Using Holdem Manager

So after Recess called me out on my donkish ways, it was obvious that if I am going to continue playing cash games, it's in my best interest to purchase some kind of HUD. I pretty much knew this already; my apprehension to doing so was twofold:

1. I never had the bankroll to legitimately play cash games until now. I wasn't about to pay for a HUD to play at the $.05\$.10 stakes.

2. Although the cost was relatively low, I had a hard time justifying it the past couple of months because I was fiscally restricted (although purchasing it while I am unemployed doesn't really make sense either, but I can justify it via severance pay).

With both of those reasons out of the way, I followed Gnome's advice and purchased Holdem Manager. And so far, it's definitely made a difference. Not only did I make up for the expense with one session, I've nearly doubled my profit at the $.50\$1 levels in just a couple of days.

Obviously, having the VP$IP stats on each player has certainly made a difference. It's helped me identify tighter players and make a couple of easy laydowns that I may have talked myself into calling otherwise. I've also used the Steal statistics to find out who some of the more notorious stealers are, and I've taken down a bunch of smaller pots preflop with some light 3-betting (in position, of course) against these folks.

What I'm still trying to figure out is the best way to use this software. Right now, I've got 6 stats on the HUD: # of hands, VP$IP, AQ, Steal, 3-bet, fold to 3-bet. I'm curious to find out what stats others use on their HUD. There's so much available, and I've only had it for a couple of days, so I haven't really played around with it very much yet.

One thing I'm still trying to figure out is how to get maximum value out of my hands. I know that I'm not going to always felt someone every time I get a huge hands, and I think that having Holdem Manager will help me improve this, but I also can't help but wonder if I missing out on bigger pots because of how I played the hand. For example:

Full Tilt Poker Game #6811565879: Table Yeager - $0.50/$1 - No Limit Hold'em - 17:03:27 ET - 2008/06/13
Seat 1: briancheng ($100)
Seat 2: Goso ($20)
Seat 3: Instantdeath101 ($101.35)
Seat 4: kabo9 ($102.15)
Seat 5: luckfactor ($100)
Seat 6: mclarich ($98.45)
Seat 7: horsedrawn ($76.40)
Seat 8: backroadbural ($102.50)
Seat 9: OSUBucks02 ($118.50)
kabo9 posts the small blind of $0.50
luckfactor posts the big blind of $1
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to mclarich [Tc Th]
mclarich raises to $3
horsedrawn folds
backroadbural calls $3
OSUBucks02 folds
Goso folds
Instantdeath101 has 15 seconds left to act
Instantdeath101 calls $3
kabo9 folds
luckfactor calls $2

First of all, I have to add that one change I've made is increased preflop bets. For some reason, I wasn't doing pot bets, or not making big enough bets with limpers as per the suggestion from my last post. So there's one way to increase the pots that I'm winning. With that aside, not too happy to see 3 callers to my UTG raise prefloop.


*** FLOP *** [Qs 5d Td]
luckfactor checks
mclarich bets $9
backroadbural calls $9
Instantdeath101 folds
luckfactor folds

So now I'm a bit happier to see three callers preflop. OOP with a set on a draw-heavy board, I bet 3\4 pot. I'm not really familiar with the one caller but figure him for some sort of draw or maybe KQ.

*** TURN *** [Qs 5d Td] [2s]
mclarich has 15 seconds left to act
mclarich bets $23
backroadbural folds
Uncalled bet of $23 returned to mclarich
mclarich mucks
mclarich wins the pot ($29)

So I guess this is a pretty standard hand. Turn doesn't complete any draws, so I bet out about 3\4 again and he folds. Being OOP, I didn't want him to get a free card to any draws or odds to chase with one card left, and I thought that he could call again with TP. I feel like this is one hand where the pot really wasn't going to get much bigger than this, but if anyone sees anything otherwise, let me know. It's a pretty boring hand but it's the only hand I have saved on my gf's laptop so it's what you get for now. I'll try to get some more interesting ones up later.