Why Party Players Should Be Using PokerTracker
If you play on Party Poker, you probably noticed that because of a recent client upgrade, hand histories are now stored locally on your hard drive in a folder called "HandHistory". Supposedly, this new feature is intended to relieve the burden on Party's overswamped mail servers. In the near future, so the story goes, the number of hand histories a player will be able to request via email in a given time period will be limited.
As a result of these changes and in anticipation of Party's new email policy, the folks at PokerTracker issued a new patch that allows PokerTracker to read the locally-stored hand histories (which, of course, are formatted differently from emailed hand histories -- great design, Party). While working on the patch, the PokerTracker folks discovered that Party's new client also saves hand histories for hands a player merely observes -- that is, hands for which the player is not even seated at the table. These hand histories not saved in the HandHistory folder, but rather in the root PartyPoker directory, in the format *.HHF. In the latest update to PokerTracker (v2.05.00M), Pat from PokerTracker added functionality to import these HHF files into the PokerTracker database.
What does this mean for you and me? It means that, as I'm typing this entry, I am observing four $50 NL tables on Party Poker and am collecting data on the players at those four tables. It means that, in a week, you can easily create a 10,000 hand database without ever risking a red cent. It means that, if you give yourself a few weeks, you will most likely never to have to sit down at a table of nine total, random strangers ever again.
PokerTracker is now the ultimate weapon. It keeps track of your own play and pinpoints leaks in your games It keeps track of the play of people you have played against in the past so that you'll be prepared to play against them in the future. And now, it keeps track of the play of people you haven't played against. The next time you sit down at a table at your limit of choice, there's a good chance you'll have a couple hundred hands logged for several players at the table, even if you've never played against any of them before.
It's easy to configure PokerTracker to exploit this new feature. This handy page explains how to do it.
If you're a Party Poker player and you're not using PokerTracker, fork over the $55 and buy it. PokerTracker is worth its weight in gold. If you're an existing PokerTracker user, I would highly recommend downloading the latest update. Your bankroll will thank you.