Most sites do not allow you to use odds calculators when playing, it is against there TOS. In the end I believe these are bad for your game as you will use them as a crutch and not develop your game. In the ling run they will hurt you.
Good Luck on the felts.
Not true. Odds calculators are allowed by virtually all the major sites, including
pokerstars, FT, Cereus, and Cake. Examples being Hold'em Indicator and Tournament Indicator. It's just calculating for you what you would calculate yourself using your head or a conventional calculator. They have no problem with this.
There are basically 3 classes of software tools that the sites don't allow: (1) tools that play for you (i.e. bots), (2) tools that suggest what move you should make, and (3) tools that implement a shared DB of player stats, other than players you've played yourself. Other than those, most all tracking/HUD and odds calculating tools are allowed. Cake has a few more restrictions than the other popular US-friendly sites, but they still allow the use of calculators and limited tracking tools. For example, they now allow using HEM for tracking your own play (but not that of other players) because Roy engaged them and agreed to restrict HEM's capabilities for Cake games. Most of the major tool developers actively work with the sites like this to remain in compliance.
Calculators can be useful for beginners who are just learning how to calculate odds, as it gives instant feedback on whether you're doing it right. Obviously if you never learn to do it yourself and depend on the calculator all the time, then it's a crutch and you'll suffer in a live game or where you don't have the calculator. Same as with a HUD, which nearly all of your advanced online players use (especially when multi-tabling). Even advanced players will sometimes use calculators because it frees your mind to concentrate on other things, such as betting patterns and player stats, especially in fast online play (again, especially when multi-tabling), where you don't the time you have in live games to think through the odds, betting patterns, etc.
I also think that Odds Calculators arent worth your while. How can they accurately predict what your odds are not knowing what the other person has.
Huh? The same way every good poker player calculates explicit
pot odds, implied odds, and win odds in their head. You count outs and pot amounts and do the math. That's all a simple odds calculator like Hold'em Indicator does.
I always surprises me to see the old-school Luddite response to
online poker tools and the amount of misinformation out there about them. People need to realize that online poker is an entirely different game than live poker. You lose most of the tells and all of the "feel" of a live game. Software tools help make up for for this information loss in online poker. Not only that, but just installing and running a tool isn't going to make you a better player -- it takes some degree of skill and experience to properly use the tools and interpret the data. It's a trade-off, and the reason why all the sites allow these classes of tools as long as they don't automate your play.