Poker Software, Tools and Programs

Many poker purists don't believe in using poker software to help them improve their game. While it's not necessary to be a computer guru and have dozens of poker programs assisting you out, most serious players do use at least some kind of software package to help their game. On this page, we've listed and reviewed a number of tools that we think can help you out.

Poker Room	Bonus	Bonus %	Review	Rating	Traffic
PokerStars	$50	100%	Read Review	9.7	28,000
Full Tilt Poker	$600	100%	Read Review	9.6	10,000
Party Poker	$500	100%	Read Review	8.9	5,000
Ultimate Bet	$1100	111%	Read Review	6.3	3,000
Bodog Poker	$500	100% + 10%	Read Review	5.4	1,000

Party Poker Software

Are you looking to download the Party Poker software? If so, click here to do so now. When you sign up for a Party Poker account, be sure to used the party poker bonus code VIPCODE so you can get access to TightPoker's $6,000 monthly freeroll.

More About Poker Software

The tools below are only a small selection of the poker software options available. Be sure to research and evaluate your options before choosing the poker software that's best for you. And, as always, make sure to only download third-party software that you feel is safe to install on your computer. While the major poker rooms (Party Poker, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, etc) are all safe to install on your computer, some third-party programs can be written by those who are seeking to compromise your security. Therefore, you should always make sure that third-party software is well-known and widely-used before using it on your machine.

Software	Description	Price
PokerTracker	Poker Tracker is by far, the most popular software package out on the market right now. It is a comprehensive database application that runs reports, shows stats and displays information about your game by reading your hand histories. You can find out how aggressive you are, how often you defend your blinds, how well you play every hand, how you play depending on position, your total wins and losses, your ROI (return on investment) for tournaments and just about every statistic imaginable. In English, Poker Tracker is useful as a tool that you can use to examine your game by looking directly at your history of how you play. Most players are able to use this information and find leaks in their game, which is why PT is so useful. A free trial copy is available at their website, which enables you to import 1,000 hand histories before requiring you to register.	$55.00
PokerStove	There is a lot of poker software designed for calculating poker odds. Unfortunately most of them use general purpose algorithms to perform the odds calculations. This generic approach doesn't take advantage of the full range of possible optimizations. To fill the gap, there is PokerStove, a texas hold'em poker calculator which can fully enumerate complex preflop situations about 100 times faster than next fastest tool available. I personally have Poker Stove installed on my computer and it's the piece of poker software I use most frequently, next to Poker Tracker. It's very useful for analyzing hand vs hand situations, as well as ranges of hands vs other hands, which is something that is very useful for the advanced player to analyze.	Free
DD Poker	DD Tournament Poker is a no limit texas hold'em software that has emerged as one of the fastest sellers on the market. Many poker books and old poker resources have referenced Turbo Texas Hold'em as essential software. That said, TTH from my own experience is terribly out of date and no longer modern enough to be realistically used by serious players. DD Tournament Poker however, is becoming a good replacement in the types of features that it can offer. DD is very good for beginners and also has enough features to help experienced players as well. It features a range of opponent profiles to choose from, different types of tournament structures to practice, free online practice arenas so that you can play against other users in public or private tournaments and one of my favorite features, a home game tournament manager. A full review of this software package will be available soon.	Free
Poker Edge	Poker Edge is a unique program that came out in 2005, which data mined the Party Poker servers to build a giant database of over 90% of the players at the site. They then used this information to build a client program that enabled you to see the statistics of each player sitting at your table. Recently, Poker Edge ran into problems however, as their software was considered an unfair advantage by the people at Party. This meant that anyone using PE was given a warning, then banned from Party Poker's servers. As such, we recommend against using this particular piece of poker software. You can still read a full review however.	$15/month

Party Poker Skins

Below, I have made some custom table backgrounds for Party Poker, which will replace the background image of your Party Poker table. This is a somewhat neat 'tool' as I've made two skins that include outs and drawing odds on the table, so you don't need to reference a cheat sheet or have a browser window open.

DISCLAIMER: If you decide to install these Party Poker skins, you do so at your own risk! I will NOT be held liable for anything that goes wrong with their software. These are unsupported by both me and Party Poker, so if the directions confuse you - DON'T DO IT!

Screenshot	Instructions
Screenshot of modified dealer skin (above)	Background table skins: - Modified dealer with odds table - Shana Hiatt with side odds - Shana Hiatt only Installation: Download the image you want into the Images sub directory under your Party Poker folder. After you've downloaded the file, go to the directory and find the file called table.jpg and rename this file to table_backup.jpg (you will need to be logged out of Party Poker to do this). Find the image you just downloaded and now rename this file to table.jpg instead. After that, start up Party Poker again and you should see the new skin! If you don't like the new skin, simply delete table.jpg and rename table_backup.jpg back to table.jpg and your original table will be restored.
Congratulations Graphic "Eat ItMuthaf*cka!" "You Owned His Ass!" "Get A Real Job!"	Although I don't use these myself, I imagine people get tired of the regular "Congratulations" graphic that appears when you win a pot on Party Poker. So, I decided to make some more humorous graphics to replace the default message. Installation: Backup congratulations.gif and replace with downloaded gif file.

Screenshot

Instructions

Screenshot of modified dealer skin (above)

Background table skins:
- Modified dealer with odds table
- Shana Hiatt with side odds
- Shana Hiatt only

Installation: Download the image you want into the Images sub directory under your Party Poker folder. After you've downloaded the file, go to the directory and find the file called table.jpg and rename this file to table_backup.jpg (you will need to be logged out of Party Poker to do this).

Find the image you just downloaded and now rename this file to table.jpg instead. After that, start up Party Poker again and you should see the new skin! If you don't like the new skin, simply delete table.jpg and rename table_backup.jpg back to table.jpg and your original table will be restored.

Congratulations Graphic
"Eat ItMuthaf*cka!"
"You Owned His Ass!"
"Get A Real Job!"

Although I don't use these myself, I imagine people get tired of the regular "Congratulations" graphic that appears when you win a pot on Party Poker. So, I decided to make some more humorous graphics to replace the default message.

Installation: Backup congratulations.gif and replace with downloaded gif file.

The following are desktop backgrounds that have pot odds charts, for all your poker site needs.

1280x1024 poker wallpaper
1600x900 poker wallpaper
1600x1200 poker wallpaper
1920x1200 poker wallpaper
Shana Hiatt 1024x768
Shana Hiatt1600x1200

Additional Software Resources

You can purchase various poker software from PokerSoftware.com. This site offers reviews of popular software such as Poker Academy, Hold'em Manager and PokerTracker3.

Another good new site is Poker Software at poker-software.com. They are still getting off the ground but they should have really good online poker site software reviews over the coming months.