Turn Poker Tracker Off.

[Sarge85]

I put this in another post - but wanted to get a over all feel of the board.

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I know how to analyze my hands with the poker tracker and how to turn it on over a game but exactly what and how do I take advantage of this program specifically?


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*Warning* - Anti Poker Tracker Post.

Here’s what I would do. -- Forget about Poker Tracker.

Why?

1) If you just got it – you simply don’t have enough hands to tell you if you are playing “correctly” or not. You need tens of thousands of hands before you can make adjustments.

2) As far as when you are playing online - I think you are better having it “off” as well. You are not going to have any significant amount of hands on any one player early on.

I also believe as a whole, the forum puts way to much emphasis on these stats in the first place. When I see posts that start off with: Player is 35% V$IP/15% PFR – LAG over 50ish hands - followed by a hand that HERO overplayed (or maybe not overplayed, but was shown a “legit” hand, I’m not that surprised.

It is sort of ironic. We’ll get players that post their Poker Tracker stats over 50K hands, looking for feedback only to receive a chorus of “Sample Size To Small” from the fourm.

However we’ll get those players that scream sample size error, posting hands where they are making a “read” on a villain based on a uber small sample size.

Try making hand written notes in the Notes Box on Party Poker. Your own observations are exponentially more valuable. Seeing a player call down with Ace high, or second pair, or raising as a pure bluff – and then noting it is vastly superior to what PT will give you: 35%/15%/ AF 2.3 - 75 hands. Those 75 hands could mean anything – seeing a player call you down with bottom pair once or twice is HUGE.

I’ve been playing at TruePoker – (non PT supported, but has a notes feature) – Here are some of my notes off the top of my head:

Loose/Fishy
Will call down to river with sh*t
Will make “moves” on pot with scare cards
Tight
Could be 2+2er

Don’t get me wrong. PT does have value. When you have 15-20 instances of how you play 88 or certain suited connectors, then you can draw some conclusions. When/if you datamine and have several hundred hands on players (and visual hand histories) then you can more accurately determine LAG, Maniac, TAG, etc.

Ultimately my suggestion is this:

1. Leave Pokertracker off for a month. Simply import hands – don’t look at numbers, and don’t use GameTime/Player View. Use your own notes and solid poker skills.
2. If you are truly new to the game – read Winning Low Limit Hold’em by Lee Jones. If you have some back ground, and reasonably solid PF skills – skip WLLH and read Small Stakes Hold’em by Ed Miller.
3. Respond to hands – don’t be afraid to be wrong.
4. Post your own hands – with out results and only up to the point where you have a question on action

Good Luck

Sarge[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]