Secrets of the Amateurs

Right, I was going to talk about software. First of all, I downloaded Holdem Manager, and it basically owns Pokertracker. Maybe that's partly because I couldn't get Pokertracker 3 to work, but anyway. It works on more sites and has more useful stats like 3-bet frequency. It also has a very cool feature for SNGs where it calculates your EV adjusted according to the "luck factor" of allins. At first I was sceptical about this but when I looked at it closely, it really does do this properly - it works out the ICM of every hand (even ones you're not involved in) and how the final result compares to the equities when the chips went in. Of course this doesn't completely adjust for all the luck, but it helps. With the other multi-tabling software (which I'll come on to), I've been playing a few SNGs on the side. They seem to be a lot softer (at the 50-200 level) than they were a couple of years ago - maybe a lot of the grinders have moved on. So I don't mind spinning a few of them if I don't feel like a full tourney session.

One other thing while I'm here, I thought I'd share my "poker playlists" with you, I have 7 of these at the moment, each one is basically a 7-8 hour playlist that starts off rocking (rock dammit) and becomes more chilled as the evening goes on. Enjoy :

Playlist 1

Trivium - Shogun
Evanescence - Fallen
Rush - Subdivisions
U2 - Under A Blood Red Sky
Bjork - Vespertine
KT Tunstall - Eye Of The Telescope
Sigur Ros - Takk
Benedictine Monks Of The Abbey Of St Maurice - Gregorian Chants
The Orb - UF Orb