Poker-Edge
Community Rating
2.55
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Synopsis
License:Subscription, varying prices
Compatible sites:
Features:
- No need for datamining
- Heads up display right on your tables
- Huge database on thousands of players
- Works on most major poker rooms
Full Review
While some players believe programs like Poker-Edge are cheating, there are sites where its use is allowed. On those sites, it can be invaluable. PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have specifically banned Poker-Edge and while there is a work around provided by the company so the software can still be used on those sites, we don't recommend or condone its use on sites where it is banned. If you choose to use this program on sites where it is banned, you are effectively cheating and you could be banned from playing on those sites if you are caught.
On the sites where Poker-Edge is allowed, it is a very powerful tool that will more than pay for itself if used correctly. Poker-Edge is basically a central database maintained by the company, but created by the subscribers. Whenever you have the program running, it is compiling statistics and adding them to the database for all your fellow subscribers. Sitting down at a table and immediately having a nice set of statistics on your opponents, while they may know nothing at all about you, is a big advantage.
Poker-Edge displays those statistics on your table with a Heads Up Display, or HUD, much like PokerTracker 3 or Hold'em Manager, though the system is not as clean as those programs and the HUD can not be customized nearly as well. Some players who play short-handed, giving them more space on the table to display multiple sets of statistics, find that using PokerTracker or Hold'em Manager alongside Poker-Edge gives them the best results.
One of the biggest negatives to Poker-Edge is the stats you give them on yourself. While you are a subscriber, your stats won't show up for other subscribers, but should you choose to let your subscription lapse, all of the hands you have played are in the database and those statistics are available to other subscribers to use against you. This can be a problem when you have had a subscription for a few months and played thousands of hands, giving Poker-Edge users a large advantage over you.
We would love to see the sites that choose to ban the program put some teeth in to the ban and find ways to stop it's use or simply allow it. Anything would be better than the current status of a banned program that thousands of players use anyway, often without consequence. This set up rewards the rule breakers and punishes those who choose to follow the rules. We would also love to see the creators of this program stop offering ways to work around the rules of the sites that have banned it, effectively encouraging cheating, but the majority of the program's use is on sites that have banned it's use, so it seems unlikely that the company could survive at this point if it were to stop offering it's product on the big two of Full Tilt and PokerStars.
Check out our interview with the creators of Poker-Edge coming soon to hear their viewpoint explained in their own words. A quick paraphrase of that viewpoint below -
If you ask your fried how somebody at your table plays, and he tells you, is it cheating? Even if you have never played a hand with that person and now you know about his style? The folks at Poker-Edge assert that all of the information they compile is publicly available simply by watching the tables, and that it is not cheating in any way.