Poker Tracking Software
Poker Copilot belongs to a category of software called poker tracking software.
What is Poker Tracking Software?
Poker tracking software is software that:
- tracks your online poker playing,
- shows your bankroll changes,
- analyses your game, and
- presents detailed info on how your opponents play.
Poker tracking software keeps a record of each hand you've played. It stores all the hands on your computer. You can then follow your performance over time, see trends, analyze your playing style, and improve your game.
The major features of poker tracking software are:
- bankroll tracking: watch your earnings over time. See how your earnings improve as you learn better skills.
- hand analysis: after a playing session, assess the way you played in aggregate to see if you made consitently good decisions. Find the hands in which you made mistakes so that you can learn from them. Over the long term, see if you bet too much, or too little, whether you are folding when you should be raising, and if you are getting the maximum value out of pocket aces.
- hand replayer: replay the most important hands, export them to video or formatted text, so that you can share them with friends, your poker coach, or in online poker forums.
- leak detectors: most poker tracking software has a number of "leak detectors" that help you detect and fix the most common mistakes.
- opponent analysis: poker tracking is not just about tracking your own history. As you play hands against the same opponents, poker tracking software collects information on those opponents. As time progresses, your software can analyze your opponents, helping you choose who to avoid, and who to exploit.
- head-up display (HUD): A HUD shows the information in your poker tracking software live on the poker tables while you play.
How does it work?
Each time you complete a hand on your online poker room, the hand is saved to a text file on your computer. This hand history contains an action-by-action record of the hand. Originally intended for auditing the poker room, the hand histories have come to be used primarily by poker tracking software.
Your poker tracking software reads each hand, extracts as much information as possible from it, and stores that information in a database. This makes it possible to collate the hand info into summary reports. The database also allows many types of ad-hoc analysis. Poker tracking software supplies short-cuts to the most common types of analysis.
Is poker tracking software allowed by the poker rooms?
Yes, mostly. The major poker rooms such as PokerStars, 888poker, PartyPoker, Winamax, and iPoker all allow many poker tracking software applications, as long as they abide by certain limitations.
The main limitation is that you can only have hands in your poker tracking software's database from hands that you participated in. It is not allowed to build up a database of hands from other people's playing sessions. Nor can you share hand histories to make a combined database.
PokerStars has an additional limitation: while not playing poker you can perform any analysis you want on your database. But while playing, only basic summaries of statistics are allowed to be viewed in a HUD or head-up display. Players can't be automatically categorised during play in the HUD component of poker tracking software.
Who uses poker tracking software?
Almost every poker pro or full-time player uses poker tracking software. Many casual players also do, but unless they play regularly, casual players might not have enough hands in their database to perform all types of analysis. At the low-stakes tables, poker tracking software is less common. However, it always offers an advantage.
Want to try poker tracking software?
Poker Copilot is a popular poker tracker that's been helping poker players improve their game since 2008.