Leak Buster Expanding to Include Pot Limit Omaha

One of the newest reviews we’ve posted here on PokerSoftware.com is for Leak Buster, a standalone program and Holdem Manager application that identifies holes in your game. The software’s creators tout that Leak Buster finds, on average, between six and 16 significant leaks, meaning that it could potentially pay for itself in no time. PokerSoftware.com sat down with Leak Buster’s John Anhalt to get the 4-1-1 on the current version of Leak Buster and the forthcoming Version 3.0.

PokerSoftware.com: Thanks for joining us. Where did the concept for Leak Buster, which is one-of-a-kind in the industry, come from?

John Anhalt: Initially, I had been coaching poker for about five years. It came from working with different students and seeing a lot of patterns of issues they struggled with. I was trying to think of a way to automate this information and make it accessible to a wide audience. I wanted to package it in a way that people could understand it.

So, I wrote down essentially what I thought were the biggest areas and then went through and played around with them to see what I could pull from those that could be helpful. It evolved over time from there. We’ve been adding more features and getting a lot of feedback from people.

Leak Buster is much more than stat analysis. The bigger part is that it provides training material and a format for learning about your game from the hands you've played. It lets people know what hands they struggle with pre-flop, it shows them weaknesses in their game by position, and it gives them concrete proof they can see for themselves about very specific post-flop situations with the filters and 45 videos that go with those filters.

PokerSoftware.com: How do you quantify a leak using statistics?

John Anhalt: As I was doing some of the coaching, I was also doing database analysis and seeing a lot of common trends. If they had a leak, I could see it right away in a stat category. It started on a smaller level, but before I launched the first version, we took in millions and millions of hands from winning players and created Leak Buster Cruncher. It takes stats that bring out the biggest leaks and breaks them into categories where we can see the drop-offs. It creates a scoring number so that if you’re within a certain range, it doesn’t count it as a leak. As you get outside of the profitable ranges, it scores you on it.

PokerSoftware.com: Can you give us an example of a leak and its corresponding stat?

John Anhalt: What started getting us off was that people lost a lot in re-raised pots. The win rates would drop off noticeably when they got outside of a particular range. When you call 3bets in or out of position and break it down by hand ranges, when people were calling 3bets with sub-par hands, it wasn’t profitable. It’s hard to play re-raised pots profitably unless you’re good at playing post-flop.

PokerSoftware.com: If someone knows they have a leak, how do they go about correcting it with Leak Buster?

John Anhalt: That is part of the other part of the program that we’re refining. We’ll have a Version 3.0 where we’ll have training content specific to our program. If you have a leak now, it gives you general information on it. This includes things you should start to look at or contemplate changing. It usually comes with a written mod or video about the topic.

For example, if you’re 3betting way too much, it’ll let you know that and give you general advice. It’ll also give you a video on 3betting and go over a lot of concepts. The idea is to find the leak and provide content to allow the user to start thinking of ideas to change their game. This automates the whole process of getting better. With the new version, it’ll be even more automated.

PokerSoftware.com: What kind of feedback have you received from users?

John Anhalt: Overall, the feedback has been very positive. Having done development in the past, you usually tend to hear more complaints than compliments. We haven’t gotten a lot of that, though. When people start winning more, they go out of their way to make that known to us. We get a lot of e-mails about people winning and improving their game. We’ve tried to keep the feedback very open because we want a lot of user input.

PokerSoftware.com: What else do you have planned for Leak Buster?

John Anhalt: We’ll have a Pot Limit Omaha version coming out at the end of the month. Eventually, we want to have tournaments as well, but it’s more difficult to get hand histories.

PokerSoftware.com: Leak Buster is a Holdem Manager application. How can interested users purchase the program?

John Anhalt: It’s pretty simple. There is a Holdem Manager Apps sidebar. If you have Holdem Manager, you can buy Leak Buster directly through their program or from our site. The program runs $49.99 for the Standard version, which essentially works on 50nl and below. The Pro version works on all levels. You can also buy our various programs as add-ons, so if you bought LeakBuster for No Limit Hold’em, but you want it for Limit Hold’em or Pot Limit Omaha, you can get those at a discount.