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Roy Rounder's Sit and Go Shark

Unfortunately, this Poker Calculator is just Calculatem Pro in disguise and that isn't even a program worth copying anymore!

Roy Rounder , a self proclaimed professional poker player, is quickly becoming an Internet Poker Guru . With several eBooks, and what must be a monster email list, if nothing else, he is certainly an excellent internet marketer. Witness the release of Sit and Go Shark . No longer content with promoting Hold'em Genius, Roy Rounder set out to take advantage of the immense popularity of Online Sit and Go poker. The result is one of the most cleverly marketed tools designed to take advantage of a market segment in the fiercely competitive poker business.

I say marketed, because if you take your basic Mathematic Poker Calculator, and add some way cool phrases to certain hands - viola - there you have Sit and Go Shark. Yes the Sit and Go Shark window looks good, and makes you feel like you are getting superior information, but you simply are not. After seeing contradictory recommendations in numerous hands I started to notice a pattern about the messages. Each of them were accurate, and each of them were not. For example - One section of the program would be telling you to stay out of the play at this stage of the tournament, while another is saying call with your KQ, and yet another indicating that your stack is getting low and you should consider making a move. What should be a program that gives straight advice is a confusing, contradictory set of automated messages that serve as angel, devil, angel, devil.. well you get the picture.

Lots of testing, same results.

The truth is after a couple months of testing, is that sadly, Sit and Go Shark is actually Calculatem Pro in disguise. Talk about missed opportunity. The disguise being these random messages that offer NO SPECIFIC advantage. You are much better off with Poker Spy or Tournament Indicator - which is what I use exclusively now for sit and gos.

"Don't play these cards at this stage." Duh. Roy rounder also sells an eBook that devotes a whole chapter to learning how to do chip tricks to impress your friends. Need I say more?

Like most others this window attaches to your poker program and reads your cards, and the flop. It also takes betting amounts, betting patterns, pot odds, blinds, tourney stage and creates several categories of decision values, like sit and go sharkposition, momentum, and table aggression, thus offering advice based on all this data. Sure a lot of this is book play, but the truth is, Book Play wins single table Sit and Go games on most internet websites. Hence, a lot of players play SnG's exclusively, and some are professionals playing $10 - $100 buy-in games as their main source of income - or a least use it as a strategy to fund larger buy-in MTT's.

The Best of it: I would say outright, just save your money, but if you really need to be told that J6os is not a good hand to call a raise with early, then this program may actually be what you need. Your are much better off Holdem Indicator in SitnGo tournaments. I have videos on this site that show how to do it.

In with the Worst of it: Sit and Go Shark doesn't display your hole cards or the flop while referring to them. Some of the sections seem to contradict each other while program doesn't give one clear piece of advice. For example your the position section may suggest to see a flop cheap with these cards, while the your cards header says not to play these cards at this stage. Something to refine for sure. As well, Shark only works on Party Poker and Poker Room, and you can only "buy" it by signing up for an account at one of these poker sites. You may have to use your wife's name to open a second account if you already have one. Further, I have had about 6 or 7 emails sent to me (I am obviously not affiliated) in regards to poor customer service for this product. Seems the download links and email support are faulty in some way or another.

Poker Calculator Wars - Sit and Go Shark vs. Tournament Indicator

Ok so you need a poker calculator, you play a lot of sit and go tournaments, and you're not sure which one to buy - right? If this sounds like you, herein lays some technical information about two online poker calculators. One of them claims to be great for sit and go poker, and one of them really is great for sit and go poker.

I have had the opportunity to test about 35 online poker calculators, and although it's hard to find a perfect product, Tournament Indicator comne very close. As an eEmpirical type of poker calculator, these are two that I have used exclusively for single table, sit and go tournaments (STT).

Empirical Poker calculators offer up to the user a dynamic collection of the aggregate activity of your opponents. This contributes to the feel, or momentum of the table. An important factor to be sure. Sit and Go Shark makes claim to this by having descriptive phrases parsed in stacked sections for you to read while playing. Yes you have to read. Problem is, it offers up different opinions about the same hand, rarely giving a clear recommendation.

Thing is, after using this for over 7 weeks and about 120 sit and gos, the multiple recommendations are continuously distracting, while slowing your game down. You eventually have to ignore them to maintain your sanity. Conversely, Hold'em Pirate's VPIP meter lets you determine in a glance the momentum of the table, the style grid of your opponents, and the strength of your hand based on pot odds. Seriously, what else can you ask for?

I eventually came to the conclusion that Sit and Go Shark was just like Calculatem Pro, but wearing a different suit. The only thing I feel it has done well is remind weak players about not playing garbage hands. It plainly says to fold these garbage hands. This may be a good thing for beginners. However, if you are beyond knowing the true weakness of J6os, T4s etc, you'll be much better off with Tournament Indicator in your sit and go quest.

Now Sit and Go Shark is a Roy Rounder product that specifically tried to nail a market niche in that he knew a lot of online players played STT's exclusively, or used them frequently to build a bankroll or gain MTT experience. (As far as marketing goes, you can't beat Roy Rounder - he successfully pushes a 2 year old poker eBook for 3 times the cost of Matthew Hilger's "Internet Texas Hold'em", a vastly superior product).

I was initially excited by some of the claims Rounder made about Sit and Go Shark, which offered a new level of intuitiveness that other Mathematical Poker Calculators were just starting to phase into. Alas, maybe v2.0 will deliver on such claims.

As for playing in sit and go and multi-table tournaments there are different factors you need to be monitoring like the mzone, tournament stage, streak and balance, VPIP etc.. all of these inbdicators can only be found in tournament indicator and the website offers training videos to let you know how to use those indicators. Further, if you want to know how about great customer service the staff at tournament indicator and holdem indicator are top notch.