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
