Texas Calculatem and Poker Office Blog

Using some stats from Poker Office, I plotted a scatter chart of $Won/Hand against SawFlop%, expecting to see a negative correlation, as loose players shouldn't make as much as tight ones.

Bizarrely, the chart shows no sort of correlation whatsoever, and goes against common Poker wisdom.

The reason for this could be I haven't got enough hands in my sample (though I only included players for which I have over 200 hands). But I'll definitely have to look at this in more detail in the future.

I've also updated the Free Calculatem Trial page. Users can now try Calculatem with $20 of free money.

John McLeod has kindly lined to me from his Poker Site. His site contains an interesting article on the history of Poker, and contains many useful links to other Poker resources.

An article that I wrote a few months ago has been published at ezinearticles. I feel very proud of myself!

You can read it by following the link below.

Statistical Arbitrage strategy applied to Video Poker

I've started gathering some statistics, using Poker Office, at Party Poker. The aim of this exercise is to identify key differences between the best and worst players. I will also publish a list of the best and worst players (from my limited sample size), so that readers of this blog can have an additional edge when selecting tables.

From the few thousand hands in my database, I have averaged the statistics for the top and bottom 5 players, on $0.50/$1.00 tables at Party Poker. I will try not to use commonly held beliefs (e.g. you should be tight-aggressive), but will point out when the evidence reinforces or contradicts them.

The Saw Flop % for the top 5 was 31.62%, and 36.86% for the bottom 5. This confirms the common belief that a strong pre-flop hand selection is important.

The % showdowns for the top 5 was 12.5%, and13.55%. While these figures aren't significantly different, it does seem to suggest that the better players fold when they know they're beaten.

The PreFlopRaise% for the top 5 was 1.41%, and 0.80% for the bottom 5. This reinforces the typical view that aggressive play is rewarded.

In the future I shall try to present more useful statistics in a more elegant manner, and maybe even publish top 10 lists for the best and worst players.

I went to a wedding yesterday and therefore haven't had much time for Poker this weekend.

The only Poker that I've managed so far was an hour of $0.05/$0.10 at Royal Vegas with a buddy, but those limits are so low they hardly count. I even started raising with 72o preflop as I wasn't taking it seriously enough. Oh well.

There are a couple of good freerols at Bet365 that I'll be doing later, and I'm planning on doing more $0.05/$0.10 with some mates tomorrow. I need to get back to doing $0.50/$1.00 or I'll never progress, but after the losses I suffered last week I'm feeling a little afraid.

I played more 5c/10c with friends at Royal Vegas this evening. The other players were either total maniacs who'd raise with nothing, or so passive that they'd check the river on strong hands such as three of a kind.

Senator, from Poker Strategy, has suggested that I might have got killed at Coral because I both moved up a limit and changed poker room at the same time. I don't like to make weak excuses, but after my last two sessions, I believe he may well be right!

For the immediate future I think I will take a break from climbing the Poker pyramid. I shall continue to play Royal Vegas socially on the low 5c/10c tables as I can't really lose, and spend the rest of my Poker time attempting to increase this blog's place in the online Poker community.

The venerable Poker Prof has linked to me from both his excellent personal blog, and Poker Blogs pages, and I must thank him for his generosity.

From 7:30pm tonight I'll be on...

The 7:30pm freeroll at Ladbrokes Poker.

A $0.05/$0.10 fixed limit table at Royal Vegas.

Please feel free to join me.

After my losses at Coral Poker, I decided that I needed to step back for a while. A friend was interested in moving from live poker to online Poker, so we played a few hands together on a $0.05/$0.10 table at Royal Vegas Poker.

It was such a change from the $0.50/$1.00 at Coral Poker! Opponents rarely raised, and would called me down to the river with absolutely nothing. I ended a 2.5 hour session with a profit of over 40 BBs (big blinds).

I only wish the higher stake tables were so easy...

I got robbed at Coral Poker today and am down about $50, after two-tabling at $0.50/$1.00, for a few hours.

Poker Office was running in the background and it gave some nice stats. However, I should have paid more attention to the game, as it takes a while to gather useful statistics.

In terms of my Poker game, I seemed to chase too many unprofitable calls, had my semi-bluffs raise/called too often, and probably folded to too many bluffs myself.

Looking to the immediate future, in my next few sessions I shall only run Poker Office in the background, allowing it to gather a significant ammount of data before attempting anymore analysis. I will also only play on a single table.

After grinding away at $0.25/$0.50 limit holdem games I've finally broken the $300.00 barrier!

I now have a bankroll that is comfortably sufficient to survive swings at $0.50/$1.00 tables and will be moving back to Coral Poker in my next session.

This will allow me to continue my Poker Office research, and I will be looking to see how effectively historical player statistics can give me an edge over the competition.

Some of my drawdowns were quite scary (despite the low stakes) as I seriously feared that I might go bust on several occasions. I shall therefore attempt to augment my Poker bankroll by claiming more casino special offers, as described in Casino and Sports Betting Strategies. The latest offer comes from Platinum Play, but the best is from Royal Vegas. This should net just under $300 and will therefore give me another safety net to fall on.

I played in another live game last night. The name of the game was No Limit Texas Hold'Em, the buy in was £5, and there were 7 players.

The nature of the game was highly aggressive and heavy bluffing bets caused me to lay down many winning hands. However, I managed to slow play a few monster hands, and came out ahead.

I believe that I might be able to improve my No Limit game if I improve my understanding of implied odds. Pot Odds are hard to achieve in aggressive games, but the extra bets that can be picked up if I hit my draws could make up for them.

I'm finally back from holiday and being sick in hospital.

My Poker form is coming back as I'm having more success using my synergetic combination of Calculatem and lessons from "Small Stakes Hold'Em" (SSHE). I feel this is because I'm being more passive than advised in SSHE, and because Calculatem's "My odds to win" feature is helping me to estimate good situations in which to call rather than fold.

I also won $30 from a Bet365 freeroll last night.

What is Poker Office

"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."

Get Poker Office free

Poker Office can be acquired for free by players who open new accounts with either Empire Poker or Noble Poker. Visit the Poker Office website for more information.

Learn how to use Poker Office

If you read through my blog you will get a general idea of how I use Poker Office to help me identify weak players to prey on and strong players to avoid, as well as analysing my own play and assessing leaks in my game.

Poker Office User Guide - this post gives a brief description of how I use Poker Office.

This post describes how I use Texas Calculatem in conjunction with Poker Office.

Resources

• Poker Office Official Website

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