Hi all,

I have HEM1. I want to upgrade.

In your opinion which one is better, HEM2 or PT4. I have been trying HEM2 trial and have been impressed so far, barring a few minor enough issues.

I played extensively with both and for me the winner was HEM2, but it will be a personal thing. They both have free trials, dl both and see for yourself.

This is the best advice: each player will have their own needs and trying them both out is the best way to find out what suits you personally.

Juk

HEM2 was too laggy for me personally.

i initially started with PT3/PT4 but decided to try HEM2, and i really like it. So am sticking with it for now.

I really like the Apps that are incorporated into the program. Notecaddy, Leakbuster, etc. Since i started with 6 max, Leakbuster has been really helpful. Still alot of things to work on, but i use it pretty much daily.

Just wanted to update where I am at.

Tried one month HEM2 trial having purchased and used HEM1. I really liked HEM2, didnt see any speed issues, had some small problems which was fixed after deleting and creating new database....after that it ran fine for months trial and was a big step up from HEM1 in my opinion.

Ive been using Poker tracker 4 beta, havent used it that much but I must say so far HEM2 is winning for me. I find HEM2 much more user friendly and polished, everything is just simple and intuitive. Not really enjoying Pokertracker, keep finding myself expecting more based on HEM2.

Going to keep trying pokertracker for a few days, but its looking like Ill be buying HEM unless it can change my mind.

One thing I found laughable was I ran the Leak tracker tool, based on the 40,000 or so of my hands I imported.

There are around 20 stats it rates you on and for every single one it rated me as "Good".

Leakbuster definitely gives a ton more detailed info. Written modules, alot of video content, all sorts of filters, comes with a color coded HUD and nice write up on how to apply the stats. I definitely recommend if you haven't tried it.

This was my feeling as well, however I played with PT4 fairly extensively. PT4 just doesn't have as much to offer as HEM does and to be honest I went into it WANTING to switch because I was very down on the initial releases of HEM2.

Things HEM does that PT doesn't
1) Track Rakeback for every site I play on for every username.
2) Detailed player analysis section that lets me study specific villains and their tendencies.
3) Much better notetracking system....even though you have to pay for Notecaddy to unlock the full potential it is worth it. Spark graphs blow away anything that is in the PT4 free version.
4) Speed. Importing in PT4 is very slow.

I'd say the only place PT4 wins is their graphs are much nicer and much more robust in terms of what you can do with them. This is an area the HEM should work on trying to close the gap.

Another winner for PT4 will be if they deliver on the promise to let you add in manual session results for live play or for sessions that were played on sites that they do not support. I have a ton of sessions from Cake pre hem that Ihave tracked on a spreadsheet and would love to be able to add the results. Hopefully HEM will add that also, but since PT4 doesnt yet offer this it is a moot point for comparison.

With all of that said I am not making a final purchase decision until they fix a bug that is corrupting my results. A very small % of limit hands on merge are not importing into HEM but they are making it into PT4. The developers are on it and working on fixing, but it keeps getting bumped for more pressing issues. They have been excellent to me and extended my free trial over and over again until this is fixed. Once this is solved I am instantly making the final purchase.

Tried the HM2 trial; like all the fancy stats and stuff but I found it just wasn't calculating some things accurately, (my winnings were different in the reports tab than the graph).

Have the PT4 beta now, lacking in the stats department, but I'm hoping they take into user feedback by the release and add some stuff, else I'll have to make some customs. Overall sexy design + free ICM calculator and notecaddy like program has won me over.

Try them both though.

I have been trying to avoid posting ITT, but I would like to point out that this was a bug that has since been fixed.

All new technologies are being designed to work with HM2. I'd just go with that.

Generally we prefer to respond to posts in our own commercial software thread, but there were some spots where I think it would be helpful to respond with additional insight. Feel free to post in our thread with any additional questions you may have.

This is also what we advise players to do if they are on the fence. Tracking software is a personal decision, try both tools and go with whichever you feel works best within your playing workflow.

I combined these two answers together because the answer is really the same.

We recommend LeakBuster as well for those users who need this functionality,
LeakTracker does not compete with LeakBuster. LeakBuster is a full product that costs nearly as much as PT4 will and HM2 does, where as LeakTracker is a free feature included within PT4 - they are very different products. LeakTracker is a basic too for remedial use and for better understanding of key stats, where is LeakBuster is a more feature filled tool. LeakTracker is aimed towards players who need basic remedial guidance and do not want to spend additional money on a third party specialist tool like LeakBuster - but it also helps point players to the possibility of using LeakBuster with PokerTracker 4 if they find themselves needing something more advanced (LeakBuster is compatible with PokerTracker 3 & 4 - and it is a good tool that we are happy to recommend to players who are looking for further self analysis).

LeakTracker's analysis compares the active player against a database of 1 million winning players to see what the average winning style for each stat is. A "Good" determination only means you are playing a similar style that matches other winning players, it does not necessarily mean you are playing optimally - that is beyond the scope of what LeakTracker can provide.


PokerTracker uses custom stats to track rakeback on every site where it is possible to track rakeback. We chose this method because rake formulas change almost every year, this allows us to make sure our rake stats are retroactive - and 100% accurate for each site. You can get rakeback stats from the Download Warehouse, this is a free service to our users.

PostgresSQL's queries and calculations are "slow", not PokerTracker. PT4 uses a pure-PostGRE solution, HM2 uses a hybrid storage solution (Fozzy - feel free to correct me here if this is an inaccurate description), both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, speed during manual import is one of the disadvantages of a pure solution like ours. The amount of calculations that occur during import, along with on-the-fly maintenance during import will result in a slower import speed - but to be honest this really only affects dataminers who purchase bulk hands which is against the terms of service for most poker rooms. On a related note, I think it should be said that we cannot stop dataminers, only the poker rooms themselves can stop datamining as proven recently in the PokerStars/PokerTableRatings.

Thnx for the other kind words, but I wanted to address this issue - if there are stats that you feel are lacking, then please let us know in the PokerTracker commercial software thread. We haven't found anything that was legitimately missing that was not addressed. We have found some users were not aware that positioning, and in-out of position properties are available on stats,... this has been addressed in a recently created training video to help users understand this concept better.

Actually, that is not correct - allow me to explain why. PokerTracker 4 has not been released yet commercially, nobody has seen the third party apps that are scheduled for release or are in development for PT4. Most developers we have spoken to are switching to a cross-platform strategy, even we do not advise locking software tools into PT4 alone - we think it is best to give the players the option and in turn the developers will sell more software because they support both PT4 and HM2.

- TT

I would say this - if HEM2 fixes super frequent&annoying stats binking in replayer, and change stacksizes (maybe cardsizes) in replayer, i would say HEM2 > PT4 (tried both)

I actually prefer PT4 but I will say that PT4 required a whole heck of a lot of work to get it to where I wanted it to be. So far as I know there's no simple way in PT4 to do something like "Filter to hands where I flopped 2pair+." You can create custom filters and stats to do that and much more but it requires quite a bit of work and learning even though once you know how to it can be done in a couple of minutes. In HM (1 and 2), this is all done for you. PT4 really needs to include way more custom filters, stats and reports. They also made some very unusual design decisions like defining fold to 3-bet as literally - you fold to any 3-bet pre including if CO opens, BTN 3-bets and you fold your SB - you just folded to a 3-bet. While I suppose that is the most technically accurate definition of fold to 3-bet, I think it's safe to say that 100% of people mean "VPIP'd pre then folded to 3-bet" when they discuss fold to 3-bet. The technically accurate definition should have been left as an alternative stat with the common usage set as the default.

But ultimately I've found PT4 much more customizable if you put in the effort required to learn how to make it do what you want it to. It's also much easier than it was customizing HM which, for instance, required software reboots to load in new custom stats which was a complete pain in the ass when it came to debugging your customizations. So I think for more technically oriented people PT4 probably wins, but for a plug and play solution I'd prefer HEM1 - I was not at all impressed with HEM2 but cannot comment on very recent builds of it.