The current version of Hold'em Hand Comparator is v0.2.

Introduction

Texas Hold'em Poker is currently enjoying a surge in popularity in America. A large and increasing number of sites give anyone with an internet connection the opportunity to give their money away to others.

An interesting problem while playing Hold'em is to estimate the chances that you (or your opponent) are holding the best hand at any given stage of the game. The little percentage indicators you see on the World Poker Tour show are part of what makes it interesting to watch.

Hold'em Hand Comparator is a Mac OS X application written in Cocoa. You input up to six players' hands, click Calculate, and the program enumerates each player's chance to win based on the cards seen so far. Simple as that. As far as I am aware, it is the only program of its kind running natively under Mac OS X.

The program is based on the very nice poker-eval package, and is licensed under the GPL (Version 2 or later).

What Does It Do?

Hold'em Hand Comparator calculates each player's probability to win by enumeration of all possible cards (as opposed to simulation of a large number of hands). This means the percentages it calculates are exact, rather than estimated (as some other software does).

A screenshot of Hold'em Hand Comparator doing what it does best.

To use the comparator, select the number of players you wish to calculate for. Then enter the hole cards for each selected player. Both hole cards for all players must be specified. Enter cards as <rank><suit>. See the table below for examples.

To see the raw output of the evaluator, click the Raw Output button.

Requirements

In addition to your poker face, the Hold'em Hand Comparator requires the following:

• Mac OS X (10.3 and above)

Features & Limitations

The Good

• Uses enumeration rather than simulation during evaluation.
• Displays raw evaluator output for more information (tie probability/etc.).
• Handles up to six players.
• Supports multiple dead cards (up to 5). new in v0.2

The Bad

• Duplicate cards are allowed (so you could input "4s" in two different places and cause the app to return incorrect results.)
• Handles only up to six players.
• My first Objective-C program, so the code may well be ugly.