When I originally reviewed Poker Drill Master for the Blackjack Insider ( issue #72), I wrote that the calculator portion of this program was worth the price of the software alone. What separates this calculator from others is that you can test any combination of both known and unknown hands. Most calculators make you enter a second hand to make a comparison. This doesn’t do you any good if you are trying to determine the strength of your hand against random unknown hands. Poker Drill Master lets you do just that. In fact, if you are playing online you can actually have the program running while you enter your hand during a live game to help you determine your odds of winning against random hands.

Being able to determine the strength of your hand against any number of random hands is a great tool but it is still not as useful as it could be in a real game situation. The reason for this is that it compares the hand to all known possibilities. While this will give you an extremely accurate figure mathematically, it does not take into account that many of the combinations of starting hands it analyzes would not be played in a real game situation.

DeepNet realized this and understood that to make the program even better, it would improve upon the calculator by adding 'biased random hand' support. This important feature makes for much more realistic pot odds calculations, by assuming that unknown players already in the pot have better than average hands.

This feature is available in Calculator mode as a choice, similar to specifying 'random' for a position (you can choose from random, a bit better, strong, very strong, a bit worse, weak, or very weak). In Calculator mode, the 'R/C' buttons have been replaced with drop down lists that set the hand according to the bias selection.

In Drill Mode, the strength of opponent hands in a pot is determined by a new option for strength of opponent hands (strong, by default). Only opponents who have previously called will get a non-random hand (meaning, they had to put money in the pot to stay in). If they have raised, or otherwise played very aggressively, their starting hand will be considered stronger.

This feature biases the random selection of the initial two cards during rounds in the simulation. Strong hands will tend to pair more and be suited more often than random, and be of higher rank.

The opposite is true of biased weak hands (meaning they will be unsuited and low ranks more often). Specifying biased hands in the Calculator means than the simulation is always random, and never 'exhaustive' (a requirement for this feature to work).

The result of this feature is that the equity of your hands in later rounds will tend to be lower than previously. This more realistically models the average choices players make when choosing to follow hands.

The feature is on by default for Drill Mode, but you can revert to the old behavior easily by changing the 'Opponent hand strength' setting to 'Select randomly'.

You can see the biases chosen by the program for opponents by using the 'Copy to Calculator' button in Drill Mode.

For those of you not familiar with the program here is a quick overview of the software. Poker Drill Master is not a game where you play poker against the computer, or battle against programmed AI opponents (artificial intelligence). Instead you learn through a series of random drills or by analyzing hands that you enter into the calculator. Poker Drill Master has four training modes you can use to improve your Texas Hold’em game.

Drill Mode - Allows you to learn to correctly determine poker pot odds, and make the best decisions at every betting opportunity.

Calculator Mode- Use the incredibly fast and powerful poker calculator that can tell you the winning probabilities and odds for any combination of known and unknown hands and/or board.

System Mode - The poker system editor that lets you select from supplied pre-flop decision methodologies by popular authors and experts, as well as edit or create your own systems.

Outs Mode - View the Outs table to quickly see your single card outs probabilities and pot odds with one or two cards to go.