- A full set of poker odds including win odds and pot odds presented side by side for easy comparison.
- The odds that you and your best opponent will make different hand types by the river (e.g. flush, straight or full house).
- See MZone information for yourself and all the other players at the table. This indicates how deep or short stacked you are and should radically change your strategy in different MZones.
- See stats on your opponents play so you can understand their style and find and exploit weaknesses in their play.
- Player stats are broken down into their play in different MZones, so you can see how their games changes according to their stack size.
- Shows your opponents mucked cards at showdown so you will know what your opponent held.
- This calculator will profile your opponents into a number of categories such as a calling station, a gambler or a tight aggressive.
- See the EV and Sklansky hand group of your starting hand to know the strength of your hand pre-flop.
- Shows your outs at each stage of the hand so you will know what cards will improve your hand.
Tournament poker is largely about changing gears successfully according to your stack size relative to the blinds and antes, while adapting to the other players’ games as they do the same. I’m sure many readers are aware that the MZone is a widely used metric to represent tournament stack sizes. It was taken into some detail by Dan Harrington in his poker classic, Harrington on Holdem Volume II: The Endgame. In this book, he gives probably the best intro to the concept:
“The most important single number that governs your play toward the end of tournaments is M, which is simply the ratio of your stack to the blinds and antes. This number is crucial and you must develop a facility for calculating it quickly and easily at the table.”
The book goes on to categorize this number M into MZones and outlines different strategies that should be adopted as you enter the different zones.
Tournament Indicator uses this metric to provide a calculator that is ideally suited to tournaments and sit and gos. The tool presents your MZone in a clear, easy to read display and shows the MZone of all the other players at the table. By doing this, you can easily see as you enter different MZones and change your game accordingly. Additionally, you will be able to see the MZone of your opponents to know when to expect gear changes from any players who are aware of how their game depends on their stack size.
As well as seeing your MZone, this tool will also present a full range of poker odds to help evaluate hand strength. The odds are presented in a similar way to Holdem Indicator, a calculator by the same group who developed Tournament Indicator that is targeted toward Holdem cash games. These calculators are well known for their clear and intuitive presentation of the odds with your win odds and pot odds presented side by side for easy comparison. You also see the odds of making different hand types for both you and your best opponents. This is particularly useful to help identify any draws that you or your opponents may have.
In addition to this, the tool displays a number of other hand strength metrics including your starting hand's Sklansky hand group, its EV, your outs and another unique feature of your pre-flop win odds against different categories of hands (e.g. big pairs, medium pairs, big slick or high cards, ...).
To round the tool off, it will also watch your opponents play and collect stats on their game. You will see a number of stats that include things such as:
- Their aggression factor (how often do they bet or raise over how often do they call post flop).
- How often they take a hand to a show down
- How often do they win when they see a show down
- How often do they attempt to steal the blinds or fold to a blind steal.
As well as these stats there are a lot more stats presented and it is worth taking a good look at them on the Tournament Indicator site. When enough hands have been played, each player will be assigned a profile such as a loose aggressive gambler, a calling station, a tight aggressive or a tight, passive rock.
All this information lets you adapt your game to your specific opponents tendencies and exploit any weaknesses they might have. It will help determine things such as how profitable stealing the blinds will be, should you consider re-raising the pre-flop raiser or if you are likley to be able to bluff an opponent off a hand.
Tournament Indicator shows key information in an on screen HUD right next to the player.
This is the only tool I have found to present a full spectrum of tournament specific information including odds, MZone and player stats and profiling all in one tool. All of this information should greatly assist your tournament play and help you make the right play according to the situation at hand.
You can get the tool free when you sign up to a poker room and make a deposit through the links on the Tournament Indicator site. There is also a 48 hour trial you can use before opening an account at a new poker room, so what I would suggest is to download the tool and spend a couple of days at the tables playing tournaments and sit and gos to get a feel for the advantage having all this information can provide and what the tool can do for your game.
