My Thoughts on Sharkscope

[cfought32]

For those who do not know there is a website called Sharkscope (www.sharkscope.com) and it is a database with ROI stats on most SNG players at several major poker sites. Sharkscope analyzes the players currently registered at a SNG and based on their ROI it assigns them a designation of neutral (ROI slightly positive or slightly negative). Fish (ROI -10% or more) or shark (ROI +10% or more). The first thing I did with it was burn one of my free searches (you get 5 freebies a day at no charge) to see what Sharkscope had on me. It basically said I was a break even player and that my ROI was just slightly negative at Poker Stars which is true. I did find it was missing some of the SNG's I had played.Sharkscope showed only 92 $10+1 SNGSwhile I have record of 107 not bad though.
A couple of nice features you can use is to request detailed stats on every player at a SNG that matches your search criteria or individual player name searches. Note if you use the detailed player search for a SNG you burn 1 search for each player in the SNG so be careful. The main feature I have been using is the tournament selector which basically displays an overall rating for the SNG (whether fishy, nuetral or shark infested). Using the tournament select for SNGs less than $10 does not use up searches whereas ones above $10 use one search per hit. The tournament selector displays the tournament ID/number as well as the rating so you can search the site in question and join the SNG based on the rating. I find in my testing with the <$10 SNGs it was difficult to join the SNGS because of how fast they fill up at Stars and Full Tilt. On Stars if you select the request option you may copy and paste in the tournament ID to join faster though Full Tilt has no such feature. What was useful is to get an idea of the general difficulty of the various SNGS at different buy in amounts.
As for my experience I played my first two table SNG ever and won third place by playing at a table rated two fish I played another SNG at Full Tilt and won third as well. Based on my experience so far it does appear sharkscope helped me to locate some very fishy SNGs. I am thinking one of the main ways I will use sharkscope is for finding fishy two table SNG's because registration on them usually lasts a bit longer than single table SNGs.
The one thing I would like to see is the tutorial Dice Man supposedly posted to this message board a while ago (I have searched and I cannot find it).

I am interested to see how others are using Sharkscope, please post some comments.

Thanks!

[K2 the ArmA]

I think the fish and shark status is actually -20% and +20%.

[Dice Man]

I more or less stopped using it when it failed to record several of my tourney wins/ITM on two different occassions.

There's one or two interesting posts regarding sharkscope on here.

[dsaxton]

20% is unsustainable for anyone.

[Local_Echo]

SharkScope is pretty decent. I use it just for SNGs and all it does is record SNGs. So far, it hasn't missed one yet. It has hiccups from time to time, but I find it fairly reliable. I think the shark and fish icon ROI threshold is off, though. I'm currently at 40% ROI and I don't have a shark symbol. I think it depends on how many you've played, but I'm not certain. I also use http://www.officialpokerrankings.com. It records all MTTs and is pretty good.

[TLR]

The shark and fish definitions are configurable, it is based on both average profit and average ROI and on the stakes you play

[The Odds God]

Some of you guys might not agree with this. I used it for some time for HU SNG's and thought it would be helpful but actually it wasn't. When it said the guy was on tilt I didn't want to bluff him so much and when the guy was hot I thought he will call me more also. If the guy was a losing player, I didn't know why he was a losing player and I was confused also. If the guy was a winning player, I gave him too much credit for being a good HU player, while he might be a nit who only knows how to sneak ITM in full SNG's and doesn't have a clue about HU play.

Overall, it affected my play in a negative way because I automatically made some wrong and inaccurate decisions about opponent's play. And it is quite impossible not to make this kind of assumptions about your opponent after just seeing his results and not knowing why he has such results.

[K2 the ArmA]

The Tilt and Hot status just reflect how many he has won or lost in a row.

I just like the pretty graphs.

[GatorJH]

I personally wouldn't take too much stock in someone's rating unless they had played in a large number of tourneys. You could have a fishy player who luckboxed into winning a 45 (or greater) person SNG that causes their ROI% to be unrealistic.

[swiggidy]

I personally wouldn't take too much stock in someone's rating unless they had played in a large number of tourneys. You could have a fishy player who luckboxed into winning a 45 (or greater) person SNG that causes their ROI% to be unrealistic.

[K2 the ArmA]

Luckbox!

[GatorJH]

I personally wouldn't take too much stock in someone's rating unless they had played in a large number of tourneys. You could have a fishy player who luckboxed into winning a 45 (or greater) person SNG that causes their ROI% to be unrealistic.

My stats went from break even to 12% ROI just because I luckboxed into a 180 man tourney win last night.

[dsmrolla06]

20% is unsustainable for anyone.

At what stakes is this? I think at the 11s and 22s a 20% roi is sustainable. I know that as you move up in stakes your roi is going to drop, but at this level i dont think its a fluke to have a a 30% roi or greater at the lower buyins. How many games does it take to play to account for you sustainable winrate?

[drmcboy]

way more than you would ever play at any level running at 30%.

[Sprayed]

sharkscope is worthless IMO. Don't waste your money.

[swiggidy]

I should have mentioned it before, 2/3 of my profit is from a $4-180man win. Here's my graph to make this post moderatley interesting

[fdnypoker]

Hey....mine looks like a good stock portfolio....LMAO
Proof there are peaks and valleys.

[cfought32]

I don't think Sharkscope is worthless, it should be taken with a grain of salt. I agree it might not be useful if you exclusively play HU SNG's. At the very least one can see how fishy games are at a site. Say you are thinking of playing $20 SNGs at Stars, if you constantly see two of more sharks at every game it finds in the tournament selector you might want to try another site or limit. Maybe you could use it to dig up dirt on your worst enemy on-line to see what you can learn about them and more importantly see if they are on a bad run Misery is best shared

[drmcboy]

I just want to mention that without exception, anyone I have ever seen chat about scope/pokerdb/Iknowhowyouplayedlastsummer.com during a game was a table coach, glass tapping donk.

[swiggidy]

Iknowhowyouplayedlastsummer.com

lol

it's nice to see you're getting out more