Session report generator

Andrew Neeme is a local grinder with whom I have played at the Palms Pokerati game a few times. We were both there again last night. A short time ago he tweeted a link to something about a report of his session. I was blown away when I checked it here. As you can see, it's an iPhone app that lets you generate a poker blog post consisting of hand histories, photos, and your commentary while you're still at the table playing the game. I had not known that any such software existed. (I apparently didn't do anything worth being featured in the post.)

While it's technically impressive, I'm personally not feeling inclined to adopt the practice, even if the same or a similar product is available for Android--and I don't know if it is. I think it would take too much of my attention away from the game. When there's a hand the details of which I want to remember, I still just pull out a pen and the piece of scrap paper I always stick in my pocket before leaving the house, and jot down a few notes.* Then, if it's something worth blogging about, I can later write up what happened as carefully and colorfully as I'm capable of, taking whatever time is required, without my attention being diverted by trying to make money simultaneously.

But even if it isn't my cup of tea, I'm glad to know the product exists. I suspect we'll all be seeing more posts composed this way in the future.

*I keep a stack of printed-on-just-one-side paper next to my computer printer to be used as scratch paper. Before I leave the house for poker, I grab one sheet, fold it up, and put it in my pocket. Its primary purpose is to record buy-ins, cash-outs, and playing times, which I then enter into spreadsheets when I get back home, as I detailed long ago here. I know that there are smart-phone apps that I could use for this, but this system works just fine for me, and I don't feel like investing the time it would take to transfer more than five years of session data to something different.

Addendum, February 26, 2012

Here's another example of the genre from my friend Dave: http://www.pokerchiptracker.com/game_reports/933a4f717f5f90f6760ac13980df77ac-4.html

Bravo app

I learned from Twitter a few hours ago that there is now an app for your Android phone (I don't know about iPhone) that displays the current live games from all the poker rooms in the U.S. that use the Bravo table tracking system. It's called the Bravo Poker Live Mobile App, and it's available for free in the Android Market.

I downloaded it as soon as I heard of its existence. It's a great idea. In fact, it's a partial implementation of something I suggested here nearly four years ago.

But on first fire-up, I see that it is not yet very reliable. If the app is to be believed, right now there are no poker games going on at the Wynn, Venetian, Mirage, Bellagio, Aria, or MGM Grand. The chances of that being correct are--wait a sec, lemme pull out my old slide rule--zero.

However, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they'll work out the bugs over time, and this will turn into a handy way of finding where games are being spread at any given moment. I sure hope so. We've been needing something like this.

First pay-off for Poker Tracker

As I've mentioned, I'm experimenting with Poker Tracker. I have done nothing with the data it is accumulating. For now, I'm just getting used to the heads-up display (HUD), getting a feel for the range of normal for the various stats shown, learning to make mental correlations between those numbers and what I can expect from the players they're attached to.

Today was the first time that I made a crucial decision differently than I otherwise might have because of the HUD. Six players left in a SNG, I had 11 big blinds remaining and was in the small blind with suited K-10. Player to my right raised to 3x after everybody folded to him. It could easily be just a blind steal. It's a spot in which I have to think about shoving. I play tightly enough that I tend to get a lot of respect when I raise or reraise, and this would have been my first all-in of the game, which should command even more fold equity.

I was thinking about what to do, when it occurred to me to check the raiser's stats. I had three games running, which is the maximum that I can manage so far, and one of them was tricky and demanding most of my attention, so the other two (including the one in which this story occurred) were sort of on autopilot. For that reason, I didn't have a good sense of what the raiser's tendencies were from having observed him.

But the HUD told the story. His VPIP (voluntarily put money into pot) was 7%, and his pre-flop raise was 2%, over the course of 48 hands. Whoa! This is not just tight, this is Rocky McRockerson. Sirens started going off in my brain, and I clicked the "fold" button as quickly as the implication of those numbers registered with me.

The big blind either didn't have a HUD or decided to ignore it. He shoved with something like Q-J, and got insta-called by Rocky with his A-K, and exited the game when the board improved neither of them (and would not have helped me, either).

I ended up rallying and coming in second. (I would have won, but when our stacks were nearly even, we got it all in pre-flop with my A-Ko versus his K-Qo, and he caught a four-flush to win, leaving me with 2 big blinds, and I couldn't recover. Grrrrr.) That's $15 I likely would have lost had I shoved in the earlier spot.

Score one for Poker Tracker.