Magic Holdem Review

• Includes a wide range of real time poker odds and hand strength metrics including win odds, pot odds, your outs and the odds of drawing to different types of hands.
• Gives real time betting advice based on your hand strength.
• The betting advice is configurable so you can tighten or loosen the advice both post-flop and pre-flop.
• The interface includes an on table hud showing odds and betting advice with additional collapsible windows that show a wide range of other hand strength metrics.
• A rival catch feature shows the odds of your opponents holding different cards that can combine with the board.
• Fully supports multi-tabling
• Shows the odds of drawing to your outs on either the turn or the river.

The Magic Holdem interface includes an on table hud showing your key odds as well as a number of other collapsible windows that can optionally show a wide range of different hand strength metrics.

The odds you need are different before the flop to after the flop.  The on table hud is the main component of the Magic Holdem interface and will show different metrics based on weather you are pre-flop or post-flop.



Before the flop, the hud will show both the Sklansky hand group or your pocket cards and their rank out of all possible pocket cards.  These are both metrics of the strength of you hand, and the Sklansky hand groups of your opening cards have become somewhat of a standard for evaluating pre flop hand strength in many forms of Texas Holdem.  The tool will allow you to start to recognize the hand group of you hand while you play by displaying this in real time.  The hud also shows betting advice based on the strength of your pocket cards, thus further helping a new comer start to recognize how far they should be taking their cards.



Once the flop has been dealt, the odds displayed in the hud changes according.  Here you will see the odds that you will have the best hand at the river as well as the odds that you will draw one of your outs (a card that will improve your hand) by the river.  The hud translates this hand strength into betting advice after the flop as well, to help develop an understanding of the strength of your hand.  At this point the hud also displays useful tips and alerts.  As you can see in the screenshot, the tool is giving an alert that an opponent may be on a flush draw.  This is the sort of information that is important to recognize but can easily be missed while developing your game.

As well as these features on the hud, the software allows you to select other widows to be displayed along side the table.  These windows have the capability of providing a wide range of odds and can be configured to show as much or as little hand strength information as you like.




Due to the range of information Magic Holdem is capable of displaying, I thought it would be good to take a look at some of the other metrics that can be displayed in the configurable windows.

Outs

Magic Holdem has an outs window that displays your outs at each stage of your hand.  Your outs are the cards that could come on the turn or the river that might improve your hand.  As well as showing your outs, the tool will also show the odds of drawing one of your outs on either the turn (in the outs window) or by the river (shown on the on-table hud).  I think this feature of showing the odds of drawing your outs by different streets is a particularly good feature of this calculator as it allows some more advanced decision making when comparing your odds of drawing to your pot odds.  Good players often compare their odds of drawing by the river to their pot odds to see if a call is warranted.  A problem can arise here, if you make the call but do not draw your card on the turn and are faced with having to call another bet on the turn.  By seeing your odds of drawing by the turn or the river, this allows for some more advanced reasoning in this sort of situation.

Odds of Making Different Hand Types

Magic Holdem will also show the odds that you will make different types of hands (e.g. flush, full house, ...) for both you and your best opponent.  As well as increasing your understanding of hand strength, this also lets you see how likely it is that an opponent may end up drawing to a better hand than yours.  Such information can be useful to decide to bet appropriately if they may be on a draw, or play with caution if the wrong card comes on the turn or the river.

Additional Metrics

As well as the above metrics, the software will also show you pot odds, some basic game info such as your current made hand and the number of players in the pot and a feature that is unique to this calculator: the rival catch odds.  This window shows the chance that an opponent will hold different ranks of cards that could combine in a strong way with the board and could get newer players used to starting to consider what cards their opponents may have, thus leading to developing hand reading skills.

You can get a free 1 year license to Magic Holdem by signing up and making a deposit at one of the partnered poker rooms and the tool also offers a demo version with unrestricted functionality for 200 hands. If your looking for a poker odds calculator I recommend to head over to the Magic Holdem site and download the free demo version. This will let you see its full range of features and get a feel for how it can improve you game while using it at the tables.