Hello folks, my name is Nathan Alden and I have chosen 2+2's awesome forums to announce the public beta of new poker tracking software for Windows: Poker Maven.

Currently Poker Maven supports Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars. I will add support for more poker rooms as soon as I get those massive hand history databases from you folks (I can't play on most sites being here in the US!) The software comes complete with a heads-up display that works very similarly to PokerAce HUD's.

I think the following screenshots speak for themselves, but feel free to browse Poker Analytics for more information. I would prefer most discussion relating to bugs and suggestions take place at the Poker Analytics web site so users who may not frequent the 2+2 forums can benefit.

Thanks is definitely owed the 2+2 community for spurring my interest in advanced poker analyis in the first place. Without you guys talking about VP$IP, meta-gaming and shipping it holla I would never have been able to create this software. I hope you enjoy using it as much as I did creating it!

I can't edit my original post for some reason so I'll amend here:

You can also contact me directly over Microsoft Live Messenger at pokermaven@poker-analytics.com. If I'm around my PC and not too busy I'll be glad to answer any questions you have.

Tell us what it has compared to Pokertracker. That is your only way of getting a market share(by beating PT)

Part of the reason I am offering a public beta rather than putting the software up for sale immediately is to gauge the kinds of features the public is looking for. Obviously, the two biggest features are support for the major poker rooms (I've got two of the big ones covered) and a heads-up display. Without these, most folks wouldn't consider purchasing a Poker Tracker replacement.

Key differentiators:

- Built-in HUD. There is no need to maintain and license two different pieces of software on your PC (PT+PAHUD). The HUD being tightly integrated with the rest of the software provides the best user experience possible.
- Asynchronous importing/exporting of hand histories. Importing nor exporting of hand histories does not lock up the application; user may continue to operate the software as normal.
- Faster database engine. SQL Server 2005 Express instead of Microsoft Access. Provides better all-around performance.
- Better reporting interface. Drill-down reports. Custom reports interface allows easy expansion of reporting capabilities for both me and others. All reports have page controls. Report grids are slightly more functional (something called "fixed columns," or columns that don't scroll horizontally, but instead remain fixed to the left of the grid). Grids use easy multi-column sorting (PT may already do this, I'm not sure).
- Additional statistics available (though some are not exposed through default reports). 3-bet stat available in HUD. Database stores all hand action for every hand, so querying hand action for things like "How often did this player 4-bet with AK preflop?" is possible. Custom reports can expose these statistics.
- Cleaner, more intuitive interface. Software looks modern, professional.

Of course, the plan is to amend this list. With community feedback I am hoping to further differentiate Poker Maven from the competition. What I have now is essentially a fully usable product with most of the important hand tracking features implemented. Additionally, my devotion to the product means a quick turnaround on valuable features I don't currently have implemented.

Is there any way to check if this software is clean?

Integrity check. What does PT do that you DON"T currently have built into the software (but I would assume you're focusing on for future versions?)

I am assuming you are being careful about downloading and installing new software you aren't familiar with--definitely a legitimate concern.

I recommend using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2, which I believe Microsoft offers free now, to create a VM to run Poker Maven on. That way you can be assured the software is running isolated from any of your personal data. Aside from my professional reputation and personal guarantee that my software contains no malicious code, backdoors, rootkits, phone-home code, etc., there's not much I can do.

Microsoft Virtual Server

I'm not sure what you mean by "integrity" but I'll definitely answer your question truthfully. Usually it is not in a company's best interest to list edges their competitors have over your own product, but I believe by me providing an honest comparison you can make better choices. It will also, of course, drive me to improve Poker Maven to go beyond what Poker Tracker can offer.

As a side note to this, Poker Maven has been in development for only a month and already supports many of the critical features the majority of users look for when considering a poker hand tracking application. I am estimating that implementing support for each poker room, including the HUD, takes 1-2 days per poker room (assuming I have hand histories to work from).

Poker Tracker edges:

- 18 hand history formats
- Tournaments
- Non Hold'em game types (I can't be sure but I think these are stored as separate databases?)
- Importing/exporting player notes
- Player auto-ratings
- Hand replayer
- Help system
- Other minor features

I'm not trying to design an application that functions exactly like Poker Tracker. Poker Tracker definitely has some great features, but also some features many people may not use. My focus at this point is providing the community with the features most people really need. I've been seeing a lot of interest in "fish lists," for example. When you boil it down, a "fish list" is nothing more than another report being run over statistical data. If I can gauge the types of statistics most people want to see used in a fish list I can create a fish report.

I am constantly reviewing 2+2's forums for new feature ideas. Poker Maven's default reports are very similar to Poker Tracker's own reports, with some additions. In the very near term I will be focusing on adding more reports, including a fish report. Adding support for some of the other major poker rooms is a top priority as well.

Again, if anyone can donate hand histories I would greatly appreciate it. I would like to focus on Party and Ultimate Bet next. Additionally, if there are hand histories out there that use currency other than USD I would love some of those so I can support different currencies.

I am also in the process of documenting the schema for the statistic databases used by Poker Maven. I should have a Word document prepared and available on my site within the next day or so.

I'd like to see Ipoker added. How big is a massive hand history database?

i assume its texas holdem only atm? any plans on adding support for omaha/etc?

I coded support for PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker on databases of a little over 2000 hand histories. I guess huge and massive aren't the right terms. I would still like a larger sample than 2000, although I think 2000 is the minimum.

Here's some technical detail on the subject. There are a lot of strange situations that can happen in poker (as you all know) that don't happen very often. Things like side pots, split side pots, canceled hands, partial hand histories, uncalled bets, etc. all make the process of parsing hand histories a challenge because I have to be sure some of the hand histories cover these bases. PokerStars' hand histories led me to fix some things I didn't think about when coding Full Tilt Poker support, so I am pretty sure I have all the kinks worked out at this point. Excluding the HUD, implementing PokerStars support took less than a day.

Correct. The supported hand history formats are listed (and updated) at Features. I think implementing support for Omaha is definitely doable, but the differences in the game make it a challenging prospect. If I use the same database schema for all game types, it would mean tracking four hole cards instead of two, which would increase the disk space required by each record in the database. There's also the question of multiple pots (hi/lo) and hand history differences. It's definitely more doable than stud or razz but still a challenge. It is absolutely near the top of my future features list though.

Prima support would be nice. Someone pls send him hand histories.

Eventually I would like to support at least as many sites as Poker Tracker does, starting with the bigger sites. The heads-up display is actually where most of the work comes in (images, database changes, default layouts, etc.) The parsing of the hand histories is not that difficult.

I have completed documenting the entire statistics database schema. You can download and read the documentation at http://poker-analytics.com/Documentation/Poker Maven Statistics Database Technical Documentation.doc

If you use Microsoft Word to view the document I recommend turning on the document map feature. Document map will make it easier to navigate around the different tables.

Thanks for this sir. You've definitely got my interest. I will be visiting your site and doing a beta download this evening.

For those interested, I am currently working on iPoker and Ultimate Bet support (hand histories + HUD) for the next release, which will occur sometime before September 15 (the current beta expiration date).

Let me also make a quick point. I spent a lot of time up front creating a good installation experience for the user. If I am going to offer software for beta testing by the community, at the very least the software should install without hitches or manual steps. Even though Poker Maven requires SQL Server 2005 I have made sure that the installation of the database server as well as all the configuration tweaking that is actually required to get Poker Maven working happens in the installer. Here's a list of tasks the installer performs that I didn't have to do myself, but chose to do to give the the user a better experience:

- Including SQL Server 2005 Express Service Pack 2 as a prerequisite.
- Performing an "NGEN" or native image generation, on the Poker Maven binaries to speed their execution.
- Making the MSDTC service (Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator) start automatically at Windows startup. This Windows service is critical to Poker Maven operation because it allows me to use database transactions. This ensures the integrity of all data imported into a Poker Maven database.
- Change the authentication mode of SQL Server 2005 Express from just Windows Authentication to Mixed Mode. This means Poker Maven can use its own database logins and users, pokerMavenReader and pokerMavenWriter rather than relying on Windows accounts.
- Setting Windows ACL permissions on the Databases folder where you installed Poker Maven to give SQL Server access. SQL Server 2005's Windows service runs as the local Network Service account that has very restricted permissions. By default, folders are not created granting permissions to this user.
- Automatically creating or updating your hand histories database.
- When uninstalling, giving the user the option to delete all statistics databases, the hand history database, the application configuration settings and the HUD configuration settings.

how about postgres support?

No reason for postgres support if it has SQL 2005 Express integrated.

As a previous poster stated, there is no reason for me to support PostgreSQL at this time. Poker Maven requires Windows, and a lot of the features in SQL Server 2005 make it the most worthwhile database engine choice in my opinion, including its integration with C# and .NET. I also use stored procedures for all my SQL queries and these stored procedures take full advantage of all SQL Server 2005 features, such as Common Table Expressions (CTE). After you install Poker Maven, install SQL Server Management Studio Express and open one of the statistics databases. Take a look at some of the more complicated Report_ stored procedures.

I have a question for the community. The iPoker network appears to consist of numerous poker rooms. I am assuming that each of these poker rooms use the same hand history format. Would that be a correct assumption?

maybe you should think again about supporting postgres, nearly all players use postgres with pt or pokermanager and i dont want 2 db engines running at the same time at my server or client.

I like the look the look and layout of the screenshots a lot, but I can't get the program to open. I get this message when opening the self extracting zip:



I'm pretty sure I have the latest Windows Installer package. Any ideas?

Also, what kind of hand import speeds are you getting?

I get the same error as Phil153 only after SQL install finishes successfully but pokermaven installer crashes

edit: I unpacked the installer by using the right-click context menu in winrar and it seems to be installing now

I think it may be a problem with the self-extracting EXE. I tested this on my QA VM and it went ok but there may be some weird issue in where it extracts the two files inside the EXE.

Try downloading the ZIP, extracting both setup files to your desktop, then running setup.exe.

There are two setup files because setup.exe does all the prerequisite checks (Windows Installer 3.1, .NET Framework 2.0, SQL Server 2005 Express Service Pack 2). Once the prerequisites are found it will run the MSI which installs the product.

I may get rid of the self-extracting EXE and just add some instructions on my download page to run setup.exe, or I might be able to add some code in the MSI to prevent it from being run directly.

Thanks for the problem report guys.

EDIT: I've removed the self-extracting executable for now and updated the download instructions on my web site. Thank you.