Cardshark Brain: Five Poker Tools, One Product

Do you think about poker day and night and sometimes wonder whether you played a hand correctly?  If you have a smartphone or a tablet, you should consider downloading CardShark Brain, which is reasonably priced at $1.99 in the Apple App Store or Windows Store.

CardShark Brain is a very easy-to-use poker odds calculator for your mobile device.  All calculations are done via a cloud, so although you need a live internet connection to use CardShark Brain, the amount of data won’t be heavy against your data usage plan.

CardShark Brain consists of five tools that are useful for all ranges of players. The Hand Strength tool is very simple and deigned for the beginning player who is unsure where their hand ranks.  First, you need to assign yourself a poker hand and then select the number of players yet to act.  This tool will then show you the next weakest hand and the next strongest hand.  Although this tool is not necessarily helpful for deciding when to play a hand, it does give you a good idea of what hands are better than others.

The Odds Calculator is similar to many others available; however, I have not seen one that is this clear and on your mobile device.  This is a fun tool to play around with, as you can give yourself a hand and selected the number of opponents and their hands.  It will then calculate your odds of winning the hand pre-flop, on a pre-selected flop, and on a pre-selected turn.

If you are the type to second guess how you played a hand afterward or wonder how bad an opponent got their money in, this is great to have available while you are on the go thinking about poker.

The Pot Odds tool within Cardshark Brain can be useful to see how good your play was if you know your opponents' cards.  After entering both of your cards and opponents’ cards, you'll enter what the pot is on the current street along with the bet you are facing.  The Pot Odds Calculator will recommend an action based off this information and give you pot odds, draw odds, implied odds, amount for a breakeven pot, and the number of outs you have.  I like this tool better than the Odds Calculator when reviewing heads-up action since it provides everything that tool does and more.

As a fan of Dan Harrington’s “Structured Hand Analysis,” I truly love the EV Calculator.  This tool shows how much you can expect to win or lose in a hand by making a bet and selecting a range of hands that would call your bet.  I have found leaks in my game by utilizing this tool using some samples from my Holdem Manager 2 database, which allows me to assign ranges to players when reviewing hands.  As someone who used to play a ton of sit and gos, I was surprised at how much I still had to learn about EV and my push/fold ranges.

For those of you who are fans of heat maps, the Post-Flop Analysis tool is right up your alley.  This is another calculator that provides a community card heat map for what cards you'll need on the turn to increase your chances of winning to more than 50%.  This tool also informs you of hand stats including the number of better or worse hands as well as the number of draws you have.

For under $2, you aren’t going to find a cheaper tool that is both fun to use and will help you improve your game.  If you are someone that thinks about poker all the time, I would consider checking out this application so you can continue to learn and improve your poker game while on the go. Check out Cardshark Brain!