My Favorite iPhone Poker Apps

Here are some completely unsolicited, unpaid endorsements of iPhone poker apps I have found particularly useful.  Frankly, now that I think about it, why am I not getting paid for my endorsement?

Poker Journal:  This app is rather pricey ($12.99), but there is a "Lite" version you can try out for free to see if you like the app before committing to the purchase.  Poker Journal is a great app for tracking your session results, for both cash games and tournaments.  You are able to customize your regular poker rooms, cash game stakes, and tournaments, as well as include home games and non-regular games (e.g., a one-time visit to a casino on vacation or a business trip).  For cash games, you simply take a few seconds to start up a session, note your buy-in, and the app starts tracking your session.  Rebuys and breaks take a quick touch of the screen to record.  When you cash out, you simply stop the session and note the amount of your cash out.  Poker Journal then calculates a number of stats, including profit/loss, and hourly rate.  The app also charts your bankroll, and can compare your performance based on a number of factors:  casino/room, stakes, game type, time of day, day of week, etc.  For tournaments, you can also track number of runners, number of places paid, prize pool, and where you busted out.  Best of all, you can export the data in spreadsheet compatible format via email.

This app gets a big thumbs up.  It is often tough to record accurate session stats, particularly if you get distracted when you get home, or if you are out of town.  The app is extremely easy to set up and use, the charts, graphs, and analysis are well-designed, and incorporating the data into an established poker-tracking spreadsheet is a snap.  I can also see how the app would be an excellent tool for tracking results on a Vegas trip, where I tend to put in sessions at multiple rooms each day, and play at up to a dozen total rooms on a trip.  Might be the best $12.99 I've spent in a while; the price of a standard 1/2 NL raise gets you a ton of functionality with this app.

PokerNews:  PokerNews.com is the leading poker media site for WSOP coverage, and this app provides live coverage for all WSOP events, including updates, chip counts, payouts, photos, and more. This app is free of charge, and better than hitting "refresh" on the computer when sweating an event.  The app also covers other poker tournaments and tournament series, including NAPT, WPT, EPT, LAPT, and WSOP Circuit events, among others.

Vegas Poker Now:  A new website for the casual Vegas poker player is being developed, and this iPhone app is an integral part of the project.  The VPN app provides information about Vegas poker rooms, updated by each room's management.  Information includes room reviews, tournament data, cash games spread, promotional events, etc.  The app is being updated essentially daily at present, as more rooms come on board.  Should become a definitive guide to the Vegas poker scene, useful to any poker player visiting Vegas.  An Android compatible version of the app is also being developed.

Poker Notebook:  This free app provides a great method for tracking interesting hands of note.  You simply plug in the cards in play, and type in relevant notes about the betting or other details.  Much handier than using the default iPod notebook app.  Plus, you can save your great hands and classic bad beats forever!

Joining the Hive

"You will be assimilated."

—The Borg, "Star Trek: The Next Generation"

Friday night I played a short session at The Meadows ATM.  It was one of those sessions where you feel like you never do anything right.  My first hand, I have Presto and turn a 5 for a nice pot before my chips even reach the table.  But then, my stack got flushed.  Literally.  I ran top two pair, two straights, and a baby flush into flushes, which is not a particularly profitable approach to the game.  Thankfully, my Spidey sense kept my losses somewhat limited.  The pickle on the sh*t sandwich that was my session was when I flopped an OESD with 64s on a board of 5-3-3.  I bet the flop and got a call from an uber-tight player.  Turn is a 7.  Donkey Kong!  I bet, he calls.  River is a blank, so I push my last $100 into the $400 pot.  He reluctantly calls with ... 73s, and says, "I was worried you had pocket 5s again."  I wish.

I headed home to watch some Olympics with the puppy in bed.  I fell asleep around 3:00 am, and I woke up around 5:00 am and heard Berkeley on the floor, chewing something.  Turns out it was several somethings:  a toothbrush, a razor, and ... my BlackBerry.  All were in pretty sad condition:

Puppy Chew Toy

As an amusing touch, I checked the still-functioning BlackBerry later in the day, and discovered Berkeley had somehow managed to call one of my friends at 3:38 a.m. and leave a six minute voicemail message, presumably of him chewing and slobbering, but who knows, maybe he barked something insightful.  I suspect my buddy was passed out and never heard the phone, or more amusingly, was perhaps drunk and thought he was getting a steamy booty call.

So yesterday I had to venture out in search of a new phone.  Since I have AT&T coverage (the sig other has an iPhone), my options were somewhat limited.  After some online research, I narrowed my choices down to a couple of BlackBerrys.  But the A&T store at the mall across the street only had one of the models I was interested in, and no staff interested in helping me.  So, I headed up the street to Best Buy.  Turns out they were running a special deal for their Rewards Zone members, where a 16GB iPhone 3GS was going for only $99.  So, I went with the iPhone.  It took about 30 minutes for the staff to set me up.  I left and went to make a call in my car when I discovered the phone was not in the box!  Hmmm, awkward.  I was heading back into the store when I ran into the salesperson who had assisted me, running out to the parking lot with my phone.

Anyway, I've been hearing iPhone users rave about their phones for several years now, and it always seemed a little over the top, like those too cheerful cult members passing out propaganda on the street corner.  Well, in less than 24 hours, I've joined the iPhone cult.  The dang thing is just ... slick.  The touchscreen is huge compared to the BlackBerry.  The interface is incredibly intuitive; no guessing where settings are located as with the BlackBerry.  Applications (pardon me, "apps") are easy to find, quick to download, and a snap to install.  I've added four apps so far, and none of them took longer than 2-3 minutes total to find and install.

Among the apps I've installed are a free Blogger app (BlogPressLite) that will let me update my blog on the go. I also added a free Google app that will let me access my documents and other Google programs quickly.  But, my new favorite app is TweetDeck, which is a huge improvement over the Twitter app I was using on my BlackBerry.  TweetDeck took less than a minute to install, as opposed to the BlackBerry where installing a Twitter app required me to find it on the internet, download it, then endure a complicated set up procedure.  TweetDeck is also a great app since it allows me to set up different "columns" or groups/categories of people to follow.  This enables me to follow the Ironmen separately, for example.  Just from browsing the app store, I fully expect I will downloading apps for days, like a puppy looking for treats.  Just so my iPhone doesn't become a puppy treat ...

For those of you losers out there who don't have iPhones, go get one!  Now!

"Resistance is futile!"