Poker Tracker Best and Worst Starting Hands...

[Kurn]

I'm a fucking idiot.

I bought it, used it for 6 months, and stopped using it. I honestly found it close to useless. I believe it hurt my game.

[PShabi]

Interesting. Don't be a fucking idiot, Kurn.

Seriously, I've thought about it and I'd rather have a thin, statistical read on an oppoenent than no read whatsoever. Yeah, the sample size may be off, but I'll take what I can get.

If you are trying to use PT as a reference in borderline situations, or to make ever play, you're (general you, not "Kurn" you) a bigger fucking idiot.

What I like about it is I can easily identify the fish and get them seated on my right. 60%VPIP over 50 hands is enough to identify that he plays too many hands.

Also, it saves me a couple of orbits when i can identify that my table has went tight with changing players.

I still take notes, but for a 4-tabler on 3/6, I couldn't live w/o PT.

[Kurn]

Maybe I came across too strong. What happened with me was, after 6 months I asked myself "what do I know now that I didn't know then?" and I couldn't come up with a good enough answer to satisfy myself, and I thought the software was getting me too hung up with minutiae. I'm willing to concede your point on quickly getting a fix on the calling stations and maniacs when playing more than a couple of tables, but as I said, I rarely play as many as 2 tables (OK, I was 8-tabling during 'Stars' 2 billion hand lottery, but that was for a different reason )

My complaint is against people who post stuff like 'in the last 10K hands, I've noticed I'm +.35 bb for 54s, but -.23 bb for T9s. What's up with that.'

I'll tell them what's up with that. Normal variance gave them favorable boards a couple of extra times with the 54 and unfavorable board a couple of times with the T9.

Sort of like in baseball, where the difference between hitting .300 and .250 is one hit per week. Sometimes those grounders find the hole and those bloppers drop in, sometimes they don't, and sometimes you get hit with the wrong end of the bell curve.

Doesn't mean I'll never use Pokertracker again, maybe I just need a big downswing to motivate me.

[PShabi]

I hope I didn't come across to strong either. The first line in my last post was totally tongue-in-cheek. It doesn't read like that this time through though.

At one point, I was feeling the same way, that I was getting to caught up in minutiae. I've got a refined method of buddylisting and table/seat selection now and I think I've got a better handle on playing with the Gametime overlay.

I'm really trying to take notes more and trying to get as many reads as I can. For whatever reason, if I fire up a party table and I don't have a gametime overlay, I feel "naked." I'm just so used to it now, that I can't imagine playing without it.

Kind of like Tivo!

[Talking Poker]

Mmmmmmmmm, Tivo. The toy that changed my life

As for Poker Tracker, I'm in agreement with both of you. While I find the silly details interesting (see above), they don't affect how I play.... much. I won't say they don't at all though, because I am a bit mroe aware of some of my trouble hands now than I used to be.

When I fire up PT and GT+, I rarely even look at the numbers.... but I do on occasion. Maybe every 50 hands, I'll take a look around the table and check out the VPIPs mostly. I multi-table all the time, and PT helps me keep track of who has come and gone. I realize 50 hands isn't a significant sample size, but when one guy has a 78% VPIP and another has a 12% VPIP, that's telling you something right there. Yes, you could probably be aware of this without PT, but it's a lot easier using it when you are multi-tabling. I also find that while I can pick uut the maniacs at a given table easily, sometimes the tight players fly under my radar. It's like I forget about them because they aren't in many pots... PT helps me with that too.

I only use it at Party/Empire. And I never use it in tourneys. This ends up being just a fraction of the hands I play.... but like I've said, I still highly recommend it. ESPECIALLY for newer players that are still at the steep part of their learning curve. The only reason I would recommend PT for a guy like Kurn is because I'd like to see his numbers and compare them to my own to see if that helped identify any leaks...

[SirFWALGMan]

I agree it is hard to say alot about a person in one session using PT. Here are the things I like.

A) I can review my hands nightly and see if I fucked up bigtime somewhere.
B) I like it in conjunction with Gametime+ to give me an idea of how loose a table is in general. You could open 4-5 tables, and then pick the loosest or tightest one depending what style you play better against. I usually notice a correspondance between VP$IP > 30-40 and me winning alot. Loose fishies, lots of them, usually pays.
C) It keeps track of my favorite fishies. I can do reports on who I have made the most from.

I do not think you are a moron if you do not use it, but it can help, especially if you build up a significant hand history file against people.