theonlinepokerleague.com Blog

Player Profiling

I have recently come across a product that allows you to download hand histories from up to 16 tables at your favourite site so that you can use this data to find weak or avoid strong opponents when it comes to playing cash games. OK its not cheap - I couldn’t get mine for free as I already had accounts at the various sites so I paid $99 for the program and then $54 for an Idle Miner license to mine the data. I am starting from the bottom so I have mined over 20,000 hands at NL $10 level in the last couple of days and I need to go through the data shortly. I have, however, used some criteria from the Black Hat program to mine the data within my Poker Tracker software and I have about 30 names from over 2,500 players at this level and I have included those 30 as buddies within Poker Usher. Poker Usher will then tell me if any of my players are online and in addition it will tell me the strength of the opposition at the table that they are at. There was one table today which unfortunately I didn’t get on where all the players had negative balances and the rating was 5 stars. These are the sort of opportunities that this software can help you find. Hopefully it will not take too long to get back my investment in this software. It is possible to get the software for free with just a license for your favourite poker room on Idle Miner to pay for which would make the software even better value.

Poker School!

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently looking at Poker strategy sites such as Black Hat which I mentioned yesterday. Whilst Black Hat is definitely on the darker side of the poker world there are more traditional trainers. It was therefore no surprise that PokerRoomSchool would come across my path sooner or later. They have ten 1 page lessons on their site and a quiz at the end. Now PokerRoomSchool operate closely with CDPoker which is part of the Playtech network. Once you set up an account with PokerRoomSchool they will automatically set up an account with CDPoker and then once you have taken the test on the school site you will receive €30 into your account. I signed up yesterday and took the test and I have received the money in my account today so I’m going to have a bit of fun on CDPoker now!

Black Hat Poker - Poker training course

I signed up with Black Hat Poker on Monday and I have been going through the stuff on their site since. There is so much material here that it is going to take me a few days to get to grips with the whole thing.  In essence this is a poker training course with a series of videos, podcasts, pdf’s and spreadsheets. The idea is to take it nice and smooth and work your way through the 8 days lessons and then you can also access up to 40 other downloads. I’m on day 3 at the moment and I will post a full review of the program here when I have gone through all of the days. The course is not that expensive at just £35+vat so it will be interesting to see how it all pans out.

PokerStars puts pressure on statistic sites

The following is an email that PokerStars have recently sent to statistical database site pokerdb. Presumably the restriction on data will also be found at Online Poker Rankings and Sharkscope….

In the month of August 2007 PokerStars mandated that websites displaying player’s rankings and ratings require players to opt-in before displaying certain data.  Within thepokerdb this only pertains to PokerStars data.  

PokerStars’ Policy Regarding “Rankings/Ratings” Services

To ensure player privacy regarding certain player statistics and financial information gathered by websites (hereinafter “Service Operator”) that collect and organize PokerStars players’ results by various means, PokerStars has devised the following rules with which such Service Operators must comply:

1. No player profitability data (i.e. ROI, net profit, etc) may be displayed on any player unless the player has explicitly opted into such display by transferring $0.03 to a prominently published PokerStars account owned by the Service Operator. This request must be acknowledged by the Service Operator by sending the $0.03 back to the player as confirmation within a reasonable time frame not to exceed 5 days.
2. Any player may choose to completely opt out of having any information about them displayed on the Service. To do so, player will transfer $0.01 to the service operator’s PokerStars account. This request must be acknowledged by the Service Operator by sending the $0.01 back to the player as confirmation within a reasonable time frame not to exceed 5 days. Note that the amount here is different, in order to distinguish an opt-out request from an opt-in request.
3. The use of the “transfer from user to Service and back again” method for opt-in and opt-out is required. This method permits these requests to be handled privately and securely without the disclosure of the player’s Email, real name, or other private information. Only the player’s PokerStars User ID is required.
4. Both the opt-in and opt-out options must be prominently displayed on the main / front page of the Service (at minimum, a normal-sized link on the front page to a more complete description elsewhere).
5. If the service’s operation pre-dates the establishment of these guidelines (December 2006), there shall be no “grandfather clause” for existing data. 100% of historical profitability data must be removed from view until such time as a player explicitly opts in as above.

Any Service Operator found to be in violation of these rules risks having their access to PokerStars’ game client restricted and/or the service impeded, including but not limited to the warning of players who access the Service while the PokerStars client is open.

I think that this may end up being an own goal on PS behalf as many players use these stats and if the databases are incomplete at PS but still good at Full Tilt etc then players may move over and play other sites more.

I played another 3 STT’s at Vegas 247 this evening and I struggled in the first two when I managed to get all my money in in front but got rivered on both. In truth both were 60/40 so fair play to the caller I suppose. The last game had me in deep trouble being 4th and on the bubble but I managed to ratchet it up and steal a few pots to get back into it. I managed to just get into the money and then had pairs 5 times in 6 cards which either held up or caused me to push to steal the blinds so I ended up getting myself back into the game with a good chip stack and thankfully I managed to take this one down.

Bankroll now up to: 34.20

I only managed to get in another 2 single table tournaments this evening as I was watching the footy again. This time Everton turned over Tottenham Hotspur which doesn’t help me too much as I have two Spurs players in my fantasy football team!! Anyway I blew it this evening..I was well placed in both tourneys but managed to go against a bigger stack in one and go out in 5th and in the other I was chip leader by quite a way and managed to throw that away to only finish third. A bit disappointing really as I should have won that one and a move too many in the other cost me making the money.

Bank balance is now 33.30.

13 August update

I only managed to get in two STT this evening as I watched my team Peterborough United put one over Southampton who play two divisions higher!! C’mon the POSH!

Anyway I only cashed in the first game when I came 3rd and I just fell short in the other game with a 5th place finish. Mind you the blinds were getting big and I had two cards with writing on so I pushed them in and as soon as I got called I knew it was game over. I mean 10 7 v AQ is always an ask but an AQ on the flop is just rubbing salt into the wound!!

Bank now: 33.90 so still $1.00 STT’s tomorrow

Update on Vegas 247 12 August

I’ve just played a couple more games in my Vegas 247 challenge. My BR going into the games was 32.40 so I was only able to play the $1 SNG’s. Fortunately I have made a bit more progress tonight. The first game I was knocked out in 5th place but in the other I finished in 1st place. I was fortunate in this as the chip leader went awol for about 15 hands which meant that we could steal his blinds and when they were 100/200 it meant that his stack went down to the other players benefit and I made sure that I got more than my fair share of benefit!! Anyway this win takes my total up to $34.50. My target for game reevaluation is $40 but I think there will need to be a fair bit of hard work put in to get there.

 I also played 3 games in my BetFred challenge at $0.10+$0.02 level and unfortunately I bubbled in 2 and was well adrift in the other. What I am really surprised about is the quality of game at $0.10 or $1.00. For instance I have played some $20 and $30 games on Pacific and frankly the skill level is not that different. Perhaps with the US ban on money movements and a lot of players still up for a game a lot of them are playing at the low levels or on freerolls and working themselves up the ladder without having to deposit. It is the only explanation that I can think off for the games at this level compared to 3 years ago when it was always an all in fest at the low level games that I played at! My Betfred balance is now $1.44 from a starting point of zero.

Building a bankroll on Vegas 247 (Absolute skin)

I’ve just logged onto one of my accounts that I’ve not used for a while and found that I have $27 in my account. I’ve been looking at writing some content for my website of bankroll management so this is the perfect opportunity to practice before I load the articles up. With just $27 in my bankroll my opportunities are quite limited. Chris Ferguson wrote in his Tips From The Pros on Full Tilt that for SNG’s he wouldn’t risk more that 1/20th of his bankroll so using that I should be playing at the $1+$0.20 level on this site. Alternatively other pros such as Bryan Micon recommend 1/100th of the bankroll which would be $0.27 which does give problems with regards to playing that small. What I am going to do then is to play at the $1.00 game but if my stack goes below $20 then I will go down to the $0.50 SNG game. I am prepared to have a go at playing the $2 game when I get above $40 but should I not make the money and fall back below that line then I will got back a level to the $1 SNG game.

My first four results show a win, 2 second places and an 8th (eek!). This is a net p/l of $5.10 which now moves my balance to $32.40.

Perl’s a singer and fantasy football

I’ve not played a lot of poker the last week or so as I have found a new site that has a lot of CGI scripts so I have been trying to get some of those to work on my website. Whilst I managed to get some to work that were hosted by the site itself I have failed to get the scripts to work that need hosting on my server. I have since found out that this is because cgi files are not supported by my host so I need to call the pl files to get them to work. Unfortunately I know next to nothing about Perl scripts so I am having a spot of bother although I do recall buying a PHP, Perl book a few years ago so I need to fish that out and do some homework!!

We had The Online Poker League game at PokerStars yesterday and the match was Limit Holdem and of the 7 players I finished second. Having some of my family turn up half way through the game was certainly a distraction but I was please with the result which I think has put me to the top of the table. There is, however, still a long way to go and if we get some more events with 10 to 12 players then 30 points for first means that players can quickly work their way up the table.

I managed to fit in a satellite to todays $100k gtd on PokerStars and I managed to come through that so I am looking forward to playing that in an hour but with 14,920 players already signed up this could be a long game!! (or very short..lol). It wouldn’t surprise me if there is a full complement of 20,000 players for this with 3,000 getting paid.

On a final note it is the start of the football season next week and I have set up my fantasy football team on the Premier League website. This should be a bit of a laugh and best of all it is free. If you have a team on this site then you can join my league (code: 663171-116510) or you can set up your team and then input the code in the league tab.