Poker Aid Calculator for iPhone Released

For just $0.99, there’s a handy little application in the Apple App Store that lets you easily calculate odds for Hold’em and Omaha hands.  Poker Aid Calculator will work on an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad and can be purchased from iTunes or your device’s App Store application.

Once the program is started, you can pick between Hold’em and Omaha.  From there, simply enter your starting hands and Poker Aid will calculate your chances of winning the hand.  It will also tell you how strong your holding is by ranking it against all other possible starting hands.  You can improve the accuracy of the calculations by adjusting the number of opponents and their perceived playing styles.  If you can make a decent read on your opponents, then Poker Aid can calculate your chances of having the winning hand.

The mechanism used to put in your hands is a very simple interface that makes use of Apple’s touch technology.  First, click on the card value you want to enter, ranging from the deuce all the way to the ace.  After that, select one of the four suits and hit the “Done” button.  If you want a random hand, there’s support for that too, as you can simply click the “Random” button.  That simple mechanism makes entering cards into the program very easy.

Once you’ve put in a hand, you will see various icons to the right of it.  There’s a skull and bones button that “kills” the hand and resets everything.  Below that is a “+” button that will add an opponent to your interface so you can see how your hand fares against theirs.  If you decide not to have that option activated, you will see the Win / Draw / Rank figures, which are also color-coded to tell you their relative strength to your hand.

Below that, you will see two sliders, the first of which tells you how many players are in the hand; it starts at two and ends at ten.  Below that is an opponent type slider that starts at “No Folding” and goes to “Loose Opponents,” “Normal Opponents,” and finally “Tight Opponents.”  When you alter the slider, the figures of Win / Draw / Rank will be changed accordingly.  Here's a sneak peek:



For Omaha, the program does not support calculating hand odds pre-flop, but will do so on the flop, turn, and river, making it a handy tool to check your potential equity against specific hands your opponents will have.  At the flop, you’ll see your outs in addition to the probably of hitting them, including runner-runner possibilities.

After the flop, Poker Aid will calculate the probability of hitting each one of your outs and boasts quick calculation times.  Currently, Poker Aid supports Texas Hold’em and Omaha High hands and starting hand calculations are only available for Texas Hold’em.  In future updates, there will be a fully activated “Videos” section that at the time of this article only shows, “No videos available, please check back soon.”

For a dollar, this is a handy little tool, if anything for the Omaha High support that we have yet to see from an iPhone App so far.  There are promises of new features, specifically the videos, which make this app one to consider when browsing through the App Store.