Poker Table Ratings Review
Review of Poker Table Ratings' hand history selling service.
Most people know PokerTableRatings.com from their tracking of cash game winnings on the major poker networks accompanied by pretty graphs showing the players tendencies and wins/losses. Although that stuff is interesting, it is not what this review is about 
In order to keep their player database up to date, PTR gathers a mindbogglingly large amount of hand histories each day. They sell these hands, so people like you and me can get extra information on your opponents by importing them into our Pokertracker or Holdem Manager database.
I haven't been using PTR for very long, but so far I'm a happy customer. I got access to my hand histories shortly after purchasing them, but the download took a little longer than what I'm used to. They also gave me a free 2 week trial of a hand history subscription service, which is a very nice bonus (more about that to come later).
| Buy Hand histories (Poker Table Ratings) |  |
Video Guide
Matt has made a delicious video walkthrough showing you PTR works, and how to use the hands after you buy them.
Supported Poker Rooms
PTR cover the 4 biggest poker networks as well as the Cereus network and Bodog. At the moment they are the only site that sell hand histories from Bodog, so if that is where you are playing, you should definitely try their service..
- Full Tilt Poker
- PokerStars
- Party Poker
- Ipoker
- Cereus (Absolute Poker/UltimateBet
- Bodog
Game Coverage
PTR cover NL and FL Hold'Em on all the sites they support. In addition they have quite a lot of Omaha hands from Fullt Tilt Poker, Cereus and PokerStars, both FL and PL.
In addition they track the CAP NL Hold'Em and CAP PLO games on Full Tilt Poker separately.
If you want to see how old the hands you are buying are, all you have to do is to go through the order process and stop at step 3, right before you add the hands to your cart and are asked for your payment details. This lets you see exactly when the hands you are buying were gathered.
Poker Table Ratings let you see the age of the hands before you buy.
Since PTR has to keep the player statistics on their site up to date they collect more hand histories than their competitors. While this is a nice feature, it don't have that big of an impact for most people, since the difference between getting 1.000.000 hands that were gathered the past week compared to during the past 2 weeks isn't significant when using the hands for HUD stats.
There are, however, groups of people, who will benefit immensely from all the extra hands. Most noticeably those who buy more than 2.000.000 hands at a time, and those who want hands from NL10$ or lower, since the other hand history sites tend to have bad coverage at those stakes.
Subscription Option
While PTR don't sell a subscription where fresh hand histories are sent to your daily each day, it is available as an "upgrade" after you have bought a batch of hand histories from them.
When I signed up, I got a 2 week free trial, but I think that may have been a limited time offer, so you may want to ask support if it is still available if the absence of the free trial would be a deal-breaker for you.
Delivery of Hand Histories
When you buy hand histories from PTR you will be sent an email with a link to where you can download them. This usually happens within an hour, but if you are buying several million hands at a busy time of the day, you may have to wait a little while longer.
Your old purchases will be available for download on their website under My PTR, which is very handy if you accidentally delete your local copy.
Payment Options
PTR has a pretty good selection of payment options, which I have listed below.
- PayPal
- VISA
- Mastercard
- American Express
I used my VISA card to buy from them, and everything were straightforward and without any issues, and while I can't speak for the other payment options, the whole process were very polished, so I would be very surprised if you had any issues with your payment.
If you can't use any of their payment options, you could deposit to your PayPal account and use that to pay. If that isn't an option you may want to have a look at Hand HQ, who has a couple of different payment options.
Support
I haven't tested
Overall Impression
Poker Table Ratings runs a pretty tight ship, and from what I have seen so far, they are a very good option (maybe even the best) if you are looking to buy a lot of hand histories at one time.
Their daily hand feed subscription is attractive, but at the moment Poker Hand Scout's subscription is slightly better for many stakes and much cheaper.
I will definitely come back to PTR to buy hands, not only because of their coverage but also the fast delivery.