Is 300k hands a reasonable sample ?

Posted 7 years agoEdited 7 years ago

Hello everyone! My name is chris and i have been grinding NL5z for a few months now and got around 300k hands at these tables. In my opinion i played pretty good but ended up down around 20 buy ins and i would like to know your opinion: Was this because of my poor skill or because of bad luck ? I had downsings before but i understood that this is part of the game. But now im really stuck especially when i see people beating nl5 and nl10 in few months. Attached Image
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P.S Thanks in advance for any feedback or piece of advice!
Archinator

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Archinator

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Posted 7 years ago
From the looks of it, just fold when you're in the blinds lol those stats themselves just highlight how important position is

I don't think 20BI over 300k hands is many at all, are you on a good rakeback deal? What site are you on?
Posted 7 years ago
It's on pokerstars. Yes i agree 20 buy ins it is not end of the world . But the fact that i cannot beat this limit for so long is tilting me a bit.
Well i mostly loosen it up with the calls against 2x raises when im in the blinds which by the way was an idea from this site aswell Laugh But yea i have to agree the blind need adjustment
Posted 7 years ago
300k jhands is certainly a big enough sample to indicate that if you are a winner at this limit, it is extremely marginal. 20 buy ins over this sample is not a big loss, and with rakeback you are probably up, but obviously not the amount you would want to be after that kind of volume.

The good news though is that you are still doing better than the vast majority of the pool, but you likely have some large leaks in your game that need to be plugged. From looking over your stats it looks like you're playing too tight, and certainly not three betting enough in general.
Posted 7 years ago
300k is a good sample size, without watching you play I would assume you have a few obvious leaks.

Start posting hands in the strategy section and we may find a few, my guess is that you're not value betting enough with your strong hands (this is a common mistake I see at the micros).
Posted 7 years ago
Echo the above, you also seem to be 3-betting more from the blinds than anywhere else, this is also where your biggest losses are. It's not easy playing a 3-bet pot out of position. You're playing the button well, I would suggest 3-betting wider from the button and cut-off and folding your blinds more often.

Posted 7 years ago
I would argue that you should be three betting more from the blinds.

Any player is going to have their biggest losses come from the blinds for obvious reasons, SB loss rate is pretty damn good but BB play could be improved. Keep in mind every time you fold from the SB or BB you are losing 50bb/100 or 100bb/100 respectively on that hand.
Posted 7 years ago
killjoy1987: Echo the above, you also seem to be 3-betting more from the blinds than anywhere else, this is also where your biggest losses are. It's not easy playing a 3-bet pot out of position. You're playing the button well, I would suggest 3-betting wider from the button and cut-off and folding your blinds more often.



Do you suggest that i should lower my calling range in the blinds ? and the 3bet range aswell?
Posted 7 years ago
Across the board you look too tight - defending your BB too tight, opening a little too tight from each position and not 3betting enough preflop.

Postflop again too tight. Your agg% is 28% which is way low, and your AF is 2.7 which is fine, but in combination with your agg% implies you are folding too much and neither calling nor betting postflop anywhere near enough. Chances are you are missing opportunities to both bluff and valuebet whilst getting bluffed often. This makes altering your preflop leaks a little risky - if you start 3betting more, especially from the blinds you may end up making frequent mistakes postflop when OOP in 3b pots.

There's a lot you can do. It might be worth building some standard preflop ranges if you know how to do this well, ie knowing what % you should be folding to 3bets, 4bets, 5bets, steals etc. Most effective is probably thinking about your postflop game - look through your hands and think about spots you're folding too much of your range, missing opportunities to bluff (eg when villain as PFR fails to Cb flop, you miss draws, turns and rivers hit your range far better than villains etc) and try putting villains on ranges. The Poker Guys on youtube have a tonne of hand reviews that might be a good and free start to thinking about villains ranges if you study these properly - pause after every decision made at the poker table, say out loud what your thoughts are about each players range then see what the guys say and if you were right/wrong etc and try to analyse why.

Another exercise you can do is every day, generate a random flop and pick some preflop action that takes us heads up to the flop - eg CO raises, BT calls or BT raises, BB 3bets, BT calls. Think a lot about the two ranges and try to work out which range hits the board better and which hits it worse. CrazyCookie on this site has a video series where he did something similar and doing this frequently, just spending a few minutes a day looking at 1 board will help you start thinking about situations where you have a range advantage so should be aggressive, or when villain has the advantage in which case you need to be more passive and really make sure your checking ranges are strong enough.
Posted 7 years ago
Interesting video from Daniel Negreanu on the topic of defending from the blinds

Posted 7 years ago
Thanks to everyone for your thoughts. Someone suggested that i post some hands where some leaks could be spotted, so here they are:
https://www.pokervip.com/forum/poker-strategy/tough-spots-on-the-river-nl5
Posted 7 years ago
folding more in the blinds is really bad advice you definately need to defend way more.

I'd recommend studying more and playing less for sure. Hopefully your on good RB so your actually profiting.
Posted 7 years ago
Archinator this 300k hands are gathered for the last 6 months so i don't really put in the volume as it may seem. What sources do you know that provide good guides or tips for micros ?
Posted 7 years ago
what country do you live in?
Posted 7 years ago
@cristi01234 you should be winner at nl5 after 300K hands. If you are not you are doing something wrong.

I would suggest to work on most obvious/fundamental things from the very beginning. And 1st thing should be

YOUR PRE-FLOP RANGE

Once you figure this out. you can start learning how to defend from blinds.

And if you are trying to use HUD, don't do it. You don't need it at nl5.
Posted 7 years ago
@Discomfort- Moldova

@mattusko I didnt use a HUD just god the 1 month free acces to review my game. I was mainly using the charts for the book " No bullshit 6 max poker"
Posted 7 years ago*
cristi01234: @Discomfort- Moldova

@mattusko I didnt use a HUD just got the 1 month free access to review my game. I was mainly using the charts for the book " No bullshit 6 max poker"


That should be OK, I guess. Then pick next topic you want to learn and do not pick anything else until you will be happy with it. and after that next one.

Posted 7 years ago
@cristi01234 I'd recommend Card runners for a cheap site, Mathew Janda's content is good for theory