First, I would like to say hello. I have been lurking on this site for quite some time and I admire and respect the people on this site. This is one of the most intelligent poker sites on the net.

I am fairly new to NL Hold'em and have come a long way in a short period of time. Below are my PT stats for $25 NL at Party:

Total Hands: 13,438
VP$IP: 20.2%
PFR%: 5.4%
PFA: 2.07 (Flop 1.97, Turn 2.04, River 2.51)

I would consider myself a TAG. Over my last 6,000 hands I have tightened up a bit with a VP$IP only around 17.5% with my PFR and PFA very similar.

I am well aware of one area that I need to strengthen. My goal is to get my PFR up to 7.5%. I am clearly not raising enough and grabbing momentum prior to the flop. I think if I were slightly more aggressive pre flop, I could increase my BB/100 by 2-3BB.

The above stats may look fairly good; however, now comes the poor stats which are the most important:

W$WSF: 33.73%
WTSD%: 22.11%
W$SD: 47.67%
BB/100: -1.49

I believe WTSD% is an OK number; however, I need to increase all of the others. I would like to get W$WSF up to 40% and W$SD up to 55-57%.

I believe my Hold'em skills are in fact solid and not the problem. My problem is bigger than that. My problem is reading opponents at the $25NL level at Party. I'm not sure if its because of the lower level or if my reads are just clearly wrong. I typically do not like to go to showdown with anything less than 2 pair; although all too frequently I get sucked into it with TPTK. At times, I will have LAG's go over top of me, or throw all in with TPMK and at other times they have the nuts. I typically have no problem judging a TAG as if they go over top of me they usually have me beat and if not then I'll reraise or smooth call.

My question is, how do you know when a LAG is bluffing with junk or if they have the nuts. Should I only be calling/raising them when I have the nuts and let them steal TPTK from me? Or should I go about this differently? Nothing frustrates me more then when a player or two go overtop of me and then show TPMK or worse to win the pot. It seems that when I aggressively attack, they have the nuts and when I fold they have junk.

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On another note, I am going to Atlantic City this week and had a few questions:

1. Which limit should I be playing if I am accustomed to Party's $25 NL tables.
2. Which tables/casinos are the loosest?
3.. Any other advice would be openly welcomed...

Thanks for all of your help!

A couple of interesting things I've found when further analyzing my stats:

1. I'm losing 4.57 BB/100 in rake! Is there any way to cut this down? I would think my tight aggressive style would cut this number down pretty good. I was expecting 2-3 BB/100 not 4.5!

2. I'm losing most of my money to players in the following order:
a. TAA (Need to avoid more than I do)
b. TPA (ditto)
c. TPP (I'm winning 70% but losing money, I need to not be as aggressive when a TPP is calling me down or raising)

3. I've lost 29 ($25) buyins with only one pair. Conclusion: I need to be aggressive with TPTK and get better reads on those players calling me down or raising over top of me. Try to avoid showdown with only one pair.

I'm more of a newbie to NL than you although I am a long term winner at limit.

Here are my stats for $25 full ring NL on Party.

Total Hands 3500

VP$IP ~ 11%
PF Raise ~ 7%
PFA (approximate 3.0 , 2.5, 2.5)

Went to show down ~ 20%
Won at SD ~ 52%

BB/100 ~ 6.2

I am TIGHT pre flop and AGGRESSIVE post flop and fold alot as my went to show down number will tell you but it's working nicely for me.

my sample size is still way too small so take it for what it's worth but I would tighten up considerably. I know I read it here before TPTK is not an all in hand.

Good Luck

BK

Its hard to answer your questions without any specific hands posted.

You say youve lost 29 buy ins with only one pair. Why dont you pick 3 or 4 of those hands and post them with full details and we'll see if we can figure out where youre going wrong.

The only thing I can see right off is tht you must be calling too many bets with marginal hands because your W$SD should be closer to 60%.

Thanks for the input. After going back and looking more closely at my losing hands, I couldn't really find any hands where I had a question. Either I played them poorly and made bad calls/raises or I had bad beats.

After analyzing these bad calls and other stats (that I posted above), I made some minor but necessary changes to my game. Tonight, I was able to play 309 hands with my corrections and I won 5 buy-ins at a rate of 39.13 BB/100. The comforting thing is that while I was getting good cards and I certainly do not expect to continually win at that rate, I was also making MUCH smarter plays including some hard folds. While 309 hands is not nearly enough hands to draw any significant conclusions, at least its a step in the right direction and definately feels good with it coinciding with my changes. I will keep you posted...

Thank you once again for the help and I look forward to participating in future forum discussions!

Just a quick follow-up:

Since tweaking my game, I have played 1174 hands in the past 2 days. My #'s since then are:

VP$IP: 16.61%
W$WSF: 39%
WTSD%: 28.57%
W$SD: 64.86%
PFR: 5.11%

And most importantly....

33.88 BB/100 for a total of 16 $25 buyins

While 1174 hands isnt a large enough sample size to draw to much conclusive evidence, it should be an ample amount to gauge how my tweaks have helped. Then again, this could be just one big lucky upswing; however, this is by far the largest run I've had. Hopefully my run continues!

Thanks once again for the help!

1174 hands is a drop in the but it looks like you are having a nice run....