The two biggest names in poker tracking software have announced a partnership. As confirmed by officials of PokerTracker on Thursday, the two market leaders in database and HUD poker software tools- Poker Tracker and Hold’em Manager have merged their business. The biggest rivals of this domain will now share management teams, staffs, resources and intellectual property as one unit.
Banking on their combined experience of 22 years in poker software services, the two brands will continue to provide their tools and services separately. The official statement says that as their technologies overlapped, a merged entity was deemed to be stronger in the long term for customers, employees and shareholders.
The combined forces are eyeing at a better situation to invest in research and innovation in the future. The developers of PokerTracker4 and Hold’em Manager2 will share codes and techniques when appropriate. The two teams have combined plans to work on Hold’em Manager Cloud Beta and come out of beta version as soon as possible. Cloud software for Poker Tracker will also get into the pipeline after this merger which promises exchange of technology for a united growth.
The merger will see majority of changes behind the scenes and will not impact the release of PT5and HM3. However, the two updated versions are currently in very early stage of development and no release dates have been promised. The statement on no price-rise will definitely cheer-up the poker professionals worldwide.
A cross-training for both teams is being planned overnight to improve on the support side. However, in the long run, a combined support team will shape up to provide a better overall experience to it users. The worldwide poker community has a mixed taste of both softwares till date. Poker Tracker was the sole leader until Hold’em Manager launched in 2007. HM acquired a sizeable portion of the market very rapidly after the launch. On its 10th anniversary, Poker Tracker launched PT4 in 2011 which is considered as efficient as the HM3. Users had definitely the last smile out of this completion till tomorrow.
It is uncertain whether this merger will make advancements at all fronts in coming years. In the short term, users will not experience any changes in tools and services. However, it would be too early to say whether these two past rivals will continue to develop products and updates faster as a combined company than they might have done as competitors pushing each other to out-do .