Here at Law School Poker we usually interview poker personalities who have backgrounds in law or a related discipline, but we just had to make an exception for Josh (or “PokerAce Josh” as he is known to his clients), developer of one of the best pieces of 3rd-party software out there right now: PokerAce Heads-up-Display (or PAH for short).  You can buy it here for a mere $25 – a bargain if there ever was one.  (The program is an add-on for PokerTracker, which you can get here.) Law School Poker was created not only for law students and graduates, but anyone who realizes that poker is so much more than a simple game of chance, and wants to leverage their intellectual and analytical abilities to improve their play.  PAH lets you do just that, and we were thrilled to recently sit down with its developer, Josh.

Law School Poker: Hi Josh, thanks for taking the time to chat with us today.
Josh: My pleasure, I like your site.

LSP: First off, because our readership is a little snobby, can you tell us a bit about your education and background in programming?
Josh: I'm 25 years old and live in Pittsburgh, PA, and got my education at Pittsburgh Technical Institute.  I grew up with a strong interest in computers and technology, mostly gaming.  In my mid-late teens, I started getting really interested in developing my own software, so I bought some books and started teaching myself.  By the time I was 17, I had created and released my own computer game as freeware.  It wasn't widely known, but it was quite an accomplishment for me at the time.  I decided that developing software would be how I made my living.

LSP: And how did you stumble upon poker?
Josh: Well, I got my first official development position a year into my schooling and was there for about five years before I found poker.  By that time I was getting tired of developing software that wasn't interesting, and was looking for a way out.  Poker was the perfect solution.  It was a game where I could use my problem solving and mathematical skills and actually make some money too.  I focused all my energy on learning and improving my game.

LSP: Can you describe for our readers who haven’t ever used PAH just what it does?
Josh: PAH grabs the statistics on your opponents that are stored in your PokerTracker database and displays them directly on the poker table as you play in order to assist you in making decisions based on the past performance of the player.

Editor’s note – below is a screen capture showing how PAH overlays statistics directly on your poker table.  The statistics are customizable and can be positioned by the user anywhere on screen.  It can only display statistics for players on whom you have hands in your PokerTracker database.

LSP: Can you give us a specific example of how it helps during play?
Josh: A simple example would be if you are playing fixed limit Texas Hold’em and have Ace-Jack offsuit, and a player in front of you raises before the flop.  Without a read on this player, it's not clear how you should play your hand.  Against a tight player, you would want to fold; against a very aggressive player, you might consider re-raising him to isolate.  If you’ve played against this player before and have stats on him in your PokerTracker database, PAH will show you how often he raises preflop as a number overlaid right on the table.  If he raises much too often – say, 30% of the time – it makes your decision easy: you re-raise him.

LSP: What sites is PAH currently compatible with?
Josh: Currently PAH supports Party Poker & all of its skin sites, PokerStars, Ultimate Bet, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, PokerRoom and skins, Prima Poker skins, Cryptologic skins, and the beta version supports Pacific Poker as well.  In all, I believe there are over 100 individual poker sites compatible with PAH, and we’re adding more all the time.

LSP: When did you first get the idea for the program?
Josh: Well actually, the functional concept behind PAH was not an original idea of mine.  Months prior to the initial release of my product, there was a similar program on the market, which, like mine, displayed your PokerTracker stats on Party Poker tables while you played.  The developers of this software decided to go commercial with it to make the time they had invested worthwhile.  However, they decided to charge $50.  With PokerTracker, the application for which it was an add-on, already costing $55, the price tag was seen as outrageous by many lower-limit players, myself included.  Also, the application seemed buggy and unreliable, which many users wouldn't accept in a commercial application with that kind of price tag.  I decided that since I had lots of spare time that I would get back into development and create an alternative to this software, in order to create some competition and force them to improve their software to make it worth the price.

LSP: You mention that there was already an existing product with similar functionality to yours, but upon release, PAH overtook it almost immediately and hasn’t looked back.  Why do you think your program became so popular so quickly?
Josh: I think the main reason for it is that I originally made it available free of charge, and within two weeks of the initial release, it contained nearly identical functionality to the then-available commercial software I mentioned before.  I also feel that the amount of time and effort I put into development and support helped.  I took the time to fix bugs and work with individual users in order to get things working properly.  I was also adding features left and right and listening to the feedback I was receiving.

LSP: Some people consider data-mining and on-table statistical displays an unfair advantage…what is your take on that debate?
Josh: The important word there is "unfair".  Personally, I don't believe PAH is unfair, or I wouldn't be developing it.  It's an advantage, absolutely, but so is the knowledge gained from reading poker books.  So is having a good memory when it comes to recognizing players and their tendencies.  PAH doesn’t do anything except take data you already have in your PokerTracker database and display it on screen.  It just automates a process that you could do manually.  It’s just data based on a player’s past performance, and can’t tell you what a player has or how he is playing this hand.  It shows you simple statistics and it's up to you to determine what those numbers mean and how to use them in your game.

LSP: You’re known for outstanding customer service, both via email and on your site’s discussion board, where you reply personally to almost every post.  What sparked this attentiveness?
Josh: One pet peeve of mine is encountering poor customer service, whether it's at the local fast food restaurant or from the support department of a software company.  I wanted to do my best to offer my users the kind of support I would like to receive if I were in their shoes.

LSP: Can you give us a sneak peak into anything you have planned for the next few months on the programming front?
Josh: I plan on adding support for a few more sites, and I’ve got a few other features up my sleeve, but I don't like to give out too much information on the future of PAH.  I'm constantly getting great suggestions from my users about what they would like to see, and I try to add the best ones.

LSP: Sounds great, Josh.  We’re always hearing glowing testimonials from our readers about your product.  We wish you the best.
Josh: Thanks, I really appreciate it.

PokerAce HUD is available here.  There is a free trial version, and the full version costs $25.

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