Tracking other players with PT

I have never used any tracking device other than a spreadsheet for my online play to analyze my average winnings for a given range of SnG's, as well as the variance I've endured over x number of games.

At a glance, Poker Tracker seems pretty superior. I noticed that on the main page it claims to give you the ability to "Track every player you have ever played against and keep detailed notes on each player. You can see how often they see the flop, raise pre-flop, check-raise, win at showdown and much more."

So in practice, has it been helpful in this regard? How easy is it to use for recording other players you encounter, and how useful do you find the stats in practice? So far, I've just been entering all my player notes in a massive spreadsheet along with everything else, but it is starting to get huge and unwieldy, plus it lacks any statistical data about their play.

Maybe this belongs in the poker tracker forum :? , but I felt maybe there would be less bias here. Thanks for any input.

knowing another players vp$ip, preflop blind play, % of time they raise preflop, and how they play certain hands when you first sit down is very useful.

i tried the spreadsheet approach, but pt is way better, plus pt gives so many stats.

edit: duh! - i forgot to mention the autorate. when i see someone at the table with the little fishy icon in pt... :D

Even though I haven't used it for this purpose much at all yet, PT seems to be very good for evaluating other players. It has a feature to autorate players based on their stats which I imagine would prove very useful.

In what web page can I get Poker Tracker?
and...
Is it free or how much does it cost?


-anto

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Originally Posted by elanto

In what web page can I get Poker Tracker?
and...
Is it free or how much does it cost?


-anto

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www.pokertracker.com

demo copy allows you to input 1000 hands.

Where can you get figures to input into pokertracker to use the autorate feature?

The auto rate rules I use are from the pokertracker forums
http://www.pokertracker.com/forum/vi...r=asc&start=30
Fnord has also posted some rules here which can be found with a search.

I use bisonbisons autorating rules, they seem to do pretty well for me.

For tournament (SNG and MTT) only players like myself poker tracker is of less use than for ring game players. I have purcahased it and it does save the hassle of keeping a spreadsheet but :-

1 It does not autorate players using tournament hand historys(dont know why) Even if it did it would be of limited use as playing tournaments you dont tend to meet the same players often. I have about 23000 hands over 405 tournaments . I have hand historys of over 3000 other players but only 12 of which I have come up against 3 times or more. Even then the most hands I have for any other player is 31 which is barely enough to base an opinion on.

2 The info on ones own play is also of less use. For example PFR in early levels is often pointless in anything under a $100 SNG therefore your aggression rating may look low. Also (hopefully) if you reach the end of a lot of SNG's you will have to loosen up therefore your stats of seeing the flop will probably be on the high side compared with ring players.

If you are not on a budget though I would still buy PT just for the ease of keeping track of your results although some info from MTT's still has to be manually entered.

Wow, thanks a lot for the insight.

I never really considered that SnG's are not as easy to get statistical data on about hand by hand play, since there is a whole mess of changing variables. Blinds getting bigger, players getting fewer, etc.
All I've been doing thus far for my SnG's is keeping in a spreadsheet on a per-buy in basis what place I took and what the earning or loss was. I'll stick with that and keep notes on the fish.

I think maybe if I start taking on ring games then i'll get PT.

Just a quick side question about PT....

Does PT support BugsysClub/PokerPages yet?