[Mpethybridge's Guest Post continued from Saturday.  He is a principal contributor/moderator to the SSFR Stats Thread and is a Poker Coach specializing in database analysis.]

1. Cold Calling Leaks.

In HEM, I go to the Holecards report. On the main filters page I deselect all non-blind positions, and under more filters I apply "did cold call = true."

With this basic filter on, I look for trends in the player's winning and losing hands. Common leaks:

a. Sub-optimal performance with broadway hands.

In full ring, it is very common for players to have a losing win rate with broadways, or to be losing with some and winning with others, dragging down the win rate with these hands below what is optimal.

In six-max, it is less common to see an actual losing win rate with broadways, but it is very often the case that the win rate is below what it needs to be.

If I see a problem broadway hand or two, I will go to the holecards HE tab and select AK down through JTo and check the overall win rate. If there are problems here, you have no choice but to do hand history reviews among this group of hands to try to figure out what problems you have playing these hands.

b. Ragged Suited Aces:

Do the same analysis; this is a particularly important group to check in six max.

c. Suited connectors:

Ditto

d. Calling with Small Pocket Pairs (22-66)

What you have to do here is go to the holecards HE tab and select pocket pairs. Then, on the holecards report, you look at two things:

i. Win Rate Analysis.

Look for a pattern. Some players are losing with 22, 33 and 44, but win with 5s and 6s. More commonly, players' win rates within the group are random, determined simply by which hands in the group happened to have been paid off or set over setted most often.

If your win rates with these hands are all similar, or appear random, just analyze the hands as a group.

What is your win rate with the group? Any win rate better than -75bb/100 hands is preferable to folding, and the higher the better, ldo. But you should actually be in profit with these hands, and if you have a big sample with them and aren't winning at a decent rate, you are probably leaking (variance is always possible).

Assuming you have a leak, you should try to narrow down the precise situations that cause you trouble:

ii. Frequency Analysis

Compare your calling frequency with small pockets to your calling frequency with middle pockets. You should see a SUBSTANTIAL drop off in the frequency with which you call with small pockets. If you are losing and you don't see a drop off in calling frequency, that's your leak right there, most likely.

Try to determine which situations are causing you the most trouble. Go back to the main filters page and select position of first raiser is "early" and go back to the more filters tab and add the filter "players seeing flop is exactly___" and make it "2."

Check your results. If there is a problem, look at individual hand histories to make sure that it made sense for you to be calling that person to set mine OOP in a HU pot.

Repeat for MP, CO and Btn.

e. ZOMG, Pot Odds!!!

This is a VERY common leak. Something like this happens: You're in the BB with T6s, EP minraises, two people call, and when it gets to you, you are getting something like 7.5:1 on the BB you have to put in to see the flop. So you call, because, pot odds, ldo, maybe I'll flop trips.

Theoretically, the call is maybe justified. But some players (myself included) don't necessarily have a big enough edge in their game to play marginal hands OOP in a multi-way hand for a profit, and this winds up being a player specific leak.

If you have the tendency to call in spots like this, the clue you will see in your DB is a lot of random hands show up with low frequencies (just a few calls each) but amounting to a significant percentage of your calls.

The existence of a lot of these one-off calls in and of itself is not a leak. Some players have the edge necessary to make these calls profitably. If you see a lot of one offs with trash hands, you have no choice but to write down all of the starting hands you called with that fit the profile, go back to the holecards HE tab, and input all of them (because of the leak discussed below, you can't just run a filter for all hands other than your standard calling range).

So filter for all these hands, and check your win rate. If it is better than -.75bb/hand, your loose, speculative pot odds calls are justified, and keep on keepin' on. If your win rate is worse than that, one of two explanations is likely true:

i. Your sample size is too small to rely on.

An indication that this is the case will be if your winrate appears kind of absurdly high or absurdly low. This is a marginal spot from which we would hope to extract a small profit, or to suffer a small loss. If you're crushing or getting crushed, it is likely the result of run good/run bad. The closer your win rate is to break even, the more confidence you can have that it is accurate.

ii. Your skill edge is not sufficient to justify these calls.

If you have a decent sample of these calls and your win rate is, say, -1.3bb/hand, it is probably close to accurate, and you should probably take these loose calls out of your game until you have significantly improved your post flop skills.

f. ZOMG! a Fish!

This is another very common leak. basically, what happens here is that you overestimate your skill edge against a fish and assume that you can play trash profitably against them.

I usually just stumble across this leak in doing win rate analysis and hand history reviews.

If I were going to look for it specifically, I would filter for the group of hands that lies just outside your standard flat calling range, and look at the individual hand histories to see if fish are over represented in the sample of hands as the preflop raiser.

If they are, and you are losing with these hands, this is very likely what is going on--you just have a tendency to dip down too deep in calling against them. Tighten up a bit.

Continued next Saturday....

Well, I just had my second 20+ BI downswing in the last five weeks.  IMO, a minor downswing is 10 BIs but a 20+ is a major that only happens a few times a year for most decent regs.  So to have two majors within such a short timeframe blows.  The graph does not include a boatload of non-ev run-bad.  Altho I'll intentionally make the spewy play from time to time, I'm generally a fairly conservative player.  It's not like I'm jamming every A6o pre.  So it take a huge confluence of factors to get me to a 20BI downswing.  Obviously the ev recovery with actual cash lagging far behind blows, but that's variance.

What's really gross is I've been running so poorly on rivers that even when I get AA aipf vs whatever, I feel a sense of dread as the turn and rivers come out.  Like altho I know the other guy is drawing to a few outs, I just expect it to happen.  Runner runner flush, runner runner straight, donk hitting his two pair, etc.  It's a horrible feeling... especially since I'm generally more of an optimist by nature.  I just don't see how pessimists can go thru life feeling this way.

But Nick Rivers gave me a valuable tip, which I will share with you, to get over such fears:
 This easy-to-follow plan has been handed down from The Greats, and is now being passed along to you at no cost: 
   1. Man up
   2. Win

Life (and poker) is not that complicated when you take a step back and get some perspective.  Oh and I made up the rest of the downswing in my last session.

WHAT'S FOR DINNER?

Usually when Mrs. Fly is getting rid of leftovers (in this case, lobster bisque and skirt steak), she sometimes makes a little somethin' somethin' on the side to enhance the dinner.  This time, it was fried shrimp.  Yeah - I know I'm supposed to be on a diet.  But shrimp with panko breadcrumbs really kicks ass.  She even made a spicy cream sauce to go with it.

Thanks Mrs. Fly!  And yes - I will be "thanking you" later.  ;-)

[As previously mentioned, Mpethybridge from 2+2 was nice enough to be my first Guest Poster.  He is a principal contributor/moderator to the SSFR Stats Thread and is a Poker Coach specializing in database analysis.]

In analyzing player databases, one of the biggest leaks common to most full ring players is excessive blind losses.

What is excessive? This question is open to debate. I normally set an arbitrary bright line between leak/not a leak at -20bb/100 hands in the small blind, and -40bb/100 hands in the big blind.

I'll stress the arbitrariness of this bright line. My rationale for these figures is twofold:

1. Each figure is 40% of the blinds you post, which means if these are your blind losses, you're recovering 60% of the blinds you post. That's pretty solid blind performance.

2. The higher you go above these figures the harder it is to construct a win rate above 5bb/100 hands (2.5PTBB). Your winnings from the non-blind positions are effectively capped. Just as an example, the vast majority of winning regulars win on the button somewhere in the vicinity of 30bb/100 hands. I see a few standout regulars in the 32-35 range, but most everybody is between 28 and 32.

If you turn in a performance that is average among all winning regulars in all of your non-blind positions, and you have blind losses at -60bb/100 orbits, then you'll have a win rate of about 5bb/100 hands. Blind losses above this are cutting into your winnings.

In 6 max, the situation is even more extreme, because you lose 3 non-blind positions from which full ring players extract profits to offset blind losses. Thus, in 6 max, loss rates from the blinds are 20-30% lower than those of full ring players (6 max win rates in the non-blind positions are typically a bit higher than at FR for each position).

So plugging blind play leaks becomes a big part of what I do. When analyzing a player's blind play, there are really only two filters that are necessary to expose most players' major leaks:

Continued Monday (cold calling leaks) and next Saturday (light 3betting leaks)...  [prepare yourself for a stats onslaught]

OMG!  Stars decided to get rid of the 20-50BB tables and instead have 20BB CAP tables.  I was fairly shocked this happened because Stars basically had a monopoly on the SSers. As of now (1:20PM), at 2/4NL there were TWENTY FIVE 20-50 tables and only FIVE 40-100 tables.  So they are getting rid of what is by far their most popular tables.  And I suppose that's the problem - what poker site is going to want to be known as the "Home of Short Stack Poker"?  Can you really base your future business strategy on catering primarily to people who play with 20BBs? and drive away people who play will full stacks?

As a business person, it was actually a difficult call for Stars.  But at the end of the day, they probably thought this was the best move for the health of the game on their site.  I probably would have made the same decision if I was Stars.  Not because I'm a great guy who just thinks about welfare over dollars.  I hadn't looked at Stars in a while, but that ratio of tables is just pitiful.  The future of online poker certainly isn't an easily programmable (bottable) game.  I think you need to try and grow the full stack player base.

And at the end of the day, where are the short stackers going to go?  If they live in the US, the answer is nowhere.  They are either going to learn to play with a 40+BB stack, which means more rake for Stars.  Or they can play the CAP tables or play SNGs (where most of the play is with a shorter stack), but those are so low margin that high volume shorties will probably stay at Stars for the rewards. The worst thing that will happen is that some of them will migrate to FT to try and get the shallow tables going.  Good luck with that.  I'm not familiar with the non-US poker situation, so I can't really speak to that.  I assume there are some "SS friendly" sites out there, so maybe those sites start getting flooded like Stars did...  And a little while later, shorties will get banned from those sites as well.

Anyway, it's a welcome change.  I played 262 hands this month at Stars, just to try out the software.  But I'm planning on getting back on SuperNova pace later next month when the changes are made.

WHAT'S FOR DINNER

Over the years, Mrs. Fly's been perfecting her chili recipe.  She makes a huge vat and freezes it in smaller containers (because it reheats well).  The last time we had people over, they all loved it.  Sure - people in Texas are going to laugh at the notion of "New England chili," but I've had my share of chili, and this is pretty good.  I'm kind of shocked that she actually put beans in, because whenever the topic of chili comes up, one of the first things Mrs. Fly says is "real chili doesn't have beans."  But I think you need something starchy to break up the "heavy meat taste."  Wait who said that?!?  Did that really come from me?!?

HANDS - C'MON MAN! EDITION

Villain is a passive 14/8.

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (7 handed) - Full Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button ($455)SB ($443.20)
BB ($849.70)
UTG ($400)
MP1 ($1187.70)
Hero (MP2) ($422.20)
CO ($400)

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with J, K
2 folds, Hero bets $12, CO calls $12, Button calls $12, 2 folds

Flop: ($42) 6, K, 6 (3 players)
Hero bets $26, 1 fold, Button calls $26
[seems standard]

Turn: ($94) 8 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button checks
[At this point, it seems like a way ahead / way behind situation, as I don't see a nitty villain having a worse kicker.  So the question is, does he have enough draws for me to bet?  I'm pretty indifferent in this case between a bet and a check]

River: ($94) 4 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $40, Hero calls $40
[I'll bet a lot of times, but I didn't see this particular villain calling with worse when checked to.  ie I think he folds TT.  He bets (and he probably isn't value betting his TT), but I have to call...]

Total pot: $174 | Rake: $3
Main pot: $174 between Button and Hero, won by Hero

Results:
Button had J, Q (one pair, sixes).
Hero had J, K (two pair, Kings and sixes).
Outcome: Hero won $171

So I'm thinking to myself,  how can you possibly float when I bet into TWO people holding a hand that has zero equity vs my value range?  At least have an Ace, a backdoor flush draw, decent pocket pair, or something!  anything!  It's not like my cbet is 80% and I'm a spew monkey.

My post on losing regs coming soon...

In case you're curious what kinds of high level poker discussion we have on 2+2, here's a recent post that prompted some intriguing discussion:

Toilet paper is a waste anyway and I haven't used it in 3 years.  I either just shower after taking a dump, or if I don't need to shower, I'll sit on the edge of the bathtub and wash my ass with warm water. Much cleaner result (doesn't leave dried bits of paper and poo on your ass). 

So of course I started laughing at the image of some guy sitting on the lip of his tub washing his ass.  But then a whole bunch of other peculiar posts about ass wiping came out. Because I'm not some kind of degenerate, I haven't seen many people use the bathroom.  Altho Mrs. Fly thinks I'm a degenerate in other ways...  eeewww.

Anyway, I just assumed everyone just sat on the toilet, grabbed some toilet paper and folded it up and reached behind to wipe (usually front to back).  I did not realize there were so many permutations.  Even assuming you use a Western toilet (because "toilets" in some countries involve squatting), below is a summary of your options (assuming you wipe at all!!!):

wipe options
** toilet paper
* baby wipes
* toilet paper then baby wipes
* hand (in many countries, toilet paper is expensive, so the left hand hand is commonly referred to as the "unclean hand")
* newspaper / leaves / whatever you can find to salvage your left hand
* bidet / high tech toilet
* and now... bathtub
* shower

toilet paper options
** fold
* crumple (presumably for more surface area)

wiping position options
** seated (leaning left or right)
* standing!!! (apparently in some countries, standing is the norm - maybe the "squatting" countries?)

wiping
** reach back
* between legs!!! (makes more sense for women)

direction
** front to back
* back to front

That's over 80 combinations of ways to wipe yourself!  I guess life can be pretty complicated if there are that many ways to clean up #2.

WHAT'S FOR DESSERT

What better way to end off my dump post than with some chocolate covered fruit?  Strawberries and apples sent for Mrs. Fly's birthday.  Altho those apples are starting to look particularly unappetizing after reading this post...

The topic of Rush win rates came up the other day, so I fired up my HEM to see what the 2/4 Rush player profile looks like.  I sorted by number of hands and took a snapshot of the top 10 people I had volume on and came up with this result:

Notice anything unusual? It's highly unusal for people who put in a lot of volume to have a NEGATIVE win rate.  Presumably, if you're losing money, you wouldn't try to make it up by increasing volume.  If you add up all of the above, that's a -1.15bb/100 (not ptbb) win rate over 124K hands (not including me).  124K hands is a decent sample.  FWIW, 9 out of the next 10 are winners, and then it's a hodge podge.

But individually, there is a sample size issue, and I'm certainly not calling anyone out for sucking (since we've all been on 50+K or even 100+K break-even stretches).  So if you are one of the above people, don't be offended.  Who knows, maybe those guys are secretly crushing the games, and I have a bad sample.

I never really thought about how nitty some of the high-frequency regs were.  There are plenty of laggy regs too, but I guess the nitty ones do most of the volume.  Like I'm THE aggro LAGtard of the group with a 16 VPIP!  And only 2 of the top 10 have a PFR in double digits.  LOL?  Thanks for your share of weighted contributed rakeback guys!  ;-)

If you think about it, Rush is the perfect rakeback grinding game.  On Stars, you can 24 table @ 65 hands an hour, giving you around 1,600 hands an hour.  Marc Karam occasionally 12 tables Rush (four 2/4 FR tables, four 1/2 FR tables and four 1/2 6max tables) and can get in 2,700 hands an hour (and apparently he also plays a few donkaments at the same time).  I have Marc as an 18/13, so you don't have to a nit to play rush.  Thankfully, FT's rewards program severely punishes a whole slew of 11/8s from moving over from Stars (because they would make 2+x times more in rewards at Stars, and for a lot of them rakeback is a bulk of their profit).

Also interesting that at least 3 of the people on that list are Korean (including me), and who knows how many of the others are Asian.  Must be that child sweatshop gene that's common among Asians.

To be continued (win rates)...

So I get an email from OnlinePoker.org saying they prepared a poker income graphic that they would like me to share, and since downloading it didn't cause my virus scanner to go bonkers, I figure I would share it with you.

The poker earnings are probably understated because they got the data from PokerListings.com and that ONLY includes income from online poker that was tracked by that site.  As we all know, data tracking sites do not capture anywhere near 100% of hands.  This also doesn't include play in donakments (where many payouts are a million plus), nor does it include any results from live play (and we know a lot of the high stakes pros rape those games regularly), nor does it include earnings under different screen names.  I still thought it was interesting to compare the earnings potential in various competitive endeavors.  The actual total poker earnings (including those items I mentioned) will probably cause the numbers below to be perhaps 2-3x larger than what is listed.  None of the numbers below include bonuses or endorsements.

Poker vs Sports Income (click to view)

Obviously, the biggest difference with poker earnings is that you can be making millions one year and lose millions next year.  But I think as the years go by, you will start seeing the same names near the top of the leaderboard... like Phil Ivey, Tom "durrr" Dwan, Phil "OMGClayAiken" Galfond, Daniel "Jungleman12" Cates, Di "Urindanger" Dang, etc.

Anyway, I thought this was pretty interesting, because poker doesn't have a "glamorous" image in the mainstream, but for the top players, it's almost as lucrative as some of the more "acceptable" sports.  I do think that in my lifetime, poker (especially online poker) will be recognized as a legitimate competition.  Even in the last ten years or so, it's come a long way.

A week ago, I got an email asking me:

I am contacting you about guest blogging on your site on behalf of a group of writers dedicated to writing poker content.  We have some of the best guys in the business in for this type of writing and would really like to get their regular, free and unique content on your site.  The only thing we would ask for in return is a couple of links per article back to relevant poker pages. This can actually add to the depth of the piece.

Since I had no idea who these guys were, or whether any of the links would be secure or whatever, I thought decided against it.  But then I had an idea...  I was thinking of taking some Saturdays off anyway, so why not have some people that I know from 2+2 do a guest blog on those days?

The benefit for me is that I get a day off once in a while.  The benefit for them is that they get a reasonable-sized public forum to write about whatever they want... whether it be something related to poker, a personal interest, something they thought was funny, etc.  And they can put in a plug about their own blog, or coaching, or whatever.  The benefit for you guys is that you get some "fresh" content, a different perspective on life as a poker player, and you can see what kinds of personalities I deal with on a regular basis on 2+2 and the tables.  Kind of a Mr. Fly's Neighborhood.

It seemed like a win-win-win scenario.  The first guest poster will be mpethybridge, who moderates the small stakes full ring nlhe forum and in particular the stats thread.  It seems like stats analysis is an area of poker you guys are most interested in and we've talked a little about maybe having him do a few posts a year on that.  He's a stats coach and has tons of data, so he'll be able to provide a lot more detailed and useful info than I can in that regard.  Let's see how that goes.  BTW, I look at the "Reactions:" section under each post to gauge interest in various posts, so take a sec to use that - not just for guest posts but for all posts.

If you're interested in being a Guest Poster, send a PM on 2+2 to me (preferable), or email doubleflypoker@gmail.com.  Obviously I need to know you from somewhere (preferably 2+2), to try and keep with the "Mr. Fly's Neighborhood" theme.  But I'm pretty easy, so if you can convince me I know you from the tables, your name is Phil Ivey or durrr, have an established blog, etc, I'd be open to that too.

WHAT'S FOR DINNER?

In keeping with "eating healthier," Mrs. Fly ripped off this grilled lemongrass chicken recipe from her sister-in-law (formerly ASS family - still thinking of a better name for them).  You would not think that fish sauce and chicken would go well together, but they do.  Maybe this will be one of Mrs. Fly's future recipes - whenever she stops being "busy."

dontholdbreath.jpg

The meh week that was...  it's kind of disappointing to have only played 24K hands last week.  Even more disappointing is losing over $3K at 5/10+ in under 400 hands.  So much for bumhunting.  I should just stick to playing Rush.  Ah well, at least I'm still making money the old fashioned way... by luckboxing.

WHAT'S FOR DINNER

The other day, Mrs. Fly decided she wanted to make dumplings.  FWIW, Mrs. Fly makes the best pork/shrimp/chives dumplings.  You would basically have to go to a good dim sum restaurant to get better.  We had all these frozen wonton skins in the freezer, so she wanted to get rid of them.  The problems with dumplings tho is that it's kind of labor-intensive.  So she enlisted the help of her personal assistant/servant...  ME.

I'm actually pretty good at making dumplings, as I used to help my mom make them when I was younger.  But as my back was aching from being hunched over making all those dumplings, I hear the familiar squeals of laughter from my kids having fun in the family room.  And then I had an idea...  Asia is the continent of child labor.  Hordes of little kids G's age are probably assembling your Nike sneakers, Homer Simpson clock, and Member's Only jacket.  And *we're* Asian!  Just because we live in America doesn't mean we should let some traditions from the motherland die.  Get over here, G!!!

Alas, Mrs. Fly disagreed and said kids with a cold shouldn't me making any food.  So much for the "fun family activity" idea.  Oh well.  But my hopes and dreams of one day sitting with Mrs. Fly on the patio with a glass of wine while we watch the boys do the yard work and other chores around the house live on...

BTW, I'm just joking about the child labor...  Or am I?!?

BTW, I'm also joking about not enjoying making dumplings with Mrs. Fly...  Or am I?!?

HANDS - C'MON MAN! EDITION

Not sure if it's because I'm playing too much, but I can't find any super-interesting hands, so I decided to start doing hand histories on hands I think my "reg" opponent butchered.  Villain looks like a new aggressive multitabling reg and is 23/18 with a 55% fold to 3bet and a 2.9% 4bet.

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (9 handed) - Full Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($826.10)
UTG ($400)
UTG+1 ($435)
MP1 ($405.10)
MP2 ($985.60)
MP3 ($400)
CO ($229.30)
Hero (Button) ($400)
SB ($400)

Preflop: Hero is Button with A, 6
4 folds, MP3 bets $12, 1 fold, Hero raises to $40,

[Well he opens pretty wide and I've been fairly quiet, so I thought I'd mix things up]

2 folds, MP3 raises to $96,  

[Oops]

Hero raises to $400 (All-In),

[I dunno...  I think he opens over 30% from MP2...]

MP3 calls $304 (All-In)

Results:
Hero had A, 6
MP3 had Q, 10
[I can't believe I'm ahead!!!  Only 53% equity tho...  this is going to be close...  O pleaze don't let the moran suck out!  Puhleeeaaze!]

Flop: ($806) 4, 3, 9 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: ($806) A (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($806) K (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $806 | Rake: $3
Main pot: $806 between MP3 and Hero, won by Hero

But seriously, how can he call with QT?  Yes - it's sooted.  But even if I'm jamming 10% of my range (which I'm not), he only has 35% equity.  He needs 38% to call.  Obviously, I need to start 3bet jamming much wider for value.

Some of you may be saying... "DFly, did you really jam $360 with A6o to win $156?!?  Shouldn't *you* get the C'Mon Man ball?"

Ya.  Turns out I needed about 70% fold equity to break even.  If I picked a better junk hand (Axs, KQ, 22, etc) I would need about 65%... so not too swift either way.  But I think you need to mix it up every once in a while.  If you only show up with KK+, you're never going to get any action.  ;-)