Coming in under the poker radar part one

What I am about to say here will probably not go down too well in an awful lot of circles but it is something that I happen to firmly believe is increasing in importance as the online Texas Hold’em games get tougher. This is that I think it is more important to conceal your identity online than ever before.

I know that many serious players and professionals will not agree with me here and that is their privilege to do so. But I have made a very considerable amount of money over the past six years playing online poker and no one has ever been aware of my screen names to my knowledge over the past two to three years.

I take further steps to conceal my identity which many people would think unnecessary but this is how I operate and it has served me well. Once you start to play above certain levels then the online poker game starts to become very serious indeed. I don’t wish to paint a gloomy picture here but your opponents will be using a whole host of information gathering software to assist them in finding out about your game.

One of the most popular is Poker Office and the newest version now has its own built in HUD (head up display). I know many players who simply leave their computer on with tracker programs running in the background on sites where you can sit at numerous different tables at the same time and simply data mine.

Millions upon millions of pieces of information about player’s tendencies and styles are stored on their hard drive. All sitting there waiting for them to start analysing your game without you even knowing it. Well if you don’t know it then it is about time that you did. You then go to sit at a table with five players who you believe that you have never played before and four of them have several hundred hands of yours in their poker database and know how aggressive you are, how often you check raise, basically how often you do everything!

The only way to combat this is to do the same back to them but what happens when you get a table full of good players who are all using Poker Office and who can all play the game very well? One rather obvious solution is to leave the table and if this were a limit game then this would be probably what I would do as I firmly believe that the nature of limit hold’em makes the use of tracker software even more important.

Then we have poker forums, websites where players can go and discuss all things poker including NL texas holdem poker tournaments …..and also compare notes and believe you me this is happening. If you happen to be playing poker against players who know your game better than you know theirs then you are going to find it very difficult to succeed in online poker or poker in general for that matter.

But this is something that I feel needs to be said and now seems as good a place as any to say it.

This is why for a full eighteen months online, I did not play at any one site for more than about three to four weeks. The player pools at the bigger limits are a lot smaller so you will find that you will be going up against the same faces too often. Look out for part two of this series coming soon.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”

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