Tournament Shark
Opponent Profiling Database Tool for MTTs and STTs
Tournament Shark is a poker assist tool that offers you opponent data based on thier statistics when playing in multi-table tournament and sit and go tournaments, and that includes short and heads-up table action.
Does this sound familiar in a Sharkscope or Poker Prophecy kind of way? You could say that, but you could also say that Tournament Shark has gone a step forward and made this clever software to attach to a user's table offering you up some immediate and pertinent tracking that may give you an upper hand when deciding how to play against a certain player.
Tournament Shark shows how often a player will finish early, early middle, middle, middle late and late in a tournament or sit and go. I have yet to see another program offer this information and with just a little "analysis" these percentages tell a deeper story. For example, let's say you have an opponent with an unusually high early finish percnetage like 34%. You may assume he is a reckeless or inexperienced player and you are probably right. I would think that assumption correct especially if his early middle finishes are high as well with a predictable low rate of late finishes.
However, an oppnent may have a high early exit rate AND a high late finish rate. If that is the case well maybe he plays a lot of turbos, but usually this means he has the mentallity of letting his stack ride early and playing very aggressive. if the numbers justify it, he has no care whether he gets knovked out or not becuase the times it works, he has skill enough to make it a profitable or positive EV strategy for him.
These types of numbers available in Tournament Shark are directly collected from all tournament results. Keep in mind here that although this sounds like data-mining, Tournament Shark Designers worked closely with Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker in designing this product that did not result in "Black Hat" program. We have been through this headache before as known with Poker Prophecy and Poker Edge. This collaboration actually resulted in some fine tuning to keep Jeff and the gang at Poker Stars happy by negating the ROI% indicator. That type of preparation should be a lesson to any designers creating new poker assist tools as well.
Back to Tournament Shark. I used it on MTT and STT and the data popualted almost immediately and although the radio buttons could be laid out a bit more cleanly, it was easy enough to figure out. It also worked just fine while using it with Tournament Indicator as Tournament Shark has a minimize feature, because once you idnetify your villians, you may not need to refer to it over and over again, but it's there when you need it.
Tournament Shark is definately a step in the right direction and this product could really put the nail in the coffin for Poker Prophecy if it isn't halfway through already. If your game is strictly tournaments this is something to chech out especially if you mulit-table because Tournament Shark hooks on to any tournament table from Poker Stars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker (MTT) and Poker Room (MTT) with more to come, almost instantly. It's designed to rest in your system tray and jumps out when it's needed.
In with the best of it:
The minimize scale is great and so is it's compatibility and simple diplay grid. The unique "Tournament Placement and Finish" model may very well be a widely accepted guide for tournament players from now on. The programming seems much better than a sister product Poker Pro 2007 as does it's behaviour in getting along with other software.
Getting it all in behind:
The radio buttons are a little hard to distinguish which is which. Sometimes you forget if you are looking at MTT or STT statistics and maybe this should be indicated by visual display using colors or graphics. Although the big two sites are included now, there is no service to the majority of sites, although I expect this to change withing a few months from Dec/07. There shant be any regualtory problems with this software as it was run by Poker Stars security staff before launch.