Using sharkscope to make decisions about your opponents

Daithio

I've gone back to playing stts after a short but profitable stint in the world of PLO. I kind of found out I wasn't very good and had just been running well so got the f*ck out while I was still in profit. So, back to stts, I know they're boring but I can beat them very consistently at the higher stakes, and I find NLH cash even more boring.

Anyway, my question is, I use sharkscope an awful lot to judge whether or not to play a higher stakes game if one is looking like it's going to fill. But, once I'm in the game, I find myself making decisions against players based on whether they're a winning player or not. But I've found that it hasn't really helped. I'd assumed that winning players in stts are generally tight early and aggro late on, and that losing players are probably the opposite, so I've used this sometimes to help me make certain decisions. But it seems that using the information from scope is actually not really helping at all, in fact sometimes I find myself making decisions I normally wouldn't based on the info I've gotten from scope, and these decisions aren't paying off.

So, my question is, is there anything you can tell about somebody's game from just knowing whether they're a winning player or not? Also I'm starting to think that maybe the best way of getting information about a player is from their graph. If it's incredibly swingy, with big jumps up and big falls down all the time I guess that means they're quite aggro and not afraid to get their chips in the middle. But if it's more of a steady graph, going either up or down, it probably means they're more solid. Anybody got any opinions on this or should I just be using the site to find out if a game will be good and leave it at that?

Hectorjelly

Persist with NLH; theres alot more money, the hands are all a million times more interesting and the women are hotter

Daithio

Hectorjelly wrote:

Persist with NLH; theres alot more money, the hands are all a million times more interesting and the women are hotter

LOL, are you pissed?

Hectorjelly

not any more!

cardshark202

I agree with HJ but since you're not really asking about that, I would only use sharkscope if they have a lot of games on it, like over 500. Otherwise the stats could be quite misleading.

Daithio

cardshark202 wrote:

I agree with HJ but since you're not really asking about that, I would only use sharkscope if they have a lot of games on it, like over 500. Otherwise the stats could be quite misleading.

I think 500 is an awful lot. 200-300 will definitely give you some sort of idea of how good a player is.

nicnicnic

Daithio wrote:

I think 500 is an awful lot. 200-300 will definitely give you some sort of idea of how good a player is.

first off stts are a far superior mode of the game them boring nlh ring, plo is the softest game there is I'm still killing it and have no idea what I'm doing, get back in there its a down swing.


as for reading into scope results' i really don't pay any attention to them two of the best players i play against ATM have horrific scope, the thing is a life report of players look at there last few hundred games. having said that and its a contradiction of what i just said 2/300 games means nothing I'm convinced that or a decent sample size needs to be at least 2000 games.


also your graph assumption makes for good logic

Daithio

nicnicnic wrote:

also your graph assumption makes for good logic

Yep. I haven't started using it in making decisions, but I've been rating players as either aggro/ tight, and then looking up their graphs afterwards, and in the majority of cases the aggro ones have alot more swingy graphs. But yeah, I agree, you do need a large sample size to have any sort of idea. Also making assumptions about people off scope doesn't take into account that alot of people start off badly but improve. So you're much better off looking at the recent results rather than their results as a whole.

Regarding the PLO, I thought I was good at it, and I was winning fairly consistently. I turned a small amount of money into a relatively large amount in a very short time, but jumped up the stakes WAY too fast. All of a sudden I was playing 10-20, and despite a few early winning sessions in it I was 100%definitely the value in the game. I then watched Halibut2 play alot first hand, who is IMO the best online high stakes PLO player there is, and realised that I was doing an awful lot wrong. I went back to these stakes trying to emulate his game but didn't have the experience or knowledge and became a huge donator for about a week. Then I dropped back stakes, which is always hard to do and maintain a good game, and continued donating. So for the mean time I've decided to give it up, but I will be returning to it once I've learned a good bit more and can get the higher stakes out of my head. It's tough playing 2-4 after even a brief stint at 5-10/ 10-20.

Also I'm travelling around alot at the moment, and need a more reliable source of income, I can't really afford to go broke while stuck in Japan or Thailand or Australia or wherever I find myself! And while playing stt's there's very little if any chance at all I'll go broke.

So when I get home I plan on watching Halibut2 play a good bit more, and then tackling the 2-4 games, with plans to move up the stakes at a much slower pace. I think the game is definitely beatable though, and there's alot more value in it if you know what you're doing than in the hold em cash games.

Also I think if you ever want to make serious money off poker cash games are the only way to go. Even playing the highest stakes stts (which don't fill enough anyway) you will not make nearly as much money as you can if you become a successful high stakes cash player. I just need to become alot more professional about my attitude towards it. And NLH cash just isn't for me. I've won at it overall but I find it really boring and it screws up my tournament game which I'd like to keep intact!

nicnicnic

Daithio wrote:

Yep. I haven't started using it in making decisions, but I've been rating players as either aggro/ tight, and then looking up their graphs afterwards, and in the majority of cases the aggro ones have alot more swingy graphs. But yeah, I agree, you do need a large sample size to have any sort of idea. Also making assumptions about people off scope doesn't take into account that alot of people start off badly but improve. So you're much better off looking at the recent results rather than their results as a whole.

Regarding the PLO, I thought I was good at it, and I was winning fairly consistently. I turned a small amount of money into a relatively large amount in a very short time, but jumped up the stakes WAY too fast. All of a sudden I was playing 10-20, and despite a few early winning sessions in it I was 100%definitely the value in the game. I then watched Halibut2 play alot first hand, who is IMO the best online high stakes PLO player there is, and realised that I was doing an awful lot wrong. I went back to these stakes trying to emulate his game but didn't have the experience or knowledge and became a huge donator for about a week. Then I dropped back stakes, which is always hard to do and maintain a good game, and continued donating. So for the mean time I've decided to give it up, but I will be returning to it once I've learned a good bit more and can get the higher stakes out of my head. It's tough playing 2-4 after even a brief stint at 5-10/ 10-20.

Also I'm travelling around alot at the moment, and need a more reliable source of income, I can't really afford to go broke while stuck in Japan or Thailand or Australia or wherever I find myself! And while playing stt's there's very little if any chance at all I'll go broke.

So when I get home I plan on watching Halibut2 play a good bit more, and then tackling the 2-4 games, with plans to move up the stakes at a much slower pace. I think the game is definitely beatable though, and there's alot more value in it if you know what you're doing than in the hold em cash games.

Also I think if you ever want to make serious money off poker cash games are the only way to go. Even playing the highest stakes stts (which don't fill enough anyway) you will not make nearly as much money as you can if you become a successful high stakes cash player. I just need to become alot more professional about my attitude towards it. And NLH cash just isn't for me. I've won at it overall but I find it really boring and it screws up my tournament game which I'd like to keep intact!

Dave nlh ring is no challenge for such an advanced expert of the game as yourself; so easy to see why it bores you, but for those misguided souls who make a few bob at that genre of the game and perceive themselves to be experts with tunnel vision to the real talent of the game..... I'm rambling

Daithio

nicnicnic wrote:

I'm rambling

Yep me too.

delanec8

Anyone with -20% or lower ROI over even 100 games is more than likely a massive fish and i treat them a lot different to someone with anything over 10% ROI. I really don't think you need 2000 games to have an idea of how good a player is. After 200 i think its pretty transparent.

kincsem

Using statistics might be misleading because -

Was the player trying? Some play for recreation.
Was the player in good condition (rested/sober)?
Was the player hampered by outside factors (bad broadband connection / rushing because they were going out)?
Do two players use the same account (husband / wife) ?

Any or all of the above could be cause major swings.

Take your choice of these two
recreation play/tired/drunk/bad connection/worst of two players
focused play/rested/sober/good connection/best of two players

AmarilloFats

nicnicnic wrote:

Dave nlh ring is no challenge for such an advanced expert of the game as yourself; so easy to see why it bores you, but for those misguided souls who make a few bob at that genre of the game and perceive themselves to be experts with tunnel vision to the real talent of the game..... I'm rambling

Joke?

It's sorta like when you get excited at the "beep beep" of a txt message and with a trembling hand flip your phone to read ......." Westwood hotel Galway 300+30 Super sat......."

nicnicnic

AmarilloFats wrote:

Joke?

yes and a drunken one