For some (or most, I don’t know) this post might be obvious and second nature. But maybe for a few it will be helpful. While reading this, keep in mind that I have an IQ of about 20 or 30 in the mornings and that I’m not a coach or anything, so if there are errors, please tear into me all you want. I like to learn.

Combinations 101

It’s easy to do. Take the remaining cards and multiply them by each other. Check Poker Stove to verify.

Example: Flop is A67. You have QQ.

How many ways can the opponent have AK? 3 aces remaining multiplied by 4 kings remaining = 12 ways he can have AK. So 48 ways for AT+.

How about 67? 3 * 3 = 9 ways.

What you will notice after doing this after while is you’ll start to gain some insights. For example, there are a lot of straight draws on many flops. On A67, there are 48 ways he can have an OESD (16 ways of 98, 16 ways of 54, 16 ways of 85) 64 ways he can have a gutshot (16 ways of T9, 16 ways of 43, 16 ways of 84, and 16 ways of 95). That’s 112 ways he can have a straight draw (ok, 95, 84, and 85 aren’t very realistic, but you get the point).

Let’s try AA on a QJJr flop. You are the pfr and bet. He calls.

Are you generally ahead here?

Assume we put his pf range at 22+, A8+, K9+, Q9+, J9+, T8+, 98, 76.

The first thing you’ll notice is the ways he can have top pair. AQ = 6 ways (because 2 aces left and 3 queens left); KQ = 12 ways; QT = 12 ways; Q9 = 12 ways. So that’s 42 ways he can have TP.

What about straight draws? 32 ways he can have an OESD; 8 ways he can have AT; 8 ways for AK; 16 ways he have T8. And 16 ways he can have K9. 16 ways for 98. That’s 96 ways he can have a straight draw. Impressive, huh?

And trips or better? 4 ways he can have AJ; 8 ways he can have KJ; 3 ways he can have QQ; 6 ways for QJ; 1 way JJ; 8 ways for JT; 8 ways for J9. 38 ways he can have trips or better. That’s almost as many ways as he can have top pair.

The other hands: we’ll assume he folds 22-88/A8/A9 to the flop bet. So, that leaves 6 ways for KK, 6 ways for TT, and 6 ways for 99. 18 ways total.

Add it all up and we get:

We’re ahead of 156 combos.

We’re behind 38 combos.

Range versus Combinations

The example above is a bit more revealing (to me at least) of the reality of opponent’s distribution of hands than merely just saying he has X range.

If you are only using ranges, you are – to use an analogy - looking at a piece of bread, while those who use combinations are looking at that bread with a microscope and seeing all that constitutes it (maybe that’s a dumb analogy).

Reads versus Combinations

You might argue, “But I have my reads, man. I don’t need to count no stinking combinations.”

Reads, in my opinion, have severe limitations and are not as good guideposts in assessing the strength of our opponent’s hand postflop as we think they are.

The reasons why might be obvious but I’ll discuss them anyway.

1)Sample size: Say you have 300 hands on an opponent (which is a lot of hands against a micro opponent since we are not playing the same people often, as opposed to MSNL/HSNL). Assume that opponent has a VPIP of 20 and WTSD of 25. That means – at best – you saw 15 showdowns where he put money in preflop (not checked his BB). So you have direct hand evidence of 15 hands. What do 15 hands tell you? Very little. See the next sections for why.

2)Preflop dynamics. Sometimes an opponent is the pf raiser, sometimes he is the caller. This affects how he plays his hands postflop. In other words, he might play TT different as the pf caller on a Qh6s7s flop than he would as the pf raiser.

3)Number of opponents posftlop: How an opponent plays top pair, a draw, or a monster multiway might differ how he plays it heads up.

4)Flop texture: There are roughly 17,000 flop combinations heads up (I think). Our reads are based on a tiny % of those flops that opponent has seen. Take opponent having a set for example. Will he play it the same on all flop combinations? Our read on how an opponent plays a set will probably come from only one or two flop combinations observed.

5)Position: How an opponent plays a hand out of position, on the button, or in good/bad relative position will likely affect how he plays his hands postflop. So, he might play a set different OOP than he would on the button or in good versus bad relative position.

6)Steal situations: An opponent might call more/be more aggressive in these situations than in non-steal hands.

7)Your image: This is very important from my experience. When I tightened up over my last 100k hands (my vpip dropped to about 14 or 15), I felt like I was getting coolered a lot. Maybe I was. But what was probably happening is opponents were playing their hands differently against me than they were against other opponents. So, while an opponent would play TPGK fast against another player, he was playing it slow and cautiously against me, but playing his sets fast against me.

General Micro Plays/Theorems versus Combinations

A lot of players at the micros make the same plays. They minraise with sets, slowplay the flopped nut flush, don’t c/r bluff the river, put you on AK, don’t fold full houses (Zeebo Theorem), raise turn with better than top pair (Baluga Theorem), etc.

So, for these situations, combo counting is of less value.

The Not-So-Obvious Value of Combinatorics

So, assuming you’ve made it this far in the thread, you might be thinking, “No way in hell am I doing all this counting at the table. I don’t have a time bank of 2 hours per hand.”

You want to review your hands in PT and apply combo counting to see if you made good decisions. After you do that for a while, counting will become much quicker and intuitive because you will have seen so many similar scenarios. So, counting top pair combos on the flop, for example, will require little thought.

Now, given this practice, you will start to gain quite a few insights. When you begin to apply these insights, you will become a much tougher player. What will begin to happen is that your game will start to lean towards a Game Theory-ish Optimal strategy.

True, you are exploiting your opponents based on the ways they can have a hand, but by doing that you start to make your plays less based on your own hand and more against the distribution of your opponents’ hands, which makes your opponent’s task of exploiting you very very difficult.

An example:

So, after spending way too much time analyzing PT hands, I noticed that I was doing a lot of this:

tag UTG/MP raises pf. I call with a small pp for set value.

Heads up, the flop comes A62r. I check, he c-bets. I fold having not made my set.

But after playing around with combo stuff, I determined that they do not have a pair of aces or better on that flop the majority of the time. So I started to check-raise here or raise from LP (doing it in a way so that it is profitable based on pot size).

Now I was no longer playing my hand. Of course, if I do this 5 times in a row against him he will likely adjust, but I can flop sets/two pair/etc too.

And on turns and rivers, your play will naturally become much tougher. If I end up on a river, and given opponent’s play so far I assess that there are 70 ways he can have a better hand and 40 ways he can have a worse hand, but only 24 ways he can have a monster, I can play aggressive enough to cause him to fold more often than he should.

Also, by playing with Poker Stove, another insight you will likely gain is how few legitimate flush draws an opponent can have compared to other hands. For some reason our brain spots flush draws right away, despite the reality that they are often a tiny part of the ways he can have a hand.

Weighting

Just because someone has a range of XYZ, doesn’t mean X is as likely as Z. So, in Poker Stove, you go through a hand and reduce the ways he can have a hand so you can weight them appropriately. So, if KTo is in his range, but rarely so given pf and flop action, I’ll reduce it from say 12 combos to 2 combos by only selecting KcTd and KhTc, for example.

Warning

At 10nl or lower, where your opponents are rarely engaged in the process known as “thought”, be very careful about ever bluffing. At 25nl, there are a few tags, and at 50nl, there are alot of tags who do think. So, keep that in mind.

To see combo counting in action by one of th ebest, look up Bobbo Fittos’ posts. This a good one (his analysis is towards the end of the thread): Link

By derosnec for 2+2 Forums

100BB stacks at x stakes

You have 67 in the BB.

UTG opens for 5BB, Button and SB call, and you in the BB call.

Flop 2 8 K (20.5BB)

Checked to UTG who bets out 20, and its folded to you, do you call/raise/fold?

When it gets to you the pot is 40.5BB and its 20BB to call. According to pot odds you should fold, getting 2-1 on a 5-1 shot. However, many players call and justify it be saying they have the implied odds to make the call profitable.

But they they ever really think about it? How big exactly, are their implied odds? That’s the tricky part. It’s so dependant on many many things, but most importantly, your opponents tendencies.

Let’s analyze it.

We are going to assume for this example that if we hit we will always have the best hand and never be outdrawn - which is not true but we need to assume it for our example.

We will hit one of our 9 outs, 9/47 times. Or, approx 20% of the time.

So lets just say 1 out of every 5 times we call the bet, we will win the hand.

This means that 4 times we lost 20BB and 1 time we win 40.5BB + Implied Odds…

So our Profit…

x = implied odds value
P = .8(-20) + .2(40.5 + x)

x is such a volitile value (meaning it has a wide range and is dependant on so many factors) that we should find the breakeven point to help us figure out the approx. value we need it to be on average.

So, solving for x when profit = 0 (breakeven)…

0 = -16 + .2x + 8.1
-.2x = -7.9
x = 39.5

So we need to, on average, extract exactly 39.5BB from our opponent every time we hit.

Considering the stack sizes in our example, the pot will be 60BB after you call and there will be 75BB remaning in each stack. Out of the 75BB in his stack we need to extract almost 40BB JUST TO BREAK EVEN. We need to do this every single time we hit (on average).

It’s going to be pretty clear to our opponent that a FD is in our range, and that if we come out betting when we hit, he may not pay us off often enough for our initial call to be profitable.

Against many non thinking players (and even many thinking players) we can usually do this on average because the pot is so big. But what if the effective stacks were smaller? Even slightly? What if the stacks were much bigger? What if we remove our assumption that we will always win, and include the % of times we are outdrawn or are already behind when we make our hand?

This is a marginal spot on the flop. If we hit our hand, we NEED to extract more than half of his stack EVERY TIME we hit or it’s just a bad call. We need to use our judgement to determine this, but if we overestimate our implied odds, we can be making bad calls left and right, and not even know it.

Sometimes, its ok to muck a flush draw. Do not overesimate the value of your implied odds.

By Tickner for 2+2 Forums

Don’t root for certain cards to come.
Much of the attraction to this game is the adrenaline rush that one gets from gambling. Many players love the feeling they get when they put their whole stack in on a draw, and watch 2 cards peel, hoping for that diamond to hit. While difficult to do, I think it is important for players to avoid this gambling “rush” as much as possible. The true grinder plays every hand with complete emotional indifference. They focus on making the most +EV decision in every single situation, and avoid getting caught up emotionally. Obviously, once you make a decision in poker, the results are completely out of your control. Though this is obvious, I see so many players get furious when their 17 out draw doesn’t hit, or when a player calls their big river bluff with bottom pair. Poker can be very frustrating at times, and the less you allow your emotions to impact your decisions, the better equipped you will be to deal with a cold run. Lastly, I think that players who enjoy the thrill of gambling tend to make decisions based on their desire to gambool rather than on the overall EV of the decision being made.

Don’t spar in chat or “go after” a certain player.
Nothing puts me on tilt faster than having a fish talk [censored] in chat after rivering me, or having a table coach ridicule me for getting my stack in on the flop with 15+ outs. For this reason, I try to avoid chat at my tables. Of course you should read chat because you can gain lots of info on your opponents thought processes. My point is, don’t get suckered in to sparring wars/arguments with the players at your table, nothing good can come of it. This is particularly true if you multitable. While your talking [censored] in chat at one table, your missing action and valuable info at your other table. Also, don’t go out of your way to “get back” at a player. Anytime you play differently for reasons such as anger/revenge/etc, there is a good chance your play will not be optimal. What starts with trying to get your money back from a fish often ends with sending a couple more buyins to the said fish. Lastly, don’t tap the tank. I know it’s very difficult, but in the long run, pointing out the flaws in a players game will only result in all of us making less money.

When your running bad, bluff less and play tighter.
Some will disagree with this, but I think it’s very important to pull back a bit when you sense that your running bad. I don’t mean to play weak tight, or to value bet less, or play your hands more passively. I am referring to situations which require fold equity. Typically, many players at your table are not paying as much attention as you. They aren’t checking hh’s to see whats being shown down or paying attention to how tight or loose their opponents are. Many players judge a players skill based on how much money they are winning or losing. If your running bad and the donks at your table are watching you ship stacks all over the place, they are more inclined to give you less respect. So when you fire two streets with whiffed overs, or bluff a busted draw on the river, they are more likely to look you up, because they think you suck. I also find this to be the case pre flop, if I’ve been running bad, my pre flop raises get much less respect. My normal game is 21/14, but when running like [censored], I tend to drift down to 16/10. Hands like A3suited or KJo, which are typically in my UTG opening range, are often folds for me in EP when I’m getting less respect and running bad. Pay attention to the feel of the table your at. Typically, if you tighten up, people don’t tend to notice until you start showing down some big hands, and then you get more respect and can open your game back up. It is amazing to me how many people will play even more aggressively when they are losing, which I believe goes against the logical solution.

At some point, you will run worse than you ever thought possible.
I know, this saying is a tired cliche that we’ve all heard over and over. In all honesty, I never really understood what this meant until I experienced it myself. At NL $50, I ran breakeven for close to 25K hands, and thought that was my “running worse than I ever thought possible.” Boy was I wrong. I used to read BBV posts about someone dropping $900 at NL $50 and thought, dude, you suck at poker, find a new hobby. I never believed that a downswing of greater than 10 buyins was possible without some serious tilt/bad play/both. I’m here to tell you that it is. Obviously my game has some holes, and sometimes I make bad plays, as we all do. That said, I played fairly solid poker for a week and lost almost 19 buyins at NL$100. No ninja monkey tilt. No obvious spew. No drunken shots at $5/10. Just complete and utter destruction, day after day, for a week straight. There are many 2+2er’s who believe that a WR of less than 5PTBB’s is unacceptable, or that a 5 buyin downswing can’t happen to them because they are “too good.” If you are one of these players, and you hit a wicked downswing, it may be difficult to accept and busto could be the result. Just realize that no matter how bad you’ve run, a worse downswing is definitely possible. The crazy thing about poker is that there is absolutely no guarantee that you will win. While good play will win over the long run, there is no way to know for sure how long a short run losing streak can last. You can plug your stats into a BR calculator, and get comfort from standard deviations and confidence intervals that tell you +/- x buyins is likely based on your stats, but the truth is, you really need a huge sample size to really know how big of a swing you could encounter. Most of us don’t have a sample size large enough to confidently predict how bad of a run we can hit at some point.

Don’t be shy about dropping down a level.
My downswing started playing NL $200 with a $3200 roll. It ended with playing NL$50 on a $1300 roll. Probably the biggest mistake I made was not moving down sooner. It is difficult to move down from a level that you have been a consistent winner at. I beat NL $100 for 7PTBB’s/100 over almost 100K hands before this swing. I kept thinking that eventually it would turn around, I am too good for NL $50, etc. Don’t make the same mistake. Even if you are rolled for the level your playing, if you start losing a lot, just move down until you start running better. There is no shame in it, and often the worse play at the level below can jump start your comeback and re-instill some confidence. I know it has for me.

Hopefully this has been helpful for some of you, holler back with a tl;dr and I’ll know my time was well spent . If anyone has additional advice for dealing with a cooler, throw it in here, I’d love to see some more tips. Good luck and see you all at the tables,
AZ

Source: 2+2 Forums

from here on in positive Expected Value is +EV and negative Expected Value is -EV.

Poker is a game in which skill will beat luck every time assuming that you play for long enough. While it’s true that any two cards preflop can win any given individual hand and that luck is a large part of this game if you hold any aspirations whatsoever to beat Poker overany significant amount of time/hands you must learn to make +EV plays and not make -EV plays.

EV is simply what you expect to make on average with any particular play.

here is a simple example

Hero(100BB) has A A and raises preflop to 4xBB from the CO.
Villain(100BB) calls from the BB and both see a HU flop of 9 3 6

Villain tells us he has black Kings (he’s not lying) and then raises all-in and Hero calls.

Villain tables K K

(disregarding how good the play is in this hand) what is the EV of calling knowing we are against specifically K K ?)

If we punch those numbers into Pokerstove we get this output..

Board: 9c 3d 6h
Dead:

equity (%) win (%) tie (%)
Hand 1: 08.3838 % 08.38% 00.00% { KcKs }
Hand 2: 91.6162 % 91.62% 00.00% { AcAs }

we can see here that if this hand goes to showdown (as it is going to) that Hero will win on average ~92% of the time.

so if we run this hand 100 times Hero ought to expect win 92 times and lose 8 times.

there are ~200BB at stake so Hero wins 18400BB the 92 times his AA holds up - and loses 1600BB the 8 times he loses the hand.

Total net win of 168BB/hand.

This play is +EV and has an EV of 168BB *every* time you make it.

It’s important to note that EV and actual results can vary massivley over any short term period. e.g. if we actually ran the hand above 100 times you might win all 100 times - does this mean the EV has changed? or you might be unlucky and lose 25 times in 100 - does this mean the play is now less EV? - no EV remains 168BB per hand. Everytime you make this play you “earn” 168BB and the more times you repeat this the closer your actual real results will get to the “perfect average” of winning 92% of the time.

Once you have played enough hands (an infinite amount) your total actual results will equal the sum of all of the total EV of the plays you have made. The closer your total number of hands gets to infinity the closer your actual results will get to this theoretical figure. So in theory every time you make a -EV play and get chips in when you are an underdog you a “losing money” regardless of the actual results of the hand - and conversely everytime you get chips in when you are a favourite in a hand you are winning money. If you added up all the “Sklansky Bucks” (theoretical EV money) you made in the long run and compared this amount to your actual winrate - after playing an infinite amount of hands these two numers will be identical - and the more hands you play the closer these two numbers will get to each other.

Lets look at a more complicated example, in our simple example above we knew villains exact hand before calling so we don’t have to put him on a range (which affects the EV of our play) in practice we never know what particular hand we are against when we make our decisions. This is a real hand from my database.

Poker Stars
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.10/$0.25
6 players

Stack sizes:
UTG: $27.85
UTG+1: $24.65
CO: $28.95
Button: $23.95
Hero: $25.15
BB: $27.80

Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is SB with 2 2
UTG calls, 2 folds, Button calls, Hero calls, BB checks.

Flop: J 2 5 ($1, 4 players)
Hero bets $1, BB raises to $3, UTG folds, Button calls, Hero raises to $8, BB raises all-in $24.9,Button folds, Hero calls.

Turn: 9 ($53.8, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $53.8)

River: 9 ($53.8, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $53.8)

Results:
Final pot: $53.8

- it’s the flop action I am interested in here.

In real life we don’t know what sepcific hand we are facing at the point in time where we make a decision. What hand does BB have here? is my hand strong enough to call his all-in? and how do we work out the EV of this play??

The answer is to put BB on a range of hands - if we re-run this hand 1000 times say sometimes he has AA and we are a huge favourite, sometimes he has 55 and we are a huge underdog, he might also have JJ-KK, AJ,KJ,J2,52,J5, Ax, or he might be bluffing. In this particular case his range is wide because there was no preflop raise. Also we are not saying htat he will always play every hand in this range exactly this way - but that he isn’t playing any other hand apart from the ones in this range in this fashion.

Against most of these hands I am a favourite, and against some of them I am an underdog. I have no way of knowing what hand he has and certainly don’t have time at the table to put the numbers into Pokerstove so we just make an educated guess.

I play using the general rule that I should never fold a flopped set for ~100BB. The reason being that no matter the flop if we can get all the money in on the flop we are almost always a favourite to win the hand at the showdown vs our opponents range of hands.
So I happily call his all-in. But have I made a +EV play and will this earn me money in the long run???

Lets put his range and my hand into pokerstove and see…

Board: Jc 2h 5h
Dead:

The actual results don’t matter, as long as my range is accurate, and what cards come on the Turn or on the River don’t matter either (as the decision is already made by then) if I make this play everytime it is +EV and in the long run I expect to win ~170BB everytime I make this play. As this play costs me 100BB to make I make a profit everytime here of 70BB, whether BB shows me JJ for top set or A 8 for a busted flush draw I still “gain” ~70BB everytime I make the play.

Whenever you determine at the table that a play is +EV you should make it EVERY time. If you don’t you are losing money in the long run. Do You See Why?

Ultimately it is EV that will decide what your true winrate is, you can’t beat it, or get around it in the long run eventually your total real results will match your expected results.

Closely tied in with EV is variance - a lot of people misunderstand what variance is and try to avoid it. But you shouldn’t. The very very best players at poker don’t care about variance and try to make every single +EV play that they can (this is the main reason why they are such big winners) Variance is simply how much your actual results can vary from the statistical EV results in the short term. It’s the reason that a 20x buyin roll is recommended. So that you don’t go broke in the short term making +EV plays that you lose in the short term because the real results vary from the Expected results. Variance is neither good or bad - and the bigger bankroll you have to absorb variance the more you ought to be willing to risk on a marginal +EV play.

Lets say you determine that a play is +EV and you’ll win 51% of the time, the more money you stake on this play the more you stand to win in the long run. 51% of 200BB is more than 51% of 20BB - though in the short term real results will vary lots and you stand a great chance of losing this particular bet if you can afford it (have a large enough bankroll) you should bet as much as you can on this 51% shot.

As a final thought here is an exercise you can try when you next get a big losing session.

Review all the hands in the session and for each hand you play work out a range of hands for each villain, run the numbers into pokerstove and see how much you made in EV.

I do this sometimes and often find out that I had a +EV session that in real results lost me lots of real money. If most of the losiung sessions you have are +EV you are paying well and eventually real results will catch up with your EV results and you will be a long term winner, so despite losing now in the short term you can be happy that in the long run you’re still winning

Source: Post by matrix for 2+2 Forums

I’m going to try to give you a rough guide for the things you can do to check on your game. These are all just my opinion; they’re all subject to interpretation, and other people may disagree with me strongly. The best way to play is usually player-specific, but these strike me as some things you can check on that are frequent flaws in the small-stakes player’s game.

1. Do you have sufficient preflop aggression? To answer this question, open up your ring game statistics and go to the “position stats” page. For each position other than the small blind, divide the “PF Raise %” by the “Vol. Put $ In Pot.” If you get a number smaller than 0.5, you’re not aggressive enough out of that position. See, aggression is a relative term; it should be a function of your level of looseness. You can be a consistently winning player at SSNL with a VPIP of 12%, and you can be a consistently winning player at SSNL with a VPIP of 30%, but only if you are sufficiently aggressive. My general guideline is that you should raise at least half the hands you play, from every position on the table.

2. Are you positionally aware? Positional awareness means that you understand Ed Miller’s comment when he said:

Quote:

---

Total all the dollars you’ve ever bet playing poker. The large majority of those dollars should have been bet from late position. Only a small percentage of your total handle should have been bet from up front.

---

To test this, go to the Position Stats and look down the list of VPIP from Button to UTG. You should see that VPIP steadily dropping the farther you get from the button. I’d love to see my button VPIP at double my UTG VPIP, but if my Button VPIP is at least 50% larger than my UTG VPIP, I’m happy with the situation.

3. How’s my stealing? To check on your performance when trying a blind steal, go to the General Info. tab. Where it says “Att. To Steal Blinds” I’d like to see that number at LEAST 20%. (Personally, I like mine to be over 30%, but I’m very aggressive in these situations. If you’re trying to steal the blinds less than 20% of the time, you’re leaving lots of money on the table.) Now click on “Filters…” and under “Chance to Steal Blinds” click “Chance to Steal & Raised.” Select OK and look at the numbers. This shows every time you’ve tried to steal the blinds, and how the attempt turned out for you. Under “Totals” see the “BB/Hand” statistic. That shows your per-hand winrate on blind steals. If you multiply this number by 100, it should be at least double your “PTBB/100″ average winrate. If it’s much less than that and you have a decent sample size, you have a hole in your game when it comes to blind stealing. This should be an exceedingly profitable thing to do when you try it; if it’s not, you need to work on your strategy.

4. Defending the blinds. Click on “Turn Filter Off,” and then click on “Filters…” again. Under “Blind Status” click on “Either Blind.” Now under “Vol. Put $ In Pot” click on “Put Money In.” This shows you if you’re bleeding money out of the blinds. A “BB/Hand” of about -0.375 would indicate that you were no better off putting money into the pot than if you had folded. If your “BB/Hand” is larger than that, then you typically win back some of your blind money when you put money into the pot from the blinds. That’s all you can really hope for. If you click on “Filters…” again and go under “Steal Attempted Against Your Blind” and click on “Steal Attempted.” After you click “OK” you’ll now see how you did when you chose to defend against a blind steal. Again, the magic number is for your “BB/Hand” to be bigger than -0.375; that means you’re making back some of your blinds when you try to defend against a steal. If either of these numbers is lower than -0.375, you’d lose less money by always folding rather than doing what you’re doing.

5. Heads-up play. Click on “Turn Filter Off,” then click on “Filters…” again. Under “Hands With Between…Players Seeing The Flop” change the range from “0 to 10 players” to “2 to 2 players.” Hit “OK” and see what comes up. This shows you how you’ve done when you were heads-up preflop, but a flop was dealt. See how you’ve done in these situations. If things look OK, go back to “Filters…” and under “Pre-flop Raise” select “No Raise.” This will show you how you’ve done when you didn’t raise preflop, but the hand was heads-up on the flop (this includes pure limping and when someone ELSE raised preflop, but not when you were the preflop raiser). Is this number positive? If not, it could be an indicator that you have trouble when you are not the aggressor preflop, especially without padding in the pot.

6. Multiway pots. Clear the filter and go back under filters. Change “Hands With Between…Players Seeing The Flop” to “3 to 10 players.” This shows you how you do in multiway pots. If things look good, go back and select “No Raise” under “Pre-flop Raise.” Is it still positive? If so, you’re selecting good times to play/limp multiway pots, and you’re playing them well postflop.

7. Pocket pairs. Under “Filters…” change the “Type of Hole Cards” to “Pairs.” This will show you how you generally play and perform with pocket pairs. Your Total VPIP with these should be EXTREMELY high; unless you play at highly unusual tables, I’d be surprised to see this number below 85%. Pocket pairs make extremely powerful hands that are extremely well-hidden; if you’re not playing them almost all the time, you’re leaving money on the table. Also, your Total PFR% with these hands should be rather high — at least 1/3 of your VPIP, if not 1/2. Some people have this number higher still, and I don’t have a problem with that, especially at short-handed tables. If you have enough hands, I’d expect every one of these lines to be positive, and reasonably significantly so. If you have any glaringly negative numbers, especially AA-88, it may indicate bad play. Look over individual hands where you lose lots of money and see if you played too timidly early in the hand, or if you went too far unimproved in the face of resistance. Also, look at the hands where you won to see if you played too timidly, or if you routinely forced weaker hands out when you should have been milking them for profits.

8. Suited connectors. Under “Filters…” change “Type of Hole Cards” to “Suited Connectors.” I’m much less likely to play suited connectors than pocket pairs, but some people play them religiously. As a result, I don’t really have a good suggestion as to how high your VPIP or PFR should be. However, your BB/hand should be positive; if it’s not, you’re probably not playing your suited connectors well. Remember: these hands play best in a multiway, unraised pot, or as a steal move. In the “Filters…” change “Vol. Put $ In Pot” to “Cold-Called.” When you hit OK, you should have almost no entries to view. Of the times you cold-called, you should be able to come up with a specific explanation for why you did so in each and every one of them. Review the hand histories; if you can’t come up with a really good reason why you thought it better to cold-call, rather than raise or fold, you need to rethink your suited connector strategy. Good explanations: the raise was very small, villain is passive post-flop, I had position on villain, villain and I are both extremely deep-stacked, villain is incredibly aggressive preflop, my suited connectors are particularly strong, there are several cold-callers in front of me, etc. I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever cold-call with suited connectors; rather, I’m saying you shouldn’t AUTOMATICALLY do so. Your default play here should be to fold weak suited connectors and reraise strong ones.

9. Unsuited connectors. Clear the filter and then go back into it. Change “Type of Hole Cards” to “Off-Suited Connectors.” Your VPIP for these hands should be noticeably smaller than your VPIP for suited connectors. Check your winrate and make sure it’s positive. Filter for cold-calling and see if you had good reasons for doing so, keeping in mind that the reasons need to be even stronger than for suited connectors.

10. Postflop aggression. Clear the filter. Select the “More Detail…” button above the “Filters…” button. Scroll down. There is a section marked “First Action on Flop After A Pre-flop Raise.” This shows your likelihood of continuation betting. If you add Bet and Raise, the total should be at least 40%. If it’s not, you’re probably giving up too soon on your good hands, and that will cost you money in the long run. Remember: people who cold-call a preflop bet are often in fit-or-fold mode. If you don’t bet, you don’t give them a chance to fold. The pot is already decent-sized, and there’s no reason to give some donk a free look at a turn card that could sink you. If you raised preflop, you need a good reason NOT to raise the flop. Continuation betting should be your default play. Scroll down a bit farther to “Aggression Factor.” Your total aggression factor should be at LEAST 2. No-limit is not a game where you can call frequently and turn a profit. You should always be looking to see if you can raise or fold; only if you have a good reason why you CANNOT raise or fold should you call. As a result, calling should be an infrequent occurrence in your play, which gives you a large aggression factor.

11. Check-raising. Some people never check-raise; others check-raise infrequently. I personally like to check-raise at least once in awhile; 1% would be fine, 0.5% would be acceptable. The goal of the check-raise is to remind your opponents that just because you checked does NOT mean that you don’t have a hand. However, circumstances need to be very specific for a check-raise to be appropriate. Typically, I check-raise on the flop when OOP against a preflop raiser, or on the turn when OOP against a flop bettor/raiser who was clearly not on a draw (uncoordinated flop). If you are check raising much more than 2% of the time, you’re being entirely too tricky for a SSNL table, and straightforward play would probably be more profitable for you.

All of this is just an introduction to the kinds of self-analysis you can/should do with Poker Tracker statistics. Notice how much more in-depth it is than just glancing at a few VPIP numbers. Typically, the only person who can truly do a “check-up” on your playing style and ability is YOU. As always, if in your searching you find hands that indicate you may have a flaw in your poker reasoning, post them up (one at a time, of course). Tell us the problem you are worried you might have, and why you think this hand might indicate the problem. Then, open the discussion up to see if 2+2ers agree or disagree.

Source: 2+2 post by Pokey