For regular online players, a hand history collector/stats analyzer/real-time opponent stats displayer is almost a necessity, particularly if you multi-table.

PokerTracker: For years PokerTracker (PT) was the best program for tracking and analyzing your online poker games. It automatically grabs your hand histories, lets you replay them for analysis, filter them to see how you played any type of hand (ie. pocket pairs, AKo, suited connectors, ect), or to see how you fared by table position, to see what percentage of flops you saw, how ofter you raised preflop, and on and on. Plus, you can view the same stats on all your opponents (but not the specific cards if the hand was folded). It takes all the information from your hand history, stores it into it’s database, and has built-in queries to analyze the data from all kinds of angles. Add to PT a program called PokerAce and you get summaries of your opponent’s stats on your screen while you play. PokerAce is a heads up display (HUD) that works with PT and will show you the statistical information on your opponents, based on the hands at the current table combined with any history that you have from previous games against that player in your database. PokerTracker and PokerAce have combined forces in the new version of PokerTracker, PT3. In addition there are a number of additional statistics and graphing options. However, the software updates have been slow in overcoming many of the bugs, the program now tends to draw a fair amount of computing power, and apparently has crashing issues for people who regularly play more than 8 or more tables at the same time.

PokerOffice: Similar to PokerTracker, a statistical analysis program with built-in HUD. I tried it at one time, but honestly don’t recall much difference. PokerTracker had the market share, and I went with PokerTracker/PokerAce. The only advantage that I recall of PokerOffice was that it showed pot odds in the hand replayer.

Holdem Manager: The new kid on the block. From what I’ve heard, Holdem Manager (HEM) was developed because PT2 was slow to start adding some features that users were asking for. Combine that with the bugginess and crashing of PT3 and a lot of players have decided to switch to HEM rather than upgrade from PT2 to PT3. Stats, graphs, HUD, as well as a two tier pricing structure so that players who play 0.25/0.50 tables and lower can buy the program for $15 less than the full version.

(Later edit: here’s a good Flash demo of how to configure the early version of HEM)

At the moment I’m undecided. I’ve been using PT for a long time, and had been running the demo of PT3 fairly satisfactorily when HEM was pointed out to me. As I mentioned, some players I know who play a lot more than I do were migrating that way so I’ve been giving it a try. Part of my problem with evaluating the programs is that for the past while I’ve really only been playing super turbos and PLO (btw, PT has a separate version for Omaha and Stud; PokerOffice and HEM are Holdem only). Both work fine for me on the super turbos and not at all for PLO, but the super turbos don’t really give anything worth reviewing unless I want to just step through an entire tournament. Thing such as stats, position stats, aggression levels all fluctuate so wildly that I haven’t considered doing review on these so I haven’t used either program for much more than the HUD. Later/later edit: I opted for HEM not too long after this post. tbh, I don’t know a lot of people still using PT3, thought I’m sure that there are, just not the people that I talk with.

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If you aren’t familiar with these programs, imagine this: You sign up to play a one table Sit and Go. You’ve played tight, survived for a while, and now the blinds are starting to rise. You need to start opening up your range to steal some blinds, but the two players to your left just got eliminated so now you need to steal from two players further along. You search your memory; how loose have they been? Do they open call raises? Or you’re playing a 45 person the Sit and Go and you make the final table. The person to your left started at your first table but got moved when players got eliminated. Do you remember how loose or tight he was? Did he fold to continuation bets, or was he very aggressive post flop, betting most flops to put the pressure on? Or you play cash tables at the same site two nights a week. You start to recognize a couple names or avatars as players that you’ve played before but you have no notes on them. Does that imply that they are good players? Or are they very tight and played very few hands? You don’t even need to be a multi-tabler to start to see how much one of these programs can help you. Just imagine what this does for someone who gets bored playing one table and instead has 4, 8, 12, or more tables running at the same time. You don’t even have to open up the hand history after each hand to see the mucked cards at showdown as the HUD will display the cards and the board for you after each showdown. And this is just the HUD. On top of this you get hand replayers and easy ways to filter your hand histories and look at your best winning hands and worst losing hands, your winning percentages and amount won or lost for each position at the table, your playing statistics in terms of VP$IP, PFR, aggression, C-bet%, attempt to steal %, graphs to chart your progress, filters to separate 6 max tables from 9 max, or this month results from last month, or 0.10/0.25 from 0.25/0.50. And all these same statistics on all your opponents as well.

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Full Tilt and some other sites will allow you to datamine. PokerStars and others will not Edit: PokerStars now does allow limited datamining. I’m actually not sure how limited; it’s on my list of things to look into. What this means is if you have a table open on Full Tilt you will get a hand history that these programs can store for you even if you’re not playing at that table. You can use this information in a number of ways. You can open many many tables at the level you want to play, come back in 20 minutes, and select what you think are the juiciest tables based on the statistics that you’ve collected. Or if you are in a 45 player SnG, open all the tables and collect statistical information on the players at the other tables so that you are armed with information even before they get moved to your table or you get moved to theirs. The major sites and networks are supported by all these programs, but if you play on a smaller one, check before you buy. Ultimate Bet requires an additional hand history grabber program in order to work with PT; I don’t know about the other two programs as I only played at UB for a brief period. I think they all have demo versions so you can test run them. They may even work with play money tables, though you may not be able to do post-game analysis as play hand histories may not get stored even though the HUD works.

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There are some serious on-line poker players who do not use one of these programs, but most of the ones that I know do use one. If you’re playing the 0.02/0.05 cash tables or only $1 SnGs and nothing higher, then it may not be worth the investment. But if you get to the 0.05/0.10=$10NL tables, or you start to multi-table, or you plan to move up, it’s well worth the investment.

• Thinking ahead, using all the useful information
• Update: Multi-tabling/HUD/full stack/postflop project
• Poker software; simulators (games) and training programs