How to Datamine Ongame

Some poker rooms consider datamining to be an unfair advantage.
I don't have the time to stay up to date with the changes the poker rooms make to their T&Cs, so be sure to check them yourself.

Guide to datamining on the Ongame network.

In order to datamine on Ongame, you will need a handgrabber. The only one that currently works is "Ongame Hand Grabber" from Idleminer.

The handgrabber doesn't have a lot of extra features, however, it does what it is supposed to (datamine) and does it well. This is in part due to the lack of extra features, since it makes it extremely easy to use, even for those who have never datamined before.

If you don't want to datamine yourself, you can buy Ongame hand histories. It gives you the same benefits as datamining, and will give you a lot of hand histories in a very short amount of time.

Video Demonstration

I have made a short video where I show how to set up the handgrabber and get started datamining.

Ongame Hand Histories

Update: After the P5 update of Ongame's software they are now saving hand histories as text files, like all other poker rooms.

Before I describe the datamining process, I want to give a short description of how the Ongame hand histories work. The reason is that they are very different from the hand histories that most other pokerrooms use, which can cause quite a lot of confusion.

Ongame doesn't use text based hand histories but instead save every hand you play in a big database. This means that it is near impossible for you to find a hand history on your own, since they are all located in a single file (the database), which tends to become very big and is also difficult to read without a special program.

This isn't a problem per se, since both Pokertracker and Holdem Manager are able to read the Ongame database and extract your hand histories, however, it can be extremely confusing for those who are used to working with text based hand histories.

Please note that Ongame Hand Grabber can both save "normal" text hand histories, and save the hand histories to the Ongame database, which allow the pokertrackers to import them.

Datamining The Ongame Network

Ongame Hand Grabber is very easy to use. All you have to do in order to datamine, is to start the program and press the "Launch Site" button, after which the program will save hand histories from any table you observe (or play at yourself).

Screenshot of Ongame Hand Grabber.

Experienced dataminers may miss the inclusion of a table opener, which would allow the handgrabber to datamine at full efficiency when you are not sitting at the computer by automatically closing tables if the players leave and open new ones.

Fortunately SpadeIT has included an Ongame table opener in their table selection tool for Ongame, EyeOnGame, which you can read more about below.

Ongame Table Selection

SpadeIT has created a table selection tool for Ongame called EyeOnGame, which will make it much easier for you to find tables with bad players. It works by looking up the stats for every single player sitting at a cash game in Pokertracker/Holdem Manager, and then show you at which tables known bad players are currently sitting.

While this is of course useful for all players, the effects are amplified if you datamine or buy hand histories, simply because you have so many hand histories. I almost always have hand histories from more than 80% of the players at the stakes that I play at (I regularly reach 95%). For me this roughly translates into knowing the quality of 4 out of 5 tables without even opening them.

Since the majority of your winnings comes from bad players, using EyeOnGame will allow you to increase your winrate from one day to the next, by helping you find the opponents that you will win the most from.

Download EyeOnGame You automatically get an 8 day free trial when you download EyeOnGame.