Stats: $2/4 (04/27/2007)

This is just a place-holder. I may never get around to posting these stats because they are uninteresting.

Stats: $3/6 (4/20/2007)

I don't know if I'm actually going to bother... 343 hands, -$300.

Stats: $2/4 (4/18/2007)

I was taking a closer look at my stats today and I realized that I have made a $100 mistake. I actually crossed the desired threshold for $3/6 a while ago. When glancing at my stats, I forgot that I started with an initial bankroll of $100. This means that in order to be rolled for $3/6, I need to have made $500 profit. Instead, I was watching my stats for the $600 profit mark. Oh well.

I don't have much to say now, so I'll just post pictures.

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Stats: $1/2 (2/24/2007)

In a quick run, I've won enough to step back up to $2/4. I tried overlimping more, and the stats suggest that I'm actually getting looser. It's 27/19/2.3 this time compared to 22/15/3.0 the previous time I was at $1/2. But these stats are over fairly short periods, and the variance has probably not been very well shaken out yet.

Just for fun, I looked at some of my stats

• Limping with previous callers: 77 hands, +$4.00
• Any raise: 290 hands, +$356.25
• Raised first in: 210 hands, +$171.75
• Raised after a previous caller/raiser: 80 hands, +$184.50

What does it all mean? I don't know. I wish I could isolate my preflop 3-bets/caps from the rest of the raises, but I don't see how this could be done.

It's also fun to look at stats based on the number of players to the flop:

• Heads up: 649 hands, 26.8/24.0, +$87.75
• 3 Handed: 435 hands, 27.6/17.2, +$34.00
• 4+ Handed: 202 hands, 46.5/14.9, +$98.25

This seems to indicate that most hands are played heads up on the flop... I've never really stopped to think about it, but it makes plenty of sense to me. Taking a closer look at the numbers, including only hands where I put money in or saw the flop for free...

• Heads up: 206 hands, 84.5/75.7, +$174.25
• 3 Handed: 163 hands, 73.6/46.0, +$70.00
• 4+ Handed: 135 hands, 69.6/22.2, $106.00

Now of course, the VPIP isn't 100% because these hands include hands from the BB which are obviously not counted as VPIP. I'm actually more curious about my raising hands (any raise):

• Heads up: 156 hands, +$146.00
• 3 Handed: 75 hands, +$40.50
• 4+ Handed: 30 hands, +$130.75

I'm impressed by how much I make in these multiway pots. What does this tell me? I'm not sure, but I think it means I'm getting tons of action with monster hands.

Anyway, it's now time for the picture show:

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Stats $2/4 (2/3/2007)

My first BUSTO of the challenge. I don't think it's likely to be the last, but I may be luckier in the future. And I may also play better. I think there were a lot of bad variance spots that really crushed me. I believe I play better than most of the players at this level and that I don't really believe $2/4 is my upper limit. However, I do know of areas of weakness (calling down in spots where I shouldn't and trying to win too many pots are two examples).

But as usual, here are some pictures with miscellaneous statistical information:

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Stats: $1/2 (1/13/2007)

Less than a month has passed and I've already cleared the second stage of the challenge. It took only about 40% as many sessions to make it as it did the first stage, which I attribute to good and bad variance. Anyway, I'll go through a quick analysis of my stats for this stage.

Even though I've only had about 2000 hands at this level, that's enough to indicate a couple trends. First of all, I'm playing tighter than I did at $.50/1. I don't believe that this is only variance, as I'm quite sure that the preflop raising at $1/2 is more frequent than at $.50/1, which means I get to limp in less with 4-5 handed pots and I don't get to steal quite as often (since someone is beating me to it). However, 22/15 stats are still pretty solid, even if not as loose as they could be. If I played better, I could probably get away with a few more 3-bets preflop, which would bump me up to something like 25/20, but I'm content with things as they are now.

I'm curious to see how the $2/4 game will be different. Although I have no direct knowledge to back this up, I've always been under the impression that the $2/4 and $3/6 games are basically the same as $1/2, and perhaps even softer. I don't know why this is, but I'm pretty sure that when I was playing $2/4 full ring, that game was fairly tough compared to things I heard about at $3/6 and even $5/10. So perhaps there's just a little anomaly there.

I also want to point out that to get to $3/6, I only need to have a $600 bankroll, which is only a $200 jump from what I have at $2/4. So it might go by fast.

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Stats: $.50/1 (12/14/2006)

The first level is complete. My BB/100 is lower than what I expect is my "true" winrate, but that's fine. I've enjoyed playing 6-max much more than full ring, mostly because it's a different game. I'm a little surprised that my stats are 25/17 and not 25/20, but I guess this means I'm limping in behind a little bit more than iso-raising. This could be good or bad. I don't think the 3% raising makes a huge difference in my bottom line, but it will almost certainly increase the variance.

I see that I did, in fact, clear the 100 BB mark earlier, but it happened in the middle of a session. I don't watch the totals very closely as I play, so I didn't really know that I was over the top until after the fact. There were four somewhat substantial downswings during this 5000 hand run. Horray for variance.

I'm not sure how to make these images appear in full size, but that's okay. Click on them and they should pop up nice and big.

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Other observations:

There are so many little nuances to this game. An interesting situation is what happens postflop when you open-raise preflop. Of the 5243 hands that I played, 569 of them were open-raised (Raised First In filter), winning $231.00 (0.41 BB/hand). Here are some stats regarding those hands:

• 242 hands (42.5%) were won before showdown, winning $336.15 (1.39 BB/hand)
• 90 hands (15.8% of all hands, 37.2% of win before showdown hands) were won without a flop, winning $58.25 (0.65 BB/hand)
  
• 187 hands (32.9%) went to showdown, winning $147.35 (0.79 BB/hand)
• 138 hands (24.3%) were folded before showdown, losing $250.50 (-1.82 BB/hand)
• 40 hands (7.0% of all RFI hands, 29.0% of FBSD hands) were folded on the river, losing $99.00 (-2.48 BB/hand)
• 370 hands (65.0%) were "Chance to Steal and Raised", winning $93.50 (0.25 BB/hand)

The first two points together show that there were 152 hands (26.7%) where I open-raised and took a flop, but won before showdown. A quick calculation shows that these hands won $277.90 (1.83 BB/hand). Since you expect about .7 BB from the blinds preflop, this suggests that postflop play collected roughly 1.1 BB. This implies that the action often gets to the turn and river, for otherwise this number would be about 0.8 BB or so (0.5 BB from the flop if it's heads up). This strongly suggests that it is often important to bet the turn after betting the flop.

Of course, as a consequence of betting the turn, there is a question of what to do on the river. Out of position, I do a lot of check-folding with junky hands (notice that the folded on the river hands are very close to -2.5 BB/hand -- This corresponds to 1 BB preflop, 0.5 SB on the flop, 1 BB on the turn, then check-folding the river).

What about folds before the river? Another caluation shows that I lost $151.50 in 98 hands (-1.55 BB/hand, 17.2% of all hands). This represents a lot of betting the flop and checking on the turn. This could be both giving up out of position and checking behind on the turn to improve cheaply. I believe there are a number of flop folds to donk bets, too, and those are usually with pocket pairs that flopped overcards and weaker stealing hands.

Here is another batch of RFI stats:

• 271 hands (47.6%) were heads up on the flop, winning $50.65 (0.19 BB/hand).
  
• 170 hands (29.9%) were 3-handed on the flop, winning $49.65 (0.29 BB/hand).
  
• 40 hands (7.0%) were 4-handed or more on the flop, winning $70.45 (1.76 BB/hand).
• 88 hands (15.5%) were won before the flop, winning $60.25 (0.68 BB/hand).
  

I was a little confused by PokerTracker because it gave me two different values for winning hands before the flop. In this situation, I used the "Between x and y players on the flop" filter and in the previous case, I clicked the "There Was No Flop" box. Further inspection showed that there have been two situations where I've raised first in, but folded preflop after it came back to me capped.

For the 271 heads up flops:

• 115 hands (42.4%) were won before showdown, winning $169.90 (1.48 BB/hand)
• 42 hands (15.5%) were won at showdown, winning $131.15 (3.12 BB/hand)
• 63 hands (23.4%) were folded before showdown, losing $113.00 (-1.79 BB/hand)
• 49 hands (18.1%) were lost at showdown, losing $135.40 (-2.76 BB/hand)

I don't really know what these numbers mean. I guess it means that I win before showdown about twice as often as I have to give up before showdown, which is good. It also shows that I'm actually losing a little bit of money when I go to showdown, but it's close.

I think I'm done with this analysis now.