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Holdem Manager and Poker Tracker: The new deal will allow both products to share intellectual property. (Image: Holdem Manager)
PokerTracker and Holdem Manager, the two market-leading poker tracking software providers, have announced that they are joining forces. While the two companies will merge to form one business, their respective products will, for the time being, remain as separate entities, and plans for the launch of the next generation of software,
PokerTracker 5 and Holdem Manager 3, will not be affected. However, management staff and intellectual property will be combined under the deal, and both companies will pool their resources to work on the forthcoming Cloud platform, which will be available both for PokerTracker and Holdem Manager products.
“Our customers are better positioned today and into the future because of the combined experience of the two teams in developing and supporting software for online poker players,” said PokerTracker in a press release. Furthermore, an “increased ability to reinvest in the innovation and improvements in the most popular online poker software brands in the world today,” would also benefit customers, said the company statement.
In the short-term, changes to player experience will be minimal; the merger is more about “working to improve efficiencies and to explore opportunities to share code and technologies when appropriate.”
Software Revolution
PokerTracker and Holdem Manager have revolutionized how we think about and play online poker over the years. Both products offer database-driven software that imports and analyzes hand histories, and stores the resulting statistics, which can then been used as a means to analyze your own play or for in-game opponent analysis using a Heads-up Display (HUD).
Using the software, players can monitor everything from winnings-per-hand to the percentage of times they have folded to a turn donk bet, for example. Statistics can show them whether they are playing too many hands or too few, or raising too frequently, or not frequently enough. And by comparing statistics against other winning players, customers can get a general idea of where their leaks might be.
Market Rivalry
PokerTracker was the first market leader. Launched in 2001, it coined many of the analytical fields that have become standard, such as VP$IP (voluntary money put in pot). Holdem Manager followed in 2007, and soon challenged for the market leader spot. The rivalry between the two companies largely drove the technological innovation of their products, as they jostled for top spot. Now, with that challenge removed and a monopoly in the poker tracking market firmly established, many are concerned that product development may suffer.
PokerTracker’s Stephen McLoughlin is anxious to reassure customers that this will not be the case.
“Stability is always a priority for both development teams of HM2 and our new partners PT4,” he said. “One of the many goals of this merger is to use the combined experience of both teams in developing and supporting software for online poker players, in turn the efficiencies and scale created by the merger which will allow us to invest even more into improving our products.”
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