What's in Your HUD with Rob Tinnion (rtinnion)

We sat down with poker player and backer Rob "rtinnion" Tinnion to talk about his unique perspective on poker software as a backer and a player.  Tinnion is currently ranked 469th in the world for online tournament play according to PocketFives and #1 in Somerset, England.
 
PokerSoftware:  What poker software do you currently use?


PokerSoftware:  What do you like about PokerTracker 4 compared to Holdem Manager 1 and 2?

Rob Tinnion:  PT4 is much cleaner. I found HM2 was very laggy and you needed a supercomputer to run it. I have never been able to do a full study session without it crashing multiple times (likely because of my computer). One of our lead coaches is a big believer in PT4 and does all of his work on there. It kind of made sense to convert.

PokerSoftware:  Tell us how your HUD is set up line by line.

Rob Tinnion:  This is my current setup, but it probably changes a few times per month. I am working on corresponding pop-ups to each stat to reduce time looking at stats during a hand:

Hands / BBs / Donk Flop / Fold to Flop Donk
VPIP / PFR / 3B / Fold to 3B/4B
Cbet Flop / Fold to Cbet / Fold BB to SB Open / Fold vs Btn Open / Raise First In

PokerSoftware:  What stats do you find the most valuable?

Rob Tinnion:  Raise First In by position has to be the most important stat for me. We get to assign villains almost an exact range of hands and then decide how we want to exploit them. Using Flopzilla allows us to see what boards we should be attacking versus players playing "too many" hands and what boards we should be giving up.  However, RFI is just the tip of the iceberg.

PokerSoftware:  How do you use PT4 as a post-game study tool?

Rob Tinnion:  I run many filters through my database to see what spots I am winning or losing the most chips in. I feel this is a much better way to learn than watching videos as your primary study tool. You might have huge leaks in some spots that might not be covered in a video.

For example, a leak I recently plugged was my opening range from early position off of 15 to 35 BBs. I was barely wining money with the bottom portion of my range, as it was very poorly constructed. So, I removed small pairs and weaker A-X hands and replaced them with more suited combinations, which will present us with more opportunities post-flop.

PokerSoftware:  What did you like about Table Ninja and why did you stop using it?

Rob Tinnion:  I used Table Ninja 1 mainly for activating my time bank, as timing out in crucial pots is soul-destroying. I loved the auto-opening size function and auto-Cbet, especially when I was mass-tabling sit and gos.

I converted to Table Ninja 2 when I bought a new computer and had many troubles with it randomly trying to jam 40 BBs, not activating my time bank, and preventing tables from cycling through. If everything were working 100%, it would be a great piece of software, but when it was actually losing me money in some cases, it had to go. I haven't used it for over two months now, so it's probably worth me checking for an update.

PokerSoftware:  How do you use CardRunners EV? What type of player do you recommend this software for?

Rob Tinnion:  I'm still pretty new to the software, but the amount of detail you can go into is almost infinite. It is definitely more beneficial to a cash game player, as playing a GTO style with balanced ranges is far more important than in tournaments. You get to look at your range and a villain's range at every point in the hand. You can see what you should be defending versus your opponent's range to prevent you from being exploited in any way. You can also work out ways to exploit the villain's range, thus ending up with the highest EV line.

PokerSoftware:  We understand you are part of Pocarr.  Tell us about your site.
 
Rob Tinnion:  We offer backing and coaching across most sites. Alex "msusyr24" Carr founded it in 2010. We currently have just over 70 backees playing from micro- to high-stakes. We have a very active community with our forum, almost 900 training videos online, and a very active Skype group. I've been with them since August 2012. Since then, they've helped me improve my game to the point where I'm playing Majors across six sites on a Sunday and am now an investor and coach.

PokerSoftware:  Tell us about the training videos.  Who produces them, what software is used, and how difficult is it to get them up on your site?

Rob Tinnion:  Currently, we have five main coaches. Alex Carr has produced a majority of the videos over the three or four years he has been running the site. We also have guest videos from various backees, top pros, and many from our past coaches.

Most videos are in the form of an MTT hand history review, where we use PokerTracker 4 to analyze HUD stats during the review, which isn't an option with Universal Replayer. When analyzing a hand history, we use tools such as Flopzilla, PokerStove, CREV, and, most importantly, an odds calculator. Using these tools and mathematically proving what is right or wrong gives our backees and us the reassurance they are playing a hand to the best of all of our abilities, and the result is meaningless.

It takes roughly 10 minutes to upload a video and you can schedule videos to be uploaded at a later date. That way, we can supply a constant stream of new videos to our backees. Typically, there is a new video every day.

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