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…

I think the differences between the session where the aggro worked and the one where I spewed were;

a) First session I’d already played for a while, and hadn’t shown myself to be anything out of the ordinary, while the second session I sat down and started firing away. Any idiot could put down as a aggrotard, and this is what happened (my check-raise was reraised every time just about).
b) I picked my spots more carefully the first time. I had got to know the players at the tables, and was able to pick and choose when to push harder. The second session I’d just started, and was basically trying to bully complete unknowns.
c) The second session I didn’t back down. I often continued against those players who pushed back at my 3bets. Consequently I ran into AA several times quite quickly. At one point I had to three barrel bluff, and the final river push finally made the guy fold, but how stupid is that! It worked once, but I don’t think it was a profitable thing to do…

So anyway, 2010 I will stop being an idiot. I’m still bankrolled for nl10, but only 10 buy-ins above the move down point – if I don’t even out I’ll be back at NL5 by February. However, you’ve got to experiment with your game I believe, so I don’t feel too bad (it’s not as if I’m going to turn pro any time soon).

Ok, onto the 2009 review;

Cash:

Tourney:

Well, it’s in the black! (the $40 lost yesterday was 2010, so close thing to ruining the year’s results, lol).

The New Year, 2009
This time last year I’d dropped right down to NL2 – most of my game up to that point had been NL10 at Full Tilt (which was their lowest stakes at that time), and it hadn’t been going very well. So I moved to Pokerstars and dropped down, first to NL5 and then to NL2 as I continued to lose.

The Redeposit – April
In April I finally lost my entire account. I redeposited, and for some reason known only to myself at the time I went back to NL10. I then had a massive heater, gaining $350 in 20k hands. How that happened I’ve no idea! I should go back and look at those hands in detail, but as far as I can remember I was very very lucky – PokerTracker all-in performance says $120 over expected value at its peak.

The Cash Out – July
Inevitably the heater ran out, and I lost a bunch of $$$ pretty quickly. I think I’d upped the number of tables I was playing, plus overconfidence, and that led to much spewage. As it came crashing down a personal credit card problem suddenly arose and I had to withdraw my entire roll to pay for it. In hindsight this was actually a useful thing to happen to me. Firstly, it showed the kindness of friends as they immediately transferred to me a little bit of spare cash to keep playing. Secondly it made me decide to follow bankroll management properly. Up until that point I’d play NL10 if I had over $100 in my account (or over only $50 sometimes). Starting from $30 with the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to redeposit in the next couple of months really made sure I did the right thing to avoid going busto again.

The Grind
So I returned to NL2 again. This time my game was much stronger and I rapidly built up enough to move to NL5. I carried on playing well and clipped $200 to move into NL10. I then lost a few buy-ins, and moved back down. Ground up, bust down. I did this 3 times (the three peaks at 41k, 51k and 65k hands). I suddenly realised I was doing the bankroll management slightly wrong – I had a single threshold of $200 where I moved either up or down. What I needed to do was set the move-up threshold higher than the move down one (ie $250 to move up, $200 to move down). This way I’d have a 5 buy-in margin to lose before having to move down.

The Donkament Win – November
I was within $20 of the $250 threshold, and it was taking ages (it says $60 on that graph, but I was also getting rakeback and bonuses which aren’t shown on the graph). It was November now, and I seemed to be on the most miserable downswing ever – no big spews, but not a single +ve session for ages and ages. Then one Sunday I was messing around playing some MTTs (as you can see from the graph above, I don’t tourney much), and suddenly went deep in a $2 180 man SNG. I walked away with $70 – I was finally in NL10 territory again.

The Final Fall
I seemed to be playing well and built my roll up to $450. It didn’t feel like a heater this time, and I felt confident that I was winning appropriate hands rather than sucking out. I decided to look closer at Rakeback and see which site was the best for me, and so I split my roll amongst 4 sites – Full Tilt, PokerStars, Ultimate Bet and Party Poker. The difference between the sites was amazing – at NL10 UB and PP was full of limpers who’d try to see every street, while FT and PS still had its usual compliment of 2p2 players. Despite this I’ve failed to profit from them, and even worse seemed to have spewed a ton of money.

Final Roundup
So what’s the roundup of the year? I have to be honest with myself and say I’m not very good at poker. Almost 100k hands, and still being buffeted around by variance and barely keeping above the rake. In fact since my chart shows only +$44 profit, it’s obvious my entire roll ($350 at end of 2009) is made entirely of rakeback and bonuses.

Is that a big problem? I guess not as I still enjoy playing. I still enjoy the challenge of learning a game where it’s clear that gaining knowledge and experience will lift you through the ranks. The frustration is coming from seeing the stakes I play as a goal in itself.

So my resolution for 2010 is to let go of the idea that I’m not a winning player if I can’t ascend rapidly up the stakes. I will play poker at the stakes my bankroll allows, and concentrate on being the best player I can for those stakes. I guess ascending graphs of $$$ won will show whether I’m succeeding, although for me it’ll be how I achieved it that’ll be more important…

Anyway, I decided to do a quick check on PokerTracker to see if my stealing is going ok – I’m a relentless blind stealer and even a constant 3bet defender won’t put me off (especially as all it takes is the odd decent hand against a manic 3betting blind to make it super profitable). Here are the results since April, filtered for stealing opportunities where I raised;

Since I rarely decide not to steal (if both blinds are 64 vpip types I might not, or against a manic 3bettor I admit I do tighten up a bit), it’s obvious that stealing pays – 39BB/100!! It’s almost worth just stealing and not playing any other hands (apart from that being insanely dull).

Position stats;

Position 1 is cutoff, and it’s always worth watching out for that ultratight player on your left who lets you steal through the button – extremely worth it in fact, you can see from the positional stats that it’s a higher BB/hand rate. Mainly this is because the button is just so obviously a stealing position that blinds give it a lot less credit than they should, while the CO is seen as a regular position and will respect your raise . I’m not a big fan of stealing from the small blind though – you’re generally only gaining one big blind while risking three and you’re OOP if called. Not a big enough deal to make a fuss about…

Destroyed 3/6, time to move up (graph)
100k hands w. aHUD

Boywonder has an amazing record and his graphs are currently showing $500k profits, which must be nice. In his earliest post he says that the key to his success is emotional stability, ie no tilt of any form. to quote him;

‘I still maintain that whilst the technical aspects of the game have their place, emotional control will destroy talent any day.‘

He also is happy to play against regs rather than fight to play only against fish, believing that too many regs become technically competent but then stagnate in their abilities due to relying on HUDs and failing to recognise their own tilt;

‘Q: What do you think changed your game the most in terms of becoming such a winning player?

BW: Realizing that most regulars actually were not that solid and didn´t have their own game (most just basically have picked up somebody else’s preflop game that they´ve seen on a training video and have no clue why they are doing what they are doing – postflop they are usually spewy as xxxx). When you start zoning in how to scalp the regs, that´s when you start improving and that´s when you start beating the game for more than 1 ptbb / hour. And the basis for all of this was realizing how much of my game was dependant on playing when in the right emotional state, and learning how to maintain that mindframe.‘

If you don’t want to read the three huge threads, then this single post from boywonder would do (this one too).

Anyway, fairly inspiring stuff (although I don’t think I’ve even got the technical side down pat yet, let alone sorting out my tilt!). I might even throw away my HUD, or at least the stats part of it (and just leave the player notes box).

(mini update: Immediately after posting this I went to see if he had gone on to produce a video (he mentioned it in a post somewhere). I searched with boywonder poker video and on the third page found my blog with this post. Fast work Google! (I guess that link probably won’t show me in the results by the time anyone else clicks on it – results move around quickly!).

The downside is that it’s harder to multitable 6max since your turn comes around so much quicker, but 8 is still within my capability (at least for this SSS stuff where my VP$IP plummets to 15%).

So I started clicking away, and it quickly became obvious that this was going to be a high variance thing and I was way out of my bankroll comfort zone. I was immediately surprised how readily people called your shoves, even when you hadn’t entered a pot for the last 30 hands. I started out taking as many pots as I lost, but then a few went awry and I started to doubt what I was doing. So I stopped after only 20 minutes.

End result was a loss of only $14 which was remarkably good considering how much luck was involved – ridiculously this was actually offset by an accident when I was setting things up – I had installed Windows 7 the day before and Full Tilt still had its default settings. So I turned on autorebuy but messed up the 20bb setting, which resulted in me sitting at a table with a full $50 stack! I was folded to on the BB, and then in the button had KQs so thought I’d at least see the flop. I then took it down on a cbet, netting me $10! (I then quickly left the table!). So net result -$4 I guess PokerTracker all-in ev claimed I was $50 under ev, but I think  it got confused by a threeway pot where I had QQ and so did one of the opponents…

On checking the bonus I’d cleared a few more dollars and it seemed that it matched up to general opinion that it’d take 7000 hands at NL50 to clear $100. I realised that playing 7k high variance hands just isn’t the way to clear a bonus…

So I switched back to my regular 4 tables of 100bb buy-in 6 max, now at NL10. After an hour and 380 hands I’d won about $30, and this only went to confirm that trying to play 7000 break-even hands just to clear $100 is a very stupid thing to do. Best to just accept the bonus and then ignore it – anything you clear is literally just a bonus!

I then had a break and came back for another 300 hands, but didn’t really improve much (all I achieved was halving the BB/100);

• My play would have been natural, not effected because someone was watching
• We could concentrate on one table at a time
• We could skip hands where I folded preflop

The final reason is only partly a good idea – obviously you miss what the other players have done at the table. Fortunately I hadn’t filtered the session on ‘put money in’ so we did at least see hands up to the point where I folded, and it was these hands that my sweat partner bought up a good point.

In several instances there had been a couple of limpers and I folded on the button (with complete trash like 83o etc). He pointed out that since I was on the button it was still worth raising while I was building up a picture of who my opponents were. Whether they fold or call (and then what they called with) was golden information when I had no other history on these players. He pointed out that I should be really taking notes on players and try to classify them (even at NL5). As the session went on, he made me classify various players at the table – then in later hands this information made it vastly more clear why certain players were doing what they were doing. So I was convinced.

This morning I opened up a couple of tables and tried to put it into action. The note taking facility on PokerTracker isn’t that great (or at least, I haven’t got the hang of it) so I just opened up notepad and figured that would do while I only had two tables open. The first difficulty was getting time to write the notes – it was like being a multitabler newbie all over again. I need to develop some acronyms and make the notes more concise.

It worked fairly well. Players rapidly showed whether they were calling stations or loose passive way before my HUD kicked in. I adapted to what I was seeing and ended up with a flawless session. It was perhaps an easy session though – everyone seemed to be huge stereotypes of what I was looking for, and even without the note taking I would have noticed how passive some of the guys to my left were. However as a first go I’m still a believer. Furthermore, it was actually fun – I had wondered if going back down to 2 tables would be dull, but to be honest it reawakened the player in me – I suspect that multitabling has really dulled my poker senses.

What I need to do now is stick to a low number of tables and improve my speed at getting those notes down. I guess I’ve got to nail down PokerTracker’s note facility, and come up with a clear and sensible notation.

Update: So what does this mean;

Meteoric’s Looseness vs. Win Rate

this one too;

Meteoric’s Aggression vs. Win Rate

All the ABC poker guides say tight play is better than loose (at NL5), and agression is better than passivity. If that’s true, why don’t those scatter plots slope down from left to right? A few outliers in the top chart slightly give that impression, but really taking the image as a whole it’s generally fairly symmetric.

Admittedly there’s not much incentive though – my plans to move up when my account reached $250 has failed miserably since rather than increasing my $$$ I seem to be continually decreasing it. At the point I made that BR decision I was at $230 and it made plenty of sense to grind out that extra $20.

Instead it’s gone the other way and I’m down to $200. I made the mistake of reading one of those monthly results threads on 2p2, and naturally the only people showing their graphs were those who were happily climbing up. Depressing that my only increases to the BR have been through bonuses and rake, and my dismal play has now eroded even those gains.

Oh well. Need to play through this as they say. The difficult thing is knowing whether this is my fault or just variance. Or were my previous winning sessions my fault or just variance? I keep going back to PokerTracker to try and spot the problems, and it’s really hard to know just what’s going wrong. I suspect I should play more weakly (I think I’m tight enough), but it just feels so wrong!

Update: There’s a thread in the gossip section of 2p2 talking about who has the most meteoric rise in poker (a bit premature perhaps). A load of nits are going on about meteors not rising, which is the typical moron nittitude of many 2p2′ers, but it has made me realise my moniker is associated with things that crash and burn (well, burn and crash). Hmmm, don’t really have much to disagree with though…