Gavin Griffin: Poker Questions Asked And AnsweredGriffin Talks About Tools For Playing Live Poker |
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People in the poker community often come up to me and ask about whatever is on their mind. Some of these questions are good questions, and some are bad beat stories in disguise. I’ve been through quite a few things in my poker career and I like to help whenever possible, and in this new Card Player series, I’d like to share my experiences and knowledge. Feel free to ask any poker-related question, and I’ll do my best to answer it in the space below.
Question: I’ve heard lots of people talk about using software tools when playing online, have you found any that you like for playing live? — Sam
Gavin: Great question. I’ve been using programs like Poker Tracker and Hold ‘Em Manager for years when playing online and they are such a comprehensive and amazing database tool that it’s impossible to find anything that even comes close to their functionality for the live realm. The ability to scan every hand history and update statistics on all the players at your table in real time is invaluable and has helped to rapidly advance the sophistication of the online game significantly faster than that of live poker. Games are tougher live but they aren’t even close to the games you find online. These programs can also be used to find leaks in your own game as well as that of your opponents, they can track your rakeback statistics, and they can even tell you how well or poorly you’ve been running in all in situations. They are, far and away, the most useful pieces of legal poker software ever created.
That doesn’t mean, though, that there aren’t any good software tools for a live poker player to use. Database crunching is great and it’s wonderful to have statistics on all of the players you’re playing with, but that doesn’t help you too much when calculating equity. The best tool on the planet for that is Poker Stove and it has been for a long time. Written by Andrew Prock, it’s a fast, no frills range based equity calculator that every poker player who is serious about the game should be familiar with. You can plug whatever range you would like to assign to your opponent or opponents in any situation you can come up with and hit the Evaluate button. Seconds later, you see the exact equity breakdowns for all remaining board combinations and you have a concrete answer about whether your play was correct mathematically, presuming your assumptions about your opponent’s range were correct. It’s powerful, quick, easy to use, and free.
Sometimes, however, you can’t wait to get home to crunch the numbers on an equity calculator and it’s a bit difficult to carry your laptop with you wherever you go and set up shop at the table. In these situations, you need a portable solution to run equity calculations. There is an Android version of Poker Stove but it leaves a bit to be desired since it’s difficult to add hands to ranges and it doesn’t have all of the functionality of the desktop version. So, instead of the Poker Stove app, I use Poker Cruncher. It’s a calculator with a very slick interface and if you’re familiar with Poker Stove, it’s incredibly easy to use. Perhaps I’m spoiled by Prock’s baby but it is a bit difficult to pay $5 for an app that provides functionality that I can get by going home and running things on my desktop, but it’s worth it in the long run.
The final piece of software that I’m using currently is a tracking app called Poker History. It’s a great tool that lets me track my sessions when I’m playing in a casino in real time. It is sortable by location, stakes, day of the week, month, and game type. It does everything you need a tracking app to do and it looks nice while doing it. Before I had this app I was making a note in a notepad app for every one of my sessions. I would forget to write in my end time or how much I bought in for. I don’t have to worry about any of that anymore. Now I just click the start a new session button, input the relevant information and then forget about it until I either have to rebuy or my session is over. It tells me my hourly rate by game and stake level as well as overall so I no longer have to figure it out manually. It even gives me my standard deviation per hour. A well rounded and very useful app that has saved me enough time and headache that it’s definitely been worth the $10 I spent on it.
I’ve found some software over the last year or so that I really like and I’m sure there are some other good ones that are out there for playing live poker. Let me know in the comments any software that you use on a regular basis to improve your live game.
If you have a question for Gavin, send it to [email protected].
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