Well I’ve been evaluating DD Poker Tournament 2006, a newly released Hold ‘em Tournament simulation, for the last week. For many poker players Tournament simulation software is of only limited value, but for the tournament player, or the ring player that wants to make the transition to tournament play, DD 2006 can provide a valuable tool. It can provide excellent practice and a way to evaluate and adjust an individual’s style of play. For the past few years the only real tournament simulator was Wilson’s “Turbo Tournament Hold ‘em,” (The only Wilson simulator, I do not recommend.) Now there is some serious competition. Since DD 2006 is a tournament simulation it does have some limitations, but it is probably the best tournament simulation available and should provide high quality practice for the player.

Well, let’s get down to the nitty gritty. The graphics and the interface are excellent. I personally didn’t like the table or the menu music but those can be changed or toggled off to fit your taste. In fact the most of the interface can be edited to fit your taste. If you don’t want the advisor, you can turn it off. The window size can also be adjusted to fit your preferences. Allowing the user to set the interface is an idea whose time has come.

The interface gets an A.

The tournament structures available are limited only by your imagination. You can practice for any tournament you might encounter. It also has several preset structures like the WSOP. After talking with the developer, I expect that the list of available tournaments will be increasing as they make additional upgrades available. If you run a home game the built in time clock and tournament management application may make DD 2006 useful all by itself.

Flexibility and ease of tournament setup an A.

The Artificial Intelligence or AI of any is often the weakest link in any poker simulation. In a tournament simulation, it can be even more difficult to develop a group of computer bots that can provide adequate competition. The AI needs to be a competent player but also a tournament strategist and still be simple enough for the user to make adjustments. The use of hand groupings by DD 2006 is slightly different than most poker simulations and allows the user to quickly adjust the opponents to provide a field similar to many of the tournament situations; online, live, small entrance fee, or large fee. The Bots also adjust to play and can be expected to “learn” your style. I asked for an explanation on how the AI’s adjusted and the best description of the algorithm was, “and magic occurs.” During my week of play the AIs have provided realistic competition at all levels. So the magic must work. It would probably take months to actually determine any weaknesses in their game.

I give the AI a B but could raise it if I had a better grasp of algorithm and if I could adjust it.

DD 2006 maintains a complete record of all tournaments played and allows you to examine the play of every hand. You can easily see that the hand you misplay the most is AQ suited, etc. The records not only reflect your starting hands but cover the complete hand all the way to the river. It could be a great tool to identify the leaks in your tournament game. I would like to see a way of charting results. When you’re sample is small a micro examination is great but a charting capability would make a macro examination of the results simpler.

Records of Tournament Play I give a B+.

I only see two weak points in the program and they are found in all tournament simulators. So, when comparing DD 2006 to the other simulators they don’t affect the score. The hand calculator isn’t really a good hand simulation and it cannot be used to examine meaningful situations. It is a quite simple Monte Carlo evaluation which simply plays out a certain number of cards. Second there is no way to run style comparisons. I would like to compare two or more different styles to see how effective in a given tournament format. When I talked to the developer he indicated they had one that had been used to evaluate the AIs but had not included it in the release. Hopefully this will make it into one of the future upgrades.

DD 2006 does have a couple of great innovations that I find most desirable in a tournament simulator. Although the hand calculator may have little use as a simulation, it does provide the capability of presenting the exact probability instead of an estimate based on a simulation of a large sample of hands. If you are interested in math and theory you will love this. Finally the ability to conduct or host your own tournaments online is a great addition. It is your own poker client. Now you can have a private game on Thursday night without trashing someone home. The game can be smoking, or non-smoking, strictly the choice of each player. Everyone has their favorite snacks and they don’t have to put up with obnoxious Joe in person.

Overall I concur with the developer’s claim that this is the best tournament simulator on the market. With online play, the promise of future upgrades, and the ability to run your own tournaments should put this on every serious players buy list. Hopefully they will give us the ability to evaluate styles soon.

Since the competition barely rates a C, I think the overall A- of the newly released DD Poker Tournament 2006 indicates this is the premier tournament simulator.

JBHarshaw