One of the neatest tools that I've run into lately is a an application called Poker Edge,
developed by two students at Carnegie Mellon (arguably the best computer science department in the US). What Poker Edge does is something
that ups the ante on all other playing tracking software out there - it tries to track every single person that plays on Party Poker.
Got your attention yet? I'd hope so.
Poker Edge: An Overview
Let's start with a brief overview of their website first. Here's the abstract excerpt from their
front page:
PokerEdge is a windows program that gives you access to a database of PartyPoker player statistics. It is much more than just a tool; It is a service. By subscribing to PokerEdge, you gain access to our massive database of player statistics - containing over 115,000 players, and gigabytes of hand history files. And the best part is that our database is updated daily! This means that the number of players tracked is growing daily, and you get the most up to date statistics.
Pretty interesting stuff, so it shows that they are tracking over 100,000 players, which is no small feat.
The geek in me wonders what method they are using exactly to track each player, but I can
only guess for right now.
The site itself looks fairly bland and utilitarian, which is a plus in my book, as most of
the 'polished' sites are usually marketing oriented. That said, I did make an involuntary
cringe when I saw the quote from Rounders at the bottom of the page. While Rounders was a
good movie, many serious poker players (myself included) get a bad taste in their mouth at
almost any mention of the movie, mainly due to it's overuse by amateur players. I have
a feeling that quote has probably made a number of serious players scoff and leave
the site outright, but as you'll see, there's definitely more to this tool.
So, what's their selling point of Poker Edge? On the
'Why You Need It' page, we see
three points to why you should use the program:
1. Know your opponent better than he knows himself.
2. Profit from better game selection.
3. Actively seek and find the sucker.
This makes sense, as anyone would be able to observe a table and run all the players
through Poker Edge and see exactly how loose (profitable) this table was. Point 3 about
finding the sucker is a bit misleading though, as Poker Edge is only capable of getting
stats from a player that you specifically request. Unfortunately (or fortunately!), you
are not able to simply get a list of fishy players and go add them all to your buddy list.
Having talked to the author, this feature was left out on purpose, to stop major abuse
and turning the games into what would really be a killing field.
How does it Work?
 Screenshot of Poker Edge |
Quite easily actually. As we see in the screenshot to our left, all it takes
is a few keystrokes of entering someone's Party Poker screen name into the
Poker ID field and clicking search.
The data is retrieved almost instantly and we now have access to this player's
Party Poker statistics. As you can see, there is Key Stats page that has general
statistics, such as Hands Played, Pre Flop Raise % and other stats that give a
quick estimate on how tight or loose this person is.
The other tabs have more detailed information on each possible round:
Pre-Flop, Flop, Turn, River and Showdown. Some really key pieces of information
here would include Turn and River stats that show how ofen a player wins when
they raise during these rounds. These stats alone can tell you how confident you should
be in laying down a hand if met with a raiser on the turn.
Included is also the ability to sort through these stacks by types of games like
limit vs no limit or short games vs full games. This is an important tool, because
most all players play differently depending on the type of game they are in.
The drawback is that Poker Edge currently does not support tournament tracking,
so to a person like me who primarily plays single table tournaments, Poker Edge
may not be as useful to those ring game players.
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How do I track players?
Another pretty cool feature is the ability to see which player at your table is
tracked in Poker Edge. What the guys at Poker Edge have done is create a large
Notes.txt file (this is the file where your player notes are stored) that includes
all the names of players that are currently tracked in Poker Edge. You can
see a screenshot of this feature on their How it Works page.
If you are not familiar with notes, what this does is put a little post-it type icon
next to that person's name, so you can graphically see who is tracked in Poker Edge and
who isn't. This saves you the time and energy of not having to type in names of players
who don't exist in Poker Edge yet - which results in a Poker Edge telling you that it
has no data for this person.
The drawback for this feature however, is that it doesn't merge it's own Notes.txt file
with your current Notes.txt file. While it doesn't overwrite your original notes (it
will back them up), all of your notes will be replaced by the line "This player exists
in Poker Edge!" instead. So if you heavily use your notes, this feature is definitely
a killer and you would want to manually enter your own notes instead.
What's new in Version 2?
As I was writing this review, the guys came out with Version 2, which has a few added
features. One of them is the ability to provide the recent showdowns of the player
you are getting information on. This is pretty useful, as it can give you a quick idea
of what kinds of cards they play and potentially how they play. The
showdown information doesn't include anything about position, players in the game and some
other details, so the information is best used in conjuction with other player
stats to develop a more well rounded picture. However, a good player can make a very good
deduction on the type of player based on the recent showdowns.
You can checkout a screenshot of this feature on their Screenshots page.
How much does it cost for Poker Edge?
Ah, the big question on everyone's mind. Poker Edge differs from the rest of
the field in terms of how much the program costs, because it goes on a subscription
rate. The cost is $9.99/month for the low-limit version (retrieves stats up to $3/6
games or NL/PL $25) or $19.99/month for a high-limit version (access to all stats).
The website justifies the cost by noting that winning one extra hand through the
use of this program would offset the cost of a one-month subscription; which is
more or less true.
I can already hear a lot of players gawking at the price, but that's not too unexpected
when the majority of the players won't even shell out $20 for a good poker book. That said,
the program does charge a premium rate, when you consider the number one application
for serious players, Poker Tracker, only costs $55. This would be equivalent to 6 months of
using the low-limit version of Poker Edge or 3 months with the high-limit version.
So, with prices like these, Poker Edge is definitely a premium service made for serious
limit players about getting every possible advantage over their opponents. However, after
contacting the authors of Poker Edge, they have agreed to offer a large discount
on subscriptions through this site, which makes it an excellent buy for any limit players.
How useful is Poker Edge in practicality?
For the serious limit player, Poker Edge is unquestionably a good investment in
the big picture of things. The ability to break down your opponents into quantitative
pieces (especially in low-limit games) is really an amazing ability. Here are some
practical examples of what Poker Edge stats could do:
Example 1: You've got top pair, top kicker and are in a pot
with a few players. You bet on the flop and get one caller, PlayerX. The turn brings 3 of a
suit on the table, representing a possible flush. You bet the turn and get raised
by PlayerX. You check him out in your Poker Edge stats and notice that he only raises
5% of the time on the turn and he wins the showdown 100% of the time if he does.
The writing is on the wall - he has the nut flush here. You easily muck your hand and
save calling a big bet on the turn and the river.
Example 2: You've got top pair, top kicker and are in a pot with a few
players again. You bet on the flop and get one caller, PlayerY. The turn is a rag
and you bet again, but are raised by PlayerY. You check him out on Poker Edge and
see that he raises the turn 30% of the time and only folds 10% of the time. You
also see that if he raises on the turn, he only wins 30% of the time as well. This
tells you that PlayerY does a lot of bluffing or semi-bluffing, so you are
not necessarily behind right now. You call the raise and then check when the river
comes. PlayerY checks behind you and you see that he had a busted straight draw,
giving you the pot.
These are examples of very clear, cut-and-dry situations of how the stats may
be applied. With more experience, you can probably derive more information from
it or get comfortable with stats that are a bit more borderline when making a
tough play.
As their site says, Poker Edge will eventually pay for itself with a subscription
if you use it correctly. That said, there are still some points about the program
that can hamper your ability to use it effectively - especially for the more experienced
online players.
Drawbacks of using Poker Edge
There are a number of drawbacks for serious players
when using Poker Edge. The main problem is that most serious players often play 2 or
more tables at one time, leaving little room for screen room or even time to manage
looking through 10+ player names and updating their notes for each player. Even
if you don't use player notes, it still takes some time just to enter in a Player ID
and check up on a players stat when the time is on you. While Poker Edge does give
you the ability to recall the stats of a recently searched player, it is only effective
if you can instantly recall any one of the players at your tables - which could grow
to be a rather big list. Otherwise, you're still typing in player names by hand.
Update: These issues have been addressed in the updated version of Poker Edge.
Now, there is a feature to automatically bring up all the player at each table
and color code them as a 'fish' or 'shark', giving you a fast an easy way to
determine who you are playing against. A very useful feature!
The second problem is a lack of any kind of Notes or clipboard export feature.
While playing around with my version of Poker Edge, I found that it would often take
me a good minute to go back and forth between Poker Edge and my player notes screen
jotting down relevant information. In a one-table situation, this would be a very
easy thing to do, but as I was three tabling, this proved to be very difficult.
Update: The notes issue has also been mostly addressed by Poker Edge as well
now. For each user, you can add notes to that person in the PE window. Still not as
efficient as having notes open on all players, but with the color coded player tagging,
it's not a big drawback compared to what it was before.
I found myself wishing for a customizable feature that could allow me to directly
take the Poker Edge stats and copy and paste them into my player notes screen on
Party Poker - somewhat similiar to the notes export feature of Poker Tracker. As
an example, here are the stats that I find very relevant:
- Pre-Flop: % Flops Seen, % Pre-Flop Raise, % Defend Blind
- Flop: % Fold, % Call, % Bet, % Raise
- Turn: % Win w/CC, % Win w/Bet, % Win w/Raise
- River: % Win w/CC, % Win w/Bet, % Win w/Raise
- Showdown: % Showdowns won
- Hands: Listing of hands played and pre-flop raised (not in the BB or SB)
- (Note: % Win w/CC = Percent of hands won with a check/call from this point)
If I were able to extract this information or any other set of customized stats
from Poker Edge and paste it into my player notes, this would make things 100 times
more efficient in my eyes. Even though these stats wouldn't compose all the useful
information of Poker Edge, it does give me the ability to see the stats for each player
on the table at one time (provided I have all my player notes open). Poker Edge doesn't
have this feature unfortunately. The authors state however, that this is a new feature
being put into development.
I would guess that the guys at Poker Edge are a bit hesitant of doing this, lest
their entire database get datamined by a bunch of bored poker players. If this were
the case, even a built in 'floating notes' window feature would be great and not
hard to implement.
Lastly, if you're a fan of Omaha, Stud or other games, you're out of luck, as Poker
Edge is only tracking hold'em players for now.
Conclusion
The question that you're probably asking is: Is Poker Edge worth it? I think the
answer is that it really depends.
If you are only playing one table at a time, then it's
without a doubt a highly useful tool. If you are playing two tables, it's effectiveness
goes down as your ability to multi-task suffers. If you play anything over three tables,
unless you're a fanatical poker player - it is likely going to be very difficult to
use in jam.
So, while the program has a few areas that it can be improved upon in my eyes,
it's definitely something that's going to be turning heads when it gets more widely known
and people realize that some program out there is scrutinizing their every play and
dumping it into a database. Whether or not you can capitalize on the data that Poker Edge
is collecting - that will be up to you. Of course, it may just be that someone else
out there is looking up your Party Poker screen name at the table and using what you don't know to their
own advantage. (Cue the Twilight Zone music...)
Hope you enjoyed the review!
Updates: Poker Edge 3.0
Poker Edge now also offers subscribers the feature of hiding your own stats
from other PE users. This could be useful for a number of reasons, but mainly to
not let anyone else know that you're a shark and PE user as well. The overall size
of the main window has been slimmed down as well, so that makes it more managable too.
In addition, new statistics like VP$IP, aggression and post flop aggression have
been added as well.
Poker Edge has agreed to a special promo deal for
visitors of this site. They are willing to drop the price to $75 a year for low stakes access and $150 a
year for high stakes access, which is a substantial drop from their website prices. This also includes a
3-day free trial, so it's quite a good deal.
Screenshots of various tabs in Poker Edge
Recent Additions
