Poker Analytics Blog

NY Players Stories : Justin Quinn

Justin Quinn, 23 years old, Buffalo NY

With $17k profit on Hendon Mob, Justin is mainly a cash game player grinding both in Canada and in the US.

Poker Analytics: Hi Justin ! Thanks for doing this interview! First question : Where are you from and where do you play?

Justin Quinn: I am from Buffalo, NY. I primarily play at a local game during the week and my local casino has some decent games on the weekends.

Poker Analytics: How did you start in poker?

Justin: It all started in the basement. I was 18 and I played in my dad’s home tournament with his friends. Eventually, some of my friends started to come and play which led to me hosting my own $10-$20 home tournaments. Those eventually turned into $100 buy-in cash games and the poker fever started.

Poker Analytics: Are you playing professionally? Since when?

Justin: I’ve been playing as a main source of income since I was 19, because I was able to go to Canada to play. However, I didn’t start taking it as a profession until about 21. I’m 23 now.

Poker Analytics: Do you play every day? Can you take us through your typical day?

Justin: Currently, when I am home in Buffalo, I play 3–5 days per week. If I go to a more desirable poker destination I’ll try to play 6–7 days per week. I mainly play $2/$5 No Limit Hold’Em with some occasional $5/$10 in the mix. Before a poker session, the main thing I try to make sure I do is eat. There are a lot of times I play hungry and I think it is one of the worst things you could do. Listening to some good music on the way to the session also helps.

Poker Analytics: If you had an advice to give to people that want to grind live poker, what would it be ?

Justin: There is a lot of advice to be given in the live poker scene. If I were to give some simple advice I think it would be to make sure that you adhere to a strict bankroll management (however difficult it may be), don’t let the swings of the game affect you, practice good game selection (play with fish), and start to practice thinking logically, rationally and empathetically.

Poker Analytics: Do you have a player you admire most from the poker community?

Justin: My biggest admiration in the poker community has to be Sammy Farha for making the term “Raisy Daisy” a thing for a while. I don’t think anyone has ever come up with anything better than that.

Poker Analytics: What did you do to improve your poker skills?

Justin: I’ve never used a poker training site. To improve my poker skills I just lost, a lot. I probably have paid off every spot imaginable at some point and I’ve made sure to really use that information to correct my mistakes in the future. I’m a very logical and analytical person, so that helps me understand the intricacies of the game and form my own strategy as well.

Poker Analytics: Are you a Poker Analytics user? If so, what is the feature you like the most?

Justin: Poker Analytics is the best bankroll management app for sure. I’ve used a couple others and Poker Analytics is by far my favorite. The best feature on this app is the Hand History Replays. You can turn the Hand History into a GIF, video, text or an image to share with your friends which is just awesome. It really make sharing a hand simple and easy to understand.

Poker Analytics: Have you ever traveled to play poker?

Justin: Have I traveled to play poker? That’s pretty much all I do! The games in my hometown are very bad so I try to get out as much as possible to play. My main travel spots are Miami, Maryland, Vegas, and sometimes Atlantic City when Borgata has good tournament series.

Poker Analytics: What are you other hobbies besides poker?

Justin: If I am not at a poker table I am probably playing golf. I recently started to get into the Fortnite phenomenon as well so if the weather doesn’t coincide with my golf plans you can find me on Xbox.

Poker Analytics: Do you have some funny stories that happened at the tables? Any memorable hand?

Justin: I can’t think of any particularly funny moments at the poker table but I definitely have a pretty memorable hand. I was playing a $2/$5 in Baltimore that eventually turned into a $5/$10 with a $50 straddle on the button. There was a couple “whales” with $10,000 stacks so the game was playing crazy. I opened 56dd to $150 in SB, and get 3 bet to $500 by one said whale. The other said whale cold calls $500 and I come along with about a $2500 stack. I end up getting it all in heads up on a flop of Kd2d3x after a $500 continuation bet and a call. The board runs out 2x 9x and I announce “6 high”. I get a look of misery from the whale as he shows 45s and my 6 high plays and I win the $6,000 pot with the second nut low! Don’t think I’ll ever play another hand that will top that one.

Thank you Justin for this interview and good luck for your future projects ! You can follow Justin on Instagram @justinwithajay

DC Players Stories : Chad Power

Chad Power, 30 years old, Washington DC.

You might remember him from his 26th place in the 2015 WSOP Main Event but Chad is primarily a live high stakes cash game poker player with more than $500k winnings in live tournaments!

Poker Analytics: Hello Chad! Thank you for doing this interview with us.

First thing I’d like to ask you (there’s no way around this one) is how you got started in poker? Were you playing live or online?

Chad Power: I started playing $5 home game tournaments after the Chris Moneymaker Boom.

Poker Analytics: How did you grind your way up to the top? Have you ever gone broke during this period?

Chad: I eventually started playing $1/$2 cash games in the casino. I had very little money and only a buy in or two as a roll. I built up a $10k roll a couple times but blew it playing blackjack. The second time I went broke I decided to start playing online. I played $0.01/$0.02 and grinded up to bigger stakes. This gave me the experience and skills I needed to start beating live poker for much more. Once I got to the high live stakes, like $10/$25, I realized that the value in live poker is much different than online, and I started studying less and trying to network more.

Poker Analytics: If you have any advice to give to people that want to follow your path up to the High Stakes, what would it be?

Chad: When you’re just getting started you should be studying more than you are playing. Once you’ve begun to move up in stakes, take a good look at where your skill set is. If you want to try to be the best in the world at game theory and you love to study, develop that part of your game. This will lead to you playing high stakes vs the best poker players in the world. If you are more suited to play, entertain, and have fun while making sure others have fun, start to network and set up fun games with players. This will lead to big games vs very wealthy people. For me, I was better suited for the latter path, and I’ve made a lot of really good friends and connections that would help me in life outside of poker more than poker ever could.

Poker Analytics: Do you like using Poker Analytics 5? What is the feature you like the most? How do you use the app? Do you use it more for bankroll tracking, results or the hand history replayer?

Chad: I enjoy Poker Analytics. I like the layout and interface better than my previous app. I don’t use nearly all the functions it has. I stick to results and stats. Results for tax purposes and stats for fun. I don’t track bankroll or location in the app, nor have I recorded a hand history, but if I had this when I was younger and putting more effort into learning then I would use all of those functions.

Poker Analytics: Thank you Chad ! Here is the last question, what can we wish you for 2019?

Chad: I’m setting up a big game in Scottsdale Arizona, and hoping that it plays as big as I’m expecting it to. Expecting it to be one of the biggest and best games in the country. No rake, and hoping I run good!

Thank you for this Interview @chadmfpower and GL for your future projects !

Android Plan

If you follow us on social media, you might have heard that we’re going to finally, after 7 years of presence on iOS, have an Android app!

We took our time, it is very true, but since the beginning we wanted to validate our business model before jumping in the multi-version-app pool, and maybe find ourselves unable to properly maintain multiples apps at the same time.

So we’ve already started developing Poker Analytics on Android as a native app from scratch, as we want to provide the same great user experience our iOS users have.

You might have seen a few screenshots as we’ve already started developments, and we’ll soon be ready to hit the Google Play Store.

Current state of the History screen, pretty close from the iOS version!

That being said, we want to tell you a little bit more about our approach: we’re definitely a little bit late to the Google Play party, so we want to put the app in your hands as soon as possible.

What that means is that we’re going to push features progressively. We’re hoping to ship a first version with a minimal set of features:

Session tracking: cash game & tournament
History
Stats

With this you’ll be able to start tracking your sessions and have basic stats along the way.

After this, we’ll focus our efforts on providing all screens related to the most important figures: bankroll, graphs, reports and of course the beautiful calendar!

Only when reaching that point will we start putting subscriptions in place. That means tracking will be unlimited for free until then!

After that, we’ll still have plenty to do as we’ll have to add hand histories and much, much more, so please be patient and see you soon on Android!

What do we do with your data?

“My data must be automatically saved somewhere right?”

The answer is no.

When designing Poker Analytics, we made the choice to build an offline first app. We want you to be able to access your data at any time, even if you have no network. For us, that means that the data is yours and that we cannot access it. It means that we don’t know how much you win or lose, what notes you have on other players, or how you play your hands.

It also means that you’re in charge of your data. You have to make sure to backup your data and that’s very important. You lose your device, you lose your data…unfortunately we cannot help you. However there are ways to fix this:

iCloud backups: You can activate your data being saved on Apple servers. You can do this under More > Settings.
XML backups: Manual data saving from the app. You should regularly send yourself backups.
Device backups: You can save the whole content of your device, including Poker Analytics, either on iCloud or directly on your computer.

Also, we don’t own any servers. If your data is stored on iCloud, please note that we still have no access to it.

That said, we want to be fully transparent and say that we do collect some data, but more precisely anonymous data only. We use Google Analytics to learn about the general app usage. With this service, we can learn the number of users we have each day, or how much time is spent in Poker Analytics on average, and more useful information like crashes. (Side note: When setting up your device or installing a new iOS version, Apple asks you whether you’d like to give developers crash data, please say yes, we like crash data!)

Additionally, on some occasions, we log events to learn more about specific usages. For example, we wanted to learn the ratio of live & online use, or how often sessions are logged in the app. Please understand that this is all anonymous and grouped data so it’s really impossible to track anything back to specific users.

Your data is in your hands.

Currencies

In Poker Analytics, since a long time ago, you have the ability to use multiple currencies.

Here is how it works:

You have a default display currency. When we calculate results from multiple bankrolls with different currencies, we use your default currency. For example, when looking at your Stats screen, we use that one. To change it, go in More > Settings > Currency. (see first screenshot)
When you create a session, you specify its bankroll. Each bankroll has its own currency, so the session will use your bankroll currency. If you want to change it, when looking at a specific bankroll (More > Bankroll > Select a bankroll), tap on Edit to change its currency. If the currency used is different from your main, you’ll be able to specificy the conversion rate with the main currency. (see second screenshot)

That’s it! You can contact us if you have more questions on the subject!