Hold'em Manager

Introduction
Holdem Manager is the first of the second generation of poker assistant programs. This program is completely approved across all the major internet poker rooms, from FullTilt Poker to PokerStars (for USA players specifically), and allows you to track your hands and those of your opponents. An essential aspect of growing and improving as a poker player is to track your results and see the holes not only in your game but those of your opponents as well.
Holdem Manager is a PC-only software that imports the hand histories files created by the various poker rooms and pastes them into a database. Within that database you can mine data and break down your own game, and anyone that you see playing online.

Some key features include
No Database size limits. You can run 20+million hand databases on your average household computer.
Unlimited reporting potential, numerous default reports, ability to customize any report, and ability to build your own stats based on complex criteria
Robust filtering system
All in EV (expected value) is calculated every time a player goes all in on any street. The actual % to win and equity are saved and can even be reported in a graph.
Complete breakdown of hole card %s for yourself or any player. You can even filter by key situation.
Powerful HUD that provides you with important info that you need to beat your opponents. HUD also contains a hand history tool to give you a recap of the previously played hand.
Players tab where you can compare detailed stats for all players in your database extremely quickly.
Player detailed window that breaks down opponent tendencies and weaknesses.
Import hands at “over 10 times the competition”

Getting Started
The first thing to do when using this program was to import all the hands I’ve saved up over the course of 6+ months of playing online. As you can imagine, this is a lot of hands. In previous programs this huge import literally took all night … I had to leave the computer on (note that I use an Intel Quad-Core PC with 4 GB of RAM) and leave it, it wasn't even done in the morning (a period of about 7 hours). With Holdem Manager, their claim of a faster import time is absolutely true … it took no longer than 30 minutes to get all the data into the HEM (HoldEm Manager) database. Right off the bat you can put a checkmark down for HEM. Configuring the auto-importer seemed to take care of itself, and in less than 1 hour not only did I have all my hands imported in the database, but I was fully functional and operational.

The HUD
The big downer other recently released poker management programs is that the HUD (Heads Up Display) is buggy and would either slow down your computer or cause it to crash altogether. The HUD for Holdem Manager is pure magic. With 18 tables opened simultaneously, at no point in the last 4 weeks of running the program has the HUD crashed or even caused a slowdown in computer or game performance. This is a far cry from other programs that would start out working just fine and eventually go down the drain in performance. The HUD is completely configurable, meaning you can have any stat on a player appear by their name so you know their tendencies of play. Font sizes and color ranges are totally configurable to whatever you like them to be, and the stats refresh themselves after every hand without any hassle. To summarize and to make a point, the HUD with Holdem Manager is simply the best we’ve ever used with any program to date.

The Cash Games Tab
There are four main tabs with the program : Import, Cash Games, Tourneys, Players.
The “Cash Games” tab is where you’ll spend most of your time looking at your own major statistics. From this area the number of filters that you can break down your game looks endless. You can add any stat to this screen, and break out your game by date range, room, stakes, number of players, action (you were the small blind for example that bet), hole cards, and more.
For example, I’ve been told that from the Button, Cutoff, and Hijack positions I need to open up my game and steal more blinds from these positions because even hands that are “garbage” are shown to be profitable. Well, using HEM I can run that report, and see that this is not the case for me. Since it should be, then I should focusing on this part of my game. The sheer number of filters in the Reports sub-tab of the Cash Game section is really impressive. From here you can see other sub-tabs such as Preflop Cards (see how often you get hands and see what you do with them), Hands (a breakdown of all the hands which you can watch in the replayer), Sessions (break down your game by each individual playing session), Graphs (fun), and vs Players (so you can see who you’ve been beating the most, and who’s been beating you!).

The Tourneys Tab
Sadly, there is one gaping hole with Holdem Manager – lack of tournament support. The good news is that if you play a STT (single table tournament, aka Sit n Go) or MTTs (multi-table tournaments) is that the program will capture hands and the HUD will work as normal. The bad part is that the sessions and graphics tabs are not supported with the build that we received and are “coming soon” to the program in an upcoming patch. So – you can play tournaments, and use HEM for HUD stats as you play, but you will not be able to track your progress (amounts won, lost , etc).

The Players Tab
This is the other area that you’ll spend a lot of your time at. One of my favorite things to do here is to run a specific report called “the fish list” that actually lets you know who the biggest fish out there, are. For example, I’ll put in for Cash Games + No Limit + Stakes + date range + minimum hands, then from the report dropdown I’ll select “Get Fish List” and hit the Run Report button.
In this example I had 36 players come up as “Fish” from the last 6 months at the 50nl stake range. The player that I had the most hands on (I will excuse their name from this review) comes up and I can immediately see their win/loss amount, VPIP, PFR, 3bet, and post flop aggression numbers. Even better than just that is down below there is a windows that show “Player Analysis” giving a breakdown of key notes about this player. Preflop, I know this player has a very low 3bet% (meaning from this I can assume that this person only re-raises a raise preflop with AA). Also this person bet way too many flops versus the preflop, and seems to never fold on the turn. That’s pretty detailed information, right? Right! But wait – there’s more! If you right click on the player in the player summary box, you can open their Pop-Up specific details which breaks down their game even more. This just shows the ridiculous amounts of depth the program goes too, in order to get you all the critical data you need to know how they play.

Support
It doesn’t seem that the HEM community is even close to what other programs have, but we imagine once the word gets out for this program that will dramatically change (that and a nice upgrade in design to their website). They have a support forum that is regularly monitored, but their email support is extremely fast and very impressive.

Final Comments
Holdem Manager is the poker assistant of choice now with our internal staff that play online poker. The big positives for this program are that it’s fast, easy to setup, doesn’t crash, has an awesome HUD, works as advertised, and has an extremely powerful filtering and reporting system for both you and your opponents. The big negative is that if you are a Sit n Go or Tournament player you will be woefully disappointed by the lack of finished support for this section of the program. Since HEM comes with a free trial for 2,500 hands imported, there really is no good reason not to try it out. Finally, with two pricing structures - $80 for the Professional Edition (fully functional) or $55 for the Small Stakes Edition (all the features, only import hands up to 100nl and tournaments $22 and below), poker players of all bankrolls can invest themselves with the programs. If you buy the small stakes edition first you can upgrade it later for the identical difference in price.
Overall, Holdem Manager should be the only program at this time used by poker players that exclusively play cash tables. The HUD is 100% functional and runs extremely smooth, and the player details and information (with filtering) is as good as anyone else on the market. Special pokerinfo bonuscode for a 10% discount can be found in our forum pages, sign up to claim it now!