Editor’s Note: Today we have a special guest post from Jennifer Curtis. The topic is Poker software, I have to admit that I’m a horrible poker player and stand to learn something here. In fact, I’m one of the worst gamblers out there and when I’m in Vegas I stick to nothing more than quarter slots and set a limit of around $50 per day. Otherwise I’d be walking out without my shirt on and trust me, you don’t want to see that.

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It’s a commonly accepted fact of life in the 21st Century that there’s almost nothing that can be accomplished these days without the help of a software program. This general trend certainly applies if you choose to play online poker as much as any of life’s most important pursuits. With Internet poker becoming an increasingly popular diversion for gaming fans all over the world, a lot of people is realizing that they can use their computer for more than having fun at online casinos. In fact, there are a number of excellent software programs out there that can be used to have a tremendously positive impact on your own personal poker skills. Furthermore, many of these programs are designed in a way to make the use of them as much fun as it is educational. So without any further ado, let’s take a look at some of the best poker software available to the discerning consumer.

MNA Texas Hold’em Assistant - this program is noteworthy in that it is entirely web-based, so there’s no need to download anything. Designed to make the mastery of Hold’em attainable for all players, this killer program calculates the probabilities for all of the hands that can be produced from a combination of 2 hole cards and a flop, with additional options for the turn and river.

Pokenum: Poker Hand Analyzer - this is an invaluable aide for determining hand strength applying to Texas Hold’em, Stud and even Lowball. The software simulates many hands so you can figure out the winning percentage of your hand against others. You can even add more cards to the board and see how your strength changes as the board progresses.

Frugal Gambler Video Poker Teacher - this is a downloadable software program that easily teaches you to play video poker. It charts your winnings and loses so you can keep close track of the progress you are making. A review of these programs (representing only a small portion of all on the market) should give you a good idea of how much great poker software is out there. Stay updated to the latest poker news to find a program that delivers exactly the combination of features you are looking for.

I was introduced to Diggy Games last week and have spent a bit of time there in the last couple of days playing some interesting Flash-based free online games. It’s also got a lot of old school games you may have once loved and forgot about. One game new to me that was a little weird but fun is a version of Tower Defense, what’s different about it is that it uses Monkeys and Balloons as you can see below; it’s called Bloon Tower Defense.

Another of my favorites that allowed me to relive old times was Cloud Soldier, a side-scroller in the sky.

Who doesn’t love a good game of Tower Defense, especially when it’s done in an original format.

This one is done on a whiteboard, with the squeaking markers and everything. It’s Whiteboard Tower Defense, hope you don’t mind losing a couple hours of your Friday.

If you’re a gamemaster then you know how time-consuming it can be to generate city maps. The Roleplaying City Map Generator is a free utility for GMs and it does this work for you with just a couple of minutes of your time and a few mouse clicks.

Via their simple UI (check out the UI here), you just enter a few parameters or you can start with one of their templates. Parameters include the appearance of buildings, streets, parks, places, rivers and the city wall. You can also define the type of settlement such as villages, small towns, or big cities for fantasy, medieval, cthulhu or scifi campaigns. Throw in a little randomization and the tool builds the city map before you, if you don’t like it then starting over using the previous settings is simple until it meets your requirements.

The tool is remarkable from the standpoint of the details you can choose from. For instance, you don’t simply choose the number of streets and buildings and towers, but have control over things like thickness of the city wall, city gate size, distance to water, tree size, orientation of the houses to the streets and the winding of the rivers. But don’t worry about being overloaded with detailed decisions you have to make, the tool uses default settings to give you a decent stab at having a proper town right out of the gate that you can tweak from there.

You can download the small Windows utility from here.

Here’s a collection of thumbnail shots from a variety of towns (clicky).

I believe this is the first youtube vid that’s been turned into a game. The video is annotated, you advance to the next level through a properly timed click of the annotation.

Enjoy.