Once a 100nl crusher, now barely breaking even at 50nl - what did go wrong?

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Once a 100nl crusher, now barely breaking even at 50nl - what did go wrong?

i have a very solid sample in stars regular tables (something like 700k hands) telling me that i was pretty much a crusher in 50nl/100nl, winning at ~7bb/100 in 50 and ~5bb/100 in 100. i slightly changed my style during this time, going anywhere from 23/18/6 to 27/21/8, but regardless, i always won easily, with very little variance (i had a 40bi downer at 100nl leading to a 130k hand be stretch once, but that was pretty much it).

but in the last few months, it all went downhill. without notice, i suddenly became a small winner/breakeven meh reg, and although i can see that i ran somewhat tighter lately, i can't really put my finger on the reason why. i don't feel like i changed my approach to the game, but stats have changed and winrate (specifically red line) suffered immensely.

i was always a red line loser, but my lossrate overall has always roamed around the 5-6bb/100 mark. though, in my last 150k hands (50k if i include zoom), this loss rate literally doubled, while the blue line gains remained roughly equal.

check the hands i played this year. that's all i have in my current database. i filtered zoom hands out, since the player pool is so different and i'm not yet a proven winner there. it looks like some witchery happened around the 100k hand mark and then booooom, red line nightmare.



i have no idea why i'm playing so poorly and i don't know where to start fixing my leaks. at first i thought it was variance, but it clearly isn't, since the redline is dropping fast and steady (like never before in my career) during a significant sample. i can't believe variance can be blamed for that (can it?)


please please please help me to identify what i was doing fine before and i stopped doing or what awful thing i started doing that i'm not doing anymore or whatever. anything. i need a guideline.


i'll post my positional stats. starting with the first 115k hands of this sample, when things were working:


and here the most recent hands, when things stopped to work:


any help will be very appreciated. if you want more stats/info, just ask me. thanks.

13 Comments

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SPrince 10 years, 6 months ago

Hi Gonira, i`m not a stats expert, but from the first glance you are playing way too tight from late positions and from the sb.

Your river agg% is on the lower side (turn is ok`ish), which means you`re probably not double/triple barreling enough or bluffing when you have no sd value.

Other stats seem ok, so you should probably focus mostly on widening your cut off, button and small blind ranges, especially SB since 14% steal is really low.

Steve Paul 10 years, 6 months ago

do you limp the sb some %? If not then you're definitely too tight folded to you in the sb. Think other opening ranges are fine (CO is a bit loose if anything imo). Sprince I think you misread the open %'s.

You fold a bit too much to flop cbets and then call turn/fold river too much. Turn fold to cbet of 35 and river 55 is not good, I think a good adjustment vs you would be to never bet turn give up river. This also explains your redline cratering, calling too many turns and folding too many rivers is a good way to lose a lot without showdown.

Your river call efficiency is just way too high, which further goes to show you fold too many rivers. What's your river call win%? I'm guessing close to 50%? You're always getting significant pot odds on the river, it's ok to call and lose!

You could also barrel more turns and generally just be more aggressive on the river, 22% river aggression is crazy. 

Lastly I think it's likely you ran pretty hot in your first sample or are playing in extremely soft games.

GInTheorem 10 years, 6 months ago

I've played against you and it seems that you're a decent player but nothing special. It's likely that the games just overtook you, and when you're playing zoom that's tougher than reg tables anyway.

Gonira 10 years, 6 months ago

the graph and stats i posted are filtered to regular tables only.

i ran hot in my first sample for sure (winning at 9bb/100 wr with -3bb/100 non-sd is way above my long term average), but as i said, i had a stretch of over 700k hands in my old database winning at 5bb/100 with a -5bb/100 red line, 700k is not sunrun. and seeing this redline suddenly drop to a loss rate of more than -10bb/100 in almost 200k hands (almost certainly not variance) is a shocker for me.

first thing in my mind is i might be cbetting flop and 3betting pf too little much and folding more to cbets, compared to how i played before (my wwsf went from 47.4 to 44.6, this can't be good). i just can't point anymore what was the kind of close spots i was attacking before i stopped winning :/

it's possible that the games overtook me (seeing the high level of discussion in this low stakes forum is quite depressing, makes me think games are dead), but it's mind boggling to me how i can be crushing for years until early 2014 and then suddenly it all stopped. games haven't changed this much overnight (i guess?)

fwiw, my river call win% is 46.5. i agree with you, steve. i probably should try hero calling more often. and very good point about my turn and river frequencies, it makes a lot of sense. but what is strange is that i had this same lack of balance before, yet i was winning at a way more substantial rate, which makes me believe the turning point in my game was really due to pre-flop and flop aggression, i don't know.

Steve Paul 10 years, 6 months ago

Your f/t/r cbet #s go from 66/46/60 in the first sample to 62/46/55 in the 2nd. That's a pretty big difference in trying to win pots. You've gone from 3 barreling 18.2% of your range down to 15.7%. Now if you've started implementing more x/c and x/r then that's fine but otherwise you're probably just missing some spots you were taking before. This, combined with folding too many rivers, would help explain the drop in W$SF which is going to lead to a red line that drops more quickly. FWIW my redline is not much better and neither is my overall winrate at zoom, 2.5-3bb/100 is perfectly respectable (though I certainly believe you can win at a substantially higher clip)

GInTheorem 10 years, 6 months ago

SB open is too low for 50NL, so many people overfold in the BB (about half of all regs have >50% BB fold vs SB steal). Apart from that, and that you overfold vs flop and river cbets, it all looks pretty decent. If it's not just variance it's probably a matter of range construction problems.

Run a 3bb/100 winrate through a variance calculator (find your stdevbb/100 from your tracking software; if it doesn't offer that stat then just use 100bb/100) and you'll see that a 100k BE stretch for what's actually a pretty solid winner in 2014 isn't unusual.

Gonira 10 years, 5 months ago

it's what i would do if i had money left, haha

about the sb opening, do you guys really think it's good to be looser than in cutoff and play a lot of junk out of position? it seems to me that regs defend a quite wide range bvb and do float a lot nowadays. i actually filtered the opens from sb in my database with hands outside the top 30% and i'm slightly down opening them (not a huge sample though). and i'm very selective in picking the spots where i open loose, so i imagine it would be worse if i open a lot against tougher villains.

Cozacu 10 years, 5 months ago

First of all, the games are not dead ;). It's not as easy as it was before, but there is still money to be made. Regarding the fact that I`m very far from your level I will not even try to give you any stats related advice but I think I can give you my 2 cents on the matter. 

You`ve been playing the same limits for a while, you`ve been playing a lot versus some of the same regulars, and regulars adapt! So that is where your problem could be (regs exploiting your play). Although the majority of money you make in poker is from recreational players, you can't be a solid winner while you are being exploited by regs. 

BE vs regs and making money from the fish is not a good strategy. I would suggest focusing more on the regs in your games, always be vigilant at the tables, always take notes, figure out ways to exploit the hell out the regs and make sure you are not being exploited in any way. Put in some extra study hours, that is always a +ev decision. :)

DoUtDes 10 years, 5 months ago

I only gave a quick look to your stats, but seems you have to increase your btn winrate!
Probably by barrelling more when you open and get called (18% riv aggression is low).

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