I was scouring the ‘Net for new software and I happened across a nifty little poker utility. I’m not a poker player (at all), but I have many friends who love playing poker – so I passed the link along to them.

Days later, I found a second piece of poker software that I thought would be useful – what are the odds? No, seriously – I don’t know what the odds are. The only thing I know about poker is that I can’t play it. I definitely do not have a poker face (though it is quite suitable for radio).

So, if you use Mac OS X, and you like poker – you might appreciate these pieces of poker freeware.

• Tournament Timer: “An extremely simple-to-use timer for poker tournaments. It is aimed at Texas Hold’em, but will work for any game that uses blinds or antes. Its simplicity belies the power of the blinds editor: with the setting of a toggle, editing the blind length, ante, or small blind in one level updates each of the following blinds.”
• Hold Em Hand Strength: “If you’ve watched the World Series of Poker on ESPN, you’ve seen that they show each player’s cards and their relative odds of winning. In essence, HEHS does the same thing. You can enter the cards of the hands in play as well as the cards on the table and calculate the odds that each hand will win.”
• Video Poker Solitarus: “On each hand place your bet (the ‘Bet’ button places down one chip for every press and the ‘Bet max’ button goes ahead and puts the maximum bet of five chips in) and click ‘New Hand’ to receive five new cards. Take a look at your hand and decide which cards to hold and which to discard. Once you’re pleased with your selection(s) press ‘Deal’ and REPLACE any cards you’re not holding.”

Completely free. Completely fun. Completely cards.