PokerTracker 4 is the most useful software for online poker players.

In this podcast you'll learn 5 ways to utilize this value program to improve your game.

Listen to this episode as you follow along below:

Is your site compatible with PokerTracker 4?

Compatible sites as of 4.27.22

If your site is listed here, but you don't have PokerTracker 4 yet, what are you waiting for?!

Get PokerTracker 4 here and support the show at no additional cost to you.

How does PokerTracker 4 Work?

The site you play on records hands in a database within your computer. PT4 accesses this database and pulls all of the information from your hands into its own database.

Now you've got a growing list of hands you can learn from with loads of statistical information com

1. Learning from Your Statistics

The statistics allow you to see your game as a whole, and how all your plays add up to the player you are.

Sort your hands by position, session, date, stake or even by starting hands.

Some statistical things you can look for to help guide your studies:

• Check to see that you're positionally aware. You should play more hands in the later positions (HJ, CO and BTN).
• Check BB/100 Hands win rates by position and your win rates should increase as position gets later.
• Now analyze the various statistics and look for big frequency changes and numbers too big or too small. For example, your Flop Cbet is 75% and it's just 35% on the Turn. You're “turn honest” and easy to exploit.
• Look at the hands played by position and analyze the questionably played hands.

You can analyze your stats and those of your opponents:

• Player A is a strong, winning player. Look at his stats and hands. What's he doing that's working well? Where do you stats differ from his? Are there any insights you can gain from this player's numbers? DO WHAT THE WINNERS DO!
• Player B is a mega-losing Fish. Take a look at his numbers and try to figure out what he's doing that's causing these losses. And of course, DON'T DO WHAT THE LOSERS ARE DOING!

2. Filtering For Specific Situations

This is one of the best ways to learn from PT4.

Filtering for situations allows you to review hand-after-hand in that spot where you can analyze your play to improve your skills.

For example, you're a “turn honest” cbettor. Run this filter to analyze all your turn cbetting opportunities where you checked:

Filter for “Opportunity to Cbet the Turn”, but you checked instead.

This filter will populate all the turn cbetting opportunities where you checked.

Now you can review loads of hands to see if you're missing good value or bluff cbets.

Follow along as I create some quick filters:

3. Using a HUD (Heads-up Display)

This is the #1 reason most players use PokerTracker 4.

• Real-time statistics on our opponents that accumulate over time.
• Configurable with hundreds of different stats, but the most common stats to see are VPIP, PFR, AFq or AF, 3bet, Fold to 3bet, Cbet, Fold to Cbet, Steal or Fold to Steal.
• The HUD gets more useful with more hands on a player: 100 is okay, 250 is good, 500 is great and 1,000+ is super.

HUD's can help us plan our strategy to exploit each opponent. Example:

• Player A's stats in the MP: RFI 25%, Fold to 3bet 55% and Cbet = 35%
• What do these tell us? He opens a wide range in the MP and doesn't like to fold to 3bets.
• He's also an honest flop cbettor.
• Plan? We can call with position against him with any two cards with the plan of betting as soon as he checks the flop.
• We can also be sure to 3bet a wide range of value hands because he doesn't like folding to 3bets.

My Smart HUD for PokerTracker 4 in action:

4a. Finding Leaks with LeakTracker

LeakTracker feature analyzes your database and shows you how your stats compare to those of winning players at 6max and full-ring games.

The green bar represents the “average winning player's numbers”. The black line represents where your statistical value falls within the range.

Anything outside of the “average winning player's numbers” indicates a potential leak. For example, in the screenshot above you can see my Fold to F Bet (flop) is higher and outside of the green average winner's range. This might mean I'm folding too often to bets and it's easy to bluff me.

After finding these potential leaks, you must return to the Statistics tab and filter for specific situations to begin reviewing hands.  The goal here is to analyze losing spots, dissect the hands, discover your mistakes then work to not repeat them on-the-felt.

Watch me find and analyze one of my leaks: over-folding rivers:

4b. Tracking Your Stats & Win Rates

You can only improve what you measure. To help you measure your stats and win rates, here's a free tracker to get you started:

This video will help you fill out the tracker:

5. Sharing Hands with Coaches, Friends and Forums

One great way to study is to share these perfectly recorded hands with friends, forums or your coach to get feedback on your play. Here's a screenshot of a video hand history I put in a group and got some great feedback on:

Join my online poker training site, The Poker Forge, so you can post hands and get loads of feedback in our Discord Server.

Challenge 

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode:

Get your butt in gear, and start a free trial of PokerTracker 4 to improve your game today. If you’ve already got PT4 and aren’t utilizing all of its features to improve your game, what are you waiting for? Commit to using the software for an hour a day over the next 5 days.

• 1st Day: Review the most recent 2-5K hands starting with your statistics and look at them by position.
• 2nd Day: Test out the filters and start by filtering for opportunities to cbet and review those hands.
• 3rd Day: Improve your HUD by adding/subtracting stats as you feel is necessary to improve your in-game reads.
• 4th Day: Use LeakTracker and see what it tells you about your cash game leaks.
• 5th Day: drop a couple hands in the Smart Poker Study Facebook discussion group and ask for some opinions on your play.

Support the Show

Megan and Kenny Elsbury supported the show by picking up the Get More From PokerTracker 4 Course. This over 7 hours, 26 videos and 83 downloads Course will turn you into a PokerTracker 4 Journeyman. The “do as you consume” instruction will teach you how to use PT4 to find and plug your leaks, use a HUD to exploit your opponents, filter through your database, run reports and so much more!