David Williams joins Real Poker Training

Just watched the first video from David Williams as he has joined Real Poker Training. One of the best online video tutorials really. Hope there is more to come especially in tournaments from him.
If you have ever been interested in joining up for training site, this is the time because if you do so through one of my links, you also get access to the MTT5PAK membership included. RPT has nearly 200 videos covering tournaments and cash games.

Tough fold in a sit and go tournament.

Sometime even in the lower limits, when your poker calculator is basically telling you the right thing to do, you just gotta do it. I folded pocket aces here. Do you want to see more sit and go strategy videos for free?

Poker Tracker and Friends

There comes a point when a piece of software is so popular that other software developers start making software for the original software further extending its value and effectiveness. Poker Tracker is one of those pieces of software that when (and if) you ever figure out how to use all of it's features to the program's full extent, well there are more add-on programs that making it even more powerful.

I say "powerful" because the players that use this program with regularity are generally the sharks that are just waiting for you to land at their table while Poker Tracker is showing them exactly what to expect from you. Is that an advantage? LoL, if you didn't think that was a stupid question.

Anyway the other popular add-on programs are Spade-Eye and IdleMiner which to some degree allow you data-mine all by yourself - without yourself! In fact you don't even need to be at your computer to have this poker calculator software running.

Poker Ace HUD is a screen scraper display that overlays your poker client allowing you to customize the data over/near your opponents playing position on the table. Another nifty Poker Tracker add-on is Poker -EV which helps measure your optimal play when considering pot equity in difficult hand situations.

The makers of Poker Tracker are currently beta testing for version 3, and while the users are not surprisingly thrilled with the new enhancements, it remains to be seen if the learning curve will be any more reasonable.

Using Poker Calculator Tools to Exchange Hand Histories

Your poker calculator may be collecting more information than you know, or even make use of. Other than the normal odds calculations, hand group rankings, and even bet or fold recommendations, hand history is something that a lot of users value most with poker assist software. This is especially true for cash game players.

Hand history research can be a valuable analysis session for you – but of course – learning how to use it and taking that extra time to delve into your collection of hands is somewhat of a measurement of how much you really want to improve.

You can analyze hand histories in two ways. The first is using a program like poker-spy that collects all the bets, opponents, pots, position and results of every hand you play. It then saves them for you to analyze later in a myriad of grids and graphics that shows you in some quick easy steps your playing style and some weaknesses you may have in your game. This isn’t that new but poker-spy also keeps a running tally of the last 17 hands in a grid that also puts out alerts about you and your opponents.

If you use one of the more hard-core hand history analyzers like poker tracker, poker sharpener, or poker prospector, then hand history analysis takes on even deeper implications whereby you start to get a better look at your opponents play as well.

There is also the more difficult issue as identified by some of the major poker sites and their security protocols of hand history exchanging. This is particularly problematic with Poker Tracker where a network of cash game players have built up a database of opponent playing profiles through their own table monitoring, then tabulate that data and make an exchange with another player. Suddenly someone’s hand history file can go from 20,000 hands to 50,000 entrapping that many more players while doing so.

Notwithstanding the fact that this type of activity is completely not allowed by Poker Stars and many other sites, it’s extremely difficult to police, so there is a huge policy challenge there for them.

Among the higher end cash game players this is a common practice, and some forums even have connection facilities to help with such exchanges. So if you are looking to exchange hand histories (files) with another player (computer), let it be known that you are surely entering the dark side, and may find yourself in murky circumstances. So be sure you can trust the source of a file exchange.

Even your Poker Calculator Knows Ace-King is a Drawing Hand.

One of the most common mistakes made by players in the low level buy-in multi-table holdem tournaments online is over-valuing ace king as hole cards. A lot of this has to do with inexperience, impatience and poor judgment, and the fact that ace king just “looks” so darn strong when you look up at your monitor and see them just sitting there for you.

Big slick, as ace king is commonly referred to can be a powerful hand to play aggressively in tournaments but the execution of that aggression requires a whole lot more specificity than you might think.

Now depending on if your AK is suited or not you are looking down at a group 1 or 2 hand as your poker calculator will likely be pointing out to you. If you happen to have Ace King both of hearts, then it is group 1 of the Sklansky hand group rankings. In accordance with that though, careful thought must be taken to know that the groups were categorized with ring game play in mind and also that of the group one hands, AKs is the ONLY drawing hand, where AA, KK, QQ and JJ could be considered “made” hands.

Therein charges your underlying strategy when playing Ace King. It is a drawing hand and during the early stages of a tournament in particular, you should be treating it like most other drawing hands – playing it with at least some help from the flop.

If you always remember that ace king is a drawing hand, it may offer you up a more reasonable strategy for playing it after the flop. Now of course depending on your opponents, the tournament stage, stack size, m zone etc. this could be radically different – even of the flop doesn’t help you. However, there is simply no reason to dump your tournament strategy in an early stage holding AK when the flop come 2-6-9 rainbow.

The utterly ridiculous thing about that very situation is that in the low buy-in multi-table tournaments (and even some high buy-in tournaments), many players will let their tournament stack ride holding AK high when the flop has not helped them. It is purely an unreasonable aggressive move that more often than not will see you on the rail in short order. Sure there are times when you can take the pot down when someone called your pre-flop raise. So what? You made the pot maybe 350 chips when the blinds are still 25 and 50. Now you want to go all in with your remaining 1400 chips to win that 350? It’s not worth it. This is the time to play passively, cautiously, with an eye to preserving your stack, not letting it ride with a drawing hand. If you happen to be using a poker calculator it will be shouting at you that you are likely behind, but players still often ignore this advice.

So when do you push with Ace King? You will get plenty of such opportunities when the blinds are higher, you know your opponents better, and your stack size warrants such a move, until that stage, play it coy and no one will be able to figure your pre-flop call hit two pair on the flop of A-K-9 and you are much more likely to double up with some schmuck being aggressive on you.

making the right read

From JP in the forum:

While it wasn't hard to SEE the maniac playing stupid, his stats were VP71, PFR29, AF2.3, 36sd 60W$sd So not only is he insane, he's lucky.
I used his aggression right before this to milk him and took half his stack
with KK, flop Krags and two hearts, I looked at his stats and knew he woud try and take it so I checked, he bet and I slo called, turn is a blank and for value I bet 1/3 my stack which is about 1/4 the pot and tru to form he shoves. He had 79h, paired the 9 on the turn and has 4 to a flush, no heart on river, whew!

Then this flop hits and he min bets, I looked again at the stats to confirm it was this maniac player from my King set and it was. I'm holding QT and I fold. For him to minbet when he was such a maniac on everything else it was real obvious to me what he had. Had I stayed, the turn gave me a boat and I give him back his chips. Instead I used the player profiling info in Tournament Indicator and observation skills to A)milk a big chunk from him and B)save from giving any of it back.

in the money with my poker calculator

I was in this hand late in a tournament and thought is wa quite interesting in that tournament indicator really helped me make my decision which might be considered over-aggressive. I think this is an example of when you get really comfortable using a poker calculator you aren't second guessing yourself afterwards and it helps you live with yourself even if you loose the hand, like I did this one.

From the forum: "Hey, I've trying to understand the relationship with the graphic display of the pot odds -vs- the win odds. I presume if the win odds is higher in relationship to the pot odds graph, it should indicate a call, giving all the other variables involved with that decision. Yea??? or would it be the other way around? just a little confused on how to read the graph at a quick glance from a poker calculator. thanks Jeff"

This is represented grahically with the color bars in Tournament Indicator's win/pot odds display. They mean completely different things and have more or less relevance in given situations.

Your win odds need to be a low ratio represented by a tall scale, and pot odds should be a high rationalso represented wiht a tall graph. (pssst... tall is good)

Qualifying for your free poker calculator.

As you know, to get a free poker calculator you need to create a new poker account and play a qualified number of hands. Here is how a new owner of Tournament Indicator got it free when signing up to a poker site:

"Okay, I made the promises I had made to myself come true, bought a notebook and got rid of my old Win 98 PC. Then I bought TI and had to play 900 flops on everest poker. I played 10 $0.04 sit and go tournaments at once and called every hand to see a flop. It took me 1 hour and a half to accumulate the hands! (I will play some big multi table tournaments there soon, but today I only wanted to to get the hands to be able to play with TI on stars!
I am pretty sure TI will improve my game as I already know the product and its features from the free trial, of course."

I though that was pretty clever! He actually went on to say he finished second in a couple of those tournaments!

Stop and Go poker strategy

The term "stop and go" refers to a tournament strategy situation in which at least one shortstack is involved and is always executed out of position. You stop preflop by calling and shove on flop ("go").
Examples:

1. You are comfortable and in the BB with 44. Now a pretty short stack (whose range is pretty wide since he is desperately in the needs for blinds)attacks your blind and you figure he will call a push preflop but might not let his stack ride on a missed flop. So you call preflop and push him all-in on flop.

2. You are short and only have time for a few more orbits and your blind gets raised. You think the raiser has a better hand but might fold it on flop if missed. You call, shove on any flop and sometimes take it down.

This only works when you have fold equity left. Don't do it vs someone with only 5M or less. And not against maniacs that will call anyways no matter which cards come on flop!

Poker calculator stats may indicate a weakness.

Tournament Stats too tight? This is from a member of our forum.

78% Ranking at officialpokerrankings.com
17/88 = 19% ITM
-4% ROI
5.7% final tables

More than 90% of those tournaments were 180 player $4 S&Gs on PS.

I am not particularly unhappy with these poker calculator statistics, as I am still learning. But I am finding that with maybe 1 exception, I have been in the red or low orange when getting near the money. I just simply have to double up 2-3 times every time I get NTM. Is it just something that I have to live with, that if I play the kind of game that gets me NTM, that I will usually be short-stacked? Or I wonder if I am missing opportunities to chip up. I noticed that I was more conservative than Marty in some of the examples in the videos during the earlier stages. Is that the problem? I am looking for ways to chip up earlier and not always be hanging on by my fingernails when I get NTM.

My current history stats from Tournament Indicator are (about 75 tournaments including STTs):

VP$IP 16
PFR% 12
AF 2.6
WSD% 6
WSDW% 54

Thanks for any help/comments

Poker-Spy's new poker calculator.

Is anyone interested in helping review the new version of Poker-Spy. I do a review myself and take into account another point of view too. You can keep the software after your review is submitted. It isn't really a poker calculator but has the most interesting and effecting hand history around. I have liked this software for nearly two years now.

You can contact me on one of my sites if you like. Thanks.

TAG still wins online tournaments.

Ram Vaswani makes a move with AK but sucks out against AA in FTOPS Main Event. He was right to do it though, and his tight-aggressive stats all the way through were uncharacteristic play on his part.

Tournament Indicator had him pegged as TAG right from the first table. Your poker calculator would pretty much do the same thing too, even if it isn't designed for tournaments.

Poker Calculator feature Update

The new Player Stats Assistant tool is the latest update for Tournament Indicator. It can be found in the upper right corner in the tools menu. But what does it do you may ask?

Let's say you played poker for a while using Tournament Indicator - (still the only poker calculator designed specifically for tournaments!).

You'll get a lot of information for player stats, but then you may want (need) to reinstall your operating system or get a new computer.

You can now use the "backup" function to put your stats information into a db file. You can then copy this db file to a safe place on your hard drive or external drive. After you reinstall TI poker calculators on the new computer or after a system re-installation. You can use "restore" function to restore your old stats information.

If you play on two computers, you can backup the the stats information from one computer and merge it with the stats on the other computer.

The "reset" function will delete all your stats - so be careful with that one. And "query" will display a break down of stats for a particular player - just type in his name to see if you have played with him before.

New User of Tournament Poker Calculator

Here is a few words from a new user of the only poker calculator designed for use in tournaments, called Tournament Indicator. It combines MZone calculations and profiling indicators along with a few features adapted for rising blinds and depleting stacks.

"Wow, what a tear I have been on using the trial version. I am here to sing the praises of this SW.

I just started playing again in January after a year off, retiring and moving so not enough time to settle down and play. For the month of January, I was about 42% ITM in 9 player S&G on PS, and about 20% on the multi tables.

I played 15 tourneys so far with the TI trial version.

12 5+0.5 S&Gs: ITM 11/12. 5 first place, 1 second place, 5 3rd place, 1 9th place. Had a streak of 8 in a row ITM.

Played 3 4+0.4 180 player tourneys. ITM 2/3. 1 40th place, 1 14th place, and 1 8th place.

I have never had a streak like this, do not expect it to continue of course at this rate, but I do believe that this SW really tuned me up so I did not lose track of my Mzone number as easily. I will not be surprised if I can maintain above 50% ITM on the 1 tables, and above 20% on the multis. Also, the ability to look at the win and pot odds graphically has really helped. If I look back at earlier critical losses they often occurred when I was being too aggressive for my Mzone level, or not being aggressive enough. I was aware of what I needed to do, but would lose track of where I was at. Simply having the meter there tuned me up and made me make better decisions for the situation. I had been using PT and so was always tracking stats on the other players, but I find the Tournament Indicator software to be much more stable and more responsive than the combination of PT and a heads up display.

I played the 25th and 26th on my desktop, and the 29th and 30th on my laptop. The program performed very well on both boxes.

I am of course purchasing the SW. What fun.

Congratulations to whatever genius put this together."

Poker Rewards Scam

I found a new poker scam with a site called poker rewards. Shows that they offer a free poker calculator which turns out is manual input piece of crap scam. The site is really a front for a casino site called casino rewards. So stupid how these people try and trap new players to the game, giving them what is surely a horrible experience. besides that they require you to join up with email for their membership, which of course is an invitation for spam.

The AF Indicator in Poker Calculators

Experienced players often have an aggression factor between 1.5 and 5.0. Holdem Indicator poker calculator shows this as one of the standard barometers. They are the ones who play a lot of small ball poker, but like to take the lead in betting. They are cunning players, and usually will fold if you are willing to take over the betting and make the pot too huge for them to justify playing a marginal hand.

Extra care must be taken though, as they may in fact be waiting for you to so just that. It's called the trap, and the trap usually involves a big pot when they are a clear favorite. It has a lot to do with toying with someones emotions and inexperience in the game.

These players can actually plan out a sequence of events whereby you will be a victim of their more experienced tactics. Keep in mind too that the AF is a contributing indicator to the overall profile of an opponent, so take that into consideration too, as well as .. maybe the guy just having a good run of cards!

Elephant Man

An "Elephant" or "Calling Station" is a player who is basically in many pots but plays with a lot more passiveness than aggressiveness. These players can be dangerous to your tournament stack because they always improve your late position, pot odds scenarios while generally ignoring their own position and not truly understanding the strength, or lack thereof of their own hole cards.

The players that lose most often to these elephants are Jackals, because Jackals like to bluff and elephants like to call. (See Phil Hellmuth's player guide). When these two profile types clash, a lot of marginal hands become huge pots and the results have a lot more to do with fortune than forethought.

If you see a player with a high WSD% and low or moderate WSDW% then beware - YOU MAY GET STEPPED ON BY AN ELEPHANT! Tournament Indicator poker calculator shows these numbers in the 7th and 8th columns in the profile grid, so take extra time to check them out a little closer and see if you can find an elephant all by yourself.

data-mining and poker calculator security

Cake Poker is an relatively new network with a small client base that has come up with a clever defence against those pesky data-mining programs like poker-edge, poker sherlock and poker tracker. Cake Poker actually allows you to change your player ID on their site once a week! I think this is a rather brilliant solution, especially for those who are plying their trade in cash games which is where these programs flourish.

Although Poker Tracker isn't a shared data-ming service like the others, but communities of its users often exchange thousands if not hundreds of thousands of hand histories collected and thus use them to their advantage at a later game. This of course goes on outside the reach and of the poker sites, but they do know about it, and want to do something about it.

Wouldn't you want to know more about your opponent like VPIP, PFR and AF if you have NEVER played a hand against him? The answer is the same for most - but it draws the line and Poker Stars, Party Poker and now even Full Tilt Poker are taking a hard line against that type of software because it could potentially makes their playing environment seem unfair.

Understanding Implied Odds in Tournaments

All of the online poker calculators, whether they are the mathematical or empirical type, will tell you straight up what your pot odds are in a given situation. In fact, that somewhat simple calculation led to a whole industry being developed to where we are now users of a remarkable breadth of product choice to help out our online poker game.

Given that some players need help with, or enjoy the ease of having their pot odds displayed at every turn then you might imagine that figuring implied odds would be beyond the scope of most recreational players. The thing is, implied odds may have a more immediate and profound impact on making the correct decision in given situations, thus not understanding this concept will surely be costly to your game.

To keep things in perspective, think of your pot odds as “limited” and your implied odds as “unlimited” even though neither of those descriptions is truly accurate they can provide a somewhat measurable thinking guideline to players just starting out. The underlying factors when considering implied odds are the type of game you are playing, your opponents’ stack sizes, and your opponents’ style of play. Let’s have a look at each of these here.

If most of you are playing NL tournaments then there is no constraint on the type of game you are playing that would limit your implied odds in a given hand. However, if the game or tournament happens to be a limit game, then you have to factor how many betting rounds are left and how many opponents you have in the hand. If you are up against just a single opponent in a $2/$4 limit hold’em game, and there is $10 in the pot after the flop, you may only get two big bets out of this opponent if you hit your flush draw. I wrote “may” because you might have a non-capping situation with just the two of you at the river. Again though, if there is a flush on board, this isn’t a likely scenario to count on.

Then again your opponent’s style of play may come into factor here because if you happen to be up against a drunken maniac, sometimes even a heads-up limit situation would have lucrative implied odds. When you are up against an aggressive character in a no- limit situation it becomes all that more “implied”, especially when you become skilled at trapping these types of players.

The highest potential draws usually happen in no-limit games and tournaments, and if you are drawing, you should strive to do it against multiple players, and preferably in position so as not to get caught calling re-raises that tend to be of the “difficult decision” variety. Keep in mind that you should always be aware in these spots of how deep your opponent’s stack is and how much of it you might get in the event your draw comes through.

Let’s say you are drawing for a flush in the middle stages of a tournament and you need to call a bet of T1,000 from a single opponent. There is only T600 in the pot and your opponent only has another T800 left in his stack! That’s quite a raise to call for a very limited scoop. Your implied odds are terrible in that situation. Let’s say though that the pot is T1,000 and your opponent bets T600 this time, and he also has T5,500 in his stack! Better yet, there is someone else in the pot who has called before it came to you and he has a T3,200 stack. Well your odds AND implied odds are both far more lucrative propositions now and these are the times when your selectivity in deciding which pots to do battle in will produce huge long term positive results.

Given that we haven’t discussed other factors of the game like the tournament stage and your mzones, the first hand is nonetheless and easy fold, and the second hand is an easy call.