What is Poker Tracker ?

Poker Tracker is by far one of the best tools you can use to improve your online poker game.

The best explanation of the software is the one on Poker Tracker Official Website:

Poker Tracker is a Windows based computer program that allows you to analyze your on-line Texas Hold’Em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Card Stud, 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo and Razz play. Poker Tracker stores and summarizes hand history data that can be downloaded from your poker site.”

What Are Poker Tracker’s Features?

Poker Tracker is an online poker analyzer. It basically downloads your hand histories, reads over them, and replays the game for itself. It then takes the data and puts it under each player’s name (the player’s online poker screen name). Later you can refer to those ratings and hand histories to make critical decisions at your poker game. It tells you everything you know from different players according to your previous plays with them.

Following are four best situations in which Poker Tracker can be – and should be – used:

• When you want to decide which table is the most profitable table to sit at. Simply check Poker Tracker and find the table with the worst players.
• When you have sat at a table, but don’t know many of the players. Check Poker Tracker for the info or import notes to the poker software from Poker Tracker. These are the information you collected from the players previously while playing against them.
• When you are in an important hand against a player whom you don’t have much information on: Check Poker Tracker, to find out what starting hands that particular player typically plays, whether he bluffs often, or can be bluffed out easily, and so forth.
• When you want to see how well you have done your self. Not only you can see how much you’ve won or lost in different sessions but you can see other material such as how often you called preflop, how often you called raises and ended up losing/winning the hand, how often you had a showdown, and more …

Here is a more complete list of Poker Tracker features …

• Import Hand Histories: Poker tracker allows you to import hand histories from almost all online poker websites. You can combine them in one large database. You can also indicate your different usernames at different websites and poker tracker will use them all to analyze your game.
• Analyze Your Own Poker Strategy: Following are the most common ways you can analyze and improve your own poker strategy:
  •   Track Winnings and Losses: Poker tracker tracks your winnings and losses for you. You can also view your wins and losses during certain time period, for certain poker hands, in cash games vs. tournaments, at different blind levels, and more.
  •   Your Poker Aggressiveness: You can check the percentages of the times you raise, call raises, see a flop, and more. You can also see how many of those times you actually end up winning the hand. That should give you a good overall analysis of your own game.
  •   Track your play by Position : You can view and analyze how many times you call under the gun, from the cut-off, etc and look at the amount of money you have won or lost from different positions. You can also see how you play in a short-handed game vs. a full table.
  •   Replay your hands: Poker tracker allows you to replay any of your previous hands. You can review your game and strategy during those hands and identify your strength or weaknesses.
• Poker Tracker allows you to put notes on players and export them to the online poker website you play at.
• The same way that you can track your own game, you can track other player’s skills . This is most useful when you sit at a table or trying to decide which table to sit at. You can take a look at Poker Tracker and check a particular player’s usernames to see whether he is a fish, good player, tight, aggressive, and so forth.
• You can also setup rules so that Poker Tracker would Categorize Players in the database. For instance you can set a rule that if a certain player calls raises more than 50% of the time preflop or sees the river more then 30% of the time he is a fish. You can also set that the rules would be used if there are at least 100 hands in the database from that certain player.

Screen shot of Poker Tracker?

Is it a practical software?

Yes it is. This is the most useful software I’ve seen on the market. I only wish I could use it at live games too.

What are the disadvantages of Poker Tracker?

I believe the main disadvantage would be that it requires windows and it won’t run on Mac. Other than I don’t see any problems with the software.

What does RNG Means ?

Poker RNG stands for Poker Random Number Generator. Every online poker website uses a certain RNG to generate random numbers which ideally leads to random cards.

However, no computer can possibly generate a completely random number. The numbers are generated using a very sophisticated formula. This formula is essentially what we call RNG. If the RNG of a poker website is found by a player, he will know the cards on the flop, turn, river, as well as other players hole cards. As every poker player knows, this will give dominating advantage to the cheater/hacker. It is important to mention that online poker websites change their RNGs bi-weekly or some even every week. While this does not stop the hackers to find the new RNG, it slows it down a lot.

Random number generation is such a wide field that you can even get your math degree concentration or masters in it. Random number generators produce random numbers using different methods. They used to produce them using the computer date/time. which led to a crack down of their RNG by a group of hackers. Nowadays, they use other methods such as radio frequencies.

There are softwares out there that claim that they can track the POKER RNG and predict the community cards, other player’s cards and so forth. Read the rest of the article to find the answer to your questions:

What is Poker RNG?

Poker RNG is a softwares that claim that it can figure the RNG formula of poker websites out. Therefore it can predict the community cards, the dominant suit on the flop, and hole cards of two other players at the table.

The way it works is that you punch in your Hole Cards and the Community Cards in the software (A screen shot of the actual software is shown below). Then based on it’s database (which has been built by you) it will predict the flop, dominant suit on the flop and hole cards of two players at the table with an accuracy of 99.9%.

Screen shot of the actual software.

How does Poker RNG predict the upcoming hands?

As I said in the last section, you will have to build a database for your Poker RNG. A different database is needed for every different website and even different ones for the ring games and the tournaments. The database is built by you as the user punching your hole cards and the community cards in the software.

Poker RNG uses the database entered by you, to figure out the Random Number Generator shuffling system. For the software to be able to make the predictions with 99.9% accuracy a database of over 2000 hands is needed (According to their website)

Until the database is completed the software can not – supposedly – predict as accurate as possible. There are different levels of accuracy based on the number of entered hands in the database. Following is a copy-paste of the section on Accuracy-Based-on-Database taken directly from the Poker RNG manual.

Before we go further with this I want to make two important notes:

• you enter a hand (your hole cards and the community cards) in the database it is only considered a complete hand if it goes all the way to the river. So to build a database of 2000 hands you would need to play more like 3000 actual hands. I think this is very important to pay attention if you are seriously thinking about purchasing Poker RNG. Because it requires a very time consuming start up to build the database.
• Also once the database is built, you will need to play approximately 300 to 400 hands a week to keep the database updated. As I said before most online poker websites change their RNG shuffling bi-weekly. So Poker RNG needs to keep itself updated with that too.

Hands 1 through 300

From 1 to 300 hands you will see some results, mainly low accuracy results and some 80% accuracy results. Please remember what was said above about accuracy. The accuracy level will not be truly accurate until it says the same accuracy constantly. If it jumps from Low to 80% and back to low, that specific 80% hand will not truly be 80% until each and every hand is showing either 80% or higher.

Hands 301 through 800

During this time frame you will notice more matches and more results. You should start seeing more 80% accuracy readings and barely any “More Data Needed” readings. It is still normal to jump from “Low Accuracy” and then back up to “Accuracy 80%”. Not all cards are supposed to match in this range!

Hands 801 through 1500

This is when you will see solid matches, higher accuracy and more direct hits. But remember, until the results are displayed as 99% every time, it will not be at the optimal level. You should be averaging at least 4 hands out of 10 where 2 cards are right.

Hands 1501 through 2200

You are very close to full accuracy. You will see accurate read-outs 6 times out of 10, a lot of direct matches and few times where almost all of the data is correct.

Hands 2201 +

You should now be very close to or already at 99% accuracy for each and every hand shown. If you have not been seeing the river often enough, your database will require more hands entered.

Is it legal to own and/or use Poker RNG?

Poker RNG is not illegal to own (This could differ from state to state as it is illegal to own any gambling cheating devices in some states including Nevada – but I’m not sure if a software can be considered a device or not).

However almost none of poker websites allow external poker softwares to be used along with their server. If the online poker websites find out that a player is using external software, colluding, or using any other cheat methods they will temporarily close the poker account and put it under investigation. Once they believe (not necessarily prove) that the player has been cheating, they will close the poker account permanently and take the money in that account away.

Some poker websites including Party Poker, look for softwares that are being run with their poker software and try to track the cheating ones (mainly the poker robots) down. However, it is not required for Poker RNG to be run on the same computer as the poker software is being run. In fact Poker RNG user manual suggests that the players should use a separate computer to punch it the database and check the predictions so there is absolutely no relationship between the two software. That way it can not be detected by the poker websites at all.

Does Poker RNG really work?

The only people who could answer this question would be the ones who actually used it. However if someone used it and later said that it doesn’t work, would you really believe them? If it does work of course they want less competition for themselves.

I personally do not think that it should work. Pay attention the way I phrased it. I don’t think that it should work. I have two logics for that:

• Online poker websites make at least a million dollar a night each. If I had a business like that, I would never allow a $500 software destroy the trust between me and my customers. I have no doubt that the actual owners of online poker websites would do the same. Even if that meant paying Poker RNG’s owner all the money he could possibly make by selling the software in order to stop the sale of the software. That is assuming that the software works and online websites would buy the software company.
• You are a poker player yourself. You know what a great advantage it would be if you knew the community cards (forget about the dominant suit and other players hole cards). If you had a software that would have done that for you, would you sell it for a lousy $500? or would you use it and make millions playing online poker? That is my second reason why I don’t believe the software actually works.

How much does Poker RNG cost? Where can I buy it from? Is it worth the price?

Poker RNG costs $457. I have not been able to find a cheaper version. Every customer is given an ID associated with their email address. You will need the email address to login to the software each time you open Poker RNG. This is used to stop illegal copying of Poker RNG.

Whether it’s worth the price or not is really up to you to decide. I have given you every information I have about the software. So go ahead and decide whether you want to give it a shot or not. I purchased Poker RNG myself and worked with it for less than a week. Honestly I never got it to the 2000 hand database. It was too time consuming for me. I believe most of their customers do the same thing. They buy the software out of their curiosity and throw it away after they use it for a while. We always want what we don’t have.

Here is my suggestion: Don’t break your bankroll to buy this because you think you will become a millionaire. Buy this software only if you have extra $500 that you don’t know what to do or you might want to get together with could friends and share it together – It is possible to share database with each other; however, I’m not so sure about the technicality of it.

Why Do We Use Chips Instead Of Currency?

If you were to take a closer look at the design of a land-based casino, you will notice that it has no windows or panes. The reason for this is to obstruct the natural light, in order to prevent the patrons of the establishment from realizing the time of the day, or in most cases, the time of the night. 

The “frozen” time illusion is also helped by the absence of clocks, so if you want to be conscientious about the duration of your stay, you should probably wear a wristwatch. However, this is only one of the methods utilized by casinos in meddling with the gamblers’ perception, the other one being the chips.

What are betting chips?

Chips and value tokens were utilized from the earliest days of casinos. In essence, players are required to transform their legal tender into the casino’s proprietary chips before they are allowed to place bets. Every casino has personalized chips that display the value, the location and the logo of the establishment. The denomination of the token is typically embossed on it or inscribed on the face, but the color codes can also represent a way to determine whether it is worth $1, $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, and etc.

The official explanation

Evidently, if you were to ask a casino employee why you need to use chips rather than cash, then he would probably tell you that chips are a lot more convenient. In other words, you don’t have to bother with breaking larger bills, stacking up lower bills and change, etc. At the same time, the color codes permit you, the dealer and the other players to estimate the value of the stacks rapidly, rather than having to count your money every time. Furthermore, it permits players to establish a certain gambling budget and stick with it. Overall, chips eliminate a lot of hassle and potential irregularities, allowing to player to focus on the game, that’s a given.

The other side of the story

What no casino owner will tell you is that the primary reason for utilizing this legal tender substitute resides in their ability to determine gamblers to place larger bets without the associated guilt. To put it simply, when a person gambles with actual currency, he is more reluctant to taking risks. On the other hand, in spite of the fact that the chips have the same actual value, they are not perceived as real money. In essence, chips are viewed in a similar manner to Monopoly money and you don’t really have a difficult time making risky decisions in that game, do you?

Why is Hold’em Poker so Popular?

Is Blackjack or poker the most popular card game in the world? These days it’s hard to tell. It used to be Blackjack but with the huge boost from the televised World Series of Poker, other big marketing campaigns and online poker rooms popping up all over the net, the game of Texas Hold’em poker has climbed the ranks quite a bit over the last few years.

But what makes it such a popular and timeless game is the challenge and skill involved, both at a land based casino or an online casino. It’s not just a game of chance where you have little hope of winning. Instead, in poker it’s all about reading the player, calculating your odds and timing your bets. In poker, learning to read the players across from you is equally as important as knowing what possible cards are left in the deck. But at online casinos, this becomes pretty difficult, so then what else makes poker such a great game to play?

It could possibly be the excitement. In poker, you’re not playing against the house or the dealer, instead you’re playing against other players and you can match your skill level up against theirs. Therefore when playing poker, you can have as good or bad a chance of winning, it all depends on how smart the other players are and how smart you are!

Playing Texas Hold’em is also a great game because you always have the opportunity to become a better poker player. Instead of playing casino games like Slots that are purely based on luck, poker lets you learn your strengths and weaknesses and you can always improve on them because you are always playing against different players, with different hands.

So while playing Texas Hold’em might seem daunting at first, the excitement, the chance to test your skill and the challenge to always become a better player make it one of the greatest card games to play! 

Why I Like Poker ?

by RANDY MURRAY 
I have never played a full game of Monopoly, all the way to the end. Or Risk. I’ve never liked Scrabble and find those party games like Pictionary to be forced and artificial. I’m not a chess player, although I appreciate the idea of the game. And although I’ve had fun playing games like Hearts or Spades or Euchre, I’ve never been any good at them.

I think I know why. Although I’m smart enough to understand the rule and strategies, the artificially of games keeps me from taking them seriously enough to care about winning. My attention wanders. I don’t engage. It’s not something I seek out. They’re fun for a few minutes and then in the way of interacting with the people I’m with.

That’s why I’ve been surprised to find out that I’m actually pretty good at poker.

I started playing a few years ago, right about the time poker and Texas Hold’em started taking off. I sat in a few friendly games and found that not only did I enjoy it, but that I could win.  It was a very different experience.

Why? First of all, there are stakes. There’s something on the line. Even if it’s only a few dollars, having something at risk brings my mind into focus. I’ve also found that when you play against other people who equally rate the risk, it’s more fun. When you play against people who don’t care about the stakes, the game falls apart.

The second and more important reason I love poker is this: it’s not about the cards. It doesn’t matter what cards you have in your hand at any moment. It’s about learning to read your opposing players and making it difficult for them to read you. It’s a game of psychology and theater. It’s where you learn about people under pressure, at their highs and lows. It’s right up my alley.

I can teach anyone a handful of simple rules and you can begin playing fairly well. You don’t need to learn complex strategies or calculate complex percentages to try and figure out what cards are at play. None of those things are important unless you’re playing at the highest ranks of competitive poker, which you or I will probably never do.

But learning to understand people and how they react is a much more complex and interesting problem. Watching players evaluate their options, choose how much to put at risk, and react to the turn of the cards is far more interesting that moving playing pieces around a board. I find it thrilling, even when things don’t go my way and I bust out.

Chess may be the game of kings, but poker is a game of life and living.  I could never sit down with a grand master of chess and have any expectation of winning, but there’s a chance, an ever so slight one, but a chance nonetheless, that I could sit down at a World Series Of Poker table and win it all. And not because of the random whim of the cards, but because of the human factors, the people sitting across the table. That’s what’s interesting and exciting.

If you ever get a chance to play with me I’ll give you a tip: the shaking of my hand is not a tell (a “tell” is a give away, a sign). It’s an essential tremor or “familial shake”. And don’t forget, I’m a trained playwright and actor. So can you really be sure that I’m excited or nervous about the cards I’ve been dealt? Thinking through what you see in my face, how I played the last few hands, and thinking about what I might do is so much more interesting than the two random cards in your hand.