From time to time, everyone on PokerStars goes through bad runs at the poker table. Some of us just experience the ugly backside of variance, while others adjust something in our game, which causes our poker game to spring a leak. Whether just on a bad run or running bad, it makes sense to give your play a check-up to determine whether or not your game has sprung a leak.
How to Analyze your Game
For starters, if you are playing poker online, it is far easier to monitor your statistics and win rates than it is by playing live. As a result, I highly recommend obtaining a tracking program to monitor your poker play. PokerOffice and PokerTracker are two reputable and useful tools designed to record and break down your player stats. These programs can be purchased for under $100, and are free (with conditions) on many poker sites. If you do not yet have a poker-tracking program, get one now.
If trying to determine whether I am running bad or playing bad, I open up my stats program, where I look at my statistics, which are broken down based on preflop, flop, turn and river actions. I can see the number of hands where I am voluntarily entering the pot, and additionally I can tell how I am entering the pot (whether via calling, raising, or reraising).
I can also tell how often I am the aggressor on each street – the flop, turn and river. I can look for trends, telling me how often I bet the turn when I raised preflop and made a continuation bet. If my turn aggression is low, but my preflop raise percentage and flop bet percentage is high, it may well be that players will call the continuation knowing that they can see a free river card as well.
Additionally, I can ask my PokerStars.com tracking program to break out the percentage of times I saw the flop voluntarily from every position. If I find I am frequently calling raises from the big blind and folding when on the button, I may be failing to utilize position in the most ideal of manners. I can also use the tracking program to show me how profitable I am playing a given hand, or to see how much money I am losing by being too loose in the blinds.
Essentially, the poker-tracking program can give me all the tools to identify and plug leaks in my game. So, next time you are running bad, open up your stats program and go over your sessions with a fine tooth comb before you write off your bad run as variance.