Recordkeeping

Hi, I'm new to PP and I was reading some of the posts where people talked about compiling databases. I was wondering what people did as far as getting hand histories: get all of them for every hand you sit? Only the ones you play? Or what? What kinds of things are you looking for? I would imagine a few of things would be keeping track of the number of hands people play, the types of hands they play, and how they play them. And of course analyzing your own play. Any other things to look for?

I'm collecting HH's for the hands in which I am sitting at the table. Using the data both to review my own play, and to compile a record of how skewed the board coordination distributions are on PP.


Also, just for fun, I'm collecting bizarre hands on PP, such as the Quads where a 4 kicker won the pot! Had 2 hands yesterday where pocket 55's in early position, stood 3 bets and strong pressure on the flop against pocket KK's, (no straight possible for the 55's and all big cards on board), and then made the set on the river when a five fell, to win the pot.

When pp first opened, I started a database. After a few months, I decided it wasn't worth it. I basically keep a mental db on the players that stick out to me, the others I basically treat as loose/aggressive. My win rate didnt seem to suffer after the change..


With the constant turnover rate of players that cash in and out online, my suggestion is to not bother...

i think loose/passive would be a better description of the majority of low limit paradise players. especially at the omaha/8 and stud tables.


i keep a very basic database- players, their style of play, and specific notes on a player. the specifics help the most, such as "john" uses the bet/raise button on flush draw, "dave" slow bets the nuts, "matt" bets his low draw...


pg

If somebody tried to get that specific on me, I think they would have problems.


I can not only play more than 1 style (more apt to do this in a short game), but I also try to randomize my timing now & then. I suspect many other players do the same.


A good general desciption would be best.."Dave plays strong. Doesn't value bet river enough"...In fact if a player is avg. in either direction, I would not waste my time typing in their info. I recommend just tracking players that are very good or very poor.


Have fun either way.

Also, if you are playing hold'em, PokerStat can help you track this stuff. You just the last 100 hand histories every hour or so and then save them to a file and run them through the program which puts together a datbase of stats on each player who has played a hand against you (as well as stats on your play).


You can get it at www.thsoftware.com