Poker Software

Online poker has its advantages over playing live at casinos. You can use poker software that help you make better decisions at the tables. It can give you extra edge over your opponents.

Poker software for beginners

If you are relatively new to poker, the first thing you will need is to have a good understanding of poker odds. There are plenty of real-time poker odds calculators available. Holdem Indicator is in my opinion among of the best. It supports every online poker room we review on our website.

How does it work? Holdem Indicator attaches itself to the poker table windows. It automatically recognizes all the visible cards, calculates the odds of hitting particular hand types, and gives you the estimated win odds. The application also works out the pot odds so you can compare them with your win odds to make the best decision about whether to fold, call, or raise.

Whenever you hold the best possible hand, you will receive a special nuts alert so you will know when it is time to play for your whole stack without any risk. The software also displays your opponents losing mucked hands that are not normally visible on the table window.

Holdem Indicator’s second main feature is a basic player tracking. It captures hand histories and analyzes your opponents' playing styles so you have a basic idea how they play and can adjust your strategy accordingly. It is not very sophisticated but still useful for beginners.

Poker software for advanced players

If you are an experienced player, you do not need to have odds calculated for you as you can work them out yourself in your mind. Instead, you need to get as much information about your opponents as possible. Poker tracking software specializes in this matter. There are basically only two really good programs that can do it – Holdem Manager and Poker Tracker. Personally, I use the first one.

Tracking software relies on thousands of hand histories that are imported into huge databases and then analyzed by running sophisticated queries. The result is hundreds (if not thousands) of unique statistics on both you and your opponents. They vary from the simple VP$IP (voluntarily put money in pot) to such stats as river continuation bet success percentage versus 3 players.

There are plenty of filters available to fine tune your searches. You can analyze statistics for specific time periods, number of players, betting rounds, actions, and much more. Statistics can be displayed next to your opponent screen names thanks to the HUD (heads up display) so you have easy access to the information on the players you are playing against.

Other Holdem Manager features include graphs, where you can see how you perform over a period of time. It draws not only the total winnings graphs but also showdown and non-showdown winnings, all-in EV (see Sklansky bucks article), and rakeback.

The built-in hand replayer allows for analyzing difficult hands after a session is over to find and plug any leaks in your game. It also calculates the poker odds and pot odds.

Poker odds calculators

Sometimes all you need is to get the odds for specific situations. You can use our poker odds calculator that will do the job perfectly most of the time. If you need more, you can try PokerStove, which is a standalone calculator. The advantage of this application is the ability to work out odds not only for specific hands but also entire ranges, which can be helpful when you can only put your opponent on a range of hands based on their playing tendencies.

Is using poker software ethical/legal?

Every program that we present in this article is totally legal to use and accepted at every online poker room we promote. They do not give you an unfair advantage of any kind. They just analyze the information that is freely available to everyone at the table. Remember that 99% of winning players already use poker software so if you do not, you are at disadvantage versus them.

Some poker programs are officially prohibited to use at most poker rooms. They are usually bots – applications that play automatically without involving the user. Players want to play against human opponents not an artificial intelligence, thus poker rooms forbid to use them. Some rooms also do not allow programs that grab hand histories and share them with network of other users.

More articles on general poker:

  Quick start
  Poker bankroll management
  Poker position
  Poker playing styles
  Optimal poker session length
  Poker history
  Poker glossary
  Poker tips

Go back to the Online Poker Strategy.