Poker Software and Analysis

Introduction

Poker Tracking applications such as Poker Office and Poker Tracker need large amounts of data in order to provide accurate results.

The easiest way to collect the data is to play Poker with the tracker on, and to let it gather the data itself. However, this method is slow, and probably non viable for infrequent players.

A method of speeding up this process is to use a datamining tool such as Idleminer. Idlemininer Party is part of Idleminer's suite of datamining tools. It will automatically collect hand histories from Party Poker, whether or not the user is present. It does this by automatically opening and closing Poker tables (subject to filtering criteria) and saving the hands into text files.

Installation

My installation wasn't quite glitch free. When I pressed the Start button to begin the data gathering it would close the application. However, Idleminer's support is very good, and after an email they quickly suggested that I turn of Windows UAC (User Access Control). The suggestion worked perfectly.

Security conscious users may be concerned about running their systems without UAC. I overcame the problem by using a Microsoft's Virtual PC.

Features

Idleminer Party has a fairly concise set of features. Users set the games they are interested in (Limit Settings, Stakes, Cash or Tourney, Number of Players, Number of Tables) and press the Start button.

Idleminer will then take control of the Party Poker client, opening and closing tables as they pass or fail the filtering critera. The hand histories are then saved in Party Poker's default hand history directory.

Performance

I have tested the software on two different virtual machines.

One was a Dell Studio laptop with Dual CPU T2390, 2.00 GB of RAM. The other is a quad core Xeon PC with 6.0 GB RAM.

On the laptop, the Virtual PC was slow to boot. But once Party Poker and Idleminer were installed, everything ran smoothly.

On the Xeon, everything ran as though it was a on a high quality desktop.

Both PC's were left to run for a couple of hours, and both managed to gather 1,000 hands. These were then successfully imported into Poker Office.

Conclusion

If you need a large hand history, but don't ha ve the time to play and gather it manually, then Idleminer is a must. It ran smoothly in the tests and has a good selection of filtering criteria.

Unfortunately the price tag is currently a bit high ($54.99), but as with all most other Poker related software, it can be acquired via a Poker Room signup offer.

To learn more about Idleminer, please visit the official website : http://www.idleminer.com.