Why You Need Poker Tracking Software

There are tons of reasons why you should consider using a poker tracking database and a HUD while playing online poker.  Most of these reasons though can be summarized into five main categories.  Let's have a look.
 
Understanding your opponents – To gain an advantage on the felts, it may be no more complicated than understanding the tendencies of your opponents. If you understand how your opponents play in certain situations, you can make the right moves at the right times to win pot after pot.  This is handy for cash games and tournaments alike.
 
Observation can only take you so far.  Your HUD can tell you how often your opponent raises in each position, how often he might three bet or fold to a three bet, and how often he may steal the blinds.  This is really just the tip of the iceberg, as whatever scenario you can name, your HUD can tell you exactly what your opponent's tendencies were in this spot when you played on the same table as him previously.
 
Understanding your image – It is also very important to understand your own image.  Your HUD can often help, especially if you switch your stats to table only.  Here you can see how aggressively or passively you have been playing, so switching gears will keep your opponents wondering what happened.  The same stats that are available on your opponents in your HUD are also available on yourself.  Use this to your advantage.
 
Multi-tabling – Some of the developers of poker tracking databases have stated that the main advantage of their software is to facilitate multi-tabling.  The main reason is that you do not have to rely on observation to get reads like you do in live poker since your HUD will do all the observation for you.  This isn't to say that observing isn't important as well since you might pick up a point in time when your opponent is going on tilt, but it is doubtful that players could play a dozen or more tables effectively at once without the assistance of a HUD.
 
Tracking your play – Tracking your play is important since you not only will see over time which games you are good at and which games you aren't, but also when it comes tax time all the information you need will be sitting right in your poker tracking database. Sometimes you may think you are good at a game when in fact you are losing money, and other times it is the exact opposite.  For ring games, it is useful to check out your all-in EV to see if your good runs or bad runs are due to a fortune of good or just bad luck.
 
Studying – Your poker tracking database is perhaps your best studying tool possible.  In addition to being able to replay any hand, you can also leak-bust to see where you need improvement.  You can easily filter your HUD to find what parts of your game you should focus on and also check out hands that opponents you respect played well to see if you can emulate how they play.

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