Filter Definitions

[Swerve]

Hi, I keep finding myself with questions regarding certain filter definitions. Since I was told recently that there isn't any documentation for filter definitions like there is for statistics, and since it seems that sometimes filters might filter in ways that aren't as clear as we might like, I thought I'd create a thread about this for myself (or anyone else) to use, and if the mods like the idea, we can edit OP with new filter definitions/explanations if and when they come up, and down the road if it gets fat with some useful info maybe we can sticky this thread so that there is some visible running filter documentation.

Or not. Just a thought. In case we like the idea, I'll start the list with the filter definition I asked about the other day, and ask my new question in the next post (and please correct anything I say that isn't correct).

__________________
FILTER DEFINITIONS
__________________

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Actions and Opportunities -> Preflop -> Preflop Calls -> Went All-In
- This filter flags hands in which the active player sees a flop but does not make any postflop actions (which may apply to other player(s) being all-in without the active player being all-in)
____
.
.
.

[Swerve]

So another filter question I stumbled across today is regarding the Actions and Opportunities -> Preflop -> Preflop Opportunities -> Faced Steal Attempt filter. I think it's not behaving as I would expect, so I'd like to clarify the definition. Although I should note that it's possible that the problem is actually in a custom statistic. I don't think this is the case, but I'll tell the whole story just to make sure:

I am using a custom statistic downloaded from the PT4 Warehouse called "3Bet vs CO 2Bet IP". This seems to behave as one would think. The stat is as follows.

Code: Select all

(cnt_p_3bet_vs_co_2bet_ip / cnt_p_3bet_opp_vs_co_2bet_ip) * 100


where

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cnt_p_3bet_vs_co_2bet_ip =

sum(if[tourney_hand_player_statistics.flg_p_3bet and
tourney_hand_summary.str_aggressors_p LIKE '81%' and
tourney_hand_player_statistics.position = 0, 1, 0])


and

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cnt_p_3bet_opp_vs_co_2bet_ip =

sum(if[tourney_hand_player_statistics.flg_p_3bet_opp and
tourney_hand_summary.str_aggressors_p LIKE '81%' and
 tourney_hand_player_statistics.position = 0, 1, 0])


From what I can tell, this seems fine; it looks like somebody just added a position = 0 'and' to the 'if' sequence of two of the default PT4 columns/definitions.

However, a discrepancy arises when I filter hands using the two filters 1. Actions and Opportunities -> Preflop -> Preflop Raises -> Any 3B and 2. NOT(Actions and Opportunities -> Preflop -> Preflop Opportunities -> Faced Steal Attempt In Any Position). With this filter in play, every single "3Bet vs CO 2Bet IP" stat shows up in the filtered list. Since 3Bets vs a CO should be a 3Bet facing a steal, this seems to be a mismatch, since the NOT should exclude any 3Bets vs a CO open raise. Assuming that the actual statistics/columns are defining the CO position and action correctly, my concern is that the "Faced Steal" filter is using some other definition of steal that doesn't include the cutoff position. Either that or NOT'ing that statement is not working as I would expect for some other reason.

Note that with no filters at all, the '3Bet vs CO 2Bet' stat contains 45/414 instances for a 10.87% rate of occurrence. With the indicated 1., 2., filters engaged, the '3Bet vs CO 2Bet' stat shows 45/45 instances.

Could I have a clarification on this? Thanks for the help. (And let me know if I should go ahead and edit the answer into the OP with the intention of this thread being reused and OP kept organized.)

For added clarity, attached is a screenshot of what I described (it is a positional report, so that last row is the BTN position).

[Swerve]

Sorry for the extra posts but I just confirmed for myself that the NOT (Facing a Steal in Any Position) filter is indeed the thing that is not working as I would expect. Since I can't edit the above post any more, and since it's thus far a little vague as to exactly what hands are being referenced, I'd like to include this much clearer example as well.

I just did a hand report with a NOT (Facing a Steal in Any Position) filter, and one hand which was included was this one

___
Yatahay Network - 350/700 NL (8 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

SB: 104.89 BB
BB: 56.17 BB
UTG: 45.51 BB
MP: 13.04 BB
CO: 78.79 BB
Hero (BTN): 59.43 BB

6 players post ante of 0.1 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.1 BB) Hero has 8s 8c
fold, fold, CO raises to 2.55 BB, Hero raises to 8.1 BB, fold, fold, CO calls 5.55 BB

Flop : (18.3 BB, 2 players) 8d Qc Ah
CO checks, Hero bets 13.73 BB, fold

Hero wins 18.3 BB
_____

This is most definitely a "faced a steal attempt" according to the conventional stat definitions, but it's being included here with the 'NOT faced a steal attempt' filter active. There are many hands like this being included with this filter, and this is the part I don't understand.

In fact, I just un-NOT-ed that clause, and now with
- Faced Steal Attempt In Any Positiom
- Raised Preflop Any 3Bet
- Position of Active Player Position of Selected Exactly 0

I get zero results! This is very odd to me. When I NOT the "Faced Steal...' as previously discussed, I get 120 results, all of which are Hero 3Bets on the button but some of which are against steal attempts.

[Flag_Hippo]

If you look at the 'Faced Steal Attempt' filter option in PokerTracker 4 you can only specify it for the SB & BB. The button cannot face a steal as they are not in the blinds and cannot be stolen from. Also bear in mind that:

1) If the BTN 3Bets/calls vs the CO 2Bet then both blinds are no longer facing a steal.

2) If the BTN folds then the SB is facing a steal.

3) If both BTN & SB fold then the BB is facing a steal.

4) If BTN folds & SB VPIPs then the BB is not facing a steal.

5) If the CO 2Bet is isolating versus a limper(s) then that's not a steal attempt so the blinds cannot face a steal even if BTN folds.

[Swerve]

If you look at the 'Faced Steal Attempt' filter option in PokerTracker 4 you can only specify it for the SB & BB.

Ok. I understand that what you're saying must be true, but visually, this does not appear to be true at all. Because when I look at the 'Faced Steal Attempt' filter option, I see what appears to be 3 separate, unrelated options: 'In Any Position', 'In SB', and 'In BB'. The "In Any Position" option has its own checkmark and there is no indication that it's only an OR of the other two visible options, as opposed to it just being what its label indicates (i.e: ANY position, which by definition would include the BTN).

Ahhh....It just hit me that you said BTN cannot "face a steal" because he "cannot be stolen from", and I see now that PT4 defines a "3B steal" elsewhere in the stat definitions as only being possible from the blinds. So I understand what you're saying here but this definition seems very odd to me. A "steal" is an action in and of itself, and it seems to me that anyone in subsequent positions after a player makes some particular action will be potentially "faced" with that action, i.e.: will potentially have an option to respond to it. This seems like the important thing to me given the language, and whether or not a potentially responding player is in the blinds and can technically be "stolen from" in that sense doesn't really seem relevant.

But I'm suddenly remembering that that's why once upon a time I had to download a custom "BTN vs CO 2B" stat in the first place. And although I find this distinction of "must be in blinds to 'face a steal' " odd and regrettable, for reasons already described, this decision was obviously made long before I came along, and at least it's consistent.

So, moving ahead: in practical terms, I want to do a hand report to filter for "3Bet from BTN vs a single open-raiser, NOT ALL-IN, NOT vs ALL-IN, NOT vs a steal attempt". In other words, I'm trying to see how often and with what hands a player foxes around on the button vs respectable honest-to-goodness open raiser folk, in contrast to how they might respond vs those obviously filthy thieves who are open-raising in the CO or later. I don't see a way to separately filter for 'Opponent' like you can in NoteTracker, so I can't filter for 'Opponent Made a Steal Attempt' on the other side of things. So far, I'm trying to accomplish this with the filters shown in the attached screenshot (EDIT: Sorry, note that the screenshot is not specifically dealing with CO or later, I specified positions >= 4. But it's the same idea).

The only thing I can think of that I'm obviously missing is a "make sure nobody else got involved in between the raiser and the player on the button" filter, but I'm not sure how to make that happen. Since "Faced Steal Attempt" doesn't cover this situation, could you or anyone else please suggest a way to complete this filter (or a better, less convoluted way to do it from the ground up)?

[Swerve]

Crap. Providing my own correction here to my last post: In the screenshot, my last filter is incorrect. I need to use an SPR filter to specify stack depth there instead of the "went all-in" filter as discussed in the other thread (really I want to include only those situations where the BTN, at the time of their 3B action, can expect the possibility of some decent post-flop playability/SPR - I tried to do it concisely by excluding 'opp. action = all-in' and 'hero action = all-in' but I'm discovering that conciseness is not my friend in PT4). This doesn't really affect my open question about how to exclude other interfering players though, or whether or not the overall approach is the right idea.

[Swerve]

I hope it doesn't seem like I'm hyperposting in my own thread but I've made my own progress on a solution and have rendered my earlier question irrelevant. Alas, there are always more questions!

I am making progress though. Here is where I'm at now.

So the answer to my question in the last post is to NOT a 'squeeze opportunity' (and I think excluding prior limpers was also necessary).

Ideally, I'd like to specify that the 3B is not putting the original raiser or 3bettor all-in, but I don't want to exclude anything that happens AFTER the 3B - so I don't think I can NOT any of the filters which reference a pre-flop all-in. i.e.: if the BB wakes up with a hand and 4Bets, etc - if people wind up all-in preflop by some future alternative means beyond the 3Bet, I don't want to exclude those hands. For this same reason I don't think I can use post-flop SPR to filter either. I want to include only those hands where a 3B is being made with the possibility of further potential significant action between, at least, the original raiser and the 3Bettor, but it doesn't matter if this action actually pops off or not, or if it happens pre or post flop, or if it gets instigated by a player yet to act.

With this in mind, the only thing I could find in the filters to help with that is 'Action/Faced Action With Sizing' stuff. There is no option for 'all-in' or 'percentage of stack' here that I can see (this might be a good suggestion for a future release, but I already completed the poll in the other thread), so I've tried to use Action/Facing Actions with Sizing to filter for "reasonably-sized" 3Bets and 2Bets, in combination with effective stack sizes. But none of this quite covers every case, as it's still possible for a small stack to shove all-in, and then for the hero on the BTN to 3Bet to this 'reasonable size'. For example, the screenshotted filter combination above that specifies a 22BB minimum effective stack size didn't filter out a hand where a 12BB stack shoved all-in as the original raiser (which actually surprised me, since I thought effective SS referred to the smallest stack still in play, which I thought included the one which just went all-in).

After posting the above screenshot I also added a "Facing 2Bet with Size <=5BB" filter to filter out that particular hand, but I still see the possibility is there for a smaller all-in to squeak through. I'm also not fond of limiting 3Bet and 2Bet sizes in this way because we can imagine a spot where people have huge stacks and are making larger than average raise sizes while still leaving a good bit of stack behind, and I don't want to exclude those just based on larger sizing. I'm just not sure how to specify that I don't want this specific 2Bet/3Bet combo to be all-in, or even 'basically all-in' for either player, without also excluding any and all preflop all-ins.

Ok, sorry for multiposting. I'd edit down earlier posts if I could. I'll leave this thread for a while and wait for somebody else to say something in case I'm missing something obvious and huge that would make all this easier.

[Flag_Hippo]

(which actually surprised me, since I thought effective SS referred to the smallest stack still in play, which I thought included the one which just went all-in).

The effective stack for a player (it is not the same for each player involved) is established at their first action in a hand and it's the amount they can potentially lose in a pot so it's determined by the larger of the stacks still involved at that point and not the smallest.

Ideally, I'd like to specify that the 3B is not putting the original raiser or 3bettor all-in, but I don't want to exclude anything that happens AFTER the 3B

This will require the use of custom expression filters in 'My Reports'. For example you can compare that the active player did not 3Bet more than their actual or effective stack by comparing "cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_p_raise_made" (the absolute size of the first raise made by the player) with their stack ("cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_before") or effective stack ("cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_p_effective_stack"):

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cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_p_raise_made < cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_before

You can use this expression filter by clicking on the 'Filters' link and selecting 'Add New Expression Filters' and you will need to replace "cash" with "tourney" if you are in a tournament report. Filtering for data from the perspective of the other players involved in the hand e.g. the 2Bettor is more complex and requires a subquery. There is an example of a subquery here but if you don't know anything about the database schema then you should see this guide for the basics on custom statistics and this guide for a deeper walkthrough. The latter was written for PokerTracker 3 but the techniques all apply to PokerTracker 4.

[Swerve]

The effective stack for a player (it is not the same for each player involved) is established at their first action in a hand and it's the amount they can potentially lose in a pot so it's determined by the larger of the stacks still involved at that point and not the smallest.

Right, I worded that poorly. In the situation I described it was easy to forget about the blinds behind and think of the 'effective stack' as being maximized by the smaller of the two colliding stacks. And also just because 'effective stack' really only applies to a largest stack's perspective in all cases (otherwise you just have an 'actual stack'), so again it's easy to think of it in terms of the "smaller" stacks being the ones that matter as far as limiting. But I understand. With multiple stacks, it's the largest of the smaller stacks that maximizes the effective stack for the largest stack.

This will require the use of custom expression filters in 'My Reports'. For example you can compare that the active player did not 3Bet more than their actual or effective stack by comparing "cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_p_raise_made" (the absolute size of the first raise made by the player) with their stack ("cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_before") or effective stack ("cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_p_effective_stack"):

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cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_p_raise_made < cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_before

You can use this expression filter by clicking on the 'Filters' link and selecting 'Add New Expression Filters' and you will need to replace "cash" with "tourney" if you are in a tournament report. Filtering for data from the perspective of the other players involved in the hand e.g. the 2Bettor is more complex and requires a subquery. There is an example of a subquery here but if you don't know anything about the database schema then you should see this guide for the basics on custom statistics and this guide for a deeper walkthrough. The latter was written for PokerTracker 3 but the techniques all apply to PokerTracker 4.

Ah, ok. I didn't know we could even do this. I'm not terribly confident that this will be easy, but I have a passing familiarity with basic SQL queries, and I have some programming experience as far as loops and if statements and comparisons and such. So I'll dig into the links and hopefully I'll be able to sort it out. (Still, I will just mention again, since there was a poll asking about improvements for future releases in the other thread: adding a '% of stack' option to the "actions/faced with actions with sizing..." menu(s) seems like something that could be useful. Assuming it's fairly trivial to add. There's already a '% of pot' option there and it just seems like a '% of actual/effective stack' type option would have a real nice home there with those other options.)

Thanks for your help.

P.S. When I first made this thread, I thought I could edit the OP much later, and was thinking it might be nice to add any good filter clarifications to the OP, and reuse the thread in the hopes that eventually it could become a good sticky. Obv I can't edit anymore, but it still seems like it would be nice to have some visible, on-the-fly filter definition documentation going on, especially for things that don't have readily visible Configure->Statistics definitions available. What I'm saying is, if I had the ability to do so, I'd edit into the OP a short definition of "Faced a Steal" to go along with the 'Went All-In' definition I already put there. I'd also maybe even put one for 'Effective Stack', since I didn't see an entry for that in the Configure->Stat path (by searching eff). Sure, most people know what effective stack size means, but as I demonstrated, it's easy to have a blind spot, and the subsequent clarification was clear and concise and useful. 5 Stars, would read again. So...just sayin. Organization might be a problem if a lot of info builds up over time, but for now, feel free to add those things to the OP yourself (assuming mods can still edit) with the goal of eventually having a centralized reference for filter definitions that you can sticky so you don't always have to answer the same questions over and over again. Which I'm just assuming you do. If not, that's fine, but if it's all the same to you I plan to reuse this thread when my next filter question arises (I already had like three more questions come up while poking around last week in the filter lists, but I forgot them before I posted them. In due time.)

[Swerve]

This will require the use of custom expression filters in 'My Reports'. For example you can compare that the active player did not 3Bet more than their actual or effective stack by comparing "cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_p_raise_made" (the absolute size of the first raise made by the player) with their stack ("cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_before") or effective stack ("cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_p_effective_stack"):

Code: Select all

cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_p_raise_made < cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_before

You can use this expression filter by clicking on the 'Filters' link and selecting 'Add New Expression Filters' and you will need to replace "cash" with "tourney" if you are in a tournament report. Filtering for data from the perspective of the other players involved in the hand e.g. the 2Bettor is more complex and requires a subquery. There is an example of a subquery here but if you don't know anything about the database schema then you should see this guide for the basics on custom statistics and this guide for a deeper walkthrough. The latter was written for PokerTracker 3 but the techniques all apply to PokerTracker 4.

Is there any way to do this for Notetracker auto-notes? I'm not seeing a way to create expression filters and such like you can in My Reports.

I'm running into a similar situation where I want to take auto-notes for "Squeeze vs Steal NOT All-In [tiered by stack size]". I've been able to get over the raiser/3Bettor all-in problem, more or less, using bet/stack sizings, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to exclude hands where, say, a BTN open raises, and then the SB goes all in for < 1BB before the BB makes his non-all-in "squeeze". The problem is of course that although it technically fits the squeeze definition, it's not a true squeeze in the sense that the original raiser no longer has a second player's potential action to "be squeezed by" behind him; it's more akin to a 3B vs steal, just with extra $ in the pot. I would expect people to be much more aggressive in that spot and thus don't want to include those results under a normal squeeze note heading. But while I can use the "Opponent" button to filter the first opponent's actions and stack, etc, there doesn't seem any way to do this for the second player. Things like "players who saw flop" don't affect it either since the all-in player technically sees the flop.

Would welcome any ideas here if you have any. Thanks.

Also, I have some suggestions/requests for future versions (in general, but also some to solve this kind of problem). Is there a designated place to put stuff like that, or should I just say them here, or make a specific thread?

Actually, one of those "suggestions" might be a question: is there any way to change the "highlight" color of Pokertracker 4? When I highlight a row, for instance, it highlights in a very light blue color and it is EXTREMEly difficult to see what's actually selected. (But if there is no way to change it, then one of my suggestion is to please change it to something more visible/traditional, like dark blue.)