which manager/tracker

just wondering if and wich manager software i should be buying? i notice here in the threads most seem to use "holde'em manager2" im playing micro stakes limit cash games so far, so do i need it yet or am i not advanced enough to be using it?
thanks
angel

both PT and HEM have free trials, so try them out. I tried both, but had an option to get HEM free, which I did, and it's helped my game a lot, even at micro levels.

How did you get it free KD?

I'm trying PT, first day today and once you're over the overwhelming number of statistical options it's user friendly.

If you visit their website there should be a tab labelled "Get It Free" which explains what to do.

It has definitely helped me make some of the trickier decisions at microstakes, especially when multitabling.

Just beware that "Getting It Free" will cost you in the long run. It means forgoing any possibility of rakeback in the future, so in the vast majority of cases, it is unwise to "Get it free"

yeah I went to the 'Get it free' section at HEM webpage, picked an obscure site I'd never play again, deposited and cleared the points needed pretty quickly, and took the money out again.

Yes. Having it will give you an edge. Poker is a game of incomplete information, so the more you have, the better off you are. It also really helps for studying purposes, being that you can easily review you sessions when finished.

I second the motion to avoid the "Get it free" deals unless you know for sure that you'll never want RB or other sign-up bonus on the site that would be far more valuable than a free copy of HM. If it's a site where you can deposit and clear the bonus to get your free license and never play there again, then I guess it's fine, but you never know where you might want to play in the future. Locking yourself out of a more lucrative signup deal would suck. When I first started playing online poker, I locked myself out of a 40% SportsBook (Cake at the time) RB deal to get a free copy of Hold'em Indicator, not knowing at the time what RB was (or that there was better tracking software). Fortunately I didn't play there very much after I cleared the requirements and then they switched to Merge where I already had RB on another skin, so it wasn't a total loss for me.

That said, Merge doesn't offer RB anymore and AFAIK signup deals don't impact your VIP potential, so if they still offer the deal with a Merge skin like Carbon, then it might be okay to do now, unless there are better skin signup deals out there.

And to answer the OP's question: trackers are used in multiple ways. The two primary ways are to gain information on your opponents, and to analyze your own play. At the lowest of the micro-stakes (penny stakes), gathering information on opponents is only marginally useful since the majority of players you're up against are so bad and all over the place that you don't need much information to exploit them. At 10NL or 25NL and up where you run into more grinding regs, then this becomes more useful. However the benefits of self-analysis at the lowest stakes cannot be overstated, and is really the primary value in tracking software.

So yes, no matter the stakes you play, tracking software can be very beneficial if you use it correctly.