Poker Tracker Software….Is it Necessary?
Over this past year or two, the number of poker players who are using some sort of tracking software or software in general have multiplied in the online poker arena. But just how important is poker software these days? Well I think what you have to remember is that you are playing poker electronically and not manually for want of a better term.
This one single difference has unbelievable ramifications for millions upon millions of players. Why is this? Well it is for the simple reason being that many of the people who play online poker will be trying to replicate what they do or would do if they were playing live. Because of the fact that online poker is played electronically then this means that electronic aids can be used to play the game.
You can be a great poker player but if you are merely “playing poker” in the old conventional way or you are trying to replicate the card room experience then you are going to put yourself at a severe handicap even against intermediate players if they are using very good software programs.
It is for this reason that I used tracker software for the first time in early 2008 when I downloaded Poker Office. I didn’t really want to use this but the way that I saw it, I had little choice in the matter at the stakes that I was playing. However you can play without using software of any kind but you are limiting your options somewhat. I know that many of the high-stakes players do not use software of any type and Phil Ivey claims not to use them.
If you play low enough so that your opponents are likely to not be too serious then you may get away with not using anything and having a good technical game along with a decent rakeback deal would suffice to make you money. There is a fine balance with regards to online poker but any player for instance who is considering playing NL200 through NL600 would be unwise to play without using something like Poker Office and a HUD.
There are probably other areas as well where you could get by without using any type of software. But even when you are not utilising data that tells you what playing tendencies your opponents exhibit, it is still a good thing to know if they are winning players or not. Table finding programmes do this for you and game selection is turning into a very important step now in online poker.
A couple of years ago I went through a stage where I site hopped quite frequently simply to avoid the serious players. The players who were using data mining and software items like Poker Edge against me where players were able to take advantage of already existing databases of players!
I didn’t much fancy locking horns with players who already had vast amounts of data on me and this is another thing with online poker, millions of players simply are not aware of what is out there and what they are going up against. In poker just like in warfare it pays to know your enemy and when you know what weapons your opponents are using against you then it will help you to understand how to combat them and how to side step them.
It is certainly possible to make money in the modern online game without using tracker software or other electronic aids but if you go down this route then you had better be alert to just how you can get around this problem and not to attempt to survive by just guessing.
This article was written by Carl “The Dean” Sampson
