Basic Hand Statistics after 3 Months of Play

Well, I'm about 3 months and 16000 hands into this journey, and thought I'd write a brief post on some PokerTracker stats. Some of these stats (especially the individual hand discussions) may not be worth much. 16000 hands seems like a huge amount, but that means I've (on average) only seen each of the pairs 72 times, the suited hands 48 times, and the offsuit hands 145 times. A bad (or good) hand or two can definitely still affect the average in a major way with this few hands. That being said.....

The first stat I will look at is BB/hand - a measure of how much you expect to win with a hand, on average. My top 5 hands are (in order):

KK: 1.99 BB/hand
QQ: 1.55 BB/hand
AKs: 1.33 BB/hand
JJ: 1.17 BB/hand
AA: 1.05 BB/hand

Those would be the 5 hands I would expect, although not quite in that order. My AA average is horrid. I have reviewed the hand histories on these, and I don't think it is a case of "falling in love" with the hand. I think it is simply variance over having only seen the hand 84 times, and losing with it the first 6 times in a row. Scary thing is that I would have to earn 3 BB/hand with it over the next 3 months just to get it to exceed my KK average!

My worst five hands are:
88: -0.50 BB/hand
Q9s: -0.36 BB/hand
A9s: -0.35 BB/hand
76s: -0.32 BB/hand
T9s: -0.31 BB/hand

Most of these (being suited hands) could likely be as a simple result of variance - again, I only have 50 or so sample size on the suited hands. However, 88 being my worst hand is certainly concerning. I would expect 88 to be at least marginally profitable.

It wouldn't be my blog without a graph and a table or two, so here goes: Here's a graph of BB/hand for all my hands. Click for larger version, as usual.



Note the graph looks amazingly like the graph in Small Stakes Hold-Em, page 47, including the bizarre downturn at the right hand side. The "blind steal" line corresponds to 0.75 BB/hand; the amount you get out of a blind steal. The "fold every hand" line corresponds to -0.075 BB/hand; the amount you'd lose if you simply fold every single time you got dealt the hand.

Many things are apparent from this graph:

1) There are VERY few hands that are more profitable than a "simple" blind steal. In my case, I have exactly 7 hands in this category (the previously mentioned 5 hands, along with AQs and AQo)

2) No hand in my database is worth more (on average) than a scenario where I raise preflop, drag both blinds with me, they check to me on the flop, I bet, and take it down. That is a 2 BB profit, and no hand currently exceeds that winrate. Long term, AA and KK probably take down more than 2 BB/hand but not significantly more than that.

3) Only 50 of the 169 hands are profitable at all. As it turns out, only 12 of those 50 profitable hands are offsuit, and only 7 of THOSE hands I believe are long-term profitable - the other 5 are only marginally profitable through short-term variance in my database. Those 7 hands are: AKo, AQo, AJo, ATo, KQo, KTo, QJo. Yes, KJo is unprofitable in my hands so far, but I would imagine that this would join the 7 hands above in the long term. Two big Broadway cards seem to be the only profitable offsuit hands.

4) I am losing more than a simple strategy of "fold every hand" with 64 of my 169 hands. Even if I "cut myself a break" and say that some of them are worth completing in the SB, then get folded (meaning a loss rate of -0.1 BB/hand), I still lose more than that on 42 hands, including 44, 66, 77, and 88. Other than the pairs, most of the hands are suited hands that I am either only playing out of the SB, or maybe calling a single raise in the BB with, so I'm not too worried - sample size variance and draws not coming in could be a source of that. But the mid/small pair loss bothers me quite a bit, and a few offsuit hands are in there that I have no business playing at all (Q4o? 52o? Q8o? J5o? J7o? K7o? T4o? - these are all hands that I am losing over 0.1 BB/hand that I really have no business playing from anywhere). This needs to be fixed.

For the truly curious, here are all my 169 hands and their profitability:



Green correspnds to "better than a blind steal", red corresponds to a loss of greater than 0.1 BB/hand, and light blue (arbitrarily) corresponds to a prfoitability greater than 0.1 BB/hand. The other hands are between -0.1 BB/hand and 0.1 BB/hand, so it is unclear where they really lie.

That's about all for today - In the future I may break these out by position once I get a few more hands in to see how profitability varies by position. I also may compare these to the EV values published at pokerroom.com. Fun, fun!