I'm a reasonably new player and I've opened a PokerRoom account through FCP. This is my first online site that Poker Tracker actually works at. (I used to play on an Action Poker Network site called TigerGaming....used to be very fishy, but enough sharks have finally caught on that the fish are fewer and farther between.)

So now I'm looking for a good ruleset to use with PT's auto player ranking system. Right now I'm just using PT's default settings, but I'm not 100% happy with the results it's giving me. (I suspect it's due at least in part to the small number of hands I've played at FCP, ~750 or so.) It may just be that my own inexperienced evaluation of other players isn't up to par with PT's ruleset, but I'd appreciate some input from the forum PT users. Please also include your own custom rulesets if you're willing to share, or links to other rulesets online.

There's a sticky thread for this in the general strategy section with a couple of good links. I was actually looking at this myself today and ended up purchasing 'Poker Tracker Guide' which has a good set of rules for full limit games. It cost $20, and whilst not life-altering, is good value for a pokertracker newbie like myself, and you too by the sounds of it. Link can be fouind in the pokertracker forums.

For NL, it seems the rules on the BetThePot link (see pokertracker forums again) are generally perceived as good. Finally, the pokertracker forums show other idea's thrown around, but I haven't checked these out yet. Another thing I found out is that with datamining available on some sites (party, UB, etc) and using Gametime+ (free on the pokertracker site), the autorate feature isn't overly useful for real-time play as you can have all the applicable stats available anyway.

Hope this is helpful.

Ahh, yes...right over there where I likely should have looked. Thank you. :oops:

And don't really worry about the stats until you have a 10,000 hand sample, sure you can find some small leaks, but 10,000 minimum is kinda the standard to really get an idea of where you stand.

Hi Profligate,

Well, you are smart enough to be actively asking questions. The following is just to get you thinking about Poker Tracker.

First of all, as one FCP poster stated, you need a lot of hands to get any kind of worthwhile read on your game. As these hands build up, concentrate on making good decisions and don't sweat what PT tells you, since the base is too small.

Ask yourself questions about hands and then use PT to answer that question.

Example: Is playing Q9 offsuit a plus or a minus?

Since you do not have enough data, PT cannot really help but you will find that asking the question is almost as valuable as answering it.

The answer is (no surprise here) "It depends".

That starts you thinking more about position and usually you will be folding Q9 more often. Not much but if you are looking at a stat that says that you are losing money playing Q9 offsuit, folding it will marginally improve your earn rate, or reduce your burn rate, depending where you are as a player.

Example: Am I losing to a particular player on a regular basis?

That player may be lucky, but it is more likely that he has your number. Time to practice your evaluations skills by really trying to figure this player out.

PT is a great tool, but its main value is adding data to a heightened level of poker thinking.

When you get enough hands, then you can start to really make some hard decisions on your play.

Ironically, once you have made that transition, you need to break those habits to move up even further.

One of the greatest first benefits of PT to a new user is identifying gross leaks and plugging them, and that will probably be your best course for now.

I hope this has been helpful and good luck in your games!

I appreciate all the answers to my mis-placed question. Thanks everyone.

As for using PT...my first plan of action with it was, as suggested, simply to plug up some leaks in my game. So far I've just been trying to play normally, which seems to be a net win so far, and use the data to improve my hand selection. As a relatively newbie player, I'm of the opinion that I should learn to play good hands before I try to learn how to play mediocre ones.

I'm currently playing nickel/dime NL and I've actually discovered that I'm a *lot* more aggressive than I thought I was. I haven't been playing a ton, and I'm only at about 1600 hands logged, but my AF is 3.17 average (flop: 4.41, turn: 2.28 & river: 1.8 ). Is this in the right neighbourhood for NL? Should it be a decline moving towards the showdown, much like in limit?