Most poker tools only analyze the hand history. This is O.K. if you need information from your opponents' past actions in order to make better decisions on the current hand. Hand history analysis however doesn't give you any information about your current situation. How exactly does your hand rate now? If you think you are beaten, what are the chances you'll improve?

There are plenty of tables online that tell you what are the chances of hitting a particular number of outs within the turn or the river. There's also plenty of poker tools that given your starting hand will tell you how your hand rate. All of these methods lack one characteristic, which is the reason why we invented computers and programs in first place: to automate.

Every valid poker window is photographed every few seconds and with the aid of a specialized algorithm the program is able to recognize the player's current hand and the community cards. With that information, useful odds that are pertinent to the situation are automatically displayed.

For example, preflop we might want to know how well our hand rates. But no information about post flop action should be displayed, as it only clutters the interface.

When the community cards are identified, we have an entirely new set of information that we would like to know. What hand do we have, are there any draws and what are our odds of improving.

Figuring out what an image represents is no easy task in programming. In order for this feature to work, there must be a sort of map that tells the program exactly where to look for a particular pattern (imagine it as a guide that is able to answer the question "where do I find the first card of the player sitting on the second seat?"). There are way too many layouts for each different client that PokerMuck supports. This is why end-users can create their own color maps, if they have the patience to.

See if your Poker Client/Theme supports real time hand recognition: Hand Recognition Supported Client and Theme List

Sometimes if there's support for your poker client, you can make real time hand recognition work by simply changing the theme to one of the supported ones. But if you are affectionate to your theme and you want to make it work with PokerMuck, you will have to create your own color map. Please refer to this page for an insight on how to create a color map for your poker client: How To Create a Color Map

Notice that you cannot set the size of your poker window while using this feature. If you enlarge your poker window, a few seconds later Poker Muck will resize it back to a size that makes the real time hand recognition feature possible. We understand this is a limitation, but we haven't found a better solution up to this point.