Champion of Poker

I have said before that I site hop constantly so using a tracker is of considerably less use to me than what it would be to other players. My biggest use of a tracker in Texas Hold’em is to help me get information on players before I sit down to play with them and this means data mining but apart from that, I am not a big user of it.

I don’t multi-table much and also I don’t play as many hours as I used to. Another problem with trackers in a game like no limit hold’em is when you start to play the bigger games. By this I mean games at the $10-$20 level and upwards.

When I play serious no limit then I tend to play at the $25-$50 level online and sometimes at $10-$20. But once you start to play against the calibre of opponents that you find at $25-$50 then you can easily be up against some of the best players in the world. This means that you have to approach the game totally differently and I have my own way of operating that has stood me in very good stead.

Trackers in my opinion lose much of their effectiveness against poker players who are very adept at situational trickiness. I am talking about players who only make certain plays when certain criteria align themselves. They don’t even know what they are going to do themselves until they do it. Or how about the player who makes his mind up before the hand even starts that he is going to try and move you from the pot here even if it means going all in with junk.

You raise pre-flop with A-Q, the player on the button calls you with 6s-4s. The flop comes 10d-7c-2s and you continuation bet the flop and get called. The turn brings the 3h giving your opponent a gutshot draw and you fire again on the turn only to face a big raise or an all in bet. Just how do you combat that? How can you combat with statistics someone who has never previously done something and will not do so again in that session? Fine so you can remember that move for later for when you play him again but the next time, he will come at you in a totally different way than before. He will make you lay down once again but in a different way to last time.

Why? Because he is very good that’s why and your tracker statistics are not going to be of much use to you here. You could get two separate players with the exact same statistics of VPIP (voluntary pot $ in the pot), PFR (pre-flop raise percentage) and AF (aggression factor) and yet the way that they obtain those statistics could be totally different making each player totally unique.

But I have found that at the higher levels that concealing your own play is just as important if not more so than finding out about your opponent and this applies whether you play holdem or Pot Limit Omaha or whatever. No one will ever convince me otherwise and if anyone wants to criticise then fine, they can play poker their way and I will play it my way. I will simply not allow dedicated online professionals to data mine me or swap information about my methods and strategies and likely ranges so that they know how I play before I even sit down.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”