poker software really helps

id like some advise on poker software, what is the best one out there?!

[TaoTe]

By software, do you mean stat tracking software such as pokertracker or simulation such as wilson turbo?

[chrisg]

Get yourself PokerTracker (about 50 dollars) and PokerAce HUD (free!). Both are invaluable.

That should do it for real time playing. I've never found a decent simulator programme.

[Pov]

[ QUOTE ]
. . . or simulation such as wilson turbo?

[/ QUOTE ]

I like Wilson, but I've heard some really good things about Poker Academy recently from some friends who are not easy to impress.

hey! thanks guys! iam goona look at the poker tracker. so u are saying that a simulation software is worthless!?

[SheridanCat]

Simulation softare is okay, but you'll soon outgrow it.

I prefer Poker Academy to Wilson.

Regards,

T

[Quicksilvre]

[ QUOTE ]
so u are saying that a simulation software is worthless!?

[/ QUOTE ]

It can be useful, but it's not nearly as valuable as practice against real opponents.

[TaoTe]

[ QUOTE ]
hey! thanks guys! iam goona look at the poker tracker. so u are saying that a simulation software is worthless!?

[/ QUOTE ]

Some professionals swear by software, especially for use in Omaha games and other non-HE games. Recently, I heard Daniel N. claim to use simulation hands to improve his Omaha and Stud8 game. I think there has already been a plethora of it done for HE, but nailing the %s down cold can't hurt your game.

i purchased wilson's software. the essence of my review of it is: don't buy it. for instance: i have sat, without exaggeration, for hours at a time discarding useless, unplayable hands. if one's purpose is to learn the play of the hand, it would seem beneficial that wilson provide some means to select the minimal parameters of the hands a player will see. hands not meeting these standards would simply tally in the statistics, and the loss of the blinds subtracted from the player's pile. instead, one must repeatedly hit the zip/deal selections over and over and over and over, often times growing so bored with the procedure that when at last a playable hand does come along, one inadvertently discards it.

one of my prime concerns about playing online is the shuffle and deal algorithms employed by the various sites. i have some smattering of programming to my credit, and almost every primer on that discipline cautions the student about the pitfalls of computer generated randomness. so when i see wilson's software generating hands whose values are so far out on the distribution curve, and repeatedly, i wonder if his procedure isn't flawed.

let me give you several examples: i have played perhaps 30,000 hands. i have won with JJ precisely ONCE in the games i played (and this was by hitting a straight!). Yao's book indicates that this power hand should win about 40% of the time in the loose games that are my concentration. not in wilson's software! another oddity: AA should win approximately 50+ percent of the hands it plays in. this may be the case, but not when they ARE in your hand. my strike rate has been closer to 22%.

a third oddity: i had my dominant hand beaten at the river over 70 consecutive times using this software (yes, i had a pencil and paper out tabulating the frequency).

now, outcomes such as these may be possible in the real world, may be--but when one sees distributions so skewed in so many probabilities, so repeatedly, well, it makes for an exasperated bit of head scratching.

is wilson worth it? as a training tool, i dont think so. as a means of testing statistical realities? there again, i don't think so, if my experience is any judge.

[SheridanCat]

[ QUOTE ]
i purchased wilson's software. the essence of my review of it is: don't buy it. for instance: i have sat, without exaggeration, for hours at a time discarding useless, unplayable hands. if one's purpose is to learn the play of the hand, it would seem beneficial that wilson provide some means to select the minimal parameters of the hands a player will see.

[/ QUOTE ]

I haven't used Wilson in years, but my experience at the time was that this was a feature of the software. You could tell the program to only deal you playable hands. I don't recall how flexible it was or if you just had to rely on the advisor to determine when a hand you might receive is playable.

Regards,

T