Poker Drill Master

Poker Drill Master is a unique Texas Hold’em training program that will help improve the game of any player. Although it is primarily designed for the low limit Texas Hold’em player the concepts of determining pot odds, analyzing the strength of hands, identifying outs and choosing the correct starting hands carries over into higher limit and no limit games. The Calculator mode of the program can even be used as you play online to help you make decisions in live games and tournaments.

The Program

To win in low limit games you can almost play a basic strategy based on the math of the game. Your decisions to fold, call or raise will be based on the pot odds you are getting. To determine pot odds you figure the odds of your hand being the winner and compare this with the relationship of the money in the pot to the size of the bet you must put in to call. If you are getting pot odds that are greater than the odds off making your hand, then you call. If you are not getting the right odds, you fold. In the long run you will make money if you base your decisions on the pot odds. This is where Poker Drill Master can improve your game. The training modes are designed to teach you how to quickly identify and calculate the odds.

Poker Drill Master is not a game where you play poker against the computer, or battle against programmed AI opponents (artificial intelligence). Instead you learn through a series of random drills or by analyzing hands that you enter into the calculator.

Poker Drill Master is divided into four main modes: Drill, Calculator, System, and Outs. These correspond to the four lettered icons in the main toolbar of the program.

Drill Mode

You should start with the drill mode to hone your skills in making the right play decisions. Semi-random poker games in various states of completion are presented to you. It could be pre-flop, the flop, turn or the river. You are shown how many random players are still active in the hand. You are given the amount of money in the pot and the size of the bet you must call. You them answer four questions based on your hand.

1. You will determine the probability of your hand being the winner if played to the end.
2. You then determine how your hand ranks to the other hands.
3. You must determine the required pot odds needed to continue with the hand.
4. You calculate your actual pot odds based on the money I the pot.

Every aspect of Drill Mode is configurable from the Options item in the File menu, so you can fine tune the testing to exactly what you need the most help with. (Pre-Flop, Flop, Turn or River)

You can copy any hand you encounter in drill mode to the calculator mode to get a complete analysis of the hand. No matter what your skill level you may find some surprises when using this mode.

Calculator Mode

The Calculator mode is the brains behind Poker Drill Master and it is worth the price of the program by itself. What separates this calculator from others is that you can test any combination of both known and unknown hands. Most calculators make you enter a second hand to make a comparison. This doesn’t do you any good if you are trying to determine the strength of your had against random unknown hands. Poker Drill Masters lets you do just that. In fact if you are playing online you can actually have the program running and enter in your hand during a live game to help you determine your odds of winning against random hands.

The calculator automatically figures out if it can exhaustively run every permutation of the game, or runs a few million random games instead. The execution time for the poker simulator is configurable from the Options item in the File menu.

Outs and System Modes

Outs
The outs mode shows you the probability of making your hand based on the number of outs you have. Your outs are the number of unseen cards that can make your hand the winner. The outs mode of Poker Drill Master is more that just an out chart. The program allows you to enter the size of the bet you must call. It then calculates the minimum pot odds needed to make the call a profitable one. You can choose to have it figure the pot odds for either one or two cards to come. This is also a handy tool that you can use while playing online.

System
Choosing which starting hands to play is the most important decision you will make in Texas Hold’em. Many well known experts have published their own pre-flop criteria for selecting starting hands that tell when to fold, call or raise with different opening hands. Some of these are included with the program. My recommendations for starting hands are included in the program along with those of Sklansky and others. In System mode you enter any hand to get the recommendations for playing any two card combinations based on the system you select. You can t also copy and tinker with them, or create new ones based on your own playing style.