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View Full Version : Article 2) re: Positional Awareness



Moshiach
09-04-2009, 10:46 AM
I've gone through all the articles and my stats are right on the money or very close for everything except Positional Awareness, where the article states 2.18-2.57 has the highest bb/100, my stats converge to 3.57 which is off the chart.

I'm not sure how to interpret this, does this mean I'm too positionally aware, should I be opening more in earlier positions, am I playing too many hands on the BTN, should I be playing more hands out of the blinds, because this all seems really counter intuitive.

http://i31.tinypic.com/2zg946u.jpg

These are my positional stats for August, any input would be gratefully appreciated.

Leak Buster Support
10-13-2009, 11:28 PM
I'll assume you're talking about 6-max, not that this stat varies huge between FR or 6-max.

Leak Buster analysis on PFPA is a little higher than the HEM article. You are on the tail end of it being a little bit too high, but it's not a huge deal. The thing with pre-flop positional awareness is that if you open more evenly from all the positions, the overall winrate statistically shows an increase.

It's simply because if you open 50% of buttons, that's great, but there are going to be a lot of hands that when you are called, you're going to be dominated, or if your opponent is at all good, they know your overall range is going to be weak on certain flops, and can move you off hands even if they are out of position.

So playing most of your hands in position is important, but you also want to make sure that you don't dilute the value of your hand too much. There's a balance there, and statistically if you look at the numbers, it's very clear that a slightly more balanced approach creates a higher winrate. Even though as a side note, I personally used to think you really wanted the positional awareness very high (stay pretty tight early, and loose late).

Hope that helps a little.

PKS Ace
09-05-2010, 09:07 AM
This is a little late to the party (googling something related), and I'm not sure if I can be completely clear about my thoughts on the subject, but your answer more addressed why you wouldn't want to open too many buttons/cutoffs which is only one part of the equation.

The real reason it's not optimal to have your positional awareness above a certain threshhold is that if it really is optimal for someone of your skill level to be playing 34% of your hands on the button, you can probably profitably play a few more hands in early position, increasing your winrate. Conversely, if you really can only profitably play 15% of your hands from early position, you probably cannot profitably play 34% of hands from the button.

That isn't to say you will have a negative winrate in that position if you play 34% of your hands from the button, but that not every hand in that range will be profitable in the long-term.