And the winner is..... Holdem Manager

After hem hawing for many weeks I have finally decided to give Holdem Manager a try. It really does kind of hurt as I was really planning and hoping that it would be PokerTracker3; but for now, Holdem Manager is my choice. Why? I'll tell you.


But First, I did play in the MATH and went out right before the first break. Our resident Presto Man put in an early position raise 3x from UTG and I push for 4.5X that bet wih 88 and he insta calls with JTs getting the nice price of .69 to 1. Nice call. Flop AK2, Turn 5, and the River was a Q giving him a straight. Now, me off all people shouldn't gripe about the JTs hand as I love to play it as well. In my humble opinion, he probably wasn't getting the right price to call. He hit his hand and so be it. It really makes no difference to me. I just went off to finish playing my cash games and playing with HEM.

So, no deep run in the MATH this week. Next week, I guess we will be back down to the normal numbers. I am going to try to continue to play these; especially if it is going to remain 6 max; but it will hard to justify to continue playing so much without the BBT reason I was throwing Mrs Wonka.

--------------


While I am just scratching the service of HEM as I try to learn about it, here are a couple of reasons that I chose it.


Let's start with some minor points:

1) They have a small stakes edition that plays of up 25c/50c NL (it has limit and tourney limits as well). Since I am only playing 25c/50c right now, I was ok in paying the $55 for the SSE. If and when I move up and can pay the extra $25 to move up to unlimited.


2) They support Absolute Poker. I know, I know.. why do I play there given all the controversy. Because, at my level, I am not really worried about cheating and the games there are really soft. Given the fact that I get 30% rakeback there also is a big factor. I still call Full Tilt home as that is where I play the most.


3) They have a working Heads Up Display (HUD). PT3 is still rumored to be a bit buggy. This HUD is amazing. The updates are about 2 or 3 seconds after the hand and of course the amount of stats you can display or get to is simply unbelievable.


4) Speaking of the HUD, they use the HUD when you replay hands (see below).. It even can display the stats up to the day that you played making reviewing the hand much easier. I believe they are still working on making the stats the exact same as when you played it (if they haven't already done so).

They are also working on the ability to tag a hand while you are playing to go back and review. This is built into the HUD already; but soon to be integrated with HEM.

So Taking a look at my stats, I have 4 lines. (they are working on having the stats with more than one box). Anyway,

Line 1: Name, Hands and Winnings

Line 2: VPIP, PFR, 3 Bet, Fold to 3 bet and 4 bet

Line 3: Aggr Factor, Squeeze, Flop Continuation Bet and Fold to Flop C-Bet

Line 4: Steal, BTN Steal, SB Fold to Steal, BB Fold to Steal

Again, I am just playing around with what I want to display. If you mouse over any of those stats, a pop up screen comes up and even breaks down the stats to a ridiculous level. I really love the Squeeze stat as that tells a lot about the person.

5) Too many custom stats and filters to even mention and to be truthful, I am still learning about these.

6) A player detail page that is pretty cool. While my stats aren't too impressive, just take a look at the analysis that it gives.

7) Graphs. I still think there is a lot to be done here and perhaps I haven't delved into it too much. The interesting thing here is that taking a look at the chart below, can you tell when I purchased and started using HEM? This is a chart for my month so far.

Can you say about hand 13K? Of course, this software isn't the whole reason as some of my big hands started holding up, etc, etc... HEM does give you the EV of when you went ALL In and there is some sort of report to give some All In EV information; but I have not found that yet. Anyway, a certainly dismal month has turned into just a bad month and given the rakeback and other stuff, I am actually positive for the month albeit barely so I really can't complain.

8) There is a document being prepared to help you find leaks using HEM. I believe that this document is going to be made available to all HEM customers free of charge. Here is a link to the 2+2 thread about it.

9) Speaking of 2+2. You can pull up a HEM HH right after the hand. Again, you will be able to flag it for future use, but you can also copy a format that can be pasted to 2+2 in the right format for their forums. Pretty cool, I tried it out and it worked pretty good even though it wasn't the best hand to review.

10) Hmmm, I need to make one more to get to an even 10 reasons. I can't really think of anything other to say that this program (as is PT3) is still a work in progress and is constantly being updated. To be fair, it is not very updated on the tourney side yet; but that is what Roy and company are focusing on next. The big release will include better tourney support, better use of multiple DBs, if wanted, and a better way of purging old hands.

I don't think they can match the support that PT and I'm sure PT3 is giving; but he is constantly updating and answering questions on the massive 2+2 thread. Their website leaves a lot to be desired and is in the midst of a professional redesign. I hope to see it at the level of PT3 with shared report repositories and a better forum.

One thing that it really needs is better documentation. This is something that PT has always been great at and I'm sure that HEM will catch up with the documentation soon.

So, that is all that I can really think of at the moment. I will continue to update you on things that I find.

Have a nice day!!!!