One of the things that novice poker players underestimate about Online Texas Holdem poker is the fact that it is poker player electronically on a computer. This fact may seem obvious to everyone but how many novice poker players are fully aware of the reality of the modern online poker situation. I use Poker Office when I play but I also don’t think that its use is essential to success either.
Let me explain, if you are multi-tabling then using software like Poker Office will help you to know important facts about players that it would be impossible to find out watching and playing in so many games at once. This is where tracking software really comes into its own. The problems stem from how players misuse the software or expect too much from it.
People have a habit of blindly following technology as if they are the ultimate Holy Grail. I have heard countless stories of motorists getting lost simply because they blindly followed their satellite navigation systems. This is the same in principle with tracker software, it needs to be used with common sense and not blindly followed.
But let me give you an example of how you can find information out about players that software like Poker Office cannot pick up. Let us say that you are playing NL400 on bwin poker and the game is six handed. You are not in this particular hand but you notice that one player suffers a particularly vicious outdraw. They then proceed to raise the next two hands.
Now it is possible that this could just be a coincidence and the player could have been dealt two good raising hands in succession. But the likelihood is that this player is tilting from the outdraw! There is no way that any tracker software can pick this up as a piece of software cannot detect subtle changes in human emotion. They are merely very good tools that are recording data and providing averages.
If a player has VPIP of 23% in a six handed no-limit game then this does not mean that they will put money into the pot in 23 of the next 100 hands that they play. That 23% is a long term average when all game factors and dynamics have been taken into consideration. Depending on current game dynamics then correct VPIP could be substantially higher or lower than what is often considered optimal.
This means that a player who may at first glance be playing optimal poker with good tracker metrics could have terrible leaks in their game at certain times. Maybe every time they win a big pot they loosen up for the next 100 hands or so. You can often feel this happening even in online poker. If you join in mid-game which you always have to do with online poker then it isn’t possible to know what certain players are feeling. It is for this reason why I often watch games that I intend to play in for at least fifteen minutes prior to sitting down in them.