Using Sharkscope To Win Poker Tournaments
SharkScope (SharkScope) is the largest database of online poker sit n go (SNG) tournament results and is an essential tool for any serious SNG player. SharkScope’s database also includes the results of many scheduled, multi table tournaments. For certain poker rooms, they even track the rebuy, bounty, satellite, and freerolls tournaments. SharkScope tracks most of the major sites, including; CryptoLogic, PokerStars, FullTilt, Cake, Party Poker, IPN, Ongame, Merge, Pacific, iPoker, Everest, Betfair, B2B, IFS, Sky Poker, and PKR. You can check the latest info on game coverage, including the capture rate of each poker room on SharkScope’s website at the ‘Coverage Details’ page.
In order to get statistics for a particular player, click on the ‘Search Database’ link. Choose your poker room from the drop down menu, type in the player name and click search. The first column is the username of the player you searched. Depending on their stats and your settings it may contain an image of a fishbowl or a shark. The default settings are designed to make the top 15% of players “sharks”, and the bottom 15% “fish”. The second column is the total number of games played. The next two columns are average profit per game and average ROI. Average ROI is calculated as the average of each ((payout – (stake + rake)) * 100) / (stake + rake); it’s important to note that this is different from total ROI. Average ROI is the most important statistic for identifying the ability of your opponent. It’s basically an ‘in the money’ percentage, weighted to the actual payouts relative to the stake. The fifth column is total profit or loss. The next column shows the most recent results and the form depends on your settings. One option is to display the form as either ‘Hot’ (3 payouts in a row), ‘Super Hot’ (6 payouts in a row), ‘Tilt’ (4 losses in a row), or ‘Super Tilt’ (8 losses in a row). The other option is to display the eight most recent results in W/L form. (i.e. WPPLLWNL). Where ‘W’ is a win, ‘P’ is a payout and ‘L’ is a loss. Also, ‘N’ is a non result, which is a loss in a freeroll or FPP tournament. Also, if you click on the name of the player you are able to view graphs, charts, and additional statistics. These tools will be covered in future articles.
There is also an advanced search option that allows you to filter the results of a player by many different criteria, such as game type, game speed, or number of entrants. This will be discussed in depth in the third article. You also have the option of searching by tournament ID for most poker rooms; simply change the drop down menu from ‘Player Name’ to ‘Tournament ID’ and enter the tournament number. This will display all of the players registered in the tourney and saves a lot of time.
There are a small percentage of people in the poker industry that feel that tracking tools like SharkScope create an unfair advantage for the players who choose to use them. When it comes to SharkScope, I couldn’t disagree more. There are many good reasons why SharkScope is not only fair to everyone, but critical to maintaining a “fair” game. One difference between SharkScope and other tracking tools is anyone can use SharkScope for free. Their website gives five free searches per day to both subscribers and non-subscribers. This is very useful for people who do not want to purchase a subscription, but still like to check out the stats of five or less opponents a day. However, in order to take advantage of most of the valuable tools, a subscription is needed. Also, many players don’t realize that everyone has the option to block all of their statistics from public view. Paying subscribers are only able to see your number of games and average ROI of blocked accounts. The other stats, specifically profits or loss, are kept private from everyone.
Most importantly, SharkScope gives players the opportunity to look for colluders at their tables. Collusion is most common at six to ten player SNGs. SharkScope is an independent monitor of the poker rooms and helps achieve a much higher level of transparency. SharkScope has also been used recently to uncover rings of chip dumpers and colluders. Here is an excerpt from their website:
“You can be sure that you are on a level playing and that no cheating is occurring by studying the available result patterns and using our head to head statistics for collusion detection. We are confident that on the sites we cover and for the tournaments we cover, a scandal such as the one to hit Absolute Poker recently would not go unnoticed.”
If you suspect your opponents of collusion or if you simply want to make sure you aren’t getting cheated, click on the player’s username to bring up ‘More Options’. Click on ‘More Options’ and then click on ‘Head to Head’ and a text box will pop up. In this box, type in the other username and click search. If they have played together, it will show the total number of games played for each, the total number of games played together and their ROI apart and together. If you do suspect collusion and the results of your search are inconclusive, the best thing to do is contact the security department of the poker room.
SharkScope subscriptions are very affordable and one of the best values in the industry. It usually takes me less than 48 hours of using SharkScope to earn enough extra profits to pay for the entire monthly fee. Refer to their webpage for additional information on using or purchasing SharkScope.
To get more valuable information on using SharkScope tools, read this article, “Using SharkScope Leader Boards to Make More Money” LINK
Make sure you bookmark this page so you remember to come back for the rest of the series. Article 3, Using SharkScope for Table Selection will contain incredibly valuable information and will be available to read for free on this website in the near future.
