What is Poker Tracker?

I keep hearing about Poker Tracker. What is it?

[Talk2BigSteve]

First off, Welcome to 2+2!

Poker Tracker is a program that keeps up with your stats and gives you up to the minute reference on how well you play as well as how well or poor your opponants play.

That is just a brief explaination...It is SOO MUCH MORE!!!!

PokerTracker This is the website.

It is worth every penny!!!

Big Steve [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

Thank you so much. Looks like I have a lot of reading to do. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I also see mention of Poker Office. Is there a difference, and do most of you recommend one versus the other?
My problem is that right now I'm still running Win98. I don't really want to install XP now if I can't help it, and I thought I read that PT and the add ons (like game time and PA HUD) aren't supported on 98.

I don't know the answer to your question, but Poker Tracker has a forum from that link that may be able to answer your question more promptly and accurately.

[Talk2BigSteve]

Yeah you do, and for some light reading I would also recommend the following links to 2+2 posts....

.5/1 vs. 1/2 vs. 1/2 6-max vs. 2/4 Why should I play each limit?

Evaluating Sites/Levels/Games and Tables.

Why you guys aren't crushing these Microlimit games...

Favorite threads on 2+2

I think my biggest leak is...

"How many hands do I need to play..."

SSH Preflop hand reccommendation chart

Some notes on notes

That should get you started in the right direction!

Big Steve [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

First let me say I believe Poker Tracker has great merit as an application, is well written, and highly respected by the online player community.

Now to the part to be cautious of...
I went to Poker Tracker knowing I was going to purchase the software and got a very COLD and nasty welcome.

On the main page of the site there are link's to the forum where you can get info on the HUD's and other software which works with poker tracker. Great I thought!

I clicked on the HUD links, signed up in the forum and ask in both hud forums if the software was compatible with Hold'em Genius online odds calculator (no links to software, or other info on Hold'em Genius was mentioned). I simply ask a compatibilityquestion. Yes these were my first post to the forum site (not unusual for a new prospective customer) and I needed this information to know where to go for additional compatible software.

To my surprise I was shut off from the forum without notice and received a very nasty e-mail from Poker Tracker forum moderator accusing me of spamming, and posting the same post in two different forums (there were two HUD's to ask about). On top of that it was also point out that as a new user my actions were even more suspect.

I replied in a like fashion demanding an apology for the degrading e-mail and ask that I be reinstated to the forum. This was all met with no response back from Poker Tracker moderator and additional e-mail to the sales staff were also ignored. All of this leads me to believe the company is a small one or two man shop running on questionable ethics at best.

Although I think the program may be great this leaves some serious thoughts as to the credibility of the company as a whole. Too bad they are the only game in town when it comes to tracking hand history. Since I do not want or desire to do business with a company which has found it suitable to take the actions they took against a simple inquiry by a prospective buyer wanting more information about side products offered on their site this leaves me with nothing.

Beware of the forum mods at the Poker Tracker Forum! To this day I have received no response from the forum moderator or from Poker Tracker the business.

Monty

[donkeyradish]

I have purchased PokerOffice and PokerTracker at different times. There is an overlap in what they provide.

Some key differences are:

PokerOffice monitors live play and gives you pot odds at each round.

PokerTracker only reads hand histories. But it provides a far more comprehensive analysis on games that you have played.

I find that I can manage without PokerOffice. Pokertracker gives me what I need.

The key benefit of a program like Pokertracker is to find out how you are doing in the short/medium/long term. If you don't know how you are doing you will never find a reason to change how you play.

Pokertracker allowed me to address several issues with how I originally started playing.

However it does not do so overnight. You probably need 10,000 hands before there is enough data to objectively conclude anything at all, and thats still quite a small sample.

[AKQJ10]

Monty,

Thanks for the anecdotes. I'm always looking for reasons to postpone purchasing PT, and you've given me some more of them.

If I ever find time, I think it would be interesting to write an open-source poker tracking program. I don't see that there would be too many technical challenges -- the parsing code aready exists as HandConverter and HistoryParser.

PT seems to me to be a textbook case of "first mover advantage."

[AKQJ10]

[ QUOTE ]
The key benefit of a program like Pokertracker is to find out how you are doing in the short/medium/long term. If you don't know how you are doing you will never find a reason to change how you play.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is to say that the "key benefit" of the program is exactly what I get from a free Open Office spreadsheet.

I suppose the automated history processing saves some time, but I happen to play B&M too so automated history processing would never be sufficient to track results.

I do think PT adds more value than just results tracking, and I doubt that results tracking is the "key benefit".