Tournament Indicator -- Dry Name; Sweet Results
Poker is new to me. No; seriously. It’s just since the TV phenomenon has kicked off in the last few years that I really started to get into it. Not unique to me, I suppose, the televised tournaments had the desired effect and I started playing. First with a computer based game, then eventually online to start playing with actual people.
I picked up a few things to read to try to help improve my game but found that most of the literature is too dry and academic to work for me or too celebrity driven to really work for anybody. Ditto for videos. What I really wanted was a tutor to help me apply the bits that I did learn from the books. I always learn better with a teacher.
So I started looking around for some software tutors or tools to help me play better poker and, hopefully, learn how to be a better player. Good news! They exist.
There is a actually a range of them: from simple manual “outs” calculators to quite complex, data-dense and intensely automated "systems" aimed at turning you into a bionic poker machine of some kind. In between are a range of tools loosely called "poker odds calculators" that will actually “watch” your online table and then automatically figure out the fundamental matters of poke for you; the number of outs, pot odds and so forth. Some will even help you try to guess the mood of the players at your table.
Over the last couple of weeks I've been scouting these things out (Google: poker odds calculator) and looking for one that would do what I wanted; that is help me to improve my game. Not play it for me or turn me into a robot; just help me learn to play a better game while I’m actually playing. I’m happy to report that I found just that in a program called "Tournament Indicator". (www.TournamentIndicator.com}
That’s a pretty dry name: “Tournament Indicator”, but the program itself and the way that it works are really pretty sweet.
I should start by saying that “TI” is a complete package that includes online videos to teach you how to use it and quick and friendly support if you should need it – but you won’t. The program sets itself up in your Windows computer (no Mac version [yet]) and is ready to go from the first moment that you start it up. All you need to do is open an online poker table at virtually any name-brand poker site and IT will “find” the table and start to work.
The videos – which are available to anyone online at their website -- are actually tutorials into some fundamentals of tournament poker as they are applied and/or exposed in the TI program. This is exactly what I was seeking: a tutor that will actually watch and guide me as I play. Fantastic. By the way; the videos would be useful to any player, not just to TI users. Just be aware; they’ll also show how cool it is to not only understand a fundamental, like “M zone” but to have this great helper, Tournament Indicator, doing the calculations for it and presenting the results instantly. Double fantastic.
The price for TI is right too. You can buy a license outright for $90 US, but you can also acquire a license for free by signing up through one of their links for an account at any of several online poker sites. (By the way, they have some for US players too.) They also offer a 48 hour free trial – no tricks; just download and go. Well, one trick; after you’ve played a few games with it, you will be wanting a copy of your own.
