Texas Calculatem and Poker Office Blog

What is Poker Office?

Poker Office is a piece of software that tracks online Poker players' behaviour and assists users with useful odds and probabilities in real time. The Poker Office website states:

"PokerOffice is the most sophisticated tool on the market for Online Texas Hold'em Poker. PokerOffice allows you to track all of your opponents actions as well as your own game, while you are playing, without any need for hand histories or user input. It stores all of the collected data and brings you summarized statistical reports, spreadsheets and graphs of your own and your opponents play. In addition it comes with a Live Advisor Window that displays real time opponent modeling of the players you are currently facing, real time probabilities of future hands, hand rankings, Pot Odds and live graphs and statistics."

What Poker Office can do to help your Poker game

Poker Office can be used to

- track your own historical poker actions
- track opponents historical actions
- present you with useful odds, probabilities and statistics in real time

Tracking your own Poker performance

One of the best uses of Poker Office is to assess how you play statistically and to identify leaks in your game. Taken on a basic level Poker Office can tell you the percentage of flops that you've seen. This figure, over the long term, should ideally be between 20% and 30%. If you are seeing well over 30% of flops then you are probably too loose and playing too many hands. Similarly, if you are seeing under 20% of flops then you might be too tight.

Another statistic that I like is the aggression factor (Agg Factor). Most Poker books recommend tight-aggressive play. Aggression is useful for protecting your hands and maximising pots. A Total Post Flop Agg factor of 2 and up is fairly high (above 3 is really aggressive). If your aggression factor is too low you may wish increase it. In order to increase your aggression I'd recommend reading Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning Big With Expert Play by Ed Miller, David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. It has excellent advice on when to bet, raise or check-raise complete with sound explanations.

Tracking the actions of other poker players

The main statistic that I use for monitoring other players' performance is the Swap Flop%. This figure tells you how often players see the flop. In general, it is believed that seeing over 30% of flops is too loose, and that money from profitable poker playing comes from players who are too loose. I therefore use Poker Office to help me look for tables with loose players. This can be done through looking at the overall Saw Flop% for a table, but this averaged statistic can be unreliable, especially when players come and go frequently. Therefore, what I prefer to do is identify individual players that I'd like to sit down with. If a player has a Saw Flop% of over 50%, for a sample of 50 hands or more, then there's a good chance that they're playing too loosely. I try to choose tables with 3 or more such players.

The Aggression factor can also affect profitability. If there are lots fo pre-flop raises then I'll be folding more hands pre-flop. And bets/raises on the other streets will induce more folds than passive tables. I therefore try to choose tables that Poker Office has identified as being passive rather than aggressive.

Realtime odds, probabilities and statistics

The statistics overlay is very useful. For example, the overlayed pot odds are can help players who struggle with mental arithematic and are useful when deciding whether or not to call/fold.

The odds of hitting various hands can be displayed, the the total playable odds of improving can give a reasonable estimate of your chances if you think you're behind.

However, be aware that the "Total Playable" statistic can be misleading as it does not take into account the chances that one of your outs will improve someone elses hand as well. For example, if you have an open ended straight draw and there are two suited cards on the board, then two of the cards that give you your straight could give another player a flush. Poker Office will count those two cards as outs, but the wise player will not give them a full weighting.

Poker Office usage tips

Before I start playing I like to get Poker Office going first. If I'm planning a long session I might start up Poker Office 30 minutes before hand to gather statistics on new players (you can watch up to 8 tables simultaneously). After the 30 minutes I will choose tables based on the above criteria (i.e. loose passive opponents).

I always have the Live Tracker window open and sort the players by Saw Flop%. When there are 3 or more players seeing over 50% of flops then I know that I'm likely to win. If the table tightens up I tighten up as well until it loosens up. If the table remains for tight for too long then I may leave.

Get Poker Office Free

Poker Office can be acquired for free by players who open new accounts with Empire Poker or Noble Poker. Click here for more information.

Resources

- Official Poker Office Website - visit this site to get your free copy of Poker office.
- My Poker Forum: Ask me questions on this forum. I also try to post profiles of individual players to help readers identify who they should sit down with and who they should avoid.
- Texas Calculatem Guide: Texas Calculatem gives real time advice and is a good complement to Poker Office.