I have wanted to write this blog for a while but i was waiting to gather enough information and win a pile of money so I could write like I was big stud and all happy. Unfortunately, I have only won 1 tournament in the past week and piled up a bunch of oh so closes for a modest profit. Life goes on and I will just cry in my small pile of money.

Gaining edges in tourneys is getting more difficult. The easy chips are going to be gone in the first half hour and it can be hard to figure out where they will come from. When you get seated at a table, most of the time you dont know who is decent and who is a recreational player(fish). One of the best tools I have found is the full table look up on the poker db. Just cut and paste a hand history and immediately you have the last 365 days of everyone at your table. You can then know how many tournaments they have played, what their average profit is, and their ROI. It takes about 5 seconds to know the results of everyone at your table.

The interputation of this data is a bit more difficult, but when married to a pokertracker3 or holdemanager can be interesting. So now you have the last years results of everyone at the table and you combine that information with every hand you have ever played with someone.

What I know is the biggest losers are the people who call about 50% of times and raise about 2% of the time. They are dead meat with about a negative 60% roi and easily the worse players you will run into. I love them, however, they are having fun and re"creating" just the same as watching TV or playing golf. I dont have any ill feeling towards them at all, I am glad they chose to recreate while providing to the poker economy. I do know they are calling stations and its stupid to try to bluff them out of any pot.

I have have also observed the even the most aggressive moronic type players tend to break even over several hundred tournaments. They can be raising 15 to 20 percent of hands and look like idiots but when I check their results they some how manage to break even or better over several hundred touraments. I guess folding equity is that important :)

I have noticed that the most successful players on Pokerstars are much more aggressive than on Full Tilt. On Pokerstars the players with highest ROI's have numbers like 13/11 while on Full Tilt it is variable. On Pokerstars with the average structure you have to be on your bike early and often to compete, where FullTilt allows you to play a bit slower.

I, personally, would be whole lot happier if there was no data collection sites. That's not the world we live in now, if your opponents are using data collection, you have to use them as well to level the playing field. This is not unlike studying your oppenents for tells I suppose, but it creates a big pain in the butt as I would prefer to be a bit lazier and just study timing tells, bet sizing tells and my notes verses checking all that plus 2 other websites.

The other major source of information is just taking notes. If I can get one decent note on someone I can get a good read on how they think. I prefer to make a note on actually what i observed rather than how I felt. A note that says "idiot" really wont help you in the future, but a note that says "shoved all in with pocket 77 with 100 bb over a 3x raise preflop" gives you a lot more information.

I guess I could go on and on for a while, but the key is where ever and however you can get information is going to be the difference in the best players. And of course how you utilize that information. If you are more diligent than your opponets you will have that edge and any edge is what the best players are looking for.

Aloha