Quick additions to your tournament tool box

Chris Grove : November 5th, 2007

If you’re a multi-table tournament player, there’s some good news for you: with just a few clicks of your mouse you can gain access to a ton of tools, mostly free, that can help transform your tournament game with just a little bit of time and effort on your part. There’s some bad news as well: there’s a good chance someone at your table is using these tools, and if you’re not, that’s an expensive edge you’re giving up. Here’s a quick rundown, with links (where applicable), to some great MTT tools for online and offline players.

The 2+2 tournament forums (FREE) . With dedicated forums for Small Stakes MTT and High Stakes MTT, you’re going to find a discussion that can help your game. And while you may have to navigate through some nonsense to find the quality, you’ll also be sharing threads with some of the top online tournament minds. The MTT community is more of a social forum, but still worth checking out from time to time.

The PokerStars Sunday Million Final Table Reply (FREE). Every Sunday Stars replays the final table from the millions tournament the week before. What’s more, players often give Stars the right to show their hole cards, so you will frequently end up being able to sweat a couple of players during the largest tournament regularly offered online. That’s a pretty unique opportunity and a great learning tool. Just go to the Stars tournament lobby, click on Special and make sure you have your preferences set to show all tournaments, not just upcoming ones.

PokerXFactor (COST). It’s arguably the premier online training program, and the combination of things it provides – access to great tournament minds along with tools for posting and sharing your own tournament efforts (and a community to discuss them with) – makes it worth the money for anyone serious about improving their tournament game. Learn more about PXF here.

The Universal Hand Replayer (FREE). If you don’t want to pay the fee for PXF’s hand replayer, this is probably your second-best bet. It’s a pretty functional hand replayer that allows you to sort hands, take notes, and share the annotated histories with others. Plus, there’s just something more satisfying and educational about watching a tournament replay visually than sorting through hand histories. Download the replayer here.

Sit and Go Analyzer (COST). While it is a tool designed for sit and gos, the lessons you learn from it transfer easily to shorthanded MTT play, bubble play and final table play. It’s not a cheap program at $79, but if you’re not confident about your play in certain spots, for example 3 or 4 handed when blinds are significant, this will be an eye opener. Check out the free download here. SNG Wiz is a similar tool, also with a free trial.

Daily Hand Quiz (FREE). Sure, it’s a bit of a shameless plug, and the quizzes are split fairly evenly between cash and tournament, but any site that gives you scenarios to consider on a daily basis has got to be good for exercising your poker muscles. New quizzes every day and a healthy discussion on most hands result in a quick poker training session that won’t cost you much effort or time. Check out DHQ.

Poker Stove (FREE). If you’re still getting the hang of of hand ranging and how shifts in ranges can impact your equity in a given spot, or if you’re unfamiliar with the math involved in preflop all in calls, this is an essential learning tool. It’s free, simple to use, and will teach you a lot of neat things about equity that you might not have known / thought to know of before. Get Poker Stove here.

Look for more articles in this series in the weeks to come – but until then, you should be able to keep plenty busy with the tools provided above.