Better Utilization of “Tourney Time” in Poker Tracker

[Gator]

I’m looking for tips on how you use Poker Tracker during a tournament (primarily SNG’s but multiplayer tourneys as well).

Currently, when I use Pokertracker during a tourney, I do the following:

1. Categorize the player as to his track record (i.e. a: never seen before b: played before and does not have winning record c: played before and has winning record) – I don’t have easy way to do this as tourney summary screen doesn’t show this data – I need to go to Summary tab and view records for individual players.
2. Categorize the player as to tight/looseness (lot of flops >30%, or few <20%) –
3. Categorize the players based on aggressiveness pre-flop (PF raise <5 or >11 seem to be my cutoffs between low, normal and high)

I’m first concerned that my statistics get skewed. For example, a strong player, that goes to final two often, is playing a lot of head to head hands and thus the number of flops he voluntarily puts money in and his PF raise % would be skewed higher (wouldn’t it?). I guess I could screen on just hands with >7 players to somewhat compensate. I’m not sure.

Am I correct that tournament amount won is not overly useful – If I play 10 tourneys (starting with T1000) and come in second every time, haven’t I lost T10,000 but still done pretty well?

Am I correct that, without filtering for $level, the amount won/loss by starting hand is of limited use? I may win 10 hands with AA at the beginning of tourney and win 500 each time, but if I lose once at the end of a tourney I could lose T5K and thus show a zero net gain.

Next, I would think there are ways to learn more – i.e. does player limp with aces, what is typical raise, etc. From the tourney time screen it doesn’t appear this is evident. I can go to the general info tab, select a player in question and replay some of his hands, but this seems like a lot of work to try to do in real time while concentrating on the tourney.

I have a feeling there are some good ideas out there and I’d appreciate some tips. Finally, any variants to this when playing ring games? Thanks.

[cavalier]

Gator, I agree about the (lack of) usefulness of certain bits of data.

As you pointed out, a player must be careful when interpretting the data. PokerTracker reports ALL data and provides many ways to "filter" the data, but you can still create some mis-leading results ( like the placing second example you provided above ).

I am still gathering my data in PokerTracker, but when tourney time comes around I always check my opponents. Hopefully I have one or two in the DB.

If I have played against them previously, I try to use the data I have accumulated in the past and the data I accumulate in he current tourney to update my "knowledge" of this player.

Good luck!