What everyday poker headaches would you like to disappear?
Hey everyoneâlong-time lurker here. I fell in love with poker at university when I was punting far beyond my means in a private 5/5 PLO dealer's choice game.
These days the professional-poker dream has settled into something more realistic: a few nightly MTTs on ACR and PartyPoker, plus the occasional 1/3 no-limit session at London casinos, all balanced around a nine-to-five career as a software developer.
Iâm between jobs at the moment, which means I finally have time to build a side project.
I would love to understand the problems the community deals with away from the felt. Especially if they are addressable by software.
For example, what is the single most annoying off-table task you have to handle as a recreational or semi-serious player? Is it tracking results and hand histories, finding soft private games, or studying GTO spots without facing complicated solver menus? Or is it something entirely different that no tool has bothered to address?
Are there any ideas that you guys have that spring to mind? So far Iâve heard people say they want more accessible solvers (simple UI/UX) and bot/RTA detection.
Feel free to shit on these ideas, but would love some guidance on what members of the online and live poker community would be interested in. If the thread surfaces something useful, Iâll share the early prototype with this forum first.
2 Replies
A lot of âoff-table painâ is basically admin + fragmented data. If I could delete a few everyday headaches, itâd be these:
- One clean results ledger across online + live. Having ACR/Party/live sessions split across apps/spreadsheets is brutal. The killer feature isnât fancy graphs â itâs fast entry + trustworthy totals: buy-ins, rebuys/add-ons, tips, travel, swaps, staking %, and a timeline you can audit later.
- Hand history access + portability that doesnât suck. Between different formats, missing HHs, weird imports, and partial hands, itâs hard to keep a âsingle source of truth.â An MVP that standardizes HHs, detects duplicates, and flags gaps would help a ton (even before any advanced analysis).
- âDid I actually play well?â without a 3-hour solver session. Rec/semiserious players donât need a solver UI â they need a study pipeline: auto-tag common spots (BTN vs BB SRP, 3bet pots, river checks, etc.), surface 5â10 biggest leaks by frequency/EV proxy, and link to simple drills. Think âcoach-style homeworkâ more than âsolver-style menus.â
- MTT workflow friction. Schedules are scattered, late-reg windows are easy to miss, and sessions run long. A tool that pulls your planned schedule into one place, estimates end times, tracks volume vs bankroll rules, and reminds you about breaks/registration would get daily use.
- Live session note-taking thatâs actually usable mid-session. Quick tags for players (without turning into a phone zombie), seat changes, and âhands to review later.â Bonus points if itâs designed for one-handed input and works offline.
- Support/disconnect evidence packs. Every player has had âclient crashed / hand didnât post / tournament pausedâ moments. A simple way to capture timestamps, table/tourney IDs, screenshots, and auto-generate a clean report would save time and sanity.
If you want a high-impact MVP: build a data layer first (results + HH normalization + export), then add âsmartâ features on top. Also: privacy matters â local-first storage or very clear controls will be a big trust differentiator.
Happy to share more detailed requirements if you pick one direction (results tracker vs HH pipeline vs study/drills).
For me, the biggest everyday headache is how fragmented everything is once you play across multiple sites (and then add live on top). Results, tournament entries/rebuys, swaps/stakes, notes, hand histories, screenshots, âwhat actually happenedâ in a dispute, it all ends up scattered across a tracker, a spreadsheet, a notes app, and random folders. The annoying part isnât a lack of charts; itâs that the data isnât reliable or easy to audit later.
If someone built a âboring but perfectâ pipeline that (1) ingests hands/results from multiple rooms, (2) normalizes them into one consistent format, (3) flags missing/duplicate hands and weird edge cases, and (4) lets you quickly tag a few hands to review later with a clean share link/export, Iâd use it constantly. Once that foundation exists, the âfunâ layer is obvious: simple study prompts (âyou faced a river check-raise in a 3bet pot 27 times this month: here are the 10 biggest potsâ) and lightweight drills without a solver UI.
Bot/RTA detection is sexy but hard to ship credibly. The unsexy stuff (reliable import, reconciliation, and an actually pleasant review workflow) would immediately remove daily friction for a ton of recs and semi-serious players.