Datamining poker sites means saving hand histories which you were not involved in, by having a software package ‘observe’ the tables where the hands were played for you. The advantage of doing this is that you can load the observed hand histories into poker tracking software packages such as Holdem Manager where it is used to collate statistics about the how the players involved in the observed hands play. What this means is that you can sit down to play with very detailed reads on your opponents’ tendencies without ever having played at a table with them before.

Online poker is getting tougher by the month and now more than ever, players need to take every edge available to them. Having a significant sample of hands on your opponents means that you can be confident that all of the statistics you use in Holdem Manager have large enough sample sizes so that they have converged (become reliable).

Datamining Software

There are two main software packages available for datamining: Idleminer and SpadeIT. Idleminer works for Bodog, iPoker, Pacific Poker, Everest Poker, and the OnGame network. Once initially configured and set up to work with the database that your tracking software utilizes, it will take care of all of the business of opening and closing tables and saving the hands to your hard drive. All you have to do is set the stake levels which you want observed and the number of tables and set it running.

SpadeIT features a number of different products which work on specific networks: SpadeEye for Full Tilt, Party Poker and the Cereus Network; Telescope for Pokerstars (table selection only); Eyepoker for iPoker; PrimaEye for Microgaming; EverestEye for Everest Poker and EyeOnGame for the Ongame network. Unlike Idleminer, each product must be purchased separately.

SpadeIT products also feature integrated table selection, which gives you the ability to scan the lobby of the selected poker client and display data about the players at each table, which is stored in your poker tracking software database. Note that Telescope is only a table selection tool and is not able to datamine Pokerstars.

Datamining has declined in popularity in recent years, due to the emergence of sites which offer batches of hand histories for sale. A 200k batch of hands, which could take over a week to datamine and use up all of your computer’s resources can be purchased for less than $10 and for this reason, many people opt to buy hand histories rather than datamine them.