PokerTracker

I've been thinking a little bit about PokerTracker and the plethora of stats that it gives us about our poker play. It also gives us a lot of information about other players. But how much should we rely on that information we have on our opponents? Unless you can datamine every single table at every hour of the day, your aren't going to have complete stats on someone. What if they are running bad? What if it was their little sister playing on their account? What if their next door neighbor is Mike the Mouth? What if they moved down to your level to donk it up?

What about data from a couple months ago? Just two months ago I was playing mainly at 50NL. Now I am playing some at 200NL. I think I have gotten better, so my "stats" will be different.

I used to think that those PokerTracker numbers of mine really told me what kind of player I was. Heck, I've made a couple posts over at Bet-the-pot and here on this blog asking about my stats and what people thought of them. I would read posts about what the "ideal" stats are. But I think I am not going to do it anymore.

I was surfing over at twoplustwo.com yesterday in a NL forum, and there was a thread from someone asking about their PT numbers. His VP$IP and PFR% were different than what most of the so called "experts" would say you should have. But the one stat of his that stuck out in my mind was his PTBB/100. The amount of money he made. It was 6.51 PTBB/100. That's pretty damn good. But one poster even came out and said, "just seeing someone with your stats, I would be isolating you every chance I get."

So let me get this straight. You would target and re-raise to isolate on someone who is a winning player? A winner at over 6 PTBB/100? That's just plain dumb. I don't know about you, but if I am going to target someone, I would re-raise to isolate the losers. The ones who spew chips. I would try my best to not get involved in hands with really good players. And someone who has a 6.5 PTBB/100 is probably a good player.

So what's my point? Don't rely solely on someone's PT stats. PT info is incomplete information. Heck, if you only had PT stats on me from today, I would be at the top of your donk list. Sure, use that information as a guide, but I would rather use the play I have actually observed from them to formulate my reads. So be like Hoyazo, and take good notes. Your game will thank you.