PTR: Know Your Villain
By on January 14thKnowing if an opponent is a losing player can help you infer certain things about him, depending on the game format and stakes. I’ve included some screenshots to give you an idea. Pokertableratings.com is a very useful tool to both size up opponents as well as track your own progress. Sign up for the site for free by clicking here. They offer some premium services, however the site is fully functional once you provide them with your email address and name.
PTR Player Summary
Summary by stake played
In order to view stats on a player simply enter an online player’s screen name in the box above or visit the site directly. If you don’t know any screen names to try, just click on one of the “Popular” links inside the search box. You get a few searches per day without registering, so if you get an error message go ahead and make a free account with the site.
The second picture on the left is a detailed summary of all of the hands played at a specific game type and stake. This is very useful information if you want to see how a particular opponent compares to others at a give level. It can also let you spot opponents that might be taking a shot at a higher level. Knowing that they are taking a shot can be beneficial information. Players taking a shot are likely to be playing in one of two ways: super tilt or hyper focused and tight. The tilty players likely had a bad run at their normal stake and decided to try and recoup their losses all at once at the higher stake (or they’re drunk). The hyper focused player made a conscious decision to try playing higher stakes and will be paying extra attention to his game. He will possibly be hesitant to call large bets and make big bluffs because he isn’t used to dealing with the bigger swings.
PokerTableRatings even grades players against the top 10 winning players at a given stake. Go ahead and give it a try by typing in any online player’s screen name in the box above. Try yourself, or if you haven’t played online try “Durrrr”. Once their states come up, click on the “Grader” tab to see their report card.
I use this site probably like 50 times a day.
So do I. The only thing you need to be careful of is making up your mind about an opponent too early. I’ve gone into many sessions, after reviewing an opponent on PTR, thinking the guy was going to be a complete donk… only to find out he was actually pretty good.
Sometimes a negative graph can be more a cause of massive tilt issues rather than skill level when playing optimally. And you can’t overlook the possibility of variance – make sure you are looking at a big enough sample.
I’ve been noticing that PTR is having some issues tracking my play during my $50 challenge at the Ultimate Bet heads up tables. I’ve only been playing heads up so I’m not sure if it’s an issue with all of the tables.
By comparing my Holdem Manager stats with PTR, I see that they are missing almost 5,000 hands…
If this is not just an issue with my account you will want to be very careful before pre-judging an opponent that doesn’t have a ton of hands tracked.