Poker Tracker 3Interview with Poker Tracker 3 developers
PokerSoftware.com: Explain what separates PokerTracker from programs like it.
PT: PokerTracker 3 is aimed at both the serious and the casual player. It offers the serious player unmatched capabilities as far as stats and filtering. None of the competition comes close in matching PokerTracker's raw power. Practically any stat you can think of can be created and you can display and filter data in any way you choose. Our Heads-Up Display (HUD) also offers unmatched capabilities as far as formatting and stat selections go. For the casual player, PokerTracker 3 offers default reports and stats to get started with, all laid out in a very intuitive manner. Installation of PokerTracker is entirely automated. A lot of tracking software on the market requires users to manually install and configure things; PokerTracker 3 will automatically do it for you.
PokerSoftware.com: Talk about the extensive stat analysis capabilities of PokerTracker. How was this feature developed?
PT: PokerTracker 3 offers a very powerful and flexible custom statistics engine. This means that you are capable of creating nearly any statistic that you can imagine. The needs of the poker world are constantly changing. Years ago, nobody saw the importance of 3bet stats. Now, it has become a very important stat to analyze. Having the ability to create your own stats means that if you want to experiment to find the next incredibly useful stat, you can. While some of our competition may claim to have custom stats, they do not offer an easy way to create or validate them and they have limited usage. In PokerTracker 3, your custom stat can be added to the standard reports as well as in TableTracker, Auto-Rate, and the HUD.
PokerTracker 3 also offers custom reporting, which lets you create and save reports. You can decide which stats are shown and even do extensive filtering that has never been seen outside of PokerTracker 3.
We realize the future of tracking is in offering the user flexibility and customization. One of the main visions of PokerTracker 3 was to allow users to choose what stats were shown in each report. This vision expanded to allow the user to create custom stats and reports.
PokerSoftware.com: The program is written in C++. Talk about why that's important and what it means to the future of PokerTracker.
PT: We chose C++ for speed. Most other tracking software is written in interpreted languages. While it's true that interpreted languages have made a lot of progress in the performance department, there is still significant overhead and that's just the nature of the languages; there's no way to get around it. Using C++ gives us ease of development through the high-level language features it offers and also allows us to easily get to the system when we need speed. Other tracking software sacrifices features and flexibility in order to give users reasonable performance. We do not have to do that. We offer much more flexibility and power to our users, but not at the expense of performance.
PokerSoftware.com: What features are in the works?
PT: In the near future, we will be releasing our Mac and Omaha versions. We have many exciting features still planned. We're going to keep a lid on things for now.
PokerSoftware.com: What feedback do you typically receive from customers? What's the most common setback that users experience?
PT: PokerTracker users are very loyal and love the product. We frequently get compliments on how much they love the software and cannot imagine playing online poker without it. That is our number one goal: to have happy customers who are satisfied with the program and are beneficially using it to improve their games. I love to receive compliments from happy customers; it makes my day.
The biggest setback that users experience are being overwhelmed by the breadth of statistics/reports and not utilizing the power of PokerTracker to its full potential. We are working on improving PokerTracker’s usability to help overcome being overwhelmed initially. We also plan on releasing video tutorials to compliment our written guides. Nothing replaces simply using the program, playing around with it, and getting accustomed to it, which can be said for any type of software. The time spent properly learning how to take advantage of PokerTracker will pay huge dividends over time.
PokerSoftware.com: Talk about your poker background. How did you become involved with PokerTracker?
PT: About six years ago, I started watching poker on television after seeing the movie “Rounders.” I quickly became hooked. After doing some research and learning that poker was a game that could be beaten, I had to learn to play. I had good success at the tables and even played professionally for a while. It was during that time that I started developing PokerAce HUD. I was going through a rough patch at the tables, so I focused nearly all of my energy on it. It didn't take long for PokerAce HUD to overtake the primitive HUDs available at the time and become the de facto application. I had always had a good professional relationship with Pat, who owned and developed PokerTracker. I believe it was in late 2006 or early 2007 when we started discussing collaborating on the next generation of PokerTracker. Development began several months later and the rest is history.
PokerSoftware.com: Why are programs like PokerTracker critical to becoming a successful player?
If you want to be a winning poker player, you need to exploit small edges you have over other players. Win rates aren't huge compared to the bets being made. If you want to win a few big bets per 100 hands, you need to make sure you aren't making mistakes that are costing you. Small mistakes add up quickly and tracking applications are crucial in order to locate them. They let you analyze thousands of hands in seconds. They show you what hands and situations you lose money in. Knowing that information allows you to make corrections in the future.
The PokerTracker HUD is also critical to being a successful online poker player. Being able to view your opponents’ stats in real-time directly on the poker table allows you to quickly process information and make the correct play against the villain. The PokerTracker HUD is the single most important tool that every online poker player should be using and, if they are not, then they are simply playing at a disadvantage and not maximizing their win rates.
PokerSoftware.com: What do you see as the future of the tracking and analysis software industry?
PT: I believe the future is in offering customization to users. This is what we are focusing on and it's paying off. Our users who take advantage of custom stats and reports are reaping the benefits of it. Why should our small team of developers be trusted to provide users with exactly what they want? We prefer that the entire community collaborate and decide on what stats and reports are important to them. That is why we gave the PokerTracker user the power to create what they want on their own. We are seeing users come up with some very exciting stats and reports (available to everyone in the PokerTracker repository) and we expect even greater things to come out in the future.
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