Holdem manager is the best tool available for analyzing your game. The amount of features built in that allow you to filter various aspects of your play is truly staggering and it is worthwhile getting to know how to use all of the features it has to offer.
Holdem Manager Statistics
Almost all advice you receive at online poker forums about how to play a particular hand will be based on the ‘stats’ of your opponent as well as how he views your stats.
This refers to how the player plays based on the statistics collated by Holdem Manager in hands you’ve played together to date. Holdem Manager records every action that you and every other player at the table make during every hand you play, and summarizes the results in useful statistics such as ‘Voluntarily Put $ in Pot”, and “Pre-flop Raise %” which refer to how loosely and aggressively a player plays pre-flop.
If you browse the poker forums on the internet you’ll find a huge amount of discussion on what range of values a lot of these statistics should fall into for winning players, and posting your own statistics is a great way for others to analyse your game for prospective leaks.
The heads up display (HUD) feature of Holdem Manager allows you to overlay whatever stats you choose on the table as you are playing, in order to see how all of your opponents are playing and act accordingly. This makes multi-tabling much easier, as the software essentially ‘pays attention’ to hands for you.
The most important stats to have in your heads up display, and to pay attention to when reviewing your poker sessions can be broken into pre-flop and post-flop categories.
Pre-flop you should be paying attention to:
Voluntarily put $ in Pot %: How many of the hands you’re dealt that you’re entering the pot with.
Pre-flop Raise %: How often you enter the pot with a raise pre-flop.
3-Bet %: How often you’re re-raising pre-flop.
Fold to 3-Bet %: How often you give up when a player re-raises you.
Attempt to Steal: The percentage of the time you try to steal the blinds when it’s folded to you in the cut-off, button or small blind.
Fold to Steal: The percentage of the time where you’re in the blinds and fold when someone attempts a steal from the cut-off, button or small blind.
Post-flop the important stats are:
Won $ When Saw Flop: The percentage of times you win the hand when you make it to the flop.
Went to Showdown/Won at Showdown: The percentage of times you get to a showdown when you have seen the flop, and the frequency with which you win the pot when you do see a showdown.
Continuation Bet %: How often you make a bet on the flop when you have raised pre-flop.
Fold to Continuation Bet %: The percentage of times you fold when you call a raise pre-flop and the pre-flop raiser bets into you on the flop.
Check-Raise Flop: The frequency with which you check raise when out of the position on the flop, in an attempt to take advantage of players who continuation bet too much.
Turn Continuation Bet: The percentage of times you follow up your flop continuation bet with a bet on the turn.
All of the statistics can be filtered by year, month and even session, so if you’re having difficulty with your game, it’s very worthwhile to sit down and minutely analyze all of the statistics Holdem Manager has to offer, in order to discover where you might be going wrong.
Holdem Manager Filters
The ‘Filters’ option is also very useful for analysing your play in very specific situations. For example you can filter hands where you just call a re-raise pre-flop with pocket aces versus those where you put in a re-raise and see which is more profitable. You can also break things down by hand type, so you might for example discover that playing suited connector type hands from early position is costing you money and decide to remove them from your opening range completely.
Another useful feature of Holdem Manager is the ‘Hands’ tab, which you can order by amount won or lost and review all of your big hands in the built-in hand history replayer. This is another very effective method of plugging leaks in your game.
Graphing
The graph feature allows you to track the ups and downs of your poker career in terms of money won. It also includes the option to display showdown and non-showdown winnings which tell you how you are doing in pots which go to showdown and how often you’re showing down the best hand, versus how much you’re winning in pots by making your opponents fold before the showdown.
The graph also feature the infamous ‘all-in EV’ line, which attempts to gauge your ‘luck’ by showing your expected winnings if you were to run at your expected value for all-in situations.
Its value is disputed by many players who hasten to point out that all-in luck is only a tiny fraction of your overall luck for a given hand sample.
Holdem Manager is now ubiquitous among online poker players and given all the information it has to offer you about plugging leaks in your game, you will be at a serious disadvantage to your competition if you don’t use it too.
Summary
Holdem Manager is simply an essential tool for the online poker player today and it’s very difficult to be a winning player without it. The ability to be able to look through all of the hands that your opponents have played at your tables and examine their playing styles when you’re not distracted by having to play your own hands is of great benefit when trying to work out a strategy to get the better of them. You should be reviewing your play after every session and almost putting in as much work with Holdem Manager as you do at the tables, particularly early in your poker career.
