Poker Software Review

I am using some software tools that I want to recommend. If you are not using these tools then you are really leaving money on the table.

Hold em manager and Poker academy Prospector are two very similar products that let you analyze your game breaking your performance by:

• Holding type. This lets you ask "How profitable are my AKo? AA? 72o?, How profitable are my AKo vs AKs?"
• Position. "Out of all my AKo, how much more money I make from the button/cutoff/high jack?"
• Stakes. "I know I seem to do better at the lower stakes, is this true?" lets you compare apples to apples by showing the performance on big blinds per 100 hands (bb/100) between a range of hands.
• Previous action. "Am I losing or making money by playing this AKo against a button raise in the big blind?" or "How profitable are my AKo vs AKs from the button/cutoff/big blind or overall (all positions)?"
• Holdem Manager has an increadible feature that lets you see what your "all-in" equity is. Lets say you are 100bb deep and get your Aces all-in pre-flop against PocketKings. You know that you are an 80-20 favorite but actual results will vary. This particular time the poker gods smiled at the other guy and you lose the hand. Holdem manager tells you your actual loss was 100bb but your EV (Expected value) is 160bb (100bb you, 100bb villain = 200bb * 80% = 160bb).

The most profitable hands in poker are pocket pairs, how many times am I seeing a flop with pocket pairs (99-22)? how many times you hit a set (1/7)? How many big blinds am I winning once I hit a set (in bb/100).

If you have never used any of these two tools I highly recommend that you download one of them and try them. Keep in mind that the variance in poker will skew the numbers violently for low number of hands (<20K kind of numbers). The higher the number of hands in your file the better specially for the more detailed stats.

Next week"Poker stove"...