Poker Tracker

[texasholdemnut]

I keep hearing everyone talking about this Poker Tracker, is this thing really worth 55 bucks? I play mostly .50-1.00 and 1-2 on multiple sites, sometimes I'll sit in on a 2-4 or 3-6 and see if my cards are running good, if not I'll bail out quickly. I have made roughly $750 in the past 6 months playing micro limits, I don't multi-table, just play causually, 20 to 40 hours per week. I do sit in on live 3-6 tables often on the weekends, but am only breaking even on these live games. Would the poker tracker help?

[mannika]

[ QUOTE ]
I keep hearing everyone talking about this Poker Tracker, is this thing really worth 55 bucks?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, it's not worth 55 bucks, it's worth way more if you plan on playing seriously and analysing your results as well as keeping track of other players.

[ QUOTE ]
I play mostly .50-1.00 and 1-2 on multiple sites, sometimes I'll sit in on a 2-4 or 3-6 and see if my cards are running good, if not I'll bail out quickly.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, maybe you don't plan on playing seriously.

[texasholdemnut]

Everything I do, I take seriously, I'm a very competative person and I don't like losing. Now with that said, no, I'm not going to make a living playing poker and I'll never be a Pro. So your assumptions of not being a serious player just because I sneak in on a higher limit table without a supporting bankroll and try and grab a few quick and profitable pots is wrong. I just don't want to become dependant on a computer program to tell me who I'm playing against, verses my reads and instincts. As far as learning more about my own play, I would be interested in that, does this program do that?

[ArturiusX]

Start with understanding probability.

Cards don't run well, they just run.

Computer programs are a tool, I wish I could rely on them, that'd make poker easy and we wouldn't need this forum. But we can't.

Also, your instincts are always wrong. Us humans suck when it comes to poker, we have to force ourselves to believe in the math.

[Magius Paulus]

There is probably a topic on this already, but as i have Pokeroffice installed, and i c most people on these forum's have PT, could someone please xplain why PT is better then PO? (i defintely like the live tracker in PO).

[Sasnak]

[ QUOTE ]
There is probably a topic on this already, but as i have Pokeroffice installed, and i c most people on these forum's have PT, could someone please xplain why PT is better then PO? (i defintely like the live tracker in PO).

[/ QUOTE ]

It's eezier to spell PT?

Having never used PO I really couldn't tell you. What I can tell you is it seems to be the number one program. It seems to be used by the overwhelming vast majority of serious players. It does way more tasks than I have even tried to use. It's user friendliness appeals to me. And Pat seems like a nice guy.

Now can you tell me why PO is better than PT???

[jrz1972]

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I keep hearing everyone talking about this Poker Tracker, is this thing really worth 55 bucks?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes.

[benkath1]

If you want your game to improve it is well worth it. If you want to track your winrate, just watch your bottom line. At the levels you play, you should pay it off in a week.

Ben

[deception5]

I just bought it myself and I think it's worth it. Multi-tabling aside it will let you do things like evaluate your play from each position, see which hands are winning/losing you money, see how often you're chasing, if you're too aggressive/too passive, if you are seeing too many flops, etc. You can also do things like look at all of the hands you played AKo from the button and replay them if it seems like you are losing money there.

But seriously if you want to see what pokertracker can do for you just download the demo. It will let you import up to 1000 hands which should be plenty to decide if it would be useful to your play.

[mannika]

[ QUOTE ]
Everything I do, I take seriously, I'm a very competative person and I don't like losing. Now with that said, no, I'm not going to make a living playing poker and I'll never be a Pro. So your assumptions of not being a serious player just because I sneak in on a higher limit table without a supporting bankroll and try and grab a few quick and profitable pots is wrong. I just don't want to become dependant on a computer program to tell me who I'm playing against, verses my reads and instincts. As far as learning more about my own play, I would be interested in that, does this program do that?

[/ QUOTE ]

I wasn't equating "playing seriously" to only playing within your bankroll, taking shots is fine once in a while. I was basing my opinion that you still aren't serious enough by your criteria for staying at the higher tables "if my cards are running good". Your thinking implies a future expectation of cards based on past samples, and I don't think anyone can be a serious player with statistically inaccurate thinking such as this.

If you meant something different when you were talking about cards running badly, then I apologize, but that was my interpretation.


Edit: And to answer your question in more detail, PT essentially is a database of every hand that you have ever played, and it compiles the data into various statistics. Using these statistics, you can find out about your own play, and review hands that you think you played badly. So yes, it would help you significantly I think, and would be worth the investment if you plan on being a serious, fairly long-term player.

[stlip]

Simply put PokerTracker is a brutally honest friend who will tell you if you are playing as well as you think you are (hint, probably not, I know I wasn't).

I'm also a casual player (I call it minimum wage entertainment) but I enjoy the challenge of measuring my game not just by bankroll and winrate but also by a variety of other statistical measures that have driven me to keep rethinking and refining my game.

[grimel]

Buy it, use it, love it. You'll find the $1 leaks. Stopping a $1 leak doesn't sound like much, but playing crap cards from early postition at $0.50/$1.00 is a $1 leak every time you do it. Just showing me where I was playing cards out of position was worth $55 the first week.

[grjr]

[ QUOTE ]
Everything I do, I take seriously, I'm a very competative person and I don't like losing. Now with that said, no, I'm not going to make a living playing poker and I'll never be a Pro. So your assumptions of not being a serious player just because I sneak in on a higher limit table without a supporting bankroll and try and grab a few quick and profitable pots is wrong. I just don't want to become dependant on a computer program to tell me who I'm playing against, verses my reads and instincts. As far as learning more about my own play, I would be interested in that, does this program do that?

[/ QUOTE ]

I want to know how my brother found a link to this site??

Seriously though, PT is well worth the money. It helped my game a lot and is still helping it.

[texasholdemnut]

OK, I'm sold, sounds like a great program. I will download the demo as soon as I get home. Thanks everyone for your input.

[TripleH68]

Have you read any 2+2 books? If the answer is no, I recommend this as a first course of action. You can get PT and start collecting stats, but they will just be numbers until you gain a solid understanding of poker concepts.

[ARodOSU]

More specifically, "Small Stakes Hold'em" by Ed Miller. This book is responsible for molding me from a Tight-Passive player into a Tight-Aggressive player, a modest winner to a maximum profit player. While PT is easily worth its money, this book is definitely worth more than the $20-$30 you can get it for. Oh, by the way, I'm up $800 in just one month of 4 tabling Party's .5/1 tables.

[texasholdemnut]

I just read the book, lost my but trying to apply the concepts. I will re-read, and re-read until I get it. I have a little problem with reading comprehension, and there is so much theory and info in there that there is no way I could take it all in in one sitting. Thanks.

[tinhat]

[ QUOTE ]
There is probably a topic on this already, but as i have Pokeroffice installed, and i c most people on these forum's have PT, could someone please xplain why PT is better then PO? (i defintely like the live tracker in PO).

[/ QUOTE ]

In truth I doubt anyone could go wrong with even a marginally useful analytical poker tool. pt gives you 1k free hands without buying it - you really should take advantage of that and answer your question yourself because maybe you have different needs/expectations than me.

Before I reg'd pt I too installed pokeroffice for a trial (which IIRC means I could not use livetracker, I think. I gather that is its top feature?). There's no doubt po is far more visually appealing; it "looks" like a polished Windows app. (In comparison pt looks like an old UNIX/Motif app). But in all honestly (for me anyway), po's visual appeal was its best feature. Maybe it's unfair but pokeroffice just didn't seem to have the breadth of features under the hood like pt.

pt seems to be the gold-standard in online HE tools. It may be a bondo-special but it's immediately apparent all its effort went into a very-well thought out design and feature set. What I really like about pt is how so much (all?) the information is interconnected. For instance, in po's "hand analysis" (like its other summaries), you see a summary of different hand types and your results. All your information is nicely sorted but you can't do anything with it. If I want to know why a particular handtype won/lost money, I found no way to discover that. If po were pt, clicking on the handtype would make available the specific times it had been played. From there (in pt) I can even replay the hands.

For reasons like this, the graphs working inconsistently, and browsing the po forum, I got the distinct impression it just wasn't ready for prime-time (r1.3). You can't really DO anything with the information it summarizes. And after reg'ing/using pt I couldn't for the life of me figure out where the po author gets off charging a price HIGHER than pt. Good for him if people are paying it but IMO this is one instance where the cheaper product is far-and-away the better value.

So IMM po's visual appeal is like the rest of the program - it's superficial. Yes you can "look" at all the summaries but I didn't find any way to actually use that information. pt gives you the interconnectedness to do in-depth analysis. If you want to "see" your results, po is probably fine. If you want to look into and try to understand your results, pt has no peer.

Mike

[shadow29]

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I just read the book, lost my but trying to apply the concepts.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not surprised. And this is nothing personal.

SSHE is not the end all, be all poker book.

I suggest you pick up Winning Low Limit Hold Em by Lee Jones. Internet Texas Hold Em is good, too. Read those books (in that order) and apply the concepts. Then read Theory of Poker (Sklansky) and think. Then, (with those three books) you'll understand why Ed advocates doing certain things in his book.

Without a background in some of the more weak-tight strategies, you'll easily get lost and lose a lot of money by playing incorrectly. And weak tight is not necessarily a bad thing for a beginner. Also, don't make the mistake of thinking that because you've been playing for a long time and making money that you're still a beginner. I'm still a beginner and I have too many posts, too many hands in PT, too much money, and I'm playing 2/4.

SSHE was the first limit book I read (with the exception of HEPFA, which I didn't study that much) and it shows with my game. I'm way too aggressive and I've been trying to work on that because I know once I get out of like 2/4 or 3/6, I'll start losing badly.

Hope this helps,

John

[snibbler14]

PT is a very good investment, $55 is actually really cheap for that kind of app. However, the new version of pokeroffice has the amazing overlay that can display betting actions, stats and odds in real time on the table. I have found that running boths apps at the same time is the perfect solution, giving you the PT database stats while still having the betting actions and pot odds from PokerOffice:

http://www.geocities.com/snibbler14/PT-PO.gif