Poker Software Revealed with Matthew Hunt (theginger45)

We grilled Tournament Poker Edge Professional Matthew Hunt (pictured) from England about his use of poker software.  Hunt has over $1 million in online tournament cashes according to PocketFives, mostly on PokerStars under the screen name theginger45.  Matthew works mostly with recreational poker players that want to take their game to the next level.  You can contact him for coaching via the Twitter handle @theginger45.
 
PokerSoftware:  What poker software do you use while playing or for post-game studies?
 
Matthew Hunt:  When grinding, I always use Holdem Manager 2 and sometimes use Tournament Shark.  For coaching others and reviewing my own play, I use SliceEV, ICMIZER, and Universal Replayer.
 
PokerSoftware:  How is your HM2 HUD set up?

Matthew Hunt:  I have a really complex HUD that I've built over a period of a couple of years.  I have six lines of stats: player name, hands and stack in big blinds, standard pre-flop stats, PFR by position, c-bet stats, and street-by-street aggression.  I have it set to "Active Table Only" so it doesn't cloud my vision all the time.
 
PokerSoftware:  Wow, that is a ton of data.  Does it ever become too much to digest when playing many tables at once?
 
Matthew Hunt:  Not really because you're never using all the stats at the same time and I try not to play too many tables anyway. I have the stats color-coded so my eyes can find the right one quickly and have big monitors so I don't have to squint to read them!
 
PokerSoftware:  With all of those statistics, do you still have a need for the pop-ups or for NoteCaddy?
 
Matthew Hunt:  I don't use the pop-ups at all.  I prefer to have the information right there.  And although I have and use NoteCaddy, I find it not so useful in MTTs.  I just use it for occasionally picking up specific reads on regs who I have big samples of data on.
 
PokerSoftware:  Tell us about Tournament Shark and how you are using it.
 
Matthew Hunt:  It is basically like Sharkscope except a window of data attaches to your table and gives you a drop-down list of everyone's tournament stats.  It is very useful against unknowns because it saves you the time of looking everyone up at every table.
 
PokerSoftware:  Tell us about the different study and coaching tools you are using and how you are using them.
 
Matthew Hunt:  I actually don't spend as much time on my own game as I should, but coaching others helps me keep improving. I use Universal Replayer to review my students' hand history files, SliceEV for some of the simpler equity calculations and combinations, and ICMIZER to run specific scenarios based on actual hands, either as a review of a mistake the student made or as a way to learn about shoving, calling, and re-shoving ranges by changing different stack sizes, ICM considerations, villains' ranges, etc.

I try to have a solid theoretical and mathematical foundation behind the advice I give to students because simply saying, "You should have folded this hand" is pretty useless if you can't show the data as to why it's a fold.
 
I have some other software I'd like to learn more about such as Flopzilla and CardRunnersEV, but haven't really had time to play around with those and get the most out of them yet.
 
PokerSoftware:  What's going on for you at Tournament Poker Edge?  Do you have any new videos just released or in the hopper?
 
Matthew Hunt:  I have a series I recorded last month that is coming out soon: a review of video footage that was submitted by a TPE member.  Sometime next week, I'm going to record a review of my final table run in the PokerStars.fr Sunday Major - part hand history review and part live footage review.
 
PokerSoftware:  What software you use to create videos for Tournament Poker Edge and how much time do you need to invest for each video?

Matthew Hunt: I usually just use a hand replayer like Universal Replayer to run through hands and Camtasia Studios to record.  Then, I talk through my thoughts.  It's pretty easy to actually make the video, but the hardest part is making sure the analysis I give is concise and easy to understand instead of rambling on about every possible scenario in the hand.

It doesn't take me that long to make the videos, maybe one hour for every 45 minutes of footage, but if I mess up and need to edit something out, either our video editors at TPE or I have a little extra work to do, and that happens more than I'd like!

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