As a relative newcomer......

is it worth using things like poker tracker or poker office to help my game or would you advise going au natural so to speak to really learn my trade without using programmes?

What ya reckon guys?

Poker Tracker is there to help you make decisions, not to make decisions for you. Use it to aid you in your decisions and you will make more $$.

For instance, you raise to 4xBB and someone reraiases to 15xBB. If your PT numbers tell you that he's never raised preflop over 300 hands before and now all of a sudden he's reraising you , AA or KK is what he's holding (99 times out of 100).

Youre really asking 2 questions there.

Pokertracker itself will greatly aid your development because it makes it much easier to go back over your hands and watch yourself play when you are in a better frame of mind to analyse your play than when you are at the tables. You can also keep track of your stats and see what sorts of hands are causing you problems. All in all I think pokertracker is a must especially for a new player.


HUD addons on the other hand may not help you. They take alot of the weight of keeping track of other players tendancies off of your shoulders which can be very helpful but by definition you wont be getting to practise doing it yourself. I think there are alot of online poker players (probably myself included) for which HUDs have become a crutch. They will certainly make you money in the short term but they could also stunt your growth as a player.

In summary.

Pokertracker - easy yes.
Some sort of HUD - Maybe

The only thing I will add is that if you multitable, or plan on multitabling then a HUD is pretty essential IMO. It just isnt possible to keep track of 4+ tables worth of players completly by yourself.

you can waste a lot of time playing poker in the dark, like i used to - Or you could get Poker Tracker RIGHT NOW and start looking at your hands...Look at your position stats, your VP$P, what hands your losing with (9,6s was one of mine that i played WAY too often, for instance) - You can think "oh, maybe i shouldn't play J9s UTG, but I can get away with it this time", but you won't really SEE how much it hurts you until you go through 10K hands and see how much your leaking - Get pokertracker and use it....its worth the money 10x over

Poker Tracker is essential. I played without it for months, which is fine, but had no way of really analyzing my game. It's helped me fix some big leaks.

PAHUD is not as essential, but once you have it you realize how good it is to have. You go from saying to yourself "this guy seems like a bit of a loose aggro donk, I wonder if I should call" to "this idiot is 65/21 so I'm fine with felting TPTK here and hopefully stacking him"

thanks guys, gonna get meself poker tracker for now and see how we go!

Hi,

I am new so this is just curiosity sakes, but wouldnt having some sort of program like this make you lazy or actually hinder your development when you play without it?

Originally Posted by Dingo_Boy

Hi,

I am new so this is just curiosity sakes, but wouldnt having some sort of program like this make you lazy or actually hinder your development when you play without it?

It depends how disciplined you are. Im pretty strict with myself about taking notes but even then I find myself relying too much on HUD stats alot of the time. I really do think alot of regulars stunt themselves by relying too much on stats. Alot of the high stakes players dont even use stats because they can be so deceptive.
On the other hand you only have to look at someone like Renton to see what the combination of having stats and actually paying attention can do for your game.

Originally Posted by Dingo_Boy

Hi,

I am new so this is just curiosity sakes, but wouldnt having some sort of program like this make you lazy or actually hinder your development when you play without it?

no exactly the opposite.
Poker tracker tracks your positional stats and how much money you make/lose with each possible hand. It therefore allows you to figure out which hands lose you money. Also, being able to track your progress you can see where you are making repetitive mistakes and fix them.

With a HUD, be it pahud or gametime the arguement is different. Personaly i learnt to play without these instruements, so i dont rely on them. However, a lot of heavy multitablers to rely on them, heavily. Certainly there is an arguement that they dont help a player develop a situational awareness or ability to read players goot, but thats what the program is supposed to do, aide you by providing stats.
I have it, and use it for lhe, but still point blank refuse to use it for nl games. Id still recommend it, just dont come to rely on it...

PT is just for keeping records. You want it, trust us.