The advantage of the mucks

[ltdan]

I admit - I didn't know this for kind of a long time. So I can only assume, many poker players playing on-line and live don't know this either.

Live games - typically you never see cards players muck.
Online - it's right in the hand history for all to see.

So - how important is this? How often do you typically bother to check the mucks while playing online?

Do you vary your play to account for the difference? It seems like quite a large advantage if the players do not know about it - altough unlikely at any serious level.

Or is it just not overly important when faced with understanding and mastering other more important facets of the game?

And for those of you I've met - I suspect this post will firmly remove any shred of evidence that ever hinted I might have been some sort of ringer at Shark-a-palooza. Eh, I'm OK with that - I just want to play better poker.

[nsidestrate]

There are software tools that automatically show you the mucked cards. When I use them, I tend to look at pretty much every hand. If I have to click the hand history button, I probably only check one in 20 or more.

When it really helps is when I go back and look at my sessions in pokertracker. I usually learn things about the other players that I didn't notice in real time and I try to add suitable notes.

[ltdan]

How often do you use such software?

Do any of those happen to run natively on a Mac?

[nsidestrate]

Lack of native Mac support is why I only run it sometimes. I use parallels or one of the ugly Windows laptops when I feel the need.

[Taardvark]

I check pretty much everytime. Before I do I try to guess what villian(s) had to test my reading skills.

[enteratlantis]

[jeffnc]

They don't show you anything that isn't available from the poker site itself.

[superduperchick]

yup i always check constantly !