Poker Software Aids

While I was waiting for my seed money to reach my Neteller account, I surfed the net and read up on the various software available to help you while playing poker online. One advantage of playing poker on your computer is that you can run other programs at the same time that can help you with your game. This is allowed by the poker sites, as long as the programs don't actually play for you or somehow tamper with the game servers. After some research, I decided to get PokerTracker, GameTime+, and Poker Indicator before I sign up at PartyPoker and start playing.

Poker Tracker (PT) costs $55 (or 5000 PSO points) and is a program that reads the hands that you and your opponents play. This is helpful for keeping track of your profit/loss at the tables. However, its real power lies in the database that it keeps of all those hands. After a session of poker, you can use PT to review the hands where you lost the most money and see where you might have made any mistakes in playing the hand. You can also examine hands where you made money to see if you could have played it better to extract more value. Or, you could sort the data by starting hands or groups of starting hands (e.g. pairs, suited connectors, suited aces, etc). and see which ones you make or lose the most money with. PT also calculates some very useful statistics of your play. The percentage you voluntarily put money into the pot (VP$IP%) will let you know if you are playing loose (playing a lot of hands) or tight (playing few hands). A common mistake among beginners is to play far too many starting hands. Playing too loose will tend to get you into trouble by having to play hands where you have much more difficult decisions to make. Unless you are more advanced and can play well after the flop, it is much better to play tight. Your preflop raise percentage (PFR%) and aggression factor (AF) will tell you if you are playing aggressively (raising a lot) or passively (calling a lot). Learning to play a more aggressive style is very important in playing profitably. Other features will help you keep track of your play by position and by session. I would highly recommend this program to anyone who plays a lot of ring games (cash games, as opposed to tournaments) online. It can be useful if you play tournaments or sit-n-go's (SNG's - unscheduled single- or multi-table tournaments that start once enough people join in), but there are fewer sites that work automatically with PT for these types of games.

GameTime+ (GT+) is a free add-on for PokerTracker, and is used to overlay PokerTracker statistics right on top of the poker table where you are playing. A great feature of PT is that it keeps track of your opponents play as well as your own. With GT+, you can keep a real-time set of important statistics right next to each player at the table. Knowing how each of your opponents at the table play will help greatly in making decisions. For example, if an opponent has been playing very tightly (VP$IP about 15%), and is suddenly making a large re-raise pre-flop, you can be pretty sure he has a monster hand like AA. I highly recommend this program if you play ring games.

Poker Indicator (PI) costs $55 (or 3500 PSO points) and is a poker odds calculator. I got it for free by signing up at Play65 (a backgammon site), but that offer is no longer available. It automatically reads your hole cards (starting cards) and the board cards (community cards - flop, turn, and river), and calculates your outs (number of cards that will improve your hand), % chance of making a better hand, and the pot odds (ratio of amount in pot to amount to call). It will also calculate the % chance an opponent will hold a particular hand, and then calculate an overall percentage chance you will win or tie. It ranks your hole cards and position by Expected Value (EV) - a positive EV means that in the long run, these two hole cards should show a profit if played properly, and a negative EV would mean a loss. Finally, for some poker sites, PI will show you mucked cards at showdown (cards that your opponents throw away without showing after they call a bet on the river - some poker sites reveal this information in the hand histories they give you). Overall, I would recommend PI for beginners. Intermediate to advanced players will not find it very useful, although it can be helpful for quicker decision-making when multi-tabling (playing several poker tables at the same time).