but the functionality is way ahead. I can now plot my winnings so it includes rakeback and bonuses, and for the first time it’s actually a winning amount rather than a losing amount

The HUD is also easier to operate and hasn’t struggled at any of the sites I’ve tried. It has a fantastic hand review feature giving a very clear and instant view – PokerTracker you have to dig out the hand and view it in the replayer which is a bit too clunky when you’re trying to play at the same time.

Filters are really comprehensive, although PokerTracker wasn’t too bad in this respect.

The only thing that PokerTracker wins is the final export of the graph – as you can see in the pic above HEM isn’t as aesthetically streamlined as the PokerTracker charts. I’ll perhaps still plot out the charts using PT for this blog, although for now HEM is definitely replacing my tracker of choice…