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Starting Hands Research
Thursday, May 29th 2008 5:30 pm |
I'm sort of using this project to shore up any holes in my own game as I move up through the levels as well, which will also help me in teaching you how to do what I'm doing. Today I did some research on starting hand values because I just haven't played enough at these micro-levels tohave a good idea which hands I can get a profit from. I imagine I could play very loosely if I concentrated on one tabl, but with six tables I will obviously have to tighten up.
I hunted around, looked through the books on my shelf, went through posts on twoplustwo, and generally followed links all over until I felt like I hada good handle on what kind of hands I could play at these micro-limit games and turn a profit without having to be focused on drastically outplaying my opponents. I may be a bit tighter than you would expect, but playing lots of tables with fish screams for tight solid play, so I'll stick with it until my stats tell me I can add more hands.
A few things I found useful -
Hands By Real Value - Pokerroom.com published this awesome resource that shows how much money has been made on each hand over 122 million real money hands at their tables. It's interesting to see some of the hands that players obviously overvalue and the huge difference betwene the top three hands and all the rest. If you sort by EV instead of hand you get a great list of hand strengths, though you have to consider that none of us are the average player, there is nothing in this list about position, and some hands may be quite valuable but overvalued by players and thus become losing hands. Interesting chart anyway.
1 Million Hands Played to Showdown - The practical value of this could also be argued, since playing a hand to showdown against all opponents is so distant from actualy poker, but the factthat all of these different charts I looked at today have very similar hand rankings tells me that there must be something to them.
Solid Player Stats - This is a set of PokerTracker stats from a solid winning player at $50 NL, quite a bit higher level than where I'm be starting out. The stats are a little bit looser than my own stats from $1,000 NL and $2,000 NL (the only games where I have a large enough sample) as well, but I think I will be tighter than either set of stats while playing at the $10 NL games.
I'll probably have to adjust things after I play some hands, but I'm shooting for something in the range of VP$IP - 19%, PFR - 12%, AF - 2.0, W$SD - 57%.
It's always been very helpful for me to have "default" plays and then alter them according to the situation. Some players use the Nash or unexploitable plays as their defaults, and at the higher levels I do that too, but at these levels I think a somewhat exploitive strategy is safe to use as a default. With all those things in mind I have settled on these starting hand standards as my defaults for nine and ten handed play at the micro-limits until I have enough hands to alter them. These are for opening when no one has entered the pot yet.
utg and utg+1 : AK, AQ, 77+
utg+2,+3, +4 : AJ, ATs, KQ, 66+
late position : Axs, A9o, KQ, 22+
Button and SB steal hands : Ax, 22+, any two suited broadway, any two connected broadway.
I'll be back alter withsome guides on calling raises, raising limpers etc. Those will be easier once I have some hands palyed at this level. I'll be playing for much of the night tonight, though a lot of it will be one table so I can record video, so I may not get that many hands in.
Current Project Bankroll = $107.80
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Comments
There will be lots of PokerTracker and Hold Em Manager info from me over the next few weeks, including videos on how to use them. Right now I'm working on mastering the new version of PT and the updated HM, so it's taking a little time, but the videos will be coming soon.
VP$IP - Voluntarily Put Money In Pot - This shows what percentage of the time a player has seen the flop other than the free rides from the big blind.
PFR - PreFlop Raise Percentage - This tells you how often a player raises preflop. The closer this percentage is to the VP$IP the less often your opponent is just limping or calling along.
AF - Aggression Factor - This determines how often your opponent is aggressive versus just checking or calling. It's typically calculated as raises and folds / checks and calls.
W$SD - Won Money at ShowDown - How often a player wins showdowns that they are involved in.
I have a few videos that help with these stat too, in fact my most recent video had a description of these stats. Rizen's videos talk about them as well.