Can Data Mining and Poker Tracking Help You Win Big at Online Poker?

Seemingly prescient professional poker players like Gus Hansen, Jamie Gold, and Scotty Nguyen can look across the table, stare into an opponent's face, and make a million dollar call or a equally bold fold. These players have a certain intuition about when someone is bluffing and when they are not.

It is this sort of poker-sense that separates the millionaires from the losers. But thanks to the proliferation of online gambling and a nifty new category of software, just about anyone with an Internet connection can play almost perfect poker and make a handy profit too.

Poker Tracking Software As a Training Tool

Poker tracking software uses relatively simple database technology to capture and store player data, helping online gamblers improve their game. Overtime, a player can collect information from hundreds of poker hands and begin to track trends, like how often he win, how often he raises, and how he fairs against other players.

This statistical tracking should lead a good online gambler to make subtle adjustments in betting or bluffing strategies. It's the equivalent golf swing training. You study how you do things in order to become more competitive, or in the case of online poker, to win more money.

Poker-Hand Tracking to Get a Competitive Edge

Poker tracking software can also be used to give players a significant competitive edge. The tech-savvy player uses tools like Poker Tracker 3, Poker-Edge, or Shark Mate to analyze the competition even before any digital cards are dealt.

For example, Shark Mate, which is a relatively new poker-hand tracking tool, uses an online database of about 2 million players to provide heads-up statistical information to their network of Shark Mate users. This information is literally mined from tens of thousands of actual poker hands played at some of the Internet's leading poker websites. The data is then analyzed, compared, and processed so that when a proficient Shark Mate user logs on to Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars, or a couple of dozen other virtual poker rooms, they get instant poker intelligence on the prospective competition, including information about opposing players winning percentage, aggressiveness, and tendencies.[i][ii]

" Identify instantly the fish and sharks around any table," Shark Mate encourages on its website. "Get a user friendly display indicating your opponents [sic] playing level and style."[iii] Meaning that Shark Mate users can know how likely an opponent is to bluff, raise, or pretend to be weak when they're really in a strong poker position. Combine this sort of strong statistical information with a simple odds calculator and almost any online poker player can wager to near perfection, knowing exactly when the odds favor folding, calling, or raising against a particular poker opponent in a particular poker hand.

Bottom line, players that track poker-hands and use the data they collect to make betting decisions should play better poker and make more money online.

Two Brief Warnings About Online Poker

While it is pretty clear that using poker tracking software will dramatically improve an online player's winnings, responsibility requires me to point out two facts about online poker.

First, online poker might be illegal. There is an ongoing debate between the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Judiciary over whether or not online gambling in general and online poker in particular are actually legal in the United States. Here is a very stern warning from the Federal Bureau of Investigations, " If you've ever thought about visiting a cyber casino, here's something you should know: it's illegal to gamble online in the United States. ..." Think a little online gambling can't cost you? Don't bet on it. Even if you don't get caught gambling, you could well lose the money you have in an online gaming account if the company faces charges, since the U.S. government seizes assets in these cases whenever possible."[iv]

Second, online poker players are more likely to develop a gambling addiction than offline betters. "There is, in fact, good evidence that online gamblers are significantly more likely to be problem gamblers," wrote Robert T. Wood and Robert J. Williams in their 2007 paper[v]. "As a reference point," the two Bobs say, "14 countries have conducted national prevalence surveys of problem gambling between 1998 and 2005. Past year prevalence ranges from 1.1-5.4%, with an average of 2.5% (AGRI, 2006). By comparison, in an online study of 422 self selected online poker players, 18% of the sample was classified as problem gamblers using DSM-IV criteria (Griffiths, Wood, & Parke, 2006)."

[i] http://www.shark-mate.com/index.php, September 5, 2008.

[ii] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0QsJvGO8dc, September 5, 2008.

[iii] http://www.shark-mate.com/index.php, September 5, 2008.

[iv] "Online Gambling: Don't Roll the Dice", Federal Bureau of Investigations, Washington, D.C., June 6, 2007, http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june07/gambling060607.htm downloaded

[v] "Internet Gambling: Past, Present and Future," Robert T. Wood and Robert J. Williams, 2007, http://www.uleth.ca/dspace/bitstream/10133/422/1/Internet-RMIGS-2007.pdf downloaded on September 5, 2008.