Online Poker Tournaments: Poker Tracker / Hold'em Manager

[Bryan Micon]

Quick intro: Some of you know me from the Neverwinpoker project and generally playing poker for a few years now. I rarely talk strategy on my own forum because it is not really the place for it, and I really have to hand it to Pokerroad for operating such an amazing forum. I have been digging through it all day and I love what I have found.

Now the question: I have to admit to being very lazy from 2006 until mid-2008. I am pretty sure online poker tournaments got a whole lot tougher during this time and the player base as a whole got a lot better due to the amazing amount of information available to anyone with the drive to find it and learn to apply it. This brings me to the question:

How many of the great players that populate this forum use Poker Tracker or Hold'em Manager or some sort of Heads-up display while they play online poker tournaments?

I have heard that some of the best players don't use it, I know some players that have been very profitable using it over the past year or so. So who uses it? Who doesn't use it? Does anyone think that it gives an unfair advantage and should be disallowed by the Poker sites? Do you think software like Poker Tracker has made online tournaments much tougher to beat in recent years?

thanks to all who respond, and again great forum.

[Barry Greenstein]

Bryan,

I have a feeling that some people are afraid to respond truthfully to your inquiry. My nephew plays a lot online and I asked him to get me some tracking software. He downloaded it and never showed me how to use it. About the same time, I heard that PokerStars ruled that some of the software was against their policies, so I never pursued it any further and never even checked to see if I have software that is permitted. (At some point, I plan to check out some of this stuff so I know what the issues are.)

It certainly would be helpful for me to know who the loose and tight players are when facing a decision and to know who the losing players are for game selection. I take notes on people I play against regularly, but I assume tracking software would be better. I don't know anyone who plays in the big limit games and plays in big games online (Ive, Doyle, David B, Patrick, Gus, Chao, Tuan, Tim Phan, David O, Eli) who uses tracking software. But they usually know who they're playing against, and the proponents of software concede that it's mostly valuable when you have a large pool of players that are hard to keep track of.

There are three reasons that people conceivably would not respond:

1) They don't want to give up their edge by helping you and others.
2) They are using software that is deemed illegal by the major sites.
3) They don't want to open themselves up to criticism from players who will complain that getting help that is not available when playing live is not fair.

I think number 3 will be the main reason for silence.

Barry

[Amit Makhija]

I think this software is more useful in midstakes cash games than tournaments or high stakes cash, When the player pool is smaller in high stakes you generally know how most people play and in tournaments people are always changing how they play at different blind levels and stack sizes. I used to use it when playing tournaments online and found that it didn't help my results much, I would use it too much as a crutch and failed to make reads of my own and got very lazy. I still use pokertracker for cash games without a heads-up display to reevaluate sessions and keep records for me.

[Justin Bonomo]

Full Tilt Poker defines an unfair advantage as a user accessing or compiling information on other players beyond that which the user has personally observed through his or her own game play.

Stars Q+A:
Can you give me some examples of acceptable tools and services ?
10. Holdem Manager
44. PokerTracker (including TableTracker)

And I can't find it in a quick google search, but Bodog allows PT and HEM too.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a non-issue ethically. The sites explicitly allow them, so long as the databases are internal and not external.

I don't use these for tournaments, mostly because I only play 3-4 online tournaments a year and won't have any meaningful sample size. If I regularly played high buyin 200-500 player fields, then I would, but be aware that stats should be very different at different blind levels.

For cash games I use HEM + a HUD the vast majority of the time.

[Bryan Devonshire]

i use pokertracker3 and love it