Using Poker Tracker to Improve Your Game: Limit Holdem - Intro
There are many parts to good play; thus, there are many parts to examining your game. In order to do this you need to isolate individual aspects of your game - a goal that PT is pretty much built to help you achieve. A couple of basic concepts to get out of the way before we begin:
1) For proper examination we need A LOT of hands. That’s a little vague, no? It depends which game we are looking at to really get a feel for how many hands we need. In a tighter game, we need fewer hands than in a looser one, but to use the methods I’m going to outline below, I recommend at least 10,000 hands in a specific game.
2) Isolate. Simply put, isolate a situation, then isolate further. Poker Tracker is amazing because it allows you to hold certain things constant where your brain tends to get things confused.
3)Trust what you find until you have reason to believe otherwise. If you don’t play 5,000 hands after you implement a new strategy then it isn’t worth considering.
Full Table Limit
Part I- Early Position Pre-flop
Breaking it down
Go to preferences tab> Game levels> select only games that are extremely similar (same player count, same blind structure, and same betting structure). Go ahead and click auto-save changes without prompt.
Go to position stats> Filter hands button near the top of the new screen. You want to look at a specific number of players dealt cards. For the purposes of what we’ll be examining, select ‘Between 9 AND 10 Players’.
Immediately you will see some stats that may be useful to you. The most common mistake is that players play too many hands in early positions. If your long term numbers up front are negative, that’s probably the reason why. Click #7 - It will bring up a list of all hands you have had in seat 7. Immediately you will see which hands are profitable in this position and which are not. Even with 10,000 hands your sample of an individual hand in a specific position will be minimal, but nonetheless you’ll have a feel for the value of a hand to you in these positions. Try grouping hands together. Look at small pocket pairs. If you play these hands in this position, you will now have a good summary about the value of these hands. Sklansky suggests you can play small pocket pairs in any position if the game is loose enough; find out of this is the case for your game. Odds are it’s the marginal hands you will have information about. If you have been playing 27o in early position then you are unlikely to read this essay series, but on the other hand if you have, then you’re likely to find it is unprofitable for you.
Part 2 - Middle and Late Positions Pre-flop
Follow the same setup recommended for early position analysis. Unless you have done something since then, they are likely saved, but double check. There’s nothing worse than spending a couple hours analyzing data then realize it is useless because it wasn’t refined properly. Middle and late position results have more to do with your play once you see the flop than results from the early positions, which are largely based on pre flop play.
If you break down your numbers and find certain hands to be big holes in your game, then it won’t be hard to know what to do with these holes. Get out the shovel. But if you are good about folding a lot, as a lot of online “pros” are, then it may actually be that you’re too tight. This problem is actually a lot harder to fix than being too loose. The effects of tightening up are obvious, but the effects of playing more hands are tougher to articulate. Loosening up will get you paid off more, but it will also get you looked up more. It will take careful attention to adjust this in a positive way.
If you are willing to try playing more hands (if this is in fact your problem), then Poker Tracker is the best tool for going about it intelligently. You can simply look at individual hands in given situations. For example, break down your information on the smallest pocket pair you give significant play to. If it is significantly profitable then the pair directly below it is likely profitable as well. (i.e. if you tend to fold 66, but play 77 in a lot of situations, AND 77 is profitable then 66 is probably profitable as well). The same can be done for suited connected and even suited gappers. This article isn’t intended to teach you how to play the game, but rather to show those that already know their math how to look at the results. If you’re in middle position and T9s is a profitable hand for you, then it may be in your best interest to expand your horizons.
Part 3 - The Blinds
The blinds are probably the trickiest thing about Poker Tracker to decipher. Your blinds are going to be a negative number in almost every game. If they aren’t, please email me, I will be curious about the situation (given 10,000 or more hands). PT has a nice tool to help us figure out some of our pre-flop decisions. First they tell us how big of a factor the blind itself is on the value. The difference w/out blind column will give you some information, but it has yet to help me with my game. The information that helps me in this particular situation is the section you get by analyzing the big blind specifically. By clicking on the big blind (or the small blind) you get an average hand stat. If the amount lost is greater than the cost of the blind, then you’re losing money by defending this blind. This doesn’t tell us if the loss comes from pre-flop play or post-flop play, but just knowing it is a place where you lose money is key. The people I have helped with this in the past have had common problems:
-Playing AXo in the big when they shouldn’t
-Playing small pocket pairs too far through the hand
-Not reraising out of their blind against a blind steal when they have a good hand.
AXo is a trouble hand against a raise, especially if there is a raise and a call. You almost never have odds to call for a miracle flop of 2 pair or better, and getting caught up in a hand with second-best causes you to make mistakes later in the hand. Let go of these hands more pre-flop if your numbers suggest you need to.
I see small pocket-pairs played with a wide variety of results. Often people call re-raises when they should fold. Others don’t fold on the flop when they should. It is my belief you can always see a flop with a small pocket pair from a late position raiser unless you know he is a very tight player and wouldn’t raise your blind with less than AQ.
Check your stats with suited cards in the small blind. Breakdown some of these hands where you have a loss and look into the specifics. Double check your math on them. This is one of the more tedious parts of the analysis. Blind play is so marginal most of the time it really comes down to fine points, but this record lets you analyze these points all at once. When you saw the flop from the small blind with marginal hands, why did you? Was it folded to you, and you raised? How profitable has stealing been for you out of the little blind? Did you limp because your games were loose and you were getting 15-1 odds, if so and you show a loss, is it because of post-flop play in those hands? I’ll look into post flop with Poker Tracker more in later articles.
