Evaluating your poker play

For some reason, I've recently been in the mood to really assess how good (or bad) of a player I really am. In my mind, I think I'm a pretty good player. At least when I measure myself against my competition at the 2-4NL tables, I consider myself above average. But having said that, there are some players that I typically try to avoid. I think one thing that I do that maybe some other people don't is I look at the names of the players sitting at the table. If I don't recognize any of the names that I don't feel comfortable playing against, then I put myself on the waiting list for that table. If there are few names that I recognize that I think are pretty good players, I avoid that table. I'm not playing for pride here. I'm playing for money. And I think this helped in turning this past month into one of the most profitable months I've ever had online. I'm still not doing well on the tournament front but I'm certainly doing ok with the cash games.

Now, I've mentioned PokerTracker (PT) before and I truly believe that as a serious player, this is a tool that, if used properly, will elevate your game no matter what level you play or no matter how good or bad you are. Just to give a brief summary, PT is basically a database software that pulls information from your hand histories online (that's generally generated as a text file) so it tracks every single hand you've played and it displays it in many different ways. It will track how profitable you are and at which levels, which sites, etc. You can see how aggressive you are preflop, post flop, on the turn, and after the river is dealt. You can see the percentage of you winning if it goes to showdown. And also helpful is it tracks other players at your table. So, though you may not be able to see their cards, you can see who tends to play more pots or likes to see flops, who are calling stations, who are aggressive. You can tailor your play accordingly against these different players. I don't use that feature as much anymore because I feel like as long as I pay attention to the tables, I don't really need that anymore. But, the self evaluation piece is priceless.



One of my favorite things that PT does is it tracks your play for each position. In other words, how much you've won/lost, how often you enter the pot, etc based on where your position is (button, cutoff, mid position, early position, utg, etc). Here's mine over the course of 13 months that I've had pokertracker. (Click on picture to enlarge)




I think there are few things that are important to note. The third column from the left that shows VP$IP (Vol. Put $ In Pot) which is how often you voluntarily put money in the pot (whether calling or raising) for the most part goes from high to low. I think the SB and BB position for this is not as relevant since from the SB, you might be inclined to play more if it's an unraised pot with any two cards. I think this stat shows that I am taking advantage of the position. I mean many of you heard me preach position and how important it is. If anything, I think my VP$IP from the button is probably a little too low. I think that should be up around high 20s instead of the low/mid 20s like it is with mine. Another important thing to note is that you should be a lot tighter from early position. Since this is a screenshot, I can't change the view right now but I would be interested in seeing this for just this year so far or even the past 6 months or something to see if there's an improvement here. Also important to note is the amount of money I won in each position. It shows that I am making more money from later positions that in early positions. I think those things are all pretty consistent with the whole notion of position is more important than anything.

One thing I have not done enough of is to really scrutinize my hand selection, going back on plays where maybe I left some chips on the table. I feel that I'm getting better at that but that is one area I definitely need to work on. Sometimes, when I have a monster hand or even a dominant hand, I tend to not bet quite as much, hoping to extract value. But true value comes when you can put someone on a hand because then, you can really try to make them commit more chips. An example hand to illustrate that happened this morning (I woke up a little early so what else was I gonna do?)...

I was playing at a $2-4 NL table feeling good because I've been on a tear the past few weeks. The table had a bunch of middle stacks (max buy-in $400, bunch of players around $200) which indicates to me, a very potentially profitable table. So, I bought in for the full amount as always and the poker gods were smiling on me very early in the morning. I was dealt KK from mid position. A player right in front of me (or to my left) open raised for $14 which is the standard 3.5x BB raise. I just smooth called (he only had $160 so if I let him get lucky, he wasn't gonna hurt me) and fortunately for me, everyone else folded. Flop comes 5-5-3. He checks. So I check. (NO ACE PLEASE). Turn comes a Q. He checks again so I decide to bet, hoping he caught a queen. I bet $25 (into a $31 pot) which is what I typically do (I try to bet around 75-80% of the pot size) and he checkraised me and made it $50. So, I pretend to think about it while and then I push all in. He insta-calls with his KQ (what a donk) and a blank on the river nets me a gain of $160. Even more fortunately for me, he bought in for another $200. (Donkey with money and only buying in half the buyin is almost a gift). Few hands later, he raises again and this time, I call with my AKs. There were two more callers behind me so I was gonna tread carefully depending on the flop. The flop was another nice one with K-5-5. My favorite donkey bets out $30. It seemed like a feeler bet considering there were 4 of us but I figured that he wouldn't bet out with a fairly decent hand. Having said that, I wanted to go heads up with this donk and if everyone folds, it was already a nice size pot with 4 players heading into the pot after a raise (it was like $60). So, I raised it to $100. Donkey after the preflop raise and the bet was down to approx $150 so if he chose to call my raise, it would pretty much pot commit him... which is what I wanted to do in case he had the Q. It folded around to him and he must have understood that because he decided to reraise me all in. I thought to myself, if he had AA, then good for him, it's his money anyways. So, I called. He flips over KQ again! Blanks on the turn and the river netted me another $200+. Quick work this morning netted me over $400 almost all from my favorite donk... I hope he finds more money and comes back to the table later! But aside from the fact that instead of just smooth calling, I wanted him to feel pressured so that he might want to fight back. I think the second reraise all in hand by him was probably more to do with the fact that he was tilting that I, once again, was pressuring him into folding (which he should have both times but he can't know that cuz he's a donk). And by making him commit, I made sure that I took all his money. Smooth calling would have left some money on the table because a player would be more apt to folding on the river than on the turn or the flop where he might feel that he still have "outs."