It amazes me that after all of the years that I've played poker, listened to podcasts and read books that there are still Ah-ha moments that are both shockingly obvious and have so far gone unnoticed by me. I'm hopeful that this one will transform my game. You need to be an eternal optimist for poker, eh?
So what is this miraculous find? Don't laugh. The good old Red Non-Showdown Winnings line. I got Omaha Manager free with my Card Runners Full Tilt sign-up and love the product. For the first time I can see what was going on. By comparison, PT Omaha is a dinosaur.
Anyway, a quick click on Graphs showed my Showdown winnings going up at a 30 degree gradient and my non-SD winnings dropping at a 30 degree gradient. Almost symmetrical and straignt as a die almost.
Thinking about it rationally, I spend a lot of time working out if my cards are ahead or behind and acting accordingly. The problem is that most flops miss most people and my opponents are doing the same plus c-betting, stealing blinds, picking up orphans and pushing me off missed draws on the river etc.
I've always known that I am passive post flop and tried on multiple occassions to rectify this but my Mr Logic side quickly kicks in again and lets me down. I find that no matter what I do, I struggle to make inroads into my AF stat.
The Red Line is different though. I have taken to having HEM Graphs open with AI EV and Showdown Winnings clicked for the last 1000 or so hands. Every big hand, I find myself glancing at my chart to see if I am playing well and playing aggressively enough. My results have been flattered by running good, but I know that I am playing better too. Just need to be careful not to get rope-a-doped (which has happened a couple of times). Or betting Pot on the river to manipulate my stats :-).
The real improvement came fromn reading several excellent strategy articles and posts on Showdown Winnings. They really put things into perspective. Including a reference to Fgators "famous" graph. Sad to say, mine was as bad or worse. Hopefully those days are behind me now.
1 year ago
2 comments:
hey there
be careful with your red line though. the stakes you play at must be taken into account too. if you play at the micros, it can be very difficult to get people to lay down marginal holdings, and you can end up becoming a spewtard.
the higher up you go, the more important the red line becomes. lower down, its just the greeen line i think
good luck
Thanks, I have experienced that already. What red line aggression has forced me to do is to better profile opponents. "Asking the question" with a bet seems to be helping in that regard.
To be honest, I also find in my Live game that my passivity (betting and personality) limits the amount of data that I have available relative to the more aggressive characters at the table. I tend to forego marginal hands, pursuing stacking opportunities.
This is still a work in progress and I really appreciate your words of caution, cheers.
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