3-G software
My favorite forum over at 2+2 is the software forum. Although I am not a coder and I know just about nothing when it comes to that shit, I am interesting in poker software. Currently there are two main 3rd generation (3-G) trackers+HUD on the market-Holdem Manager (HEM) and Pokertracker 3 (PT3). I have limited experience with both and offer my thoughts. There are other software programs out there and if you want to say something about them, go ahead. Also, Zy and others will say that tracking software should be banned. I do not want this thread get into that that discussion. A few years ago that argument had merits, but it is now clear that live poker and online poker, whilst based on the same game, are totally different creatures requiring different skills and techniques. Finally, I am not going to go into the whole history of these programs' development. While that is interesting, it is not really relevant to this thread.
There is also one 3-G program in development, PokerEV (pEV). Since this is not out in yet, it is not worth discussing. And it is a formal possibility that pEV is an elaborate hoax, although I do no think this is the case. I have had limited discussions with the developer/programmer of pEV and it is my opinion that when that software is released it will be the best. But we will have to wait and see. Furthermore, it is worth pointing out that, in my opinion, less than 2% of the people that owned PT2 used it as a game analysis tool. So the whole 3-G thing is a little silly, as the vast vast majority of the customer base will never use the game analysis part of the programs that make them 3-G.
PT3- I start with PT3 because it is what I started with. Currently PT3 is a disaster. The database side of the software seems to be ok, but it lacks many features that make it truly 3-G. Many analysis/graphing/database features are promised, but it reveals the biggest problem with PT3. PT3 was rushed into release and current program is probably similar to a alpha.1 release than a 6 month old commercial release. And this is before the HUD problems. The HUD cannot work for more than two active tables, and no more than 5-6 open tables total. A new update that promises to fix the HUD has been promised and delayed three times.
The PT3 development team (which PT Pat is not a part of) squandered a lot of the good faith of the community. Although I paid for PT3, I recently deleted it from my computer and will never put it back on my computer. Claims in the 2+2 thread, and supported by a few programmer types I know and trust, suggest that the database end of PT3 is far superior to HEM and ultimately that will allow PT3 to survive. Even if that is true, I am done with PT3.
HEM- I purchased HEM this weekend and only played one session with (somehow installing HEM activated my doomswitch, but that is a different problem). It took a few hours of set up and import from my PT2 database (I only imported from 6/07 onward) but as far as I can tell. HEM is a stable, user friendly 3-G software. The analysis features of the database are fully functional and thus far fantastic.While there is a learning curve, as it is a totally new software, I love it. There are many little touches that just wow me. For example, from the list of hands, I highlighted the top 10 biggest losing hands from my session (it sucked, did I mention that?). This was from the summary form, and no details of the individual HH were listed, but when I right-clicked on the highlighted 10 hands, a ton of options were available to me, including "copy hhs to clipboard". I just love that feature. The replayer is fantastic, allowing you to display all your HUD stats in teh replayer, including the option of the stats that were displayed at the time of the hand. You can make notes in the replayer that then show up on the HUD. And I am not even getting into the game analysis part of the software. I am hooked. The HUD is fully functional and displays everything you can imagine, although it is a little less stylistic than the rest of the program.
TLDR: PT3- DO NOT BUY and I recommend uninstalling. HEM-BUY.
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