Donkey Tracker [for iOS]

Poker tracking for live poker. This app creates a simple HUD (heads up display) for live casino poker. The format will be familiar to players who have used Poker Tracker or Holdem Manager for online poker.

It displays VPIP (voluntarily put money in %) and PFR (pre flop raise %) along with a hand count, so you'll be able to see the basic stats for each player at the table using about three button clicks per hand. This is fairly easy to do because casino poker is so slow — about two minutes of down-time must be tolerated per hand. This app will kill some of that time and make you a better player.

Most players (especially online players) don't realize how many extra hands they are playing because they become bored in a live setting. Your live-game stats will almost certainly be higher than you think, as will be the HUD numbers for other players.

A typical hand takes less than ten seconds to enter; most of the time you won't be in the hand and you won't miss a thing. Simply select "raise" or "call" for each player that does not fold pre-flop. Players that fold require no selection; fold is the default.

Try asking other players familiar with online HUD-stats to estimate VPIP and PFR for each player at the table. Most often they are very wrong, and have stereotyped players instead of actually watching them play. Typically an elderly gentleman playing very loose-passive (55/4) will get a very tight (10/8) estimate because of the way he looks and acts. Even professional players tend to judge opponents superficially and often underestimate the capabilities of opponents because of their personalities. Opponents that talk a lot will enjoy inflated ratings, and quiet players will almost always be viewed as tighter than they really are.

It is surprisingly difficult to maintain any reasonable estimate of VPIP and PFR for nine other players. Stats will converge at about 75 hands (they'll stop changing with each new entry). To have a reasonable estimate of each player's VPIP and PFR would require tracking and utilizing 675 player-hands (9×75), and 2,025 data points (raise, fold, or call) accumulated over a three to four hour period. This is a virtually impossible task for the average human mind, making HUD-tracking a huge advantage in live poker for players familiar with heads up displays.