Review

After reviewing my HH for my $1K milestone session the other night, I thought it would be good to stop & review all of my numbers. I started with positional stats and found that I am nearly profitable on the BB & SB (damn the cost of those blinds because I would be profitable in all spots if I didn't have to pay the cost of those blinds...)

My SB aggression tact of stealing the BB when I can (folds around, semi-strong hand against limped button, etc.) seems to be paying off. My thought to stealing the BB is this: I will keep hammering away at the player (my blind steal percentage is sometimes greater than 50%, though I don't have the data in front of me) until he plays back at me. I have no problem letting the issue drop, the minute I get played back, but my logic is that if I can steal 4 times and get played back on the 5th time, I'm profitable by a BB (3x raise each time). The math goes as follows (perhaps flawed; never was a math guy): stealing 3 blinds makes the loss of the 4th blind even money. If I can steal 4 times and get caught once, I'm up a BB. Moreover, I am ultra-aggressive from the button for this exact reason. It is a lot harder for the SB & BB to play back at me when they know I am very aggressive post flop, and they will play the remainder of the hand out of position. I get away with this tact a lot more when I have a "predictable" tight BB/SB combo (i.e. VPIP less than 15). I can rest assured that if they're re-raising my Button open, they have a hand and I can lay down (while simultaneously making a note to watch for the re-steal from that player later on).

Continuing with the review though, I think I am limping WAY too much from early positions. I need to either fold that junk pre flop or raise it up. I am limping AJo & KQs type hands from those positions (as well as your standard small pairs) - and with the AJ/KQ hands, I'm folding PF to any raise (which, from prior posts, in my opinion, is good, tight pre-flop poker - hands you don't want to go to the flop being potentially dominated). For the most part, though, when I hit with a limped pot on those types of hands, I'm usually good. I have started to raise my small pocket pairs more often - from around 2-5% of the time to maybe 20-25%. This way, I keep my AA, KK more hidden from those players who are paying attention (very few at this level, I'd imagine).

FYI: These are numbers since 2009-06-13, as is the basis of most of the writing on this blog. The reasoning behind the date threshold is because after that date is when I truly "learned how to play correctly." See the post on A long time... for a more detailed explanation.

Position	Hands	VP$IP	PFR	CCPF	Win %	W$WSF	Amount Blind	Amount Won	Without Blind	BB/Hand	W$SD	WTSD
Button	3,650	31.97	23.84	12.02	20.79	52.03	$0.55	$177.92	178.47	0.13	45.93	27.32
1	3,644	25.36	16.96	11.83	16.58	53.96	$16.25	$231.03	247.28	0.22	51.15	25.51
2	3,545	22.6	12.41	13.94	13.29	51.82	$3.40	$258.44	261.84	0.17	49.38	26.49
3	3,553	18.18	7.18	10.63	9.79	51.28	$1.35	$129.20	130.55	0.16	48.47	32.15
4	3,344	18	5.32	9.44	9.39	52.03	$0.20	$135.69	135.89	0.08	49.31	29.27
5	2,651	17.09	3.85	4.35	8.19	48.68	$0.45	$53.27	53.72	0.06	45.74	24.87
6	1,290	17.36	4.73	NA	8.68	50.28	$0.00	($5.34)	N/A	0	43.14	28.49
BB	3,566	17.61	8.16	NA	30.54	42.61	$503.35	($113.24)	390.11	-0.04	47.7	21.52
SB	3,540	31.55	12.8	NA	18.05	45.87	$228.15	($62.09)	166.06	-0.08	48.04	22.07
AVG		22.80	11.36

A short table of definitions:

VP$IP = Voluntary Put $$ into Pot (i.e. percentage of times I've entered a pot with a call or raise, pre-flop)
PFR = Pre-flop raise (i.e. percentage of times I've raised or re-raised a pot, pre-flop)
CCPF = Cold Call Pre-flop (i.e. pecentage of times I've flat called a raised pot, pre-flop)
W$WSF = Won $$$ When Saw Flop
W$SD = Won $$$ at Showdown
WTSD = Went to Showdown