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Texas Hold'em No Limit Beginner

Configuring Your Poker Client

7,929 Views on 29/5/12

Configure your poker client (software) settings before you get started to create the most comfortable and customized playing experience.

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Before we sit down at the tables and begin playing for real, we have a number of options in terms of configuring our client. This will ensure we have the most comfortable playing experience.

4 Colour Deck

Nearly all poker clients have this option now. It displays your hand in 4 colours. Clubs are green, diamonds are blue. It may seem a little strange at first, but in the long-run this can potentially save you a lot of money if it prevents you from misreading your hand.

It might not happen often but 4-colour can make the difference. You won't mistakenly think you have a flush because there are a lot of red or black cards out there

Auto-Rebuy

Auto-Rebuy will automatically top up your stack when if falls below a specified level. If you are playing 100bb it is recommended that you set this to rebuy chips any time you fall below 100bb. It makes it easier on yourself knowing you will start every hand with at least 100bb. If your stack size is a lot below 100bb it will affect your overall strategy and starting-hand selection.

Often when a player is not auto-rebuying you can identify them as a weaker player. By not auto-rebuying you may be indicating to other players at the table that you are not a good player. Of course, this could potentially be a good thing too – but if you really are a weak player there is no need to go out of your way and advertise this by not auto-rebuying.

Display Hand Strength

Many clients (but not all), have this option. When enabled it will usually tell you in a text format the exact strength of your hand. For eg – “A pair of kings”, or “Straight, nine high”. Like four-colour deck this can also help prevent you from making misreads. Perhaps you think you’ve made a straight, but upon seeing “Queen High” in big letters you don’t proceed to make a big mistake.

This is especially useful if you are playing more complex variants like PLO, or PLO8 . It is much harder to work out what hand you have. Enabling “display hand strength” can save you a lot of time, particularly if you are multi-tabling.

Auto-Post Blinds / Wait for Big-Blind

The “auto-post blinds” option will automatically post the blinds for you when it is your turn to act. Make sure and use this option in conjunction with the “wait for big-blind” setting. Otherwise you will be posting the blinds out of turn, which is going to have a negative effect on your win-rate in the long run.

Auto-Muck

This option will automatically muck both your winning and losing hands (unless you are required to turn your hand over). Turning on auto-muck will save you extra hassle if you don’t want to show your hand, and allow the games to run a bit faster. It is generally not recommended that you show your hand if not necessary; it just gives free information to your opponents.

Preferred Seating

Mostpokerimage poker clients will allow you to select your preferred seat at any given table. This can be useful to help you avoid misreading your position on the table, especially when multi-tabling.

Save Hand-History

In order that your poker-tracking software records played hands, some clients will require you to enable the “save hand-histories” option. A lot of clients have this enabled as default, but not all.

Even if hand-history saving is already enabled you can change the location where your client stores them. You will then need to give this information to your poker-tracking software, although with most software you can ask it to “auto-detect” the location where your hand-histories are being saved.

Note System / Label System

All poker clients have a note/label system. It is worth getting familiar with how this works. Using this effectively will allow you to pick up better reads on your opponents and table-select well.

Table Layouts

If your plan is to play multiple tables, take a look at the table layout settings in your client. You want to spend as little time messing around resizing tables as possible during the action.

Some of the better clients will even remember your specific table layout and load it every time you open tables. Other clients do not provide this facility but do have a “tile-tables” or a “cascade-tables” option that you can activate once your tables are open.

In the majority of poker clients you can choose this option at the top tight hand side of the client after you have joined a table!

The time to establish how this operates is before you open your tables, not during a session whilst you are trying to play hands at the same time. Remember, you don’t necessarily need to be sitting on the open tables in order to figure out how the table layouts of your particular client will work.

Other Options

We have considered just the main way of configuring your client, but every client is unique and will present you with alternative options. Some clients/skins allow you to do things like automatically fold certain hands preflop, or play an alarm when you get dealt a certain hand. Before you hit the tables, take a little while to explore your poker client and consider the most efficient way to make use of the various options.

Author

w34z3l

I am of British nationality and go by the online alias w34z3l. I am considered one of the top consultants in the field for technical analysis (i.e. database work) and application of game theory concepts to various card games. I make a ... Read More

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