A Ninja Is My Friend

One of the benefits of Hold'em Manager are the array of integrated apps that can be added in and work (more or less) seamlessly withing the HEM environment. A few days ago, I purchased the app "Table Ninja" (TN) for both Pokerstars and FullTilt. The 'Tilt app is a little flakey (it's still in beta release), but the 'Stars TN version seems to work pretty well.

So what is Table Ninja, you ask? For starters, it's a program that allows you to program keyboard shortcuts for routine actions performed during a poker game. For instance, I've got TN set up with "F" for fold, "B" for bet, "C" for call, and "Space-Bar" for check. I also have things like "ctrl-Q" for quick quitting of all tables, "J" for jamming all-in, and "W" for activating the wait-list function (more on this in a minute).

You can also set up default bet sizes. For instance, I have TN set up to bet 2.75 x big blind, plus 0.75 x big blind for every limper upstream of me. Similarly, if there is a raise in front of me, and I want to RR, I have the app set to bump it up 2.8x the original raise. There are a ton of other betting shortcuts you can set up, including hot keys that vary the bet size up or down by predetermined increments, different percentages of teh pot for different situations, etc.

The wait-list function is pretty cool, too. Basically, I can go into the 'Stars lobby of NL ring games at the stakes I'm interested in playing and start joining juicy table wait-lists. When a table becomes available, TN opens it for me, clicks the auto-post blinds checkbox, and selects the wait-for-big-blind option. I then stack the tables, so only the active tables pop up on top for me to pay attention to. Once the big-blind hits at one of the waiting tables, TN posts my big blind, the table becomes active, and it's added to the stack of tables.

I can also set the max number of tables I want to play at. For instance, I can join a hundred table wait-lists in the 'Stars lobby, but have Ninja stop adding tables at, say 14 (which is what I currently have it set at). Once 14 tables are up and running, Table Ninja simply stops bringing up new tables and joining them. It's all very transparent to the user, and very easy to program, too.

Now, there is definitely a learning curve, and I'm still getting used to using the keyboard to play poker. Betting, checking, folding, and calling without the mouse is weird, to say the least. That said, I'm slowly getting up to speed, and TN allows me to essentially simulate a "Rush" experience of 1000 hands per hour on Pokerstars.

So, how's it working out? Answer: pretty well so far. I have a smallish bankroll on 'Stars (was $185 when I sat down this morning), so I'm pretty much stuck playing at the $10NL tables until I build it up. This morning, as my first full session test of TN, I had the app open up 14 tables of $10NL full-ring on 'Stars, and I was off to the races.

For the first 10 minutes or so, I made a few mistakes and clicked Bet when I meant to Fold, and Call when I meant to Check. After a few "slow-down, Bug, and think" self-reproachments, I got the hang of things and started to concentrate on the actual games. And this is when TN started to pay for itself. For the next 30 minutes I essentially crushed the games I was in, playing my usual hyper-TAG, hyper-positional approach at these stakes, bullying the other players, and--most importantly--getting off marginal hands and avoiding "gambling" situations. I don't want to say it was easy, but playing against these particular 'Stars players at these stakes wasn't particularly hard, either. Here are the results from the early morning pseudo-Rush hour:

As you can see, I had some issues early in the session (the aforementioned mis-clicks within TN), and toward the end of the session, my brain simply started slowing down and my game tailed off. (Playing 1000 hands of full ring in an hour literally taxes this bug's late-forties physical abilities. Oh, to be twenty years younger....)

In any case, I'm cautiously optimistic that Table Ninja is going to help out my game-- at least on 'Stars, where there are no Rush-type tables available, and I'm pretty much stuck playing "real" ring games. Over on 'Tilt, as I said, the TN program is a bit unstable and buggy, so I'm probably going to just stick with the Rush games when playing on that site, unless and until they fix the quirky behavior of TN.

All-in for now...
-Bug