Introduction & Pokertracker opinion

[AleoMagus]

Hi all. I'm not new to 2+2 by any means, but I am new to this forum and as I've been lurking for a few weeks, I thought I'd introduce myself as I intend to make it (and Small Stakes) my home for a while.

I have predominantly been a SNG player since the online boom (last couple years) and most of my past posting has been in the STT forum (Shhhh. Don't tell them I'm here).

Anyways, I really want to play more limit, so here I am. I can currently be found playing in the 1/2 games at UB, seeing as how party has taken away my rakeback (I'm not bothering getting it with the skins, cause that will soon be gone as well IMO). I know UB's games are not as soft, but that is fine with me, as I'm not playing for maximum profit right now anyways. I'm playing to learn how to beat bigger games.

...

So, my first question, or actually, an opinion that I want to discuss, is the necessity of Pokertracker and GT+.

I don't use it, and for now at least, I have no intention of using it. I have done a lot of thinking about stats and variance when I was playing SNGs, and in the end, if anything became clear to me, it was that so many of the statistics people rely upon are really not that meaningful in typical samples. In SNG play, for example, even after many thousands of tourneys, your ROI is still not accurate to a great degree of confidence. Adding to this the fact that our game is constantly developing has made me seriously question the value of most poker stats altogether. Limit Ring play has far more variance than SNG play, so this leads me to conclude that I don't care one iota how large my profit is per hand. It just doesn't mean that much. So long as I'm making a profit and so long as I feel I'm progressing and analyzing hands that get me thinking, I'm satisfied. In other words, my cashier histories are all I care about for the time being.

Am I insane for thinking this? Has the internet poker environment changed so much that I'm basically giving all the other GT+ players a tremendous advantage over me? I don't think so, especially in the sense that I'm trying to develop my limit game for live play where there is no program to track my own/other's play. I have more to say about all this, but I'll turn it over to some other opinions for now...

Actually, ALL opinions are welcome, as far as my site selection, transition form SNG to limit ring, etc...

Regards
Brad S

[steelcmg]

If ur just playing to learn how to beat the higher limits and only playing 1 or 2 tables at a time u can get away with out using PT. But it can really help when u cant get any good reads if ur doing a million things at once. If ur like me most of the time i just play Basic poker nothing fancy i try to stay away from the rocks and attack the fish so i kinda depend on PT to let me know which ones are which since im kinda to lazy to watch for my self sometimes. But i feel any good player can play with out GT running its just so much easy to let it run and take advantage of it.

[BatsShadow]

I have been using PT for about 4-5 months or so and I love it even though I rarely if ever use GT+. With the help of the microlimit forum, you can use the general stats to see if you are playing too loose or too tight, calling down too much, cold-calling too much, etc. But the main benefit to me is to be able to watch every ATo I've ever played and try to figure out why I am losing money with that hand. Knowing which hands are winners and which are losers is great.

[stlip]

Welcome to the forum. I can't say I'm a very profitable SNG player, but the fact that I have a small profit after a few hundred tourneys is certainly in part due to the things you contributed over there.

I'm far more experienced and successful at full ring limit games and I absolutely love PokerTracker. You can disect and monitor your game on a level that just isn't possible otherwise. You'll know if you are solid preflop, but I doubt you will know if you are at 19.5 percent VP$IP or 21.5 percent without it. And that's a figure that begins to take on a high degree of accuracy in a few thousand hands. Preflop raising at a high enough level is also a basic key to successful play, and again, in less than 10k hands you'll know if you're at 7.2 percent or 9.4 percent and how to adjust your game accordingly.

As an SNG player you know the value of blind steals so there's almost no doubt you'll do that sufficiently, but it is vastly underutilized by most micro players and again PokerTracker is just a nice easy way to make sure you're in the range you need to be.

As I've gone from 20k to 30k hands at Party 1/2 one of the biggest refinements to my game has been tightening up even more in UTG and UTG+1 positions -- interestingly it was the SnG play that convinced me that only a few hands have enough value to stand up consistently to 8 or 9 players still to act. I used to be at about 15-16 percent VPIP in UTG, now I'm shooting for about 11, and at least I'm down to about 13-14.

Now, this is not to say people don't over-analyze too small data sets, they do all the time. There was a thread you may have seen just the other day about the biggest losing hands, and AKs is for some people and for me KQo is more profitable by far than AKo. It was pointless.

As for in-game reads, I use it and GT+, but obviously when I see someone call a UTG raise with K2s in EP I know that their 15 VPIP over 17 hands will soon be much, much higher.

[DMBFan23]

Hey AleoMagus,

I don't use GT+. I think pokertracker is very very helpful for tracking my own play, but I only play 2 tables so it's easy for me to get reads the old fashioned way. I think if you have a good note taking system and pay attention, GT+ would certainly augment that but is by no means neccessary

[silvershade]

Well I dont use GT+, my aims arent dissimilar from yours so I only play single table and would prefer to use reads ( or player notes ).

Pokertracker is however very useful, not so much for stats on other people but just for the way that it lets you analyze your own game and adapt your play based on that information.

I'd say the ability to replay losing hands is worth the cost alone, I know I've learned a bundle replaying hands to rethink what I ought to have done differently.

[aces_dad]

I've been playing online for about six months, started with the 5+1 and 10+1 SNG's and filled up a small AleoMagus spreadsheet over a few months, enough to convince myself I was at least a positive ROI player, so thanks for your spreadsheet.

I switched to small stakes ring several months back and used some of my poker money for PT. Originally I used it only for tracking my own game and coming from SNG I found I was too tight, especially not playing enough suited connectors and small PP's, compared to SSHE and the numbers posted by some of the more successful small stakes players here. So it has helped me analyze my play in general by looking at the numbers, and you can also check by date to see how your game is adjusting.

I'm just now getting used to GT+, and still like to take player notes. However, one benefit I've already noticed from GT+, besides who the obvious maniacs / calling stations are (which you may not need GT+ for), is for helping with table selection, which can have a big impact in ring games. If the table really tightens up, and VP/IP drops below say 30%, I'll look to replace that table with a more profitable one. Since Party doesn't supply those figures it is valuable info to know.

It is also very useful for seeing your BB/100 winrate and once you get used to it, the automation is nice.

So I'd recommend PT/GT+, and would think of it as something that will pay off over time. It could come with better documentation as it's a little cumbersome to get started.

Anyway, why not try importing your 1k hands for free and see if you like it? And, again thanks for the cool SNG spreadsheet!

[parappa]

I think that stats for limit holdem are much more reliable than stats for SNGs.

There is an excellent analogy between ROI in SNGs and BB/100 in Limit. These stats are never incredibly useful because by the time that they mean anything you're not the same player anymore. This has been covered ad nauseum in the SNG forum, as you're well aware.

The other reason that PT isn't that useful in SNGs has to do with level changes. VPIP% isn't a very good stat in SNGs because you seldom have enough hands on someone that when the blind levels are accounted for for the stats to still mean anything.

These problems don't exist, more or less, in limit holdem. VPIP% and PFR% can converge in just a couple of hundred hands and are the 2 single most useful pieces of information you can know about yourself or anyone else's game. Postflop aggression takes longer, of course, but generally provide reasonable reads after not-that-many hands.

So, I think that the applicability of the tools is very different and that PT is extremely useful (maybe even indispensible) for limit games, so long as you can avoid reading too much into the smaller stats and/or changing the way you play based on stats rather than situations, neither of which will be a problem for you.

[Mroberts3]

I use both PT and GT+, but I would consider GT+ more important when it comes to making money. I use my PT to track my play and make sure my stats arn't totally out of line, but as long as your stats are reasonable there is no need to tweak your game too much. I dont really pay attention to BB/100 because as others have said, its useless unless you have a bajillion hands. THe main reason I use PT and GT+ is to help me get reads on my opponents while I 4 table. You have no idea how much it helps to see that the UTG raiser is a rock or a maniac without having to spend a great deal of time watching each player. GT+ gives you info about every player that you just couldnt compile on your own.