Top 5 Best Poker Tools and Poker Software for 2024
November 12, 2024 Jon Pill
Contributor Yori Epskamp Senior Content Manager
If💸 you're looking for the right poker
tools to help you at the online poker tables, look no further! Poker tools💸 and software
serve several purposes like helping you track your results, improve your game, and
increase your profitability at the💸 table.
There are plenty of different ways that poker
software can help your poker career. Poker trackers allow you to accurately💸 assess your
performance and analyze hand histories. Solvers can guide your overall poker strategy,
provide a rough sense of the💸 GTO play in a given spot or group of spots, and help you
account for ICM (Independent Chip Model).
Tools such💸 as a poker odds calculator can
give you a quick equity check and heads-up displays help you parse the patterns💸 of your
online opponents.
In this article, we'll walk you through the types of poker software
available, what poker tools can💸 do for you, and when and how to use them.
Top 5 Best
Poker Tools & Software for 2024
These five tools💸 are some of the best-loved, most
useful, and well-established poker tools on the market today. They range in cost and
💸 complexity, but every one of them has proven its usefulness in the poker software
market.
PokerNews Poker Odds Calculator
The PokerNews Poker💸 Odds Calculator is a
simple, easy to use tool for checking hand v. hand equity.
What is the PokerNews Poker
Odds💸 Calculator?
The PokerNews Poker Odds Calculator allows you to calculate the equity
of one set of hole cards against another.
With this💸 tool, you can enter your hole cards
along with the hole cards of up to nine opponents. The PokerNews Poker💸 Odds Calculator
will tell you the percentage chance of each hand winning at the showdown given a
particular board.
How to💸 use the PokerNews Poker Odds Calculator?
To use the PokerNews
Poker Odds Calculator, just navigate to the PokerNews Poker Odds Calculator
💸 page.
Select the hand of the player you want to enter and use the card table on the
right to select💸 the value and suit of each card. Do the same for all the other players
in the hand. If you💸 want to calculate flop or turn equity, then it's just a matter of
adding in the board using the same💸 card table.
The PokerNews Poker Odds Calculator
player will then give you the percentage chance of each hand winning beneath the
💸 relevant player's name. The box at the bottom will also give you a simple readout of
your hand's equity against💸 the other hands you entered.
How Much is the PokerNews Poker
Odds Calculator?
The PokerNews Poker Odds Calculator is completely free to💸 use! It
costs absolutely nothing and is on the house from us. All you need is an internet
connection and💸 a device with a web browser installed.
PokerTracker 4
PokerTracker 4 is
a poker tracker and heads-up display that allows you to💸 turn your online poker hand
histories into easily analyzed tables, graphs, and HUD data.
What is PokerTracker
4?
PokerTracker 4 is a💸 piece of software that tracks your online poker hands for you
and has plenty of powerful features that allow you💸 to use that data to analyze your
performance, direct your study, and get reads on your opponents in real time💸 (at least
on those sites that still allow HUDs).
How to use PokerTracker 4?
To use PokerTracker
4, download the software and💸 use the 14-day free trial or buy a license.
Once
installed, you need to link it to your online poker accounts💸 and give it access to the
hand history folders on your hard drive. Then, when you play online, PokerTracker 4
💸 will work in the background, helping you track the hours you play, your wins, losses,
and all-in EV, and the💸 patterns of your opponent's play.
If you use it with a site that
allows HUDs, PokerTracker 4 will also provide an💸 overlay showing the statistics it has
gathered on your opponents over all the sessions you have played with them.
How Much💸 is
PokerTracker 4?
PokerTracker 4 has several price points starting fromR$64.99. The
cheapest version allows you to use PT4 on small💸 stakes tables, one of either Holdem or
Omaha tables. Additional price points exist for an "all stakes" version and a💸 combined
Omaha and Holdem tracker.
The top price point—which gets you all-stakes and includes
both games—isR$159.99.
Buy PokerTracker 4
Holdem Manager 3
Holdem Manager💸 3 is
PokerTracker 4's direct competitor and provides a slightly less powerful platform but
with greater ease of use. HM3💸 tracks your sessions for you and provides the poker tools
to analyze the data it collects. It can also create💸 a heads-up display on many of the
sites where HUDs are allowed.
Professional poker players have used Holdem Manager 3 for
💸 years to play at the best poker sites that allow this software. Famously, PokerStars is
one of the sites that💸 allows the usage of this excellent tool.
There is also an Omaha
version of the software called Omaha Manager 3.
What is💸 Holdem Manager 3?
Holdem
Manager 3 is a poker tracking and HUD software that collects your hand histories and
provides you💸 with key statistics on your sessions.
You can also use the software away
from the table to identify weak points in💸 your game and to analyze opponents.
The HUD
feature overlays data on your opponents' play in real time, but is only💸 available on
sites that have not banned heads-up displays.
How to use Holdem Manager 3?
To use
Holdem Manager 3, buy a💸 copy from the website and download the installer.
Once
installed, check out the manual for a simple walkthrough to set up💸 permissions and link
HM3 with your online poker software and hand history folders.
How Much is Holdem
Manager 3?
Holdem Manager 3💸 and Omaha Manager 3 each costR$60 for the low-stakes
version orR$100 for an all-stakes version.
You can also buy Holdem Manager💸 3 and Omaha
Manager 3 packaged together forR$100 (low-stakes only) orR$160 (all-stakes).
Buy Holdem
Manager 3
ICMIZER 3
ICMIZER 3 is a piece💸 of poker strategy software that takes a
pre-flop tournament position and calculates the correct push-fold play for that spot
using💸 an independent chip model to calculate the most profitable moves.
What is
ICMIZER?
The independent chip model is a way of converting💸 the chip EV of a tournament
strategy intoR$EV. ICMIZER 3 uses ICM to create a chart of a simple push-fold💸 strategy
for any tournament position you enter.
While you can use ICMIZER 3 to quickly check
what the correct move was💸 in a specific circumstance, what makes it especially powerful
is that you can quickly run a bunch of similar spots💸 with different parameters to work
out how different dynamics affect your overall strategy.
Premium subscribers to ICMIZER
3 also get access💸 to a MTT Coaching tool and a tournament replayer that can give you
feedback on how you played in real💸 spots.
How to use ICMIZER 3?
ICMIZER 3 is a
browser-based online poker tool that can be used without download. To analyze💸 a
position, you can manually enter all the details of the tournament and hand, including
chip stacks, number of players,💸 and payout structure, or you can upload that
information from a specific hand or tournament history.
ICMIZER 3 will then create💸 the
push-fold chart for that spot.
How Much is ICMIZER?
ICMIZER 3 allows a limited number
of daily use for free. For💸 anyone who wants full access, ICMIZER uses a subscription
model.
The basic ICM calculator-only subscription costsR$80 for an annual subscription
orR$15💸 monthly.
The 3-in-1 package with ICMIZER 3, MTT Coach, and Replayer software
costsR$179.99 for an annual subscription orR$32.99 monthly.
GTO Wizard
GTO Wizard💸 poker
tool is a game theory- and solver-based training suite, that allows users to explore
and study GTO strategies and💸 analyze hands.
What is GTO Wizard?
GTO Wizard is a suite
of tools designed to help you get to grips with game💸 theory optimal play.
It uses a mix
of database of positions that have been pre-solved and access to a powerful solver.
💸 Using these tools, GTO Wizard provides you with learning materials that range from
simple pre-flop charts to full training suites💸 in which you can study in-depth
positions and play against a GTO opponent with instant feedback.
How to use GTO
Wizard?
GTO💸 Wizard has a large range of tools and software built into it. After signing
up, players are best advised to💸 follow the various tutorials that will allow them to
get to grips with the relatively advanced tools this poker software💸 provides.
How Much
is GTO Wizard?
GTO Wizard offers a free version that includes pre-flop charts, one
post-flop solution per day, and💸 ten hands in the trainer.
You can also purchase various
monthly subscriptions that are specific to the type of game you💸 want to study. These
run fromR$29 per month for a "Starter" Heads Up SNG package up toR$129 Elite packages
that💸 allow you to set parameters on the solver yourself and give you up to 150,000
hands to solve each month.
What💸 are the Different Poker Tools/Software?
Poker tools and
poker software tend to fall into one of a few major categories.
Although there💸 are
plenty of niches that poker tools fill, most poker software either serves as a poker
odds calculator, a poker💸 solver, a poker tracker, or a poker heads-up display.
Poker
Odds Calculators
Poker odds calculators are relatively simple tools that will tell💸 you
the winning chances of a hand or set of hands. Good examples are th PokerNews Poker
Odds Calculator and💸 Open Poker Tools' Range v Range Equity Calculator.
What are Poker
Odds Calculators?
Poker odds calculators are useful for getting a sense💸 of how strong a
given hand or range is when matched up against other hands or ranges.
In a typical odds
💸 calculator, you enter information about your hand, your opponent's hand, and the board,
then the calculator tells you what the💸 winning chances of each hand is at that point in
the hand.
How to use Poker Odds Calculators
Poker odds calculators are💸 a great tool for
improving your intuition for what hands are strongest in what situations.
Odds
calculators help you work out💸 what hands play well against each other, sharpen your
ability to estimate equity on the fly, and can be used💸 to check the pot odds and
expected value of a given situation.
Poker Solvers
Solvers are a group of powerful
analytical tools💸 that aim to provide good estimates of the game theory optimal strategy
for a given player in a given spot.
What💸 are Poker Solvers?
Poker solvers are a group
of poker tools that are designed to generate the GTO strategy for any💸 situation you
input.
The output usually takes the form of a table explaining the best move frequency
for each type of💸 hand in your range.
Although the goal of a solver is to provide true
GTO, the limits of computing power and💸 complexity of no-limit betting mean that solver
outputs are more like good estimates of the GTO strategy. Even so, these💸 estimates are
good enough to be the major force guiding strategy at the top of modern poker.
How to
use Poker💸 Solvers
Because of the limitations of both modern poker solvers and human
memory, solvers are best used as tools for interrogating💸 strategic ideas and creating
general strategies.
Players who are learning the basics of GTO strategy will probably
benefit more from solvers💸 secondhand by studying pre-solved tables, like those on the
GTO Wizard site.
However, more advanced players may wish to buy a💸 solver and run their
own personally tailored simulations on it.
The Top 3 Best Poker Solvers
The most
popular poker solvers are💸 PioSolver, MonkerSolver, and PokerSnowie.
PioSolver is
popular with players who focus on heads-up strategy. This powerful tool allows you to
calculate💸 heads-up Nash equilibria or nodelock an opponent's strategy to figure out the
best exploitative play.
MonkerSolver is a little more user-friendly💸 and allows you to
study multi-way action with built-in simplifications to improve
performance.
PokerSnowie is a poker analytical tool that has💸 built its GTO estimates
using neural networks to estimate GTO in a much wider range of spots. As a result,💸 it
is faster, more flexible, and more comprehensive than most other solvers, but this
comes at the cost in the💸 accuracy of its GTO strategy estimates.
Poker Trackers
Poker
trackers are tools that track and analyze your poker sessions. The best-known software
💸 like PokerTracker 4 and Holdem Manager 3 automatically record online poker sessions,
but there are also other apps that allow💸 you to track live sessions by entering the
data manually.
What are Poker Trackers?
Poker trackers are tools that automatically
track your💸 online poker hands, recording your win rates, session times, and even your
opponents' hands. The tracker then allows you to💸 pore over this data in a wide range of
ways including results graphs and HUD readouts.
How to use Poker Trackers
Most💸 online
poker tracking software will automatically update once you have linked them to your
online poker accounts and given them💸 permission to access your hand histories.
You can
then use the software tools to produce results graphs and to look at💸 data for specific
hand types, game types, table positions, and opponents. In this way, poker tracking
software allows you to💸 get an objective sense of your performance as a poker player and
to analyze patterns and weaknesses within your play💸 and your opponents.
The Top 3 Best
Poker Trackers
Holdem Manager 3 is a user-friendly online poker tracker, with plenty of
functionality💸 and an excellent range of features.
PokerTracker 4 is a powerful and
thorough online poker tracker that will appeal to the💸 more tech-savvy online
player.
Poker Bankroll Tracker is the best live poker tracker on the market, allowing
you to track things💸 like session length, buy-in, and key hands. It also comes with a
built-in odds calculator and is suited to both💸 cash and tournament players.
Poker
HUDs
Heads-up displays or poker HUDs overlay important information about your opponents
onto your online poker tables.💸 Once a vital part of every professional's toolset, HUDs
have become less ubiquitous as many of the biggest sites have💸 banned them.
What are
Poker HUDs?
Poker HUDs are pieces of software that track the action at your online
poker tables. The💸 software then overlays key statistics for each opponent based on the
data it gathers.
This information allows you to quantify key💸 aspects of your opponent's
play like what percentage of hands they play preflop and how often they raise or
reraise💸 on each street. Since the data usually comes from your own hand histories, the
more you play with an opponent💸 the better the data you have on them.
How to use Poker
HUDs
Once you have set up your poker tracker and💸 HUD to work together with your online
poker software, all you have to do is open an online poker table.💸 The HUD will appear
with a string of statistics beneath each opponent's name.
The default data is usually
the opponent's VPIP💸 (voluntary put in pot, i.e. what percentage of pre-flop hands they
play), PFR (pre-flop raise, i.e. percentage of preflop hand💸 they open with a raise),
and 3bet% (i.e. what percentage of preflop hands they reraise when bet to).
However,
you can💸 personalize these statistics and find many more by clicking on an opponent's
entry on the HUD.
Poker professional Jonathan Little, who💸 writes regular strategy
content at PokerNews, has created a video to understand how to set up the right HUD
(Heads-Up💸 Display) to crush your opponents.
The Top 3 Best Poker HUDs
Holdem Manager 3
and PokerTracker 4 are by far the most💸 popular and highest-quality poker HUDs on the
market today. Their popularity has meant both a significant investment in constant
improvements💸 and a lot of user feedback.
Alternatively, DriveHUD is a more recent
addition to the HUD market, which aims to be💸 as intuitive and simple to use as
possible. In the process is sacrifices some of the power that comes with💸 HM3 and PT4.
However, it may be worth looking at if you find the more established brands a bit
intimidating.
The💸 short answer is: yes, but only some of them, and sometimes. Tools
like trackers are considered a standard tool for💸 record-keeping in online poker and are
almost universally allowed both by the terms and conditions of poker sites and by💸 the
poker world's sense of what is socially acceptable.
Heads-up displays are mostly
allowed by the latter but in an effort💸 to make the game more recreational-player
friendly, most of the big sites have banned HUDs.
Solvers are allowed as training
tools.💸 However, when solvers or solver outputs are used during play, they are called
real-time assistants and are considered a form💸 of cheating.
Always check the terms and
conditions of any site you join to determine if your poker software is allowed.
Is
💸 there a poker simulator? Yes. There are several useful poker simulators on the market
at the moment. What is the💸 best poker tool for PokerStars? The best poker tool for
PokerStars is probably a poker tracker like Holdem Manager 3💸 or PokerTracker 4. What is
the best online poker software? The best online poker software will depend on personal
taste💸 as well as what is legally available in your region. Check out our online poker
review pages for more info.💸 Do online poker players use software? Yes. As well as the
software platform on which online poker players play, many💸 players use poker trackers
and HUDs (where allowed) while playing and solvers and training software while
studying. Is there an💸 algorithm for poker? No. While an algorithm is theoretically
possible, we are a long way from working it out. Some💸 very simple games like heads up
limit holdem are close to solved, but most of the games you will actually💸 play in your
poker career are still far from it. How much do poker solvers cost? MonkerSolver costs
€499 ($529)💸 and PioSolver costsR$249 orR$549 depending on which version you buy. There
are also several coaching sites that will offer you💸 access to databases of pre solved
positions, usually for a monthly or annual fee. What are the best tools to💸 study poker?
This depends on your level and the type of poker you play. Tournament players will get
a lot💸 out of ICMIZER 3 while cash game players might want to look at the software
provided by sites like GTO💸 Wizard. Can you use software for online poker? Yes. Many
types of software are allowed for online poker. However, check💸 with each site's terms
and conditions as some sites ban specific tools and some software—like RTA databases or
solvers—are not💸 allowed.
Jon Pill Contributor
