Poker calculators have quickly become one of the most important tools for any poker player. Many people claim that it’s imperative to know the maths behind a certain situation from within the game, but in all honesty, the ability to be able to key in a certain poker hand into a computer or calculator in this case, is just as efficient and far more accurate.

We do understand that a basic understanding of the numbers side of poker is important. You need to know – even if just roughly – how often you are going to get your money in ahead against an opponent’s range of cards. If you are a live player then you won’t be able to plough your stats into your phone as the hand takes place. Having said that, even if you are playing online you are going to have to be working extremely quickly to do so within the allotted time!

The best thing that these Windows Phone poker calculators are for is reviewing your play and then learning from it. It’s much easier to enter your hole cards, community cards and then assign your opponents range into this device when you have a bit of time after the hand goes down. This also gives you time for reflection and the ability to review how you played the hand. As you will all know, it’s really important that you learn from your mistakes so that you don't keep making the same costly errors.

The apps on the Windows format come in varying degrees of success to be honest. Some are just truly awful in terms of design and features, and we’ve even found some to spit out the wrong data, which was just mind boggling for an app ‘dedicated’ to this section of the game. There are some good ones though and the apps listed below we feel all offer viable options, with degrees of differentiating features that should aid your schooling as a poker player.

The first app is probably the most comprehensive of the bunch. Poker Calculator Pro offers up a wide range of scenarios, allows you to input as much data as you feel necessary whilst also providing a number of different hand outcomes.

The first thing you will be asked to do is input your hole cards and the number of opponents in the hand. You can choose at this point to assign ranges to each player’s hole cards, input them as known or just leave them as unknown; either way, the app will distinguish between each. Before you have even entered the flop the app can produce numbers to see how successful your hand will be up against the assigned ranges. It’s a simple drag and drop feature to assign cards to players which actually works quite well.

As you progress through the hand the app will give you odds for the flop, turn and river whilst also being able to compare between known and unknown opponent’s hands. You will be given a percentage of the amount of times you win the hand, your opponent wins the hand and then the percentage of how many times to pot is chopped.

On top of that the Poker Calculator Pro will also give you the likelihood of the type of hand of hand you or your opponent could make.  So this could range from one pair all the way up to a Royal Flush. This becomes especially handy in seeing if your hand has good equity to improve over your opponents range.

The Free Poker Calculator is another excellent app that allows you to not only calculate the odds for each possible outcome, but also input assigned ranges for your opponents. The inclusion of the assigned ranges feature is defiantly the biggest positive with this app. It’s something that a lot of poker calculators actually leave out, but if you are wanting to really get the most from these types of training aids, then it’s a really important feature.

You can literally choose between every possible combination of hands, or simply give them a range of say pocket pairs, suited connectors or premium starting hands. It’s pretty much what sets this app apart as an essential tool from just another poker calculator.

Obviously on top all this you will be able to get the numbers you are looking for as well. The hand re-player allows you to insert your hole cards and even add that of your opponents. Be warned though, you can’t actually remove a player once added and you will need to start the hand again if you do need one removing, which is less than ideal.

Stack’d is one of the more comprehensive calculators we have tested.  What’s great about this little app is that you not only get your calculator, but also get tools to work out ICM, prize pool pay outs, a poker term dictionary and even a TDA rules section.

The app will probably be downloaded mainly for its calculator, and it’s a pretty decent one. If fires quite a lot of information at you in a very short space of time, with pretty much instant processing. It’s actually one of the few that you could use whilst sat at the tables. You can input your starting hand and then see the likelihood of your hand improving as the streets progress. It will offer a breakdown of each hand and its percentage on the flop, turn and river. Likewise, you can add opponents starting hands as well to see how they fair up, whilst adding in community cards for adjusted odds.

The bit that we actually found most interesting is their m and q ratios. These basically give you an effective big blind and stack size to table average based on blinds and chips in play for tournaments. All you need to do is add in your small blind, big blind, ante, stack size, number of players at table and then it will provide you with your m rating and effective m rating. The term ‘m’ is essentially just used to abbreviate the amount of chips you have taking both blinds and the ante into consideration and is thought by most players to be more effective than simply working it out as how many big blinds you have.