BBJ v non-BBJ

[NimhOfJoy]

Does/can PT4 break down stakes by BBJ and non-BBJ tables?

[kraada]

Unfortunately we do not track BBJ rake and thus we cannot separate those stakes out for you.

[NimhOfJoy]

Can I request this as a feature going forward?

[WhiteRider]

We're aware of the issues with BBJ, but it isn't as simple as it appears. Some sites don't mention the BBJ in their histories at all..

[StevenM]

Not only do some sites not notate the BBJ, but in the majority of cases we cannot even determine what amount was taken separately from the rake. As an extreme example 888 has BBJ tables but participation is optional in each hand and they take the BBJ directly from the stack without noting it in the hand history. As you can imagine, calculating the BBJ becomes very hard when the rake is not notated in the hand history as well as is commonly the case.

We have discussed this discrepancy with many poker rooms, the official reason we receive for not including the rake or BBJ amount varies but it basically comes down to one simple fact - the room doesn't want to remind the players how much is being taken from the game for the BBJ or for the house. Since we cannot get the industry to change to meet our needs for tracking, we must count the BBJ contribution as rake on all sites except for 888 where the BBJ is taken from the stack so we have no way of knowing what has occurred.

We should note that the Winning Poker Network (ACR & True Poker) is an anomaly, The hand history format is encoded, but we can determine the amount contributed to the BBJ separately from the rake, the text hand history format you see in PT4 is translated by us from the encoded file to a format that is legible by humans. But we cannot separate this out in PT4 to it's own field because the data is not available for other sites, sadly we must roll this all into the rake field in the database to ensure consistency.

I hope this detailed explanation helps answer your question, if the industry is willing to change then we will be first in line to change our BBJ tracking strategy as well, alas we cannot make this change on our own. Thanks for asking!

[NimhOfJoy]

Argh, this totally ruins everyone's rakeback stats too. Thanks for the info.

[StevenM]

Argh, this totally ruins everyone's rakeback stats too. Thanks for the info.

This is one of the many reasons why PokerTracker does not automatically track rakeback, sadly its virtually impossible to get accurate data, and our developers are sticklers for accurate data!. We do however encourage users to download custom stats for tracking an estimate of rakeback if this is something they wish to do - keep in mind that if the poker site uses a system like Essence which weighs the value of a player in the rakeback calculation based on a secret formula only known to the network then there is no way to calculate the rakeback expectation.