Play Mixed Games? Use Pokeit

Looking back, I feel like I must have grown up with a deck of cards in my hands. I would always be involved in some dealer's choice home game for nickels and dimes, which meant at an early age I was exposed to many different types of poker.

If we fast-forward to 2003, the Moneymaker Effect on online poker made No Limit Hold'em the game of choice. While I do not expect that to change, I am pleased to see an increase in the number of casual and big-time poker pros playing games outside of No Limit Hold'em over the past couple of years.

While I love the poker software I am using to help me analyze my game and keep track of my statistics, one major downside is the lack of huge software suites like PokerTracker and Holdem Manager for games outside of Hold'em and Omaha. The main reason is that a large percentage of these programs' customer base only plays these two games, so there isn't a valid business reason to spend a ton of money developing and supporting software for other games.

It seems just about every day you can find Islidur1 dominating opponents on Full Tilt Poker in high-stakes ring games of 2-7 Triple Draw or Shaun Deeb dominating opponents on PokerStars at high-stakes Eight Game tables. The players I look up to are not the ones who are winning the WSOP Main Event, but rather aren't one-trick ponies and can dominate many different forms of poker.

This basically got me into asking around to see if there were any pieces of software that support almost all poker games you can find online. While I couldn't find a HUD that tracks a wide variety of games, I was pleased to see that Pokeit handles tracking and a bit more.

Pokeit is a cloud database that currently tracks 18 different poker varieties, including the popular Hold'em and Omaha games and those increasing in popularity such as 2-7 Triple Draw, Couchevel, Stud High-Low, Irish Poker, Five Card Stud, Badgui, and Five Card Omaha. It appears that if the game is released online, Pokeit will figure out how to track it. As far as I know, Pokeit is the only poker software that attempts to provide a tracking service for every game available on major online poker networks.

The industry leader PokerStars and its sister poker site Full Tilt Poker have been constantly releasing new games, which immediately puts those who have a good knowledge of them ahead of the curve. It is great to see when a new game is released how many people are flocking to it. Sometimes this is just a flash in the pan where the demand wanes after a few weeks; other times, the release of a new game is just the start of its popularity.

As part of the learning process for any new game, it is important to review your play. It is also important to be able to identify hands that will be good to discuss with others. The Pokeit Smart Graphs, Report Builder, and Hand Browser can all help you understand your trends and find potential leaks and discussion topics.

The software can also tell you if you are a winner or loser in certain games without having to keep track with a pen and paper, a form of record-keeping that is mistake prone and does not provide you any information on your opponents and only limited information on your own play.

Perhaps the coolest feature about Pokeit is the Replayer. The Replayer was recently redesigned so it could be supported on all platforms, browsers, and devices for all 18 games the software currently tracks. The Replayer also shows a basic HUD on your opponents so you can get an idea of how they are playing.

Since the software doesn't include a HUD in real-time, you can keep a Replayer window open to see the stats on your opponents based off your prior hand histories with them. Since it is difficult to mass multi-table most games outside of Hold'em, it is possible to reference another screen for stats on opponents. While this isn't as ideal as having the stats overlaid on your online poker table in real-time, it still gives you information you might need to make a decision.

Even if you don't play Mixed Games, I would recommend checking out Pokeit. It is free for the first 10,000 hands, so you can see what it is all about. After 10,000 hands, it has a reasonable pricing structure that depends on the size of your database.

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