I've always had my shark scope stats blocked just cause I used to think it was anal when people looked at others stats. Obviously I completly disagree with that now, but I'm just wondering what people think are some pro's and cons about having stat blocked/unblocked.
I mean, if your stats are decent and they are on show, are you essentialy getting the better players that game select to stay away from you? or even better players with better stats than yours sitting with you?
Does the general player give someone who's stats are blocked less respect until they are shown otherwise etc etc.
As my stats are slowly getting better and better, I'm still undecided if it will make a difference to unblock them or not
Thanks
If you're a winning player I don't think it matters much unless you're playing way above where your stats indicate you are beating.
For example, if you are a 5% ROI winner with avg stake of 75, you're not going to get sat by the best players in the $115 or even $230 turbos on Stars. You will, however get sat by the best players at higher stakes. With the same ROI and an average stake of 300 or so, you'll get avoided by most of the regulars even at higher stakes, but some of the better and/or more egotistical ones will sit you, at least until they safely know you're really good. If you don't want to play these types of players (nobody should), don't be a jerk to them either, unless you want unlimited action from guys like bcm or emotional guys (egotistical if you prefer) like cat5cane.
Getting back on topic, I don't think it matters and I prefer to keep stats 100% out there. If I don't want people to see my stats I won't tell anybody my username. It's pretty easy to keep your stats a secret that way, but most poker players want to brag when they are doing good and hide themselves when they are doing bad or somebody is harassing them.
I *think* having stats blocked increases your action from all players, and at $230+, I'll take all the action I can get. Nobody really has a way of knowing for sure and after doing a stat reset, I started getting tons and tons of action. I'm sure that'll go away once I make money again. The most profitable thing to do if the regs already know who you are is probably to reset your stats as often as possible, so that every time you go on a bad run, the low-stakes fish come out and sit you. However, if you're playing low stakes, I'd probably just say keeping your stats blocked is 50000x more +EV than having good stats, and having bad stats is the most +EV thing of all. Even fish at low stakes game select with SharkScope. Best thing you can do is make fish come find you.
Meh, the worst fish don't block their sharkscopes, so they presumably don't know about it.
I honestly don't think it matters at low stakes, you get action within a minute or two anyways and most players that sit you suck. Good players that game select won't sit anybody with a positive ROI in the low stakes. Some of the aggros might, but you're a degenerate if you're sitting players second AND sit winners. Sitting first is infinitely better in those games for any winning player.
thanks, some interesting things to take into consideration there and definitely something I'll be giving thought to over the next couple of days.
I generally do always sit first (23s) and get a fairly balanced mixed of winners and losers, which I'm actually enjoying at the moment but as I move up i obviously want more losers so was eager to hear some views on this.
In general, at the higher stakes, would you say that people with blocked stats are sterotyped as being weak? (as most the top players have their stats shown)
At the super high stakes x% of the best players will sit literally any player they have not played until they believe that player is at least nearly as good as them. x% of players won't sit a winning player they recognize unless they really feel they are bad, even then they sometimes do not sit this player. The blocking of sharkscope really doesn't matter that much imo as long as blocking SS doesn't make you look a lot better or worse (like if you had 180 man stats that propped up ur ROI blocked to 5%, but if you left it open ppl could easily see you suck badly at husngs). That's my opinion though, Skates disagrees, at least to an extent.