Texas Hold’Em has exploded in popularity over the past year due to the success of TV programs such as the World Series of Poker coverage on ESPN. With online poker becoming more and more accessible to the population, many inexperienced players are making their way to the Texas Hold’Em tables of the online card rooms. Hold’em Partner is a software program designed to assist players of online Texas Hold’em in evaluating their hand and making decisions during online play.
The program is easy to install and takes up very little room on the hard drive. The player enters his favorite card room and then clicks on the Hold’em Partner icon to open the program. The program automatically resizes the screen resolution to 1024 X 768 pixels, which allows the software interface to be seen at the same time as the poker room. However, this screen resolution may be quite smaller than some players are used to and may take a little while to get used to. While the size of the program worked fine with Poker World, Pacific Poker, and Party Poker, it partially obscured the chat area of Royal Vegas Poker, even when the taskbar was hidden.
The Hold’em Partner interface consists of two windows, one on the bottom of the screen that contains information on the current hand, and a clickable card list that appears on the right side of the screen. After the player’s pocket cards are entered, Hold’em Partner provides a number of pieces of information:
· Pocket Rank: The player’s starting cards are ranked from 1-169. The hand rankings are similar to what you will find in most beginning poker books. However, the hand rankings have a slight bias towards suited cards, as they are ranked higher than most “experts” would have them, and straight-draw hands are in general underrated. Using the ranking from Hold’em Poker for Advanced Players (by Sklansky and Malmuth), KJs, KTs, QTs, K9s are all overrated, while hands like AKo and 98s are placed significantly lower down the ladder. However, the hand rankings are close enough to accepted values to be practical. This can be useful for the beginning player in implementing some simple strategies. For instance, for a player using Winning Low Limit Hold’em by Lee Jones and sitting in early position would raise with hands ranked about 1-8, and call with the first ~20-25 hands.
· Odds to have better pocket cards than other players before the flop: This section gives the odds that your pocket cards are the best at a full 10-player table. Assuming that this is based on the hand rankings discussed above, the odds seem reasonable. This tool is best used in understanding when you are better than an even-money favorite before the flop.
· Recommendation: This section acts as an “advisor”, giving suggestions hot to play the hand. This is described in more detail below.
When the player enters the flop cards, one other section becomes functional:
· Number of outs you have before the turn: This section counts the number of “outs” available for your hand after the flop. This only counts hands that you can make on the turn, meaning if you have 3 to a flush, suited cards are not counted. Gutshot straight draws are not recognized, but in general these are hands you should not be seriously considering anyway.
The recommendation section acts as an “advisor” to give the player an idea of what should be done with the hand. In general, the advice conforms to accepted poker strategy. Pre-flop and after the flop, the advice is usually pretty detailed. It will tell you what hand you have and usually what the percent chance is that you will improve and the chance of overcards. It also gives some basic suggestion on whether you should fold, raise, or call. This information is usually much more detailed before the flop, when it sometimes will make suggestions depending on position, number of callers, etc. There is rarely much advice offered on the turn or the river, but it is almost impossible to give accurate advice without knowing how many people are in the pot, the play of the hand so far, and the betting tendencies of the remaining players.
The last tool offered with this program is something called “online poker tells”. This is a series of hints that the program designers have included to adapt specifically to online games. These are usually very general, and I am not convinced that they are always useful. However, this may at least get a beginning player thinking about how an opponent’s actions at the table can give some insight into their hand and how to interpret an opponent’s tendencies. They are an added and somewhat unique feature of the software.
I played a number of hands using the advice of Hold’em Partner. I showed a net loss over a few hundred hands at Pacific Poker micro limit games ($0.05/0.10), but did a little better at low limit ($1/2) games. Overall, I think the strategy suggested is probably a bit too conservative for the micro limit games, where you have many players sticking around for the flop, and therefore a chance for some big draw hands to pull through. This program seems to be a lot better for higher limit games, where a tighter strategy is more effective. The recommendations are fairly consistent with a “tight/aggressive” style.
Overall, this is a good product for a beginning player. This cannot take the place of reading the essential poker books and getting online experience, but it will probably speed up the learning curve of new players and ensure they don’t make any major mistakes. It also will help the beginner get at least a general idea of hand rankings and get them thinking a little bit about pot odds and probability. A total newbie can be greatly intimidated by the vast amounts of poker information out there. Since this software attempts to assimilate all of that information, it can help a new player get over the apprehension of learning the basics of winning poker. For players with a moderate degree of experience, the software will be less useful. However, it can still be helpful in situations where a mathematical analysis is desired. The price is fairly insignificant for those players serious about online poker.
Hold’em Partner is available through www.holdempartner.com and is currently available for $26.95 + $2.95 shipping. The developer has also sold this product on eBay and had all positive comments.
Disclaimer: The author (drunkguy) has not received any compensation for this review or sales of this product, and is not associated with the designers in any way. However, a complimentary copy of the program was provided in order to write this review.
The program is easy to install and takes up very little room on the hard drive. The player enters his favorite card room and then clicks on the Hold’em Partner icon to open the program. The program automatically resizes the screen resolution to 1024 X 768 pixels, which allows the software interface to be seen at the same time as the poker room. However, this screen resolution may be quite smaller than some players are used to and may take a little while to get used to. While the size of the program worked fine with Poker World, Pacific Poker, and Party Poker, it partially obscured the chat area of Royal Vegas Poker, even when the taskbar was hidden.
The Hold’em Partner interface consists of two windows, one on the bottom of the screen that contains information on the current hand, and a clickable card list that appears on the right side of the screen. After the player’s pocket cards are entered, Hold’em Partner provides a number of pieces of information:
· Pocket Rank: The player’s starting cards are ranked from 1-169. The hand rankings are similar to what you will find in most beginning poker books. However, the hand rankings have a slight bias towards suited cards, as they are ranked higher than most “experts” would have them, and straight-draw hands are in general underrated. Using the ranking from Hold’em Poker for Advanced Players (by Sklansky and Malmuth), KJs, KTs, QTs, K9s are all overrated, while hands like AKo and 98s are placed significantly lower down the ladder. However, the hand rankings are close enough to accepted values to be practical. This can be useful for the beginning player in implementing some simple strategies. For instance, for a player using Winning Low Limit Hold’em by Lee Jones and sitting in early position would raise with hands ranked about 1-8, and call with the first ~20-25 hands.
· Odds to have better pocket cards than other players before the flop: This section gives the odds that your pocket cards are the best at a full 10-player table. Assuming that this is based on the hand rankings discussed above, the odds seem reasonable. This tool is best used in understanding when you are better than an even-money favorite before the flop.
· Recommendation: This section acts as an “advisor”, giving suggestions hot to play the hand. This is described in more detail below.
When the player enters the flop cards, one other section becomes functional:
· Number of outs you have before the turn: This section counts the number of “outs” available for your hand after the flop. This only counts hands that you can make on the turn, meaning if you have 3 to a flush, suited cards are not counted. Gutshot straight draws are not recognized, but in general these are hands you should not be seriously considering anyway.
The recommendation section acts as an “advisor” to give the player an idea of what should be done with the hand. In general, the advice conforms to accepted poker strategy. Pre-flop and after the flop, the advice is usually pretty detailed. It will tell you what hand you have and usually what the percent chance is that you will improve and the chance of overcards. It also gives some basic suggestion on whether you should fold, raise, or call. This information is usually much more detailed before the flop, when it sometimes will make suggestions depending on position, number of callers, etc. There is rarely much advice offered on the turn or the river, but it is almost impossible to give accurate advice without knowing how many people are in the pot, the play of the hand so far, and the betting tendencies of the remaining players.
The last tool offered with this program is something called “online poker tells”. This is a series of hints that the program designers have included to adapt specifically to online games. These are usually very general, and I am not convinced that they are always useful. However, this may at least get a beginning player thinking about how an opponent’s actions at the table can give some insight into their hand and how to interpret an opponent’s tendencies. They are an added and somewhat unique feature of the software.
I played a number of hands using the advice of Hold’em Partner. I showed a net loss over a few hundred hands at Pacific Poker micro limit games ($0.05/0.10), but did a little better at low limit ($1/2) games. Overall, I think the strategy suggested is probably a bit too conservative for the micro limit games, where you have many players sticking around for the flop, and therefore a chance for some big draw hands to pull through. This program seems to be a lot better for higher limit games, where a tighter strategy is more effective. The recommendations are fairly consistent with a “tight/aggressive” style.
Overall, this is a good product for a beginning player. This cannot take the place of reading the essential poker books and getting online experience, but it will probably speed up the learning curve of new players and ensure they don’t make any major mistakes. It also will help the beginner get at least a general idea of hand rankings and get them thinking a little bit about pot odds and probability. A total newbie can be greatly intimidated by the vast amounts of poker information out there. Since this software attempts to assimilate all of that information, it can help a new player get over the apprehension of learning the basics of winning poker. For players with a moderate degree of experience, the software will be less useful. However, it can still be helpful in situations where a mathematical analysis is desired. The price is fairly insignificant for those players serious about online poker.
Hold’em Partner is available through www.holdempartner.com and is currently available for $26.95 + $2.95 shipping. The developer has also sold this product on eBay and had all positive comments.
Disclaimer: The author (drunkguy) has not received any compensation for this review or sales of this product, and is not associated with the designers in any way. However, a complimentary copy of the program was provided in order to write this review.
