PokerTracker 4 Announced

It wasn’t exactly a tightly kept secret, but the team at PokerTracker officially let the cat out of the bag Monday with the announcement PokerTracker 4 (PT4).  Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, PokerTracker will launch public beta testing of its new release late in the third quarter of 2011, with commercial sales scheduled for the fourth quarter.

PokerTracker is the most popular online poker hand analysis, tracking, and statistical tool in the world.  It has become an indispensable part of the game for countless players, ranging from daily grinders to low-stakes recreational players.  Though sometimes criticized by brick and mortar “purists” for being something that gives players an “unfair” advantage or simply something that takes away from “real” poker, PokerTracker and similar software packages are now woven into the fabric of the online game.

In a press release, PokerTracker executive Steven McLoughlin said, “PokerTracker 4 is the result of collaboration between its developers and the online poker player community that has given constant feedback throughout its ten-year history. Without the support of its loyal users, PokerTracker would not be where it is today. PokerTracker has listened to and considered each user’s request and has implemented nearly every reasonable design suggestion that positively affects the greatest portion of its user base.”

It appears that the minds at PokerTracker are most proud of the revamped Heads-Up Display (HUD) coming in PT4.  Its newly redesigned Vector HUD Engine will make the table overlays look better and easier to read.  Says McLoughlin, “The developers of PT4 believe that tracking software should augment, but never interfere with, the user’s playing experience – the interface and HUD are crisp, clean and without clutter while maintaining a vast amount of data available at the touch of a player’s fingertips.”

Other than the look, the HUD has also been given more features and flexibility.  Any statistics a player wishes to include in the HUD will be able to be quickly dragged and dropped into the HUD profile editor.  Hand equities will be shown for every street at showdown and stack sizes will be able to be shown in terms of big blinds.  And for those users who don’t know exactly what sorts of stats to include in a HUD, PT4 will have several pre-built HUD profiles from which to choose.

On the analysis side, several interesting new features have been added.  For example, the new LeakTracker will examine a user’s play statistically and see which situations are causing the most trouble.  Once these problem areas are pointed out, the player will then be able to focus on plugging those holes.  There is a new Money Flow Chart coming with PT4, which will give a visual display on how money passes from one player to another.  Another fascinating addition (and there are more), is the Global Player Scatter Graph, which will help players quickly spot “statistical anomalies,” such as when the superusers were found on Absolute Poker.

When it comes to usability, it will be much easier to share replays with others, as there will be built in functionality to allow exporting to YouTube as well as social networking functions to facilitate further sharing.  And to the relief of many, it appears that manual database maintenance will be a thing of the past, as it will all be done automatically.

The above are just a few of the new features of PT4, which, as mentioned earlier, will be available in beta form in the late third quarter of this year.  For those who don’t have PokerTracker yet and don’t want to wait, anyone who buys PT3 now will receive a free upgrade to PT4 when it is released commercially.  Prices for PT3 vary depending on the package, from $44.99 for the micro stakes version up to $144.98 for the combined full versions of both PokerTracker Hold’em and Omaha.