The biggest poker tournament on earth is currently underway – the 2012 World Series of Poker Main event. The annual $10,000 buy-in Texas hold’em championship event attracted 6,598 players, all with the intention of scoring a multi-million dollar payday and becoming the world champion of poker.the winner will be taking home $8,527,982!
With nine contenders remaining and the final table set to be played in October, , we thought we’d have a look at some of the coolest poker apps available
for your iPhone or iPad, Who knows, maybe with the help of some of these apps and tools, you will be the next poker world champion!
EA WSOP for iPad and iPhone (Free)
EA Games has picked no better time to team up with the WSOP to offer a free poker game with a really authentic WSOP and ‘Vegas feel to it for both the iPhone and the iPad. Promising a “full house of features”, the EA WSOP app supports both PLO and Hold’em. Easy to play with friends, you can customise your avatar by adding your own photo, enter competitions to earn ‘pro-status’ and win virtual WSOP Bracelets and rings (pokers’ most-precious trophies) and badges.
The app provides detailed statistics on your play over time allowing you to track your play and look out for any bad patterns in your gameplay which you can refine to become more profitable on the tables.
The game is very socially integrated, allowing you to login via facebook, play with friends, add your own avatar, use it as a social gaming platform through Facebook, with real-time chat with other players, and the ability to send virtual items to players such as energy drinks and cool sunglasses (yes, sunglasses, it’s a “poker player thang”). With perhaps the prettiest graphics and the simplest interfaces we’ve seen on a tablet or phone-based poker game. This is the one for you if you can’t afford to visit Sin City this year.
ICM Cruncher – Poker Tournament Equity Calculator And Decision Analyzer By PokerCruncher, LLC (£1.49)
ICM Cruncher allows poker players to play perfect poker on the final table and bubble (on the brink of the payouts) in the most popular type of poker games – sit-and-go’s, as well as multi-table tournaments. This iPhone poker app is an ICM “Independent Chip Model” calculator. ICM is a mathematical way of modelling and representing your equity in a tournament prize pool, based on multiple factors such as your stack, the current blind level, the number of and stack sizes of your opponents, the number of players left and finally the payout structure.
Once you hone your pushbotting and shortstack skills and are aware of your true equity with specific hands in bubble situations in a SNG or MTT, you will easily be able to know when “the rewards justify the risk” – and when to take advantage of the situation by knowing when it’s profitable to do fun stuff such as going all with any 2 cards to ‘abuse the bubble’ and make weak players fold.
In tournament poker you need to be willing to die to survive – and with ICM cruncher in your pocket you will be able to train yourself to know which hands and positions to choose to exploit weak players and invariably make more profit in critical bubble situations. Definitely a tool to practice with on the daily commute home if you’re not driving!
Our Rating 5/5 – it does exactly what it says on the box.
Poker By Zynga (Free)
No top poker apps would be complete without a mention of Zynga Poker, despite the fact that it’s a recreational app (there’s an inability to play for real
money at this time – but that could change soon!). The free Zynga poker app has over six million daily users and is the #1 poker game on the iPhone. It has changed how people play poker on a social level. Complete with authentic sound effects (shuffling cards, chip movement and clocks), and glorious graphics, the product feels and looks wonderful and the interface is easy to manipulate.
Players try to build they chips on a 5 or 9 seater Sit-n-go tables and tournaments.Zynga poker is the ideal place for beginners to learn – it’s very well presented, and addictive (in a fun way) for any poker player. Nobody wants to get beaten by a < ! One might be forgiven for thinking “oh, it’s a free poker site – nobody will ever fold or take it seriously” – that’s not the case. As you progress upwards in stakes, the games become noticably more difficult. Zynga is the poker idiots playground and the poker newbie’s best friend. Learn and play for free. Then once you’re profitable / confident, you can decide whether to move on to the “hard stuff”.. real money poker! Additionally – what better way to get your friends, family andloved ones interested in poker than to get them to Install it on their iPhone and challenge them to “heads up for bankrolls” action. If you do get good at crushing the free poker tables on Zynga Poker, you should have a look at poker freerolls, which are free to enter poker tournamnets with real cash prizes.
The biggest social poker site online, and probably the best. Poker players everywhere are hoping they open for real money play very soon.
Our Rating 5/5
Holdem Manager 2 Companion App for iPhone (Free – but requires a HoldemManager Licence)
If you’re serious about poker – you probably use poker tools and trackers to save and analyse your hands. The best way to improve at poker is to analyse your plays and discuss them with others (which is something a lot of poker players have clearly realised – since the the respected twoplustwo.com poker forum is one of the top 20 forums on the internet in terms of posts). Being able to share and review your hands on-the-go is a must!
One of the top poker manager programs (now a bit of an industry leader) is Holdem Manager 2 – a poker manager application which allows you to automatically import, categorise, analyse your hands and tournaments. It maintains records of profits, loss, expected value, luck adjusted EV and hoardes of other stuff.
The Holdem Manager 2 companion allows you to share, discuss and replay your poker hands via a beautiful interface. As well as allowing you to easily post your hands via social media or add hands to the public hand database on Holdem Manager for iPhone, you also get the added bonus of being able to get your hands posted on iPhone channels which are moderated by some of the biggest and best names in poker (for example poker-training site instructors from CardRunners, PocketFives and many more.)
Our verdict: This is a sweet application for showing your buddies your bad-beats or sick herocalls – as well as for getting some expert help & feedback on a hand that you’re just not sure you played correctly.
Our Rating 4/5 – Almost essential for the aspiring poker-pro. Downside – requires paid software.
Contributed by Daniel Philip, – poker blogger at Rake360.com – the Rakeback specialists, and real life poker fanboy dreaming of winning the WSOP.
