3-G software

[melioris]

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.

[MAYHEM45]

I couldnt agree more. PT3 was the biggest waste of money ever.

[Robbie Robb]

I really don't want this to turn into the flame war that often erupts on 2+2 over this very topic but here's my two cents:

PT3 - Yes, it isn't nearly as feature rich as it's predecessor is - yet. As for the HUD problems - I have only ever had PT3 crash out on me once and I was only single tabling. Go figure. I can routinely be playing four tables with no HUD problems at all. There seems to be some part of the code that is causing problems for some computers and works perfectly fine with others. Obviously, these types of bugs can be painful to find and squash. Part of me agrees with the idea that Josh rushed it out and part of me disagrees. I used some of the public betas prior to the release and didn't have many issues with it at all - those issues I did have were just small nits like sorting defaults etc. All indications Josh had prior to the "commercial" release were that it was stable. All private beta and public beta reports were of a fairly stable platform. It does appear that the majority of people having problems (which is NOT the majority of users, but only a small number of users by the sounds of it) are the players that have many millions of hands in their database and routinely run 10+ tables. But again, it's not consistent as there are some players in that category who aren't having any problems. In hindsight, maybe a couple more months of beta really pushing people to get out there and try AND actually report any bugs they found would have caught the problems. Who knows? I'll touch back on this at the end of the post.

HEM - I played with this back when it firsts came out. It was buggy, crashed a lot, and was slow at importing. I deleted it. Kinda like you with PT3. Now, a year down the round, it's mostly bug free and not crashing anymore, but from what I've read on 2+2 it's still incredibly slow importing hands. That's been my only exposure to HEM. I have no need for two trackers (especially ones I have to pay for) so it's unlikely that I'll ever buy a different one.

As for PEV, the release of it keeps getting delayed. Which is a good thing. I think that Phil has learned from watching the issues Josh is having. The one thing to take away from all of it, which I think he has, is that poker players, at least those on 2+2 are, for the most part, an ungrateful bunch of bastards. You post some screenshots and then they start begging and pleading for a release, chastising you when you miss your tentative open beta date. Then, when you finally do give in a post a public beta saying that there are going to be bugs, they tear you a new one for releasing buggy code.

You also forgot to mention the OpenSource effort that is being developed.

Going back to PT3 for a minute as promised. Again, this is all in hindsight - but were I Josh, I would have probably scoured the HEM threads on it's forum and 2+2 looking for people that had major issues with HEM during it's growth period and asked those people to test PT3 with a promise of a free license for helping track down and squash the bugs. It may have cost him a $1000 or so in lost sales but the trade-off would have been invaluable. All in hindsight however...

You've made it perfectly clear your standing on the two NextGen trackers (and I think my preference is pretty clear as well ) but I would ask you to consider one of two things. Think back to a year ago when HEM first "commercial" release came out - all the bitching and moaning it's users made. Or, wait until May 2009 - one year from the "commercial" release of PT3 and evaluate against HEM at that time (although a more fair, but unrealistic, evaluation would be to compare it against the HEM of today).

Personally, if I were one of these developers (thinking of Josh specifically here but it could apply to the others), I would happily comply with the demands for the refunds that are being asked for on the forum (there's about 5 or 6 of them I think). I would give them their money back, de-activate their license, and remove them from the forum. There's one guy on there that keeps bitching about how buggy it is and the same guy is bitching about the lack of release on the PEV thread on 2+2. Apparently there is just no pleasing that guy.

What it ultimately boils down to is personal preference. I won't make any recommendation other than this: TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF ANY TRIAL PROGRAM THAT THE DEVLOPERS OFFER. Find out which program does what you need it to. If HEM does all you'll ever want in a tracker and is working great now - go for it. If PT3 looks like it's going to have features down the road a few months that you're looking for then go for it. No one's really sure what PEV is going to offer so maybe you want to wait for it. The OpenSource project is always going to be free so no point in waiting for it. You can always run it at the same time as the others.

One other question for you Mel - you're a Mac guy right? Are you using boot camp to boot into XP for poker then? Or are you emulating XP and running the Mac clients natively?

[melioris]

nice comments RR. In no way are your comments leading to a flame war. Yeah, I totally forgot about the open source tracker, which is my preferred choice and I really hope it makes it. Right now it falls into the same camp as pEV as far as development.

As for some of your comments. While ultimately PT3 may end up being the superior product, and I suggested that in my OP, I think they have mismanaged the business end of PT3 to such a degree I do not trust the brand any more.

Yeah, I am a mac guy. I run bootcamp and dedicated a 25GB windows partition on my MBP. I run XP SP2 on that partition.

[Wes]

PT3 is garbage. HUD crashes constantly when I'm playing. Really hate that I bought it. HEM is ok. I really really hope pEV turns out to actually work.

[Talking Poker]

Good thread, guys.

I generally like waiting before trying new software, after learning lessons the hard way for years and years and years, dating all the way back to when I tried to upgrade from Windows 3/1 to Windows 95 with disasterous results.

So, as you probably could have guessed, I'm still using PT2.

I'm sure there are many features I'm missing out on, but for my needs it seems to serve it's purpose. Can any of you 3G guys make a solid argument for my to upgrade to either PT3, HEM, or anything else for that matter?

[melioris]

it is like anything else, if you don't see the need for it then don't upgrade. If/when you go back to 6-max games, then I think it is worth it for the extra HUD stats and analysis, but I don't see how it is necessary for HUSNGs.

[Robbie Robb]

I can only speak for the PT3 side of things and the answer is: absolutely not. At this point in time PT2 actually has more reports and analysis built in than what is currently offered in PT3. PT3 imports faster, looks prettier, but at the moment is lacking in all but the most basic features. I do firmly believe that if you ask this question two or three months from now, the answer will be completely different - especially as you're one of the players that actually uses PT2 to its fullest for post game analysis. From what I've heard through the bits and pieces of the grapevine Josh seems to have finally licked a large majority of the HUD bugs with this upcoming beta build so we'll see.

I don't think HEM really offers much that PT2 doesn't but I may be wrong. Mayhem? Wes?

[melioris]

HEM offers tons more post game analysis than PT2. Huge step up in that department.

[Wes]

HEM has a lot of things that you can look at and go, "oh damn, i must really suck in that regard." after you search for other people that are giving you problems and/or that seem tough and you can learn things from your opponents. So yeah basically what mel said.

[MAYHEM45]

I set up my HUD tonite and am now 100% using HEM. Ill talk about it a bit in my video.

[Nikita]

I might have to switch to HEM too. PT3 is starting to piss me off. After the last Stars update it's been nothing but trouble. It occasionally imports tourny hands as cash hands. I only noticed because I had suddenly won approx $6K at $2NL (back in 1969 no less-no idea where the date came from). And the HUD freezes a lot. I move tables, close tables, open a new table--boom, it's frozen and so it the table I'm supposed to play at.

[MAYHEM45]

cash games were sick soft in 1969, those were the days...

[melioris]

back in the summer of '69

[de-coder]

And the video is where? On the way?

[MAYHEM45]

I still have aids, going to the doctors right now. Been sick for over a month, it's retarded.