PokerTracker (and Notetaking) Questions

[Student]

I'm a beginner at poker, with less than 4 months here on 2+2. I started with freeplay, and moved after a few weeks to PokerStars 1/2 cents (.01/.02), and always NL HE ring games. A few weeks ago I loaded the PokerTracker free version to my computer, and put up 79 hands I'd played that day. I used their hand replayer facility, and that showed me how useful PT would be. I've read just one of the Bet-the-Pot articles about PT (Poker Tracker: Part I), just enough to have more questions than answers.

Recently I read a 2+2 post about recording notes on players we play against. A choice one can make is the level of notes about opponents one takes. These notes can be most comprehensive (list of good opening hands, list of crumby opening hands, player style, betting patterns etc). The longer this list is, the less poker one gets to play, and the fewer 2+2 articles one gets to read, and the fewer poker books, too; there just isn't time for all of that!

Well, I'd learned PT can be used to fortify player notes, saving lots of player time in the process. So I've come to the conclusion I should use PT to suppliment player notes (PS permits clicking the player icon, and storing notes for each player). PT generated opponent VI$IP and PFR statistics can be stored to PS notes automatically, and that would save a ton of time making observations concerning opponents, and enrich these notes substantially.

Hopefully I've described my situation adequately, so my many questions will have relevance. Here they are, and certainly not in order of importance:

1. I have 79 hands in PT, all played one day. I'd like to place the 214 hands I played Tuesday (so many that they came in 2 deliveries from PS to my computer!), to PT, but I want to analyze the 214 new hands separate from the 79, and reanalyze the 79 hands too. Is it possible to do what I want to do using the PT trial version? How? Do I have to have separate files saved in PT?

2. Do you (or have you) use PT to carry stats to opponent files? Which stats? Do you use auxiliary software? Which software? Which stats? What do you recommend?

3. How do you rate opponents? Mentally, only? Using notes? What do you store in your notes?

4. For beginners, how important are opponent notes, vs learning the ABCs of poker? What you recommend my PS notes be? Why?

5. Tuesday, my last 2 tables had players showing almost no cards (perhaps 1 in 10 hands went to showdown, and the rest were mucked out hands). GSiH says "A large number of showdowns, ..., is a symptom of both loose and passive play. (p. 186)" I lost money, even though I played a ton of hands [I was very tight (16% including blinds)]. Can I deduce tight and aggressive play is indicated when there are practically no showdowns?

6. GSiH lists 5 qualities of "Good Limit Games" on pp 185-6 (such as 5 or more players call before the flop, etc). My apologizes if you don't own GSiH! Loosely speaking, can we say these same qualities also apply to good NL HE games?

7. I had a maniac to my left (sometimes very loose, and sometimes very aggressive), and the next 2 players to my left I rated as "Strong" in my notes. These 2 had unusually large bankrolls. Would you have left this table as soon as you understood this situation existed?

8. I'd like to have hands opponents have played in my notes. What do I have to do to get PT (or other software) to do this for me?

9. What questions do you have about notes? PT? PS? Beginner problems? Anything else?

I recommend you have fun with this, answering any questions you want to, and making comments w/o giving answers! If you prefer, answer them all. Pose questions of your own. We're all here to learn, after all. Have a profitable day today, whether this be in terms of learning some important lessons today, or in dollars!

Dave

[OrianasDaad]

1) Sort by date, under the preferences tab will show you hands only for a particular day.

3) I store a) exploitable and frequently made mistakes and b) things to help me narrow the range of hands down on later streets.

7) In a the loose limit games I play in, no way. I prefer having loose players on the left and tight on the right. In a NL ring game, I'd prefer the opposite.

In NL, I'd want the "bad" money (from loose players) in before it was my turn to act. In limit, the bad money
will go in most of the time anyway, so I like having position on players who are likely to be better.

Since most of your questions are specific to NL, I'll leave others to answer them.

[Student]

Of course your answers to questions 1. and 3. more than pay the price of admission, and Thank You!

The answer to 1. gives me the opportunity to employ PT quite a bit more, before I actually pay for the product. Your answer to 3. suggests to me that you record info that can be put down on paper in a timely way, using the computer that sits on top of your shoulders to make many of the deductions and inferences. The last thing one wants to do, when making notes, is detract from the next hand by taking down too much info into the notes. Some folks dwell on having a great set of abbreviations, consequently.

It's probably reasonable to spend a few minutes taking notes at the time you've decided to sit it out at the table, prepretory to gathering stats and leaving the table. Of course, if one were multitabling (which is awfully far into the distant future for me, though I've practiced it a bit to date), the luxury of taking notes after deciding to leave a table would be missing.

Your answer to 7. is similar to the way Ed Miller did in GSiH. I don't know where he wrote it, but he preferred smart money to his left and dumb money to his right, when sitting down to play. He stated this was opposite to the common wisdom. I suspect he made this observation within a part of the book dealing with limit HE.

Thanks again!

Dave

PS: Your post defines "having position" as being to the left of a player, eh?