Review of Table Ninja

Justin Howell : July 16th, 2009

Multi-tabling online is a taxing experience, and it’s not something that most poker clients are really designed well for, to be honest. As a result, there’s a growing amount of 3rd party tools aimed at making the mutli-tabling experience more enjoyable. At first these started off as individual scripts, but as demand for features grew, more and more ’suites’ appeared. That’s the category Table Ninja falls into – a sort of one-stop shop for multi-tabling shortcut scripts.

Overview
Table Ninja is a supplement to PokerStars. It essentially automates some of the more common tasks associated with playing multiple tables (buying in, sitting down, sitting out at all tables, joining waiting lists) and also allows you to assign keyboard shortcuts to actions at the table (betting, checking, etc).

Look
The program isn’t the slickest in the looks department. It suffers from what I generally refer to as Poker Trackeritis – you can tell all of the effort went into the function rather than the form. That’s probably not an issue for the majority of users, but a visual upgrade might improve the credibility of the program for a few.

The user interface is reasonable, although a bit cluttered in spots.

Unique pros / cons
This is a great program that does take a lot of the annoyance out of multi-tabling. Even if you don’t use it for anything more than just managing your lobby, it’s still a godsend when you’re playing a ton of tables. It’s important to stay in a bit of a zone when you’re multi-tabling, and having waiting lists pop up, clicking on the seat you want to sit in, buying it, etc are all little pains that can pull you out of a rhythm.

It’s very easy to assign the keys you want to the actions you want, and in our extensive test run with the program there weren’t any issues with accuracy. You can create several different sets of hotkeys and save individual setups for use whenever appropriate.

The program offers a full-feature free trial that lasts for 30 days. After that, it’s $35 if you want to continue to use it.

On the con side: The program only works at PokerStars, which is obviously a drawback for some users. Also, if you have a custom skin for PokerStars, there’s a decent chance that Table Ninja won’t perform all on-table functions properly. You’ll definitely want to test (as the software suggests) on play money tables if you do have a custom theme installed. Finally, it would be helpful if the program offered some sort of summary ‘cheat sheet’ of your hot keys that stayed visible as you got used to using the program. Having to go back to the main software screen to remember what hotkey you assigned to auto-fold is cumbersome.

Finally – and this is more of a general issue with hotkey programs than one unique to Table Ninja – most players will need a decent amount of practice with a program like TN if they’re never used keyboard shortcuts for poker before. jumping right in to your 10-table routine without a few warmup sessions will likely produce a less-than-optimal result.

Bottom Line
The price seems more than reasonable for people who play multiple tables on a regular basis. You could probably assemble most of these individual features from various AHK scripts, but that would be annoying and probably less stable than just getting it all in one place.

Treat yourself right – get Table Ninja and make the multi-tabling experience a smoother, more enjoyable and likely more profitable affair.

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