Recently the designers of poker edge announced that their "black-hat" style tracking software of the same name now included support for tournaments. What this means is that when a player on their database plays in a tournament those statistics can now be analyzed separately as tournaments stats should be.

These are the kind of statistics that both Tournament Indicator and Poker Edge collect: VPIP%, PFR%, WSD%, and WSDW%. Tournament Indicator also adds a statistic called WIN% which means the percentage of hands won that may or may not have ended in a showdown.

Now what exactly do these statistics represent when you are playing somebody at a table and looking up their stats? Let's say your opponent shows 35% VPIP and 35% PFR on Tournament indicator and poker edge which is generally quite loose and very aggressive for tournament play. Well the problem with that kind of general information is that it actually doesn't relate to tournament play in the sense of it being valuable to you. For instance, that information was likely collected during a period when that player was short stacked, and ultra aggressive was his best strategy. In fact, general tournament statistics like that can range from questionable to downright misleading. The real value in tournament statistics is what has happened recently, unless you can qualify those actions with a players' stack or mzone situation.

If you do happen see tournament statistics on Poker Edge, (that is a slim database as the software is mainly for ring games), you will find general data that is much the same as in the Tournament Indicator main stats window. However, Tournament Indicator goes much more in depth as you can simply click on the players name and get a history of that player's stats divided into mzone categories that player was in when those stats were collected.

If we go back to this same example, we could find that the player with a 35PFR% actually raised only 10 hands altogether, 6 of which were from his red mzone (desperate stack) and that violently skewed his information. Omitting that, the rest of his stats indicate he is a very tight player. Now don't you think that is more relevant? Not only is it relevant, it demands analysis that Poker-Edge simply cannot provide.

Since Tournament Indicator breaks down opponent statistics into mzones, you are able to rationalize your opponent's strategies in one easy glance. Now it is true you won't often run into the same player from tournament to tournament, but if you make it deep, chances are you will be seated at a table with several players you have already crossed paths with in the same tournament! You will also likely have information on them from different mzones as well.

There are some additional technical differences between the two that may help your decision making. The main difference being that Poker-edge is a screen scraper which means you don't have ANY flexibility in resizing your poker table, nor can you take advantage of all the background options your poker site may offer. Screen scraping also means that if you cover your onscreen poker table, even partially with any other program you have open on your computer, Poker-edge will lose all reading capabilities.

Tournament Indicator uses the chat box on your poker screen and transcribes that information into a single window with much easier to read information. As we have determined before, that information is much more credible for tournament play. Keep in mind too that Tournament Indicator is a program that is allowed by all the major websites too, where sites like Poker Stars will freeze your account when they find out you are using Poker-Edge. (Check your PokerStars user agreement on this). Good luck in getting your money out if they do that.

While Poker-edge has made a decent attempt at offering tournament statistics, the value of which that software displays is virtually meaningless. Tournament Indicator is the only poker calculator on the market specifically designed for tournaments and can effectively serve up the critical information you need to make decisions in tournaments.

About the Author

Marty Smith is webmaster and a regular online poker player. He has a FREE Multi-Table Tournament Video Strategy Series on his website at http://www.MZoneReport.com . He is also editor of http://www.PokerCalculatorReport.com .