6-max pokertracker autorate rules????????? [Archive]

MrWookie47

11-15-2005, 11:24 AM

Another poster just PM'd me about this the other day, and I didn't give him the response he was looking for. I implemented autorate rules a while ago, and I still have them turned on, but they do virtually nothing for a thinking player, and they can be harmful to someone who misapplies them. Here's the thing: stats are already an overly restrictive view of a players style. They can be helpful, but they can blind you to many subtleties of their play. For example, just last night I was sitting to the left of a very profitable player. His stats were roughly 45% VPIP, 7% PFR, and a total agg. factor in the ballpark of 1. And yet, when he would open raise on the button, I 3bet him in the SB with KJo. Why would I do this when he has such stringent raising requirements? Because I saw him limping or cold calling his premium hands, but raising things like Axo, 3betting 33, and other very weird plays.

Even if a player is very straightforward and their VPIP and PFR correspond to appropriate ranges of hands, putting another lable on them with an autorate rule is still detrimental. We use stats for 2 things: table/seat selection, and for hand reading. With regards to table selection, if you see a table full of TAG's and one fish, you might consider not sitting down. However, if that fish isn't just some run of the mill LPP but instead has a VPIP of 80, you should jump at the opportunity to sit on his left, regardless of who's behind you. This is even more important in hand reading. Players with VPIP's of 50%, 60%, and 70% usually and the same PFR and aggression factor will usually get the same designation. However, there are significant differences in their ranges of hands, and you need to keep this in mind. The same idea holds for players with PFR's of 20%, 30% and 40%. And there's relatively little difference between a PFR of 9.9% and 10.1%, if that's where you happen to draw your line. Classifying them as "aggressive" or "passive" is unimportant compared to the actual number you presumably have displayd on your HUD because it's the number that helps you put them on a range of hands.

I actually have been using a somewhat unorthodox method for autorating players. In that system, there's only one designation that I really like. I assign players with VPIP's >60% a moneybag icon regardless of their other stats. These players are bleeding money, and the deserve to be followed around. In PT, it's easy to filter for these players if I give them this designation. I can then export the list to a file and add them to my buddies. THAT'S useful. All the other stuff just isn't all that good. Instead, I just use the stats for what they are.