All is fair in love and war. The famous saying should also include poker. Ultimately winning is the only thing that counts. If htiting and unexpected (lucky) hand on the river is what it takes to get the pot then so be it. Sure you would prefer to beat your opponent "legitimately", by outplaying him, but in the end thats just an insignificant little detail, isn't it?

So what if you had some secret weapon you could use from the comfort of your own home while playing online poker? The suckers would never know what hit them. Enter poker software.  Good poker software, when used properly can be something like that. Unfortunately the cate is out of the bag years ago, and if you arent already using poker software, your actually late, thousands of your opponents have been using software against you already! Worried? Good, then go get you your own copy right now!

The kind of poker software I am referring to here is not software that plays on your behalf, altough I am sure that kind must be available as well. I am referring to software that records and analyses all the statistics imagineable on you, your bankroll and your opponents. A good example in  a field of many is the POKER ELEPHANT, which you can actually obtain for free by signing up through Rakeland's free bankroll offer #2. Sign up for a free bankroll, play it and accumulate a level of points that gets you the license for free. Well woryth it in my opinion. 

So what do the softwares do. As mentioned above, the softwares collect data to create and maintain statistics. one important feature for the software of your choice is that it intergrates with the poker room software you are using, so everything is automatically tracked and the interfaces have no problems etc etc. then its just a matter of playing and playing, and letting the softare do the work for you. The software will summarise your play and your opponents play based on the statistics it gathers, and may for example clasify your opponents play style for you in a way that may help uou beat him/her. it will take you time to learn how to best profit from the use of any given software as most softwares out there are already very sophisticated. The different types of statistics kept on your opponents seem endless and what they actually mean (both mathematically as well as when applied in a strategy) is not always obvious.

Also something to remember is that the software only has (statistical/behavioural) data on your opponents based on/from as many hands as you have happened to have faced them. you can only imagine how many hands it takes againts a certain player before his/her true traits are truly revealed. Anomalies in the hands they have been dealt may have their stats show some results that are very different from what they really should be. But in the end, just like the poker tables will mercilesly show who is a winning player over time, so will the software eventually discover your opponents true colors.

From personal experience I can also say that while software doesnt tell you how to play, or what to do, it may inadvertedly still have a direct effect on your game, and not always in a good way. I have personally been hypnotised by all the "secret insight" I have received regarding my opponents styles, this one is loose agressive, the other one folds to a re-raise and so on. Very tempting information when back up by statistics. And what happened was I altered my own game and became too agressive, or more prescicely more agressive than my skills would have permitted. This resulted in losees and some more losses. Learning to read the information had proven more complex than just understanding its meaning .