Holdemgenius and calculatempro?

[SweatLaserXP]

Generally if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I made the mistake of dropping $20 for one (Calculatem Pro), and the only real benefit, I found, was having some occasionally useful stats to glance at. They are terrible at recommending plays. If you want a statistics tool, it's fine, but don't count on it making you a penny extra when used for guidance.

The bottom line is that the calculators ignore a lot of critical information when recommending plays. From my brief experience using it, I found that it encourages you to be a "calling station". It also seems to encourage folding in situations where the pot is sizeable, and your hand may have a decent chance at winning, implying that the program has a worst-case-scenario attitude about potential hands against you. I've already learned the hard way not to give my opponents too much credit, and I don't need a program to tell me to always fear the worst.

The program doesn't seem to understand the functions behind betting- whether to knock out drawing opponents to protect your hand or betting for value when you have a big edge. Any of you who have graduated from low stakes know that you must bet in many situations to protect your hand or to maximize winnings. The program is suspiciously unaware of this. It is also unaware of the check-raise, a clear flaw.

Calculatem seems to be mixed-up about the playability of starting hands, and it ignores the number of players that have already entered the pot when recommending a hand. The program thinks that QTo and K5s are playable from UTG, when set to "tight" guidelines for preflop play. It also thinks that 54s is playable from the button before anyone has called. This is miserable play no matter how you slice it. Now, if you could sit down for a while and configure the program for your own starting hands, that would be interesting, but you can't. Even then, you often adjust starting hands based on the action in the room.

The statistics are interesting, but there's an awful lot more to winning poker than just considering the numbers. Calculatem is only capable of recommending plays based on calculations, and it tries to reduce them to a single number about what to do. It ignores far too many factors to be taken seriously. If poker were that straightforward, no one would make any money online. Right now I'm in the process of earning back the money (not much, luckily) that I lost following the play decisions of Calculatem. I am still a novice at poker, but I have spent the last year or so studying SSHE, playing very small stakes, and listening to the advice at 2 + 2. You probably noticed that I have no posts on the forum. The plays that the program suggests are incongruous with the strategy taught in SSHE, and after an couple of hours using the program, I could no longer bear deviating from the strategy that I have been learning, based on Miller's book. I don't need a computer program to tell me to call when I flop a flush draw, or to bet or raise when I flop a set.