Yorky Pud

Since as long as I can remember I have always been a stat geek, I don't know why but I just have. Back in the days when I was glued to my computer playing the then called Championship Manager I could literally tell you how many appearances players had made and goals they had scored from huge sample size. Quite sad really if you think about it.

When I discovered Holdem Manager I was over the moon because of the plethora of stats it produces but one of them has been masking problems and leaks in my game, the dreaded “$ EV Adjusted” column. For those of you who haven't heard of this evil stat what is basically shows is how much money you should have won had the cards fallen the way they should have over an infinite sample size. So if you win $100 with AA vs KK you would actually lose around $20 from the $ EV Adjusted stat because AA should only beat KK around 80% of the time. The opposite also runs true too and if you get your money in as a big favourite and lose you earn plenty of Sklansky Dollars.

The problem is with stats is you can mess around with them to tell whatever story you want them to. For example, do you know that almost 100% of people who have died in the world have drank water, therefore water must be dangerous. Far fetched and silly but it gets the point across. In my case I have been using this particular stat to paper over the quite obvious cracks and flaws in my game by simply blaming the cards for my short comings.

I recently spoke, I say spoke but it was all typed on Skype, to a high volume player, one who is going to try and make SuperNova Elite in the next couple of years and one who really talks sense. He asked me how poker was going and I said it basically wasn't and that my EV was all over the place. As soon as the text hit his screen he stopped me in my tracks and told me to completely forget about EV as it can not only do what it had done to me, give you a false hope or a reason to believe losing wasn't my fault, but it could drive some people to madness because they would think their account is **** and other such ridiculousness. He said to look for reasons why my EV was screwed such as getting my money in on flips or calling three-bets too lightly and getting my money in badly. Dude makes sense, check his blog out here.

I've actually gone as far as deleting the stat from all the reports on Holdem Manager so I haven't a clue if I am running under EV or not, I no longer care. As long as I am making decisions that, in the long run, are going to make me money that is all that I care about. The only stats I should be concentrating on is my win-rate and how to improve it. I have been on auto pilot for a long time and picked up a ton of leaks, leaks that need to be filled in quickly and filled in by going back to basics, probably playing one or two tables and actually thinking about the game rather than simply betting because my hand looks good, having a plan for every hand and owning the fishes again!

Over the past week I have played 200 of the 10-man turbo SNG on Betfair Poker but I won't be playing them anymore, I hate them. I basically broke even after rakeback and bonuses, and they are very good for doing just that, but I am more than a rakeback ****, plus to be honest the three minute blinds are a joke and the fact the buy-in isn't altered to accommodate the fact they are turbos kind of tilts me. One positive thing I must mention is the instant play client, which is pretty awesome. My laptop is a complete dinosaur but using the browser client I could 12 table quite easily and have iTunes running with no lag at all. Just a shame the hand histories aren't saved when using it.

In the online poker sense I'm not too sure what I am going to do but my local casino has started spreading cash games and some half decent low buy-in tournaments so I'll probably hit those up in the next week or two as live poker is much more fun and the standard is generally LOL-bad! No poker reporting for me this month but its in France so I'm not too fussed. I've heard bad things about France and the French, though the only Frenchman I have met is a great laugh and nothing like the stereotypical Frecnhy we get told about. Fingers crossed I get to go to Copenhagen in February as I've never been to a Scandinavian country and would like to do so.

Right, this has gone on for long enough so I'll leave it there and get on with some other stuff. As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!