Use Web-based Poker Tools to Crush Online

Humans have used tools as far back as we archaeologists can track. In fact, our use of tools is what has allowed us as a species to dominate, to overcome what would otherwise seem like insurmountable obstacles—good luck living in the Arctic without tools. Given this, any poker player who is serious about turning a profit will use whatever tools they legally can to increase their edge against the competition.

The first tool most players add to their toolbox is some kind of heads up display. Playing without a HUD puts you at such a serious information disadvantage that it’s unreasonably difficult to turn a consistent profit. That’s not to say you won’t stack players from time to time, but over the long term, your game will suffer.

Two other web-based poker tools that can improve your game is 888 Poker’s “Poker Calculator” and PokerWarmUp’s Poker Session Timer.

Use the Poker Calculator in Grow Your Game

Understanding your odds of winning a hand is the difference between seeing your EV line march way up into the black and watching it dip deep into the red. Of course, that doesn’t mean profits in any given situation will follow—if someone has a 4.3% chance of beating you in a situation, it will happen, eventually. However, serious poker players know that as long as they keep making +EV decisions, they’ll be able to grind it out and turn a profit.

The Poker Calculator allows you to determine your exact odds for any given situation. You can calculate the odds in heads-up, six-max, or a full table game. All you have to do is plug in your hand, your opponents’ hands, and the board.

With this information, you can start deciding what moves are going to be +EV for you. If there’s information you don’t have, you can leave your opponents cards blank, and you’ll be given your odds of winning based on a random holding.

For example, if you want to know how A of hearts and A of spades stacks up against ten random hands, plug in your aces to find out you have a 30.5% chance of winning ahead of the flop—everyone else sitting with two random cards has 6.9%. Of course, if everyone sticks around for the flop and it comes out nasty—let’s say all diamonds—then the calculator will tell you that you have only a 13.7% chance of winning. If you want to see how a heads-up situation looks on that flop against one random diamond, fold out the rest of the players and give the one remaining player a hand with a diamond—you’re still going to have a 62% chance of scooping the pot.

The best part about the calculator is that it’s simple to use. The math is all behind the scenes, and the interface is clean and simple without limiting your abilities to really test out situations.

The poker calculator is ideal for reviewing hands to ensure you made the right choice—or to prove to friends that you made the right choice based on the odds. It can also be used in play if you’re really unsure of what to do, but are able to give your opponent a very narrow range.

As always, may the odds always be in your favor—and may you always know them.

Stay Focused with Your Poker Session Timer

You might have strong reads, top skills at determining ranges and be good at calculating your odds of winning a hand on the spot. However, poor game-time management skills can still cost you a fortune and dull your edge in a cash game.

It’s way too easy to get on the grind and dig in until your screen is blurry and your bladder is about to burst—we’ve all been there. For some, it’s hard to step away for a breather when you’re crushing. For others, it’s hard to take a break when you’re on a nasty downswing. And for nearly everybody, it’s easy to lose track of time and put in long, break-less sessions without even realizing it.

PokerWarmUp’s Session Timer tool is the cure. Pull up the site, set the amount of time you want until your first break and then start the countdown.

In general, you’re going to get the best results by taking at least a 10-minute break every 1.5-2 hours. It’s a strategy used by anyone engaged in “think-work” that is shooting for optimizing their time and effort. Short breaks are known to restore motivation, help with decision fatigue, increase creativity, and improve learning. Additionally, for poker players, it can help you manage your tilt tendencies.

Of course, the clock, which will also play relaxing background music if you want it to, is only a reminder to take a break. If you find yourself cursing at your computer, tired, or hungry—it’s time to take a break.

When you take breaks, make them “moving breaks.” Don’t just click over to Facebook for 10 minutes. Get up and go for a walk, do some yoga stretches, or even a few push-ups—just get your body moving.

Drinking water and gnawing on some healthy snacks are also a good idea during your break. You want to stay properly fueled and hydrated during your sessions.

By setting your timer as part of your pre-session warmup routine—which you can do when you create a free account on pokerwarmup.com—you can opt to review what leaks you have in your game and make a mental note to focus on those specific issues in your upcoming session.

Along the same lines, when the timer goes off and you’re ready to call it a session—rather than just taking a break—you can spend a few minutes going through a cooldown routine. Doing this will allow you to process what you’ve learned from the session and identify any mistakes or areas you’d like to see yourself improve on next session.

Use web-based poker tools to crush online

By adding the Poker Calculator and the Session Timer to your poker toolbox, you’re giving yourself the chance to grow as a poker player, as well as a way to increase your bankroll. If you’re serious about sharpening your edge in poker, you need to take advantage of every opportunity out there to improve your game.

PPPoker: play with HM2 or PT4 HUD and tracker

PPP POker HUD example
PPP Poker HUD

Having better information than your opponents when you’re playing poker is essential to being a consistent winner. Any situation where you’re able to create a positive information gap between how much you know about how your opponent plays and what can possibly be in their range in any given situation, the greater your edge — and the more money you’re going to walk away with.

The PPPoker converter works with both Poker Tracker 4 and Holdem Manager 2, which means either your standard HUD from either of those programs or your customized one will appear once you fire it up.

A heads-up display — HUD — is where all your stats are shown for individual players, as well as yourself, giving you insights into what exploitable habits they have. Do they open with too wide of a range? Do they fold too often to 3-bets? Do they 3-bet light? Your HUD will give you an idea of how best to answer these questions, as well as dozens of other essential issues that can make the difference between you being a winning player and you having to consistently re-deposit to keep playing.

Not only does tracking hands give you the necessary information to play better poker and choose the optimal strategy against individual opponents, but it also stores your hand history. This gives you the chance to go back and analyze hands by yourself or with a coach, catching leaks in your own game and allowing you to adjust how you think about certain situations to continue to improve as a player

The PPPoker converter works with both PC versions and emulators, so you’ll never be left at the table without your HUD. This is especially important on sites such as PPPoker, where the player pool is really soft and diverse, making a HUD essential.

Of course, PPPoker does have a built-in HUD. However, you have to pay a monthly fee for each account you have. This can add up fast for multi-tabling players, as they need to pay for a HUD account on each table.

The PokerMasterHUD has converters developed for PPPoker and PokerMaster. However, the PokerMaster’s one isn’t supported at the moment, so you’ll want to check back in for updates.

The EliteHUD has converters developed for PokerKing Asia, Mollys Poker (former PokerKingdom (former PokerLords) and HiPoker (former OhPOker, former Thirteen poker).

So no matter which Asian Poker Apps you’re playing in, don’t be a fish and get felted just because you don’t have the right tools to play the most optimal poker against your opponents.

PokerMaster hand history converter and HUD

PokerMaster Converter by PokerWarmUp

PokerMaster HUD allows tracking results of your play on PokerMaster  in your favorite Holdem Manager 2 software. Now you’ll be able to review your hands, statistics, track your results, and run your favorite HUD setup with any stats you want.

Install PokerMaster converter in less than 5 minutes according to this manual.

What better appreciation of your service can you receive in black & white ?!

great_workTranslation to other languages including Russian is the planned feature.

Dear users ! Please let us know if you are interested in helping us, yourself and speakers of your language to make this great Poker tool really available to everybody who is keen.

As for donations, for me personally the PokerWarmUp.com is in a way my own donation to her majesty Poker. For all the good changes she brought into my life.

But we will think about it 😉

Keep your Game hot, 

Keep Warming Up! 

Site Update

pokerwarmup-poker-goals-page

Major website redesign and several new features gonna be added in the next couple weeks.

Here are couple screen shots of future look:

pokerwarmup-poker-goals-page
pokerwarmup-Technical-Leaks-add-new-step-3-predefined
pokerwarmup-Technical-Leaks-add-new-step-3-predefined

Function change request

We probably should change the order of steps during the Poker warm up. As per Jared’s suggestions in his article,  the “Around the Table” step should run before anything else. And this is quite logical, we want to remove any distracting factors first, so that they can not even distract us from the Warm Up procedure itself. But I would like to hear some feedback first though, as  I am using this routine myself for many months already, and the process of  closing my skype, gmail , etc as the last step, gives me some extra motivational push and sense of accomplishment just before starting the session. Also sometimes I send some “last” messages in skype or gmail during warm up – to clean my head off  of them.

Wake Up to Play Poker

Several days ago I was describing to my friend a routine that I go through almost every working day and which works very well for me. And I decided to write a post about this. It took many words, but in reality all this lasts 30-40 minutes at maximum, especially if you do it several days in a row and get used to it. This make my mind and my body to wake up completely and make sure I am ready for some serious work. 

  • 1. Wake Up 5am. My mind is very clear in early mornings and games are quite sweet this time too.  I sleep 7 hours and usually wake up 3-5 minutes before the alarm clock,

The first thing I do is:

– Remembering Why I wake up today?
To do something good and useful. To improve myself. To make myself  and other people more happy.

Something positive enough to bring a meaning, inspire and make you smile.

  • 2. Wash up myself.  Clean up the room, my working place, etc. If there is an order everywhere, there is an order in your head too. And its just a bit lazy sometimes to do the morning exercise straight away. Sometimes I check e-mail, Facebook just to make sure there is nothing new in there, same pictures, same people and same 80% of spam messages.

***Update. I now also do a 30 mins meditation session every single morning, regardless if I play today or not.  

  • 3. Do the morning exercise, its highly desirable to start sweating. I do Ashtanga yoga or  just general set of stretches, push-ups, sit ups, etc. If there is a swimming pool around, I swim. This should take at least 15 minutes. I need to start breathing deeply and freely, as sometimes my nose is blocked in the morning.

During this warm up I try to think ONLY about warm up. Like:
“this is my hand, touching the ground. This is my breath, I am inhaling now. My knee still hurts a bit, probably after that basketball game”.
I think only about NOW, not yesterday, not in another city… But Here and Now. By doing this I prepare my mind, restraining it from random thoughts, stopping it from wandering away at every favorable moment, and instead make it do what I want it to do, namely make good poker decisions.

Often thoughts completely unrelated to what I am doing at this moment would come into my mind:

“I am going to Australia next month, where will I stay?”
Fk this, I’ll sort this out just before or when I come there.
Now I am lifting up my left leg…

“My Girlfriend is gonna have a birthday next week, what should I buy her for present?”
Ok. I’ll put this task into my daily planner (using Simpleology ) and will think about this later. Now I am making a deep, deep breath…

  • 4. Shower with cold water and breakfast. I eat cereals with fruits, salads, soy milk or juice, scoop of protein. I never eat something fried, like eggs or bacon or any bread like toasts or cookies – this makes me lazy and sleepy, and it’s just an unhealthy food overall.

During the shower and breakfast I keep thinking about here and now.

“ehhm.. This water is cold. Goosebumps on my skin. The pineapple is sweet and tasty.”

Some unwanted thoughts would keep coming into my mind:

“It’s friday. How should I entertain myself today?”
I’ll think about this after I finish my work, It’s not something urgent. Now I am chewing my pineapple and enjoying the taste.

“What if result of my today’s session will be negative like yesterday?”
Doesn’t matter. I am aware of variance, and If I make any mistakes I will review them later and discuss with my poker friends. Now I gonna play with huge edge against fish. And more often my sessions are positive than negative.

Or even better just to leave them Unanswered and ignore.

  • 5. Ready to go. If I still have some thoughts running in my head, I write them down to a notepad or online, I use  http://simpleology.com/.
  • 6. I open my Poker Warm Up, check if there are some newly discovered leaks to be added to my warming up routine (though I usually do this afterwards, during my session review).

Start Warm UP and attentively go through all the steps completing it like it’s the most important checklist of my day:

a) My Poker Goals. I remember why I play, except for the play itself. Besides money, what else gives me her majesty Poker? If I have some new Goals to add, I quickly check it is a SMART goal
b) My Technical leaks. To become better these must be eliminated. And to eliminate I need to constantly be aware and work on my weaknesses.
c) Mind leaks. To evaluate results of my play, I use not only monetary measures but how I coped with various forms of tilt too. Recognizing signs of upcoming  tilt is the most important thing I took from Jared Tendler’s  Mental Game of Poker.
d) Distracting factors. Yeah, I can play 3 tables HU and discuss plans for the evening with my friend on the phone. But can I be sure that the quality of my decisions during this time is the best? Not at all, rather opposite.
e) Check my Concentration. Several days a month I would delay or even skip playing poker just because I don’t feel like playing. I had enough cases in my experience when I ignored this strong feeling and had a very bad session that day, including 10 hours non-stop play, broken mouses and keyboards, chairs flying across the room and screams like “I knew I shouldn’t play today”. So I learned it hard way. Most probably this is caused, as  Jared Tendler defined, by accumulated emotions tilt. 

  • 7. And the last step, as Poker Warm Up suggests I set up the  Poker session Timer for 1,5 or 2 hours with strong intention to have a brake or finish the session when the Timer tells me do so.
  • 8.  Only after this is done, I start opening tables…

Good luck at the tables!

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