To say that there is no true competition to DD Poker
would be silly and naive. There is plenty of competition for your
business, gentle reader, and your hard earned dollar. We at Donohoe
Digital believe we have created the very best poker software you can
find: one that meets or exceeds all your poker needs ... all for a
very reasonable price.
Prove it to me, you say! Well, okay. Below
is some food for thought on the three main alternatives you have to
DD Poker.
3D Poker Entertainment Titles
The main goal of the poker games with 3D graphics appears
to be to replicate the feel of real poker. You get to sit at a virtual
table and see all your opponents. You see the cards get dealt and
watch as the opponents think about their action. Some will even talk
to you, although after a few dozen hands, they become quite repetitive
(after all, it is expensive to have actors do voice over work). You
have to sit through the hands after you fold a poor hand. Essentially,
you are playing poker at roughly the speed of a real live game.
The truth is that playing real, live poker can be quite
boring. Honestly. Especially if you are playing "correct"
poker. The poker you see in a one or two hour TV show has been edited
down from six or eight or more hours of actual poker. And this footage
is only of the final table, which was arrived at after four or five
days long days at the poker table. Poker requires a lot of patience
because you often have long stretches of time in between playable
hands. Any professional poker player will tell you that it is real
work, requires a lot of discipline and can sometimes be not so fun.
Now given that, why would you want to replicate this experience in
a game?
DD Poker lets you play more hands in less time.
You can jump to the end of a hand after folding. You can configure
how long it takes the computer players to act. The game moves at your
speed.
Another aspect of these 3D fancy graphics poker games
is that they typically run in full screen mode, taking up the entire
screen. While this is fine and dandy for practice, it doesn't quite
fit the bill for online play. You don't see online poker rooms taking
up the full screen, do you? That's because you typically have some
down time while in an online game and want to multi-task, checking
email or surfing the web or doing the work you are supposedly getting
paid for.
DD Poker lets you multi-task, control the size
of the window, and most importantly, lets you play at work where a
quick alt-tab brings up that spreadsheet to hide the game when your
boss walks by.
So-called Professional Poker Trainers
If you search hard enough, you will find very expensive
poker products available for sale over the internet. Some cost $59
or $89 or even a whopping $129. We can't really out right name these
competitors, but rest assured, you would be better off going with
DD Poker. Read on for more specifics.
One competitor claims to have the "#1 Rated Software
For 12 Years Straight", but they fail to backup this claim with
actual article dates and citations. We acknowledge they probably had
the best software out there five years ago, but they haven't kept
up with the times. The interface is clumsy, outdated and hard to use.
They don't offer online play or a poker clock. They don't offer in
game information like pot odds or chance of improvement. There is
nothing to match the broad array of information about a hand you can
learn via the DD Poker Calculator Tool.
DD Poker has a modern interface and is packed
with features at 1/4th the price.
Another competitor, the most expensive of the bunch
at $129, claims 10 years of research behind its poker AI, much of
which is available on the public internet, so it's not so secret.
The truth is that this research is focused on playing limit hold'em,
which is a much easier game to get a grasp on versus no-limit holdem.
While their research no doubt helps create a decent no-limit player,
they are missing many aspects of no-limit that simple number crunching
cannot account for like tilt, boredom and table position. These limitations
are visible when you consider their advice consists of gems like "Fold
75% and Bet 25%". Are you supposed to roll a die and figure out
what percentile you currently find yourself?
DD Poker has a sophisticated AI engine that
describes the factors that led to its recommendation. It will recommend
that you might want to attempt to "steal" the blinds or
simply check for "deception". It will tell you that a Fold
recommendation was a combination of hand selection, table position
and stack size. DD Poker speaks in terms you would learn by reading
a poker book from a poker expert.
Finally the company behind this expensive program likes
to claim it has numerous features that DD Poker doesn't have. Don't
be fooled. They are talking about version 1 of DD Poker and not the
current, improved version.
Here is a list of features these $100 products
don't have that you get from DD Poker for under $30:
- Poker Clock
- Online play on your LAN
- Fill empty seats in an online game with computer players
- Multi table online
- Calculator Tool with flop/turn/river possibilities, hand ladder
and hand group simulations
- Faster showdown calculator
- Full and complete tournament editor so you can define a tournament
to match one you commonly play
- Run game in Full Screen mode, or as a resizable window (where
the table graphics scale)
- Export tournament formats (levels, prizes), analysis stats,
leader boards to comma delimited files
- And much more. See for yourself by trying our free
demo.
DD Poker is the best of both worlds. Not only
is it far less expensive (at $29), but it has more features!
Online Poker Rooms
Online poker rooms are great for playing for real money
with strangers. However, if you want to play a friendly game with
friends and family only, you have few options. Not many poker rooms
offer private tables, and those that do charge a rake.
DD Poker is great for playing online with friends
and family over your LAN or the internet.
Few poker rooms we are aware of offer the learning tools
that DD Poker provides.
Use DD Poker to practice and become better so
you can do better at the online poker rooms.
