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Aside from nearly missing my dental appointment because of a confusion over the time (I made it, just) it's been a stress-making day. But, after two hours in the chair, being treated by two different dentists, I'm back hime, feeling a bit groggy, and with the joyful knowledge that next Thursday I have to go through half the whole thing again (the surgery bit) on the other side of my mouth. Great.
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I had a quick look through my stats to see if I was being unnecessarily passive in the small blind. It appears that I raised 25% of the time when I entered the pot (i.e., completing 75% of the time. There may be a few where I cold-called a raise from the SB, but it's a play that I seriously dislike, because you still have a player to act behind you). But I digress, I can cover that point another day.
Now, since I'm ahead of a random hand 50% of the time when it's passed round to me, presumably Matt would argue that I should raise 50% of the time. I can't help but feel uncomfortable with this line.
But I looked at the hands that I raised with most in this situation. Unfortunately I have opnly 22,900 hands to play with, which thins down to just 255 hands where it was passed round to me in the small blind. And, lo and behold, I see that I raised 119 times and called 136 times. I also "gave up the hand" 13 times. Many of those are probably auto-folds where I didn't expect a pass-round (or when I went to the loo). It's v unusual for me to consciously fold in these situations.
Looking specifically at pairs, I see that I raised 17 times, and limped 5 times (four of them with Aces and once with, yes, the pair of eights mentioned a few days ago). So, I'm clearly publishing hands where I act atypically from my normal style. If I act atypically, it's for a reason (in this case, having a LAG on my left, a situation that I am normally careful to avoid) and it's also an attempt to think through my own processes. This would be why I tend to publish this kind of hand.
With suited connectors I limped five times and raised five times.
With off-suited connectors I limped 17 times and raised 15 times.
Suited unconnected hands I limped 47 times and raised 24 times.
Unsuited hands unconnected I limped 84 times and raised 78 times.
So, apart from the aforementioned pairs, it looks to me as if, even though there is some bias towards raising with better unpaired unconnected hands, much of what I do is more based on my opponent's statistics rather than on my own cards.
Unfortunately the sample size is way too small to decide whether it works better one way or the other. My gut instinct is that a limp when you have showdown value unimproved tends to win more against aggressive players, while a raise wins more against tighter more passive players. Obviously if you have a very loose-passive opponent, you bet far more for value. If you have a very tight-aggressive opponent, all lines are much more blurred.
And, ever willing to publish stats that could be seen as a detriment to my own way of play, I see that in this situation when I raise, I average 1.01BB per hand, whereas when I limp, I average 0.11 BB per hand. Unfortunately, there's no "control" situation here (and it's also a very small sample). There could be several reasons why the limp on average wins less than the raise, including the fact that (a) there is a bias to raising with better hands and (b) there is a bias to raising against players who are more likely to fold (there being more tight-passive opponents than loose-passive opponents).
When limping, I won $ 70% of the time when I saw a flop. I went to showdown 17% and had a 42% success rate.
When raising, I won $ 62% of the time when I saw the flop . I went to showdown 29.5% of the time and had a 60% win-rate.
But, very small samples. Not sure if anything at all can be read into this.
"A half-poker blog" indeed. Pah.
++++++
I had a quick look through my stats to see if I was being unnecessarily passive in the small blind. It appears that I raised 25% of the time when I entered the pot (i.e., completing 75% of the time. There may be a few where I cold-called a raise from the SB, but it's a play that I seriously dislike, because you still have a player to act behind you). But I digress, I can cover that point another day.
Now, since I'm ahead of a random hand 50% of the time when it's passed round to me, presumably Matt would argue that I should raise 50% of the time. I can't help but feel uncomfortable with this line.
But I looked at the hands that I raised with most in this situation. Unfortunately I have opnly 22,900 hands to play with, which thins down to just 255 hands where it was passed round to me in the small blind. And, lo and behold, I see that I raised 119 times and called 136 times. I also "gave up the hand" 13 times. Many of those are probably auto-folds where I didn't expect a pass-round (or when I went to the loo). It's v unusual for me to consciously fold in these situations.
Looking specifically at pairs, I see that I raised 17 times, and limped 5 times (four of them with Aces and once with, yes, the pair of eights mentioned a few days ago). So, I'm clearly publishing hands where I act atypically from my normal style. If I act atypically, it's for a reason (in this case, having a LAG on my left, a situation that I am normally careful to avoid) and it's also an attempt to think through my own processes. This would be why I tend to publish this kind of hand.
With suited connectors I limped five times and raised five times.
With off-suited connectors I limped 17 times and raised 15 times.
Suited unconnected hands I limped 47 times and raised 24 times.
Unsuited hands unconnected I limped 84 times and raised 78 times.
So, apart from the aforementioned pairs, it looks to me as if, even though there is some bias towards raising with better unpaired unconnected hands, much of what I do is more based on my opponent's statistics rather than on my own cards.
Unfortunately the sample size is way too small to decide whether it works better one way or the other. My gut instinct is that a limp when you have showdown value unimproved tends to win more against aggressive players, while a raise wins more against tighter more passive players. Obviously if you have a very loose-passive opponent, you bet far more for value. If you have a very tight-aggressive opponent, all lines are much more blurred.
And, ever willing to publish stats that could be seen as a detriment to my own way of play, I see that in this situation when I raise, I average 1.01BB per hand, whereas when I limp, I average 0.11 BB per hand. Unfortunately, there's no "control" situation here (and it's also a very small sample). There could be several reasons why the limp on average wins less than the raise, including the fact that (a) there is a bias to raising with better hands and (b) there is a bias to raising against players who are more likely to fold (there being more tight-passive opponents than loose-passive opponents).
When limping, I won $ 70% of the time when I saw a flop. I went to showdown 17% and had a 42% success rate.
When raising, I won $ 62% of the time when I saw the flop . I went to showdown 29.5% of the time and had a 60% win-rate.
But, very small samples. Not sure if anything at all can be read into this.
"A half-poker blog" indeed. Pah.
