Friday, November 18, 2005

Use those poker tools!

If you are a serious Internet poker player and are not using Poker Tracker and Poker Ace Hud, you're missing out on extremely valuable information about you and your opponents' play.

Poker Tracker allows you to examine how many times you see the flop, raise, go to showdown and more. But the best feature, IMO, is that it logs the stats of every player you have ever played against! You can see how often they voluntarily pot money in the pot, raise pre-flop, check-raise, win at showdown and much more.

Poker Ace Hud is an incredible program that overlays player statistics from your database right on top of the table you are playing! This, along with a little data mining (auto-import hand histories) enables you to get instant reads on your opponents. You will know if they are loose, tight, aggressive or passive. The implications of this are significant. It could very well add 1BB/100 or more to your win rate.

Selecting a Table Position

To best take advantage of loose/passive players, try to get a seat directly to their left. When they limp-in, you can raise your strong hand and often isolate them.

On the other hand, it's usually not a good idea to sit directly to the left of a loose/aggressive player unless you like getting pounded with raises and battling back at them.

The ideal situation, IMO, is to have loose/passive players on your right (for reasons above) and tight players on your left who you can push around and steal from.

Pre-flop Play

If a player with a low pre-flop raise (PFR) percentage raises, get ready to muck AQo and worse in LHE. However, re-raising with AQo is likely +EV against a loose player with a high PFR. Of course, if you're playing deep stack NLHE, you can call with a wide range of hands becuase of your implied odds.

Post-flop Play

If you miss the flop, don't bet into players with a high VP$IP (voluntarily put $ in pot) and high WTSD% (went to showdown). These players are typically calling stations. However, if you miss the flop against a player with a low WTSD%, get ready to bet.

If a player with a low WTSD% and high W$SD% (win $ at showdown) calls your flop bet, you are often behind unless you have a big hand.

If a highly aggressive player with a low W$SD and high VP$IP bets, think about calling him down with a mediocre hand.

When you hit a big flop and the players behind have low aggression, make certain you bet.

The Bottom Line

Poker Ace Hud will give you the 'wrong' read on occasion, but overall the numbers don't lie and you'll likely increase your win rate while being more comfortable at the tables.

So what are you waiting for, if you don't have Poker Tracker or Poker Ace Hud, click on one of these links and get it!!

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi,

I just started using these tools and I was wondering what you consider "high" and "low" as numbers for the different stats?

Thank you

1:10 PM  

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