Until recently, there was not a single poker calculator designed for tournaments and out of all the software that I have tried for the last two and a half years, I found this somewhat fascinating. The fact is, online poker has thrived thanks to new players signing up after watching WPT or WSOP reruns.
Both shows ushered in new TV celebrities like Gus Hansen, Daniel Negreanu, and Chris Moneymaker. As a result, hundreds of thousands of players flocked to poker sites in search of cash games. No. They came because of tournament action and playoffs that could, for as little as a couple of dollars, get you to a final table on television competing for millions.
These players need help in the game, and many software designers are bound by poker calculators. However, using poker calculators often meant that you had to adapt the information you provided while playing tournaments because tournaments and cash games are completely different strategies.
I was recently on a forum where players admitted to using two different poker calculators to help offset tournament structures. Those players using two poker calculators are welcome at my table at any time. Too much of a good thing can turn you into a geek in this case, and it will take your game away.
Regardless of all this, the bottom line from tournaments is that the only story you should focus on is recent history. Any particular player can take on many characteristics during a single tournament (regardless of hundreds). Too much past data not only diverts your attention from the game, but diverts you into thinking about how credible your opponent’s hand may or may not be.
I prefer to keep things on a simplistic screen with hard core data that reflects what has happened RECENTLY, like the last 10 hands or so. I think the Tournament Indicator does this better than anything else on the planet right now.
The only stable period where long-term stats MAY be useful is in the first 2 or 3 levels. However, this stage is more dependent on the strength of the hole card. Once your table has reached a variance in the MZone stacks, then the long-term data window is almost useless. You don’t need it, and you don’t really WANT it either.
Rather than relying on profiling, I strongly believe that reading opponents has more to do with how they “feel” at a critical intersection of tournament play. If I can get an idea of that player’s feelings, I am much, much further ahead than looking at the historical data collected at different tournaments and levels of play from the past.
