Playing the Texas Hold’em game is becoming increasingly competitive, and days when raising the C-bet or the pre-flop to win games are long gone. There is a lot of information or content available on the internet; nowadays, even the weakest Poker player has some knowledge of the game.
Therefore, Poker players must utilize every available Poker software to their advantage to give themselves an edge. The most successful Poker players always have an additional Poker tool. The two most popular software are the Hold’em Manager and the Poker Tracker.
These programs have come a long way, and their latest upgrades, the HM 2 and the Poker Tracker 4 are exceptional programs that give the player a significant edge on and off the Poker table.
Both tools can extract hand histories, plug leaks after each session, and analyze your game. In addition to all that, players can also use guidance from their opponents’ real-time statistics and identify areas they can exploit.
Simply put, it is invaluable to use Poker software, raising a logical and important question: which is the best Poker software out there? While it is certainly one of the two programs we’ve discussed in this article, today, we will go through a few factors and try to determine which tool is the best.
Performance of the Tools
Every player that has used the Hold’em Manager 2 and the Poker Tracker 4 knows that none of these tools are lightweight, and a particular skill level is required to operate them. While this shouldn’t be a major issue for you if you have a dedicated Poker PC, if you are running these programs on an old laptop, you will need to change your device.
This is why we decided to check how the frameworks of both the Hold’em Manager 2 and the Poker Tracker 4 are built. The Poker Tracker 4 is the clear winner, as it uses less space than the Hold’em Manager 2. Both tools use MySQL as a database, but Poker Tracker 2 sends a query every time a customer needs information.
However, the Hold’em Manager 2 software keeps all the information cached in its memory, thus the reason why it is much slower than the Poker Tracker 4. As far as performance is concerned, the Poker Tracker 4 is the clear winner. The first point goes to PT 4.
Interface
Since both software has tons of charts, sections, features, and graphs, the user interface is a significant and essential component. While you will need time to get comfortable with both tools, it seems that Poker Tracker 4 also has the edge in the interface category.
The Poker Tracker 4 layout color scheme, is much more intuitive than the Hold’em Manager 2 scheme. Most of the buttons and menus in the Poker Tracker 4 software are easier to understand. While this matter is subjective, it has been observed that people are more comfortable with PT 4 than HM 2. Another point goes to Poker Tracker 4.
Filters
One of the most essential things of this software is the opportunity to edit, add or remove filters. You will also find many coaches on the market that charge a fee for just showing players the right configuration of Hold’em Manager 2 or Poker Tracker 4. This is why it was important for us to discuss filters in this article. We will also help you understand how easily you can configure these tools.
Both tools are good for filtering, making these tools the most popular ones on the market. Let’s first focus on the Hold’em Manager 2; compared to its main rivals, the HM 2 is more intuitive. The software offers several premade filters and a wide array of filters.
This saves time and gives inexperienced Poker players a good starting point, especially when searching for leaks in their game and creating a report. Finding the right filter is easier and faster in the HM 2 software, so this section goes to the Hold’em Manager 2.
Poker Tracker 4 also shows some muscles in the filter category. While the software lacks the simplicity that HM 2 offers, it offers more flexibility in certain areas. You can make your filters from scratch and use the OR, AND, or NOT feature to combine, remove or add all types of conditions.
While the process in PT 4 is more time-consuming than the one in HM 2, it will break your reports in many situations and is more precise. While this is handy in most areas, 99 %of Poker players will not see this as an advantage and will stick to using HM 2, which is a more natural and faster option. The clear winner in this category is HM 2, so 1 point to Hold’em Manager 2.
HUD
The heads-up display is probably the biggest reason people use these two tools. This feature offers real-time information for every Poker player on the table and contains all the statistics you have for other players. The HUD gives players a massive advantage, as they can predict each player’s behavior and adjust their strategies accordingly.
Let’s first focus on the PT 4 HUD; this tool has a pair of pre-defined configurations that can help beginners. All the essential information is in the HUD, and you can easily remove/add the statistics by dragging and dropping individual pieces of data.
The overall impression among players is that the PT 4 HUD is robust and offers everything they need. The HM 2 HUD is tougher to customize than the PT 4 HUD, and you will need more time to learn about the features of the HM 2. However, the HM 2 HUD still offers some quality add-ons, giving players powerful custom statistics.
This is the difference maker, and while the PT 4 HUD checks on the boxes, the add-ons that the HM 2 HUD offers give it the edge. Another point goes to HM 2.
Additional Software
Both HM 2 and PT 4 offer several extra applications that work alongside the main tool. However, the difference here is that PT 4 offers most of the applications for free. While you may have to pay for the applications in HM 2, they are much better than the free applications that PT 4 offers. Another point goes to HM 2.
The Verdict
So which software takes home the big jackpot? The final score is 3:2 in favor of HM 2, so we pick it as our winner. HM, 2 is a more complete software than PT 4 and offers more powerful features.
