Poker Office Readying Fish Finder Tool

Recently, PokerSoftware conducted an interview with Poker Office representative Magnus Wennlöf regarding the special two-week free trial offer for Poker Office 5. We also touched on the direction of the online poker tracking software industry in general. We also get a scoop about a forthcoming fish finder tool.

PokerSoftware.com: How did Poker Office get its start?

Magnus Wennlöf: The initial development of Poker Office started in 2003. By that time, there were already other tracking software available, but filling them with hand histories was quite cumbersome. The reason being that back then, poker sites didn’t actually write hand histories to your disk. You had to send the sites an e-mail to request your hand histories and then manually import them.

We realized that a program that could read your poker tables in real-time and automatically fill your database with hand histories would be a very valuable tool for a poker player. That’s how the idea of PokerOffice was formed.

PokerSoftware.com: How did Black Friday affect the poker tracking industry and the online poker industry, in your opinion?

Magnus Wennlöf: The poker market as a whole obviously took a big hit when almost all of the American players vanished overnight. What makes the whole thing even worse, of course, is that the reputation of online poker definitely has been tarnished due to the scandal regarding Full Tilt Poker, for example.

While we were negatively affected by Black Friday and not being able to target U.S. customers, it did, on the other hand, give us the opportunity to focus more on strengthening our position in the European market. As a result of this, we are releasing a French version of our software and others languages will soon follow.

PokerSoftware.com: What are some of the difficulties associated with providing coverage for country-specific sites like PokerStars.it and PokerStars.fr?

Magnus Wennlöf: Technically, it’s not any different than supporting any other poker site. The difficult part with all of the country-specific sites, especially if other countries decide to follow suit, is that it takes a lot of development time to keep up with all of the updates each site releases.

This extra time could otherwise have been spent adding new features.

PokerSoftware.com: What feedback have you gotten from Poker Office 5 customers?

Magnus Wennlöf: What we mainly hear is that users find it very easy to get started. Everyone fancies the idea of simply downloading a program, sitting down at a table to play, and everything just works out of the box.

PokerSoftware.com: What are some of the key features included in the Poker Office 5 fully featured product?

Magnus Wennlöf: Since we don’t sell any add-on products like many other software providers, a Poker Office full user has the advantage of benefiting from all of our available features, including live HUD stats, pop-ups with advanced player statistics, odds calculations, and outs displays.

When not playing, you can analyze your own game from all angles with graphs, advanced filters, a hand replayer, custom statistics reports, and you can also search for certain player types by using our “Player Search” tool. All of this applies to both Hold’em and Omaha.

PokerSoftware.com: How much does Poker Office 5 cost? What are the different packages available?

Magnus Wennlöf: There are three different packages of Poker Office available:

Poker Office Hold’em – €99
Poker Office Omaha – €99
Poker Office Full (Omaha and Hold’em) – €179

PokerSoftware.com: Could you share some of the most recent updates that developers have made to Poker Office?

Magnus Wennlöf: We have focused a lot of time improving the live play experience, both visually and performance-wise. The Table Overlay HUD is basically completely remade and it’s now faster and completely customizable. It has manually moveable stats and user-defined background transparency, among other features. Another thing that has improved greatly is the overall multi-tabling performance.

Another major thing, while not exactly a feature, is that Poker Office is now available in French. This is something that has been frequently requested and we’re happy to release the translated version to our French user base.

PokerSoftware.com: Can you provide us with a sneak peek some of the features that will be available in the next six months?

Magnus Wennlöf: We have a couple of big things that we’re currently working on. An advanced server-based fish finder tool is in the works and this definitely will be an extremely valuable tool for our users. Another thing we’re working on is adding social features that will make it easier for Poker Office users to interact with each other. For example, we want our users to be able to show hands or sessions to friends or coaches, share results, and so on.

PokerSoftware.com: Where do you see poker tracking software going in the future?

Magnus Wennlöf: We believe that poker tracking software will be increasingly used by coaches, letting players run advanced reports and being told what they need to work on to improve. We also believe that software users will be able to interact more with each other in the future.

PokerSoftware.com: What are some of the advantages to using poker tracking software? Is it for everyone?

Magnus Wennlöf: It’s for anyone who aspires to improve as a poker player or for anyone who simply wants an easy way of keeping track of winnings and losses. During live play, you’re supplied with opponent statistics, pot odds, and outs, which together make your decisions much easier and also quicker. Purchasing your own tracking software is a great investment that you should be able to benefit from very fast.

View our Poker Office review today.