A Review of the Poker Table Ratings Site
News June 13th, 2011. Poker Table Ratings now Supports the Merge Network!
This is big news for players in the United States, as the Merge network is one of only a handful of choices that US players have at the moment for playing online poker. Until today, though, that meant playing blind without significant hand history data on your opponents. Now PTR has hand histories for merge. They are capturing about 450,000 hands a day and have data that is up to three weeks old as of today. They are also offering a special limited time discount for merge players-- $10 off any purchase over $40 when you use the coupon code MERGELAUNCH at the checkout.
What Is Poker Table Ratings?
PokerTableRatings (we'll call it PTR from now on) is a site that harvests hand histories from many online poker rooms. At the present time they have a huge database of hand histories which individual players can use either by purchasing a group of hands or by using the site's online tools to determine the skill of players at a particular table, etc.
Typically you would download the most recent 200,000 hands for $10 up to the most recent million hands for $40 for a particular online poker site, game and limit and then import those hands into your poker database which for almost 100% of online professional poker players is Holdem Manager.
That $40 investment pays huge dividends with more accurate and extensive information on your opponents that you can view in real time using your Holdem Manager.
Once you've buffed your database with all those extra hands the quality of the stats for each person you are playing against goes up dramatically and with better information about your opponents you are able to make better decisions at the poker table.
Other Tools
PTR has several other tools you can use to select optimal tables and to show a heads up display (HUD) for your opponents (people who own Hold 'em Manager and other tools already have a HUD, but PTR provides a web based version that registered users can use at any time). The PTR Tools are:
Player Search
This feature allows you to type in the screen name of an opponent and see detailed statistics about them. For example, entering Tom Dwan's player name of DURRRR yields
Likewise you can look up Player information on anyone that plays on any of the sites that PTR supports (which includes most of the major online poker sites).
My Buddy List
You can create a list of PTR buddies and track their progress using PTR. You can also see who is online at any poker room and even what table they are sitting at. It's like a version of UltimateBuddy that works for all the major poker rooms at the same time.
Table Finder
Find the weakest tables online and immediately improve your EV. This is a premium feature which you can get for as little as a $9.99 one time fee
WebHUD
Shows a web-based Heads Up Display with important player statistics for everyone sitting at your table utilizing the full PTR database. This is a premium feature
Prices
If you register with PTR you are given 10 free player searches. Hand histories for all supported cardrooms are $10 for 200,000 hands and $40 for a million hands (which is more than enough to give you detailed betting tendencies of all your frequent online poker rivals).
