Tracking Tools To Identify Fish...How Important?

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FloppyNutzs

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So, if you hang around BCP freerolls you have probably seen some games offered from bestpokercoaching.com.

I thought I'd check it out and get access to the freeroll. I subscribed and watched intro video and a second video. Both videos I believe the links were emailed to me.

The first video covered 3 main concepts needed to win at poker.
Put in the hours, get a coach, and game selection.

The second video was more on game selection. I could summaryize the 17 minute video by saying you need a least one big fish in 6 man max ring game to feed off of to be able to beat the rake and make profit long term.

I found the way the content was present was a bit funny, as he basically was saying if you don't follow this then you should be kicked out of our club etc. It basically suggested you needed to find at least one fish that losing 50 BB or more for every 100 BB they posted. Suggesting that if that one players losses is spread evenly across the table you should beat the rake. Logistically it makes sense.

I agree that finding fish is important, you must also learn how to isolate them and take advantage of them.

The key takeaway for me was they were using tracking software to label and find the fish.
I really feel if you are going to be good at this game you need to be able to read your tables and figure out player styles and ranges by observing. This is a skill that you need for both live and online play. When you sit down at a live table it is not like you can plug in all the hands into tracking software to help you now are you?

If you weren't so focused on finding the fish, maybe you would have more time to focus on playing a better poker.

I'm just getting back into the game recently. I don't really use tracking software. Some of the sites I play at don't even work with the tools out there.

What are you thoughts...
Are you going to rely more on tracking software over you own instincts?
 
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FailX21

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Tracking tools are really useful, but not really to "find fishs". Using a HUD can give you quite a lot of informations about each player and their play style, which can help you make decisions.

You're right, in live poker you need to be able to do this by yourself, but if you play online and you are multi-tabling, then it's really useful !
 
Trillian

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Since there is at least one free and open source tool, there is no reason not to use one. But there are rooms, where HUDs are not allowed and for them (and for live play of course) there are some other ways to spot the fish. Blackrain79 had posted some interesting thoughts about this recently. https://www.blackrain79.com/2018/05/poker-hud-banned.html
Another huge advantage of trackers are session reviews. They help you to find your leaks at certain spots.
 
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FloppyNutzs

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Yeah I did grab a tracker and thought the the leak tracker was a nice feature.
However, I'm wondering what people consider a good sample size for a tracker.
Obviously there is a lot of variance in the results when there is not a large sample.

Having a tool to help analyze where you are against winning players seems helpful.

Has anyone considered what these tools could be doing tho?

If they are reading you hands live real time couldn't they expose your hands back to some server and then other players? I haven't studied poker sites software enough to know when the logs are written but if they are wrote in real time and tool is reading your hands in real time they could be leaking information. Has there even been any scandals like this exposed? Sorry for cooking up some conspiracy theory. I'm sure I'm not the first person to thick about this.

I'd would like to see the open source solution.
I would think that would be a safer option.
 
Polytarp

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Good thread with good points.
Being analytical is good but you need to obtain and qualify the data before quantifying it. I've been doing this since April of this year and am still searching about before I commit to tracking software and supplementary aids.
Regarding back-channel paths that could be used to flash hands in real-time to others, contact the site's technical support and look at journals like 2600. Anything is possible so use the "means, motive and opportunity" assessment to determine the value of exploiting such "zero-day" entities.
At 888, I play "Blast" sporadically and the biggest stack before the automated all-in doesn't always win the pot. If you study this game you will have a good peek at how they have meshed human psychology within this software...not unlike some of the intrinsic components within cyber-warfare coding.
 
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