Armed to the Teeth!

By Tony Guerrera

Different types of software and web resources are available to help you with analyzing poker hands, logging hands played online for future reference, and keeping track of your online opponents. Since poker is a game that favors those who have the best information, you should take advantage of them all!

Hand Simulators

A hand simulator is a program that takes a situation and evaluates the probability that each player will win or tie. For example, if I have AK, and I am all-in preflop against an opponent holding 99, a hand simulator will find the outcome for each of the 1,712,304 possible boards and spit out the chance that each hand wins or ties. You could do this calculation by hand, but I doubt it would be a constructive use of your time; the sheer number of possible boards in Texas hold’em makes a hand simulator necessary for most hand analysis. Of course, when you are actually playing, you need to have approximations for what is going on, but if you are serious about improving, you need to be doing analysis away from the table, and a hand simulator will make your analysis much more efficient. The more efficient your analysis away from the table is, the more time you can spend playing profitable poker!

Many simulators allow you only to put in a single hand for each opponent, but the best simulators allow you to put in distributions for each opponent. Suppose it’s preflop, you have JJ, and you believe your opponent has AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, 99, AK, AQ, AJ, or AT. Instead of having to do separate simulations for each scenario and having to weight the results accordingly, a hand simulator that handles distributions can just run this as one simulation. Obviously, you should use a simulator that allows you to put in distributions! My simulator of choice is Poker Stove.

Sniffers

If you only play in brick-and-mortar casinos, a hand simulator is the only piece of software you’ll need. If you play online, you’ll need much more. The first type of software that you should have is hand-tracking software. Hand tracking software packages, referred to in Killer Poker Online 2 as “sniffers,” create a database of every hand you and your opponents have played and calculate a wide range of helpful statistics for every player in the database. Sniffers also let you sort through hands intelligently, looking for specific situations that you might want to analyze. Perhaps you want to look at all the hands where you played AJ under the gun in the early rounds of MTTs (multi-table tournaments). Perhaps you encounter player XXXXXX every night at the 6-max $200NL on your favorite site, and you have played hundreds of hands against him. The bottom line is that sniffers are great for dissecting your own play and the play of your opponents. From my experience, finding a good sniffer for free is really tough, but the $25-$50 that you’ll spend on a sniffer will be some of the best money you’ve ever invested in your poker game. My favorite sniffer is Poker Tracker; it provides many useful statistics, and its instant replay feature is unrivaled (if a sniffer doesn’t have an instant replay feature, don’t even bother with it!).

HUDs

It would be nice to have the information in your sniffer’s database live on screen when you are playing online, wouldn’t it? Well, there are pieces of software out there that do exactly that! Such software packages are referred to as heads-up displays (HUDs). The information provided by HUDs won’t let you discern every nuance of your opponents’ betting patterns. In other words, to play optimally, you still have to pay very close attention to your opponents. However, a HUD gives you a tremendous edge in that it picks up information that you may have missed. In tournaments, where your results can often hinge on the results of one hand, having as much book as possible on your opponents is vital. If you are multitabling, playing with a HUD is absolutely essential!

Just remember that using a HUD isn’t an excuse to be lazy; HUDs are an aid, but they won’t give you information as specific as “this person raises from the big blind every time there are a bunch of limpers.” But even though they are just an aid, they are essential if you want to optimize your profits at the online tables. My HUD of choice is PokerAce HUD. PokerAce HUD interacts with the Poker Tracker database and has an easily customizable display.

Online Databases of Online Tournament Results

If you play tournaments online, you should be aware of various websites that keep databases on MTTs and STTs. These websites allow you to type in a player’s name, and within seconds, you have a complete record of that player’s online tournament history. Knowing who the good players are and who the bad players are can give you a big advantage at the tables. Early on in a tournament, you may wish only to engage in pots with the bad players. Or, perhaps you are close to a final table, and you see that an opponent in the blinds hasn’t had much final table experience. In that case, you should be able to steal from that player quite easily because he won’t want to risk not making a final table.

You should also be aware of your own stats in these databases, because the top players you face will most likely be looking you up and adjusting their play against you based at least partially on what they find out. Besides just using these databases in the heat of battle, you can also use them to identify great players whom you should watch-one excellent way to improve your poker is to study how other successful players play. Presently, the most popular database is Shark Scope.

Be Prepared!

I know that I’ve just given you a lot of software to obtain, but remember that poker is a game of information. Every piece of information you have makes it easier for you to profit. Therefore, make sure you go into battle prepared because I guarantee that the best opponents you’ll face will be armed to the teeth with as much information as possible!

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker by the Numbers

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