Poker Striker: A Dynamic Poker Calculator

Are you a new Texas Hold’em poker player who doesn’t completely understand the odds or an existing player who needs a refresher on analyzing the math behind the poker?  You may want to check out Poker Striker, a dynamic poker calculator that helps you analyze as many situations as you can think of on all streets.

All you need to do is manually plug in your hands to see the odds of winning pre-flop, on the flop, on the turn, and on the river against one to nine opponents.  Unlike other poker odds calculators that work solely within online play, Poker Striker allows you to analyze situations when you have a chance.  You can quickly plug in a hand while playing and use it for in-game play as well; however, this may prove difficult if you are multi-tabling.

Poker Striker provides a Probability Map covering what type of hand you and your opponents will ultimately come up with based on what cards you have and what's on the board.  This is a cool tool since you can see how often your two pair might turn into a full house or how often your open-ended straight flush draw might turn into a straight, flush, pair, two pair, straight flush, or no pair.  When just learning Texas Hold’em, it is important that you can make these calculations quickly in your head, and Poker Striker should significantly reduce your learning curve.

The software also allows you to save your hands and input pot sizes and bet amounts so you can analyze your hands at a later point.  This is a feature that most poker calculators do not have.  You'll be able to think faster on your feet about your odds of your hand improving.

Another interesting feature about Poker Striker is its Card Map, which shows you how each available card that still can potentially hit the board on the next street would improve your odds of winning the hand.  This feature can even be useful on the river since you do not technically know what your opponent is holding; even a card that you think will improve your hand may not improve it as much as you might think.

There is also a Winner Map, which displays all the cards that can potentially cause your opponent to have a dominating hand to yours.

The software is very easy to install and comes with a limited license of 100 hands or 30 saved games.  If you like what you see and feel this software can improve your grasp of the mathematics behind Texas Hold’em, you can purchase a one-year license for $69.99.  After one year, you should have a firm grasp on everything that Poker Striker can teach you.  In fact, I feel the program should offer a cheaper license for one to six months for people who want to brush up on their poker odds knowledge or are very quick learners.

Poker Striker only works on Windows and is only helpful for Texas Hold’em.  For those who want to also learn Omaha, I first recommend learning the odds thoroughly in Texas Hold’em before jumping into more difficult calculations.

Although I am a big fan of in-game poker odds calculators, I also feel that studying after the fact could quicken the learning curve for players to master the odds.

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