Guides

Configuring Your Table Grid

CoreSpade calculates and generates your table layout automatically based on the parameters you define in the Layout Settings.

• Layout Management: You can create, save, and manage multiple layout profiles and switch between them at any time.
• Import Layout takes over your layouts from Jurojin or Intuitive Tables. Hotkeys and frame colors are not imported.
• Monitor Parameters: Configure each monitor individually by setting the total number of table slots, the alignment (Left, Center, Right), and the fill direction (Horizontal or Vertical).
• Advanced Tuning: Further refine your grid using parameters such as display priority (determining which monitor fills first), maximum allowed overlap, taskbar avoidance, and uniform sizing (which forces identically sized slots across all active displays).

Special Window Slots

Assign reserved slots for auxiliary windows to keep them separate from your active tables.

• Dedicated Slots: Configure fixed positions for Replayers, Hand History (HH) Viewers, MTT Lobbies, and Note Windows. When you open these windows, they are automatically snapped into their designated slots.

• Client Lobby Slot: Group and stack all poker client lobbies into a single, unified window position. This feature includes an interactive tab-bar for quick switching between lobbies, which can be docked to the slot or dragged freely across the screen.

Using Stacked Layouts

A stacked layout assigns multiple tables to the exact same slot position, grouping them together to save screen space.

• Setup: You can define specific slots in your grid to act as "Stacked" slots within the Layout Settings.
• Overflow Slots: Once every slot is taken, additional tables go to an overflow slot. By default that is the last slot in the fill order. In the Layout Settings you can mark one or more slots as overflow slots instead, and extra tables are spread evenly across them. As soon as a regular slot becomes free, a table from the overflow moves back into it. A slot is either a stacking slot or an overflow slot.
• Table Activation: CoreSpade continuously monitors the game states. When it is your turn to act, the software brings the active table to the foreground.
• Mixed stacks: Poker clients bring their own tables forward by themselves. GGPoker does this even with CoreSpade closed. If tables from several networks share one slot, the wrong table can end up on top, and a left click brings the right one back. A slot holding tables from a single network is unaffected. Popups can have the same effect: bounty payouts, tournament notifications and prize awards all reorder windows.
• Hybrid Configurations: Mix different layout types by combining single-table tiled slots and multi-table stacked slots on the same monitor to create a hybrid grid.

Rearranging Tables During Play

You can dynamically move tables to different slots while playing without disrupting your layout.

• Drag & Drop: Click and hold the left mouse button on a table to drag it into a new slot.
• Hotkey Swapping: Press your designated swap hotkey to select a table. Then, move your mouse over the target slot and either press the hotkey again or left-click to finalize the swap.
• Visual Indication: In the Settings, you can enable a customizable colored border that highlights the currently selected table while a swap is in progress.

Configuring Action Hotkeys

Map in-game actions to physical inputs for faster decision execution.

• Supported Actions: Assign hotkeys to standard poker actions such as Check/Fold, Bet/Raise, All-In, and specific bet-sizing buttons.
• Input Devices: CoreSpade supports key mapping across all standard input devices, allowing you to use your keyboard, mouse buttons, or a controller.

Configuring Utility Hotkeys

Map recurring window management actions to hotkeys to streamline your workflow.

• Window Functions: Assign hotkeys to instantly open a table's Replayer, open a Tournament Lobby, or safely close the active table.

Automated Screenshots

Use automated screenshot sequences to capture game information without manual window management.

• Hand History Capture: Pressing the hotkey automatically opens the Hand History Viewer in an enlarged state, takes a screenshot of the hand, and immediately closes the window.
• Lobby Capture: Similar to the HH capture, this hotkey opens the MTT Lobby, navigates to the necessary tab (like payout structures), captures a screenshot, and closes the lobby.
• Standard Captures: The same hotkey system can be mapped to take standard screenshots of the active table or screen.

Advanced Swapping Hotkeys

Map specific swapping commands to keyboard inputs for faster table organization.

• Hot Slot Target: Define a specific "Hot Slot" and use a hotkey to instantly pull any active table from a stack into this designated slot.
• Direct Swap: Initiate table swaps between slots using keyboard hotkeys instead of mouse drag & drop.

Voice Control

Say a word and CoreSpade presses the hotkey for you. Fold, call, raise, open the lobby or the replayer, all without touching the keyboard.

• Runs on your PC: CoreSpade uses the speech recognition built into Windows. Nothing is uploaded and nothing extra needs to be installed. Windows needs the English (United States) speech pack; if it is missing, add it under Settings, Time & language, Language.
• Turning it on: Open the Hotkeys tab and flip the switch in the Voice Control box. The group switch of the action has to be on as well, for example Bet Hotkeys for fold and call.
• Choosing words: Every hotkey row has a microphone column. The word in it triggers the row. English poker terms are filled in already: fold, call, raise, all in, size one to size five, replayer, lobby and so on. Change any word you like, and separate several words with a comma, such as "raise, bet". Leave the field empty and the row ignores your voice.
• Using it: Point the mouse at the table and say the word, short and on its own. Like a hotkey, the command goes to the table under the mouse.
• Push to talk: Assign a key, a mouse button or a controller button in the Push to talk row and CoreSpade listens only while you hold it. Without one it listens all the time. Use push to talk once real money is on the table, so that a conversation in the room cannot trigger an action.
• Feedback: Play signal tone on execution gives a short beep when a command went through. Show heard word briefly displays the recognised word in the top left corner of the screen, handy while setting things up.
• Good to know: On PokerStars the row also needs a key, because the client only reacts to its own shortcuts. If a word is often missed, speak more clearly, move closer to the microphone or pick a different word.

Highlight Assistant Configuration

Use visual indicators to quickly identify which tables require action.

• Active Table Border: Draw a customizable colored border around the table that currently requires your action. Border thickness and color are configured in the settings.
• Mouse Hover Border: Draw a border around the table currently located under your mouse cursor to ensure you are interacting with the correct window.
• Sitout: Marks a table you are sitting out on, in its own colour. Useful when you are registered at more tables than you are actively playing.
• Busted: Marks a table you have been knocked out of, so it is obvious at a glance which windows you can close.
• Reverse Highlight: Instead of highlighting the active table, this feature dims all inactive tables. You can adjust the opacity level of the dimming effect to suit your preference.
• Blink Frame: Makes the action border flash instead of standing still, with three speeds to choose from. Only the action border blinks, never the other frames.

Setting Up the RNG Assistant

Configure a centralized Random Number Generator (RNG) panel for randomized decision making.

• Panel Design: The RNG is a separate window. Numbers are never drawn into the table image, and nothing is written into the poker client - the panel does not touch it at all.
• Generation Triggers: You can configure the RNG to generate a new number manually upon a mouse click, automatically at a set time interval (e.g., every 5 seconds), or use both methods simultaneously.

Activating Tables on Hover

Configure CoreSpade to automatically bring tables to the foreground based on mouse position.

• Focus Mechanics: When enabled, simply moving your mouse cursor over a table will activate it and bring it to the front of your screen.
• Overlap Handling: This feature is specifically designed for overlapping or heavily stacked layouts: hotkeys go to the specific table located beneath your cursor rather than to whichever window happens to be active.

The Table Counter Bar

A small always-on-top bar that tells you what your tables are doing without looking at them. Switch it on with Show counter bar in the Tools tab.

• What it counts: how many tables are open, and how many currently need your action. Tables that are sitting out or busted are shown dimmed, so they do not inflate the number you actually have to play.
• Where it sits: drag it anywhere you like. Its position is remembered between sessions.
• Dock to first stack table slot: if your layout uses a stack slot, the bar can attach itself to it instead of floating free.

Final Table Song

Set one track to play when you reach a final table. It sits on the Home tab and says No Song Set until you give it a link.

• Setting it: paste a Spotify or YouTube link. CoreSpade fetches the title and cover art so you can see what you picked.
• Playing it: the track is started in the player it belongs to. CoreSpade does not stream anything itself and stores no audio.

This one is pure ceremony. It changes nothing about how you play.

Safety Assistant Protection

Closes tools that are permitted on their own, but must not be open while you are in a session. The list is CoreSpade's, not a poker room's - you decide what it contains.

• Process Monitoring: CoreSpade continuously scans running processes to detect active poker clients.
• Automatic Termination: When a poker client starts, listed programs (e.g. Equilab, Flopzilla, PioSolver) are terminated. This is a hard process kill - unsaved work in those programs is lost. Close what you need to keep before starting a session, or take the entry off the list.

Configuring the Autostart Assistant

Create a macro to launch your entire workspace environment simultaneously.

• Program Paths: Add the executable paths for your poker clients, tracking software, and other utilities to the Autostart list.
• Launch Sequence: You can configure custom time delays between the start of each program to ensure heavier applications have fully loaded before the next one launches.

What the Tracker Reads, and What It Does Not

The Core Tracker is a results overview for your own tournaments. It is closer to a spreadsheet than to a database tool, and it is deliberately narrow in what it touches. It is marked EXPERIMENTAL in the interface: it is not essential to CoreSpade and may be removed in a future version.

• Supported networks: GGPoker, PokerStars, WPN (ACR, PokerKing) and iPoker. iPoker amounts are converted from euros to dollars. 888poker, CoinPoker and partypoker are not imported, because their files do not state your winnings or they write none at all.
• What it stores per tournament: buy-in, rake, bounty, re-entries, field size, prize pool, and your own finishing position and winnings.
• What it never stores: no player names, no hands, and no statistics about anyone other than you. There is no opponent data of any kind.
• Nothing appears during play: the tracker displays nothing while tables are open. It is something you look at afterwards, not a live overlay or HUD.

Most poker rooms prohibit HUDs, opponent analysis and mass data analysis, and the tracker has none of them. See the Compliance page.

Importing Tournament Results

Results are imported from a folder you choose. Nothing is imported automatically and nothing is sent anywhere. The database stays on your machine.

• Import Tourney Results: Select the folder containing your tournament summary files, and CoreSpade will search it and its subfolders. GGPoker does not write these files itself. You download them from PokerCraft, so point the import at wherever you saved them. PokerStars and WPN write them on their own; for iPoker, point the import at the client's History folder.
• Repeated imports are safe: A tournament that is already recorded is updated rather than added again, so you can point the import at the same folder as often as you like without inflating your figures.
• Overview: The Tracker tab summarises the imported tournaments as Profit, ROI, ITM and average buy-in, with the individual results listed below.
• Bounty tournaments and ITM: Progressive bounty formats do not state how a payout splits between prize money and bounties, so a cash-out cannot be read as "in the money" with any certainty. These tournaments are therefore left undetermined and are excluded from the ITM figure rather than guessed at. Your ITM rate refers to non-bounty tournaments only.

From the Hand History File to a Posted Hand

The Reviewer tab lists the tournaments and cash tables in the hand history files you load, replays any hand of them on a CoreSpade table, and turns the one worth talking about into a single image. It works on files after the session and has no connection to a running poker client.

Loading and finding a session

• Loading: Drop files or whole folders anywhere on the tab, or use Open Files and Open Folder. Subfolders are included. Files that are already loaded are skipped, so dropping the same folder twice adds nothing.
• Supported formats: GGPoker, PokerStars, CoinPoker, 888poker, iPoker and WPN hand histories. partypoker hand histories are not supported yet.
• One row per tournament or cash session: A tournament is one row, however many tables it moved through. At cash tables, hands at the same table belong together until you take a break of more than 30 minutes; after that a new row begins.
• Place and winnings: These are taken from the tournament summary files your client writes, if they sit in the loaded folder. GGPoker, PokerStars and WPN summaries provide your finishing position and prize, 888poker summaries only the position. iPoker carries both in the hand history itself and needs no summary, CoinPoker writes neither and stays without a place. For PokerStars without a summary, the elimination line in the last hand is used. For cash sessions the column shows your net result.
• Sorting and search: Click a column header to sort by it and click it again to reverse the order. Amounts and dates start with the highest or newest, names alphabetically, places with your best finish. Rows without a value stay at the bottom either way. The search field matches tournament names, table names and the blinds of cash tables.
• Nothing is kept: Loaded hands stay in memory while CoreSpade runs. They are not written into a database and nothing is sent anywhere.

Replaying a hand

• Opening the replayer: Double-click a row or press Replay and the replayer opens with the hands of that tournament or session, starting with the first. It shows the hand on a CoreSpade table, one action at a time.
• Stepping through: Left and right arrow, or the mouse wheel forward and back, move one action. Home and End jump to the start and the end of the hand. Space plays the hand on its own, at 0.5x to 4x speed.
• Changing hands: Ctrl with the arrow keys, or XButton1 and XButton2 on the mouse, go to the previous and next hand. Shift with the arrow keys skips to the next hand you played, meaning you called, bet or raised before the flop. Ctrl with Home and End go to the first and last hand.
• What the table shows: your own cards, the board, stacks, bets and the pot as the hand history records them. Opponent cards appear only where the hand history contains them, for example after a showdown.
• Amounts: The BB button switches between big blinds and chips.
• Copy Raw and Controls: Copy Raw copies the text of the hand exactly as it stands in the file. The Controls button lists every key and mouse button in the replayer.

Hand Recap: the whole hand on one image

• Opening the recap: The Recap button in the replayer, or the V key, opens the hand as a single image that you can paste into Discord or a forum.
• Layout: a title line with the site, the tournament name, the game and the blinds, then the table at the end of the hand with the winner marked, and below it one column each for blinds and antes, pre-flop, flop, turn and river with the pot at the start of every street. The image grows with the amount of action.
• Anonymous: The mask button replaces opponent names with their positions and calls you Hero, in the image and in the hand list.
• No hand ID: The image never shows the hand number or the table, so a posted hand cannot be traced back to you through them.
• Copy and save: Copy puts the image on the clipboard (Ctrl+C works as well), ready to paste. Save writes it as a PNG file.
• Hand list: The narrow bar on the right edge opens a list of the hands with your cards, the winner and the pot. Hands you played are tinted, and a click in the list moves the replayer to that hand as well.
• Follows the replayer: While the recap is open, even minimised, it always shows the hand the replayer is on.

Choose What CoreSpade Does on Each Site

Every supported poker site has its own row: one main switch and four function switches. Changes apply immediately.

• Active: Off means CoreSpade leaves the windows of this client completely alone.
• Layout: Arranging tables, lobbies, notes, the replayer and the special slots.
• Bet Hotkeys: The nine bet hotkeys and the mouse wheel. Off: the key goes to the client unchanged.
• Other Hotkeys: Utility, screenshot and slot swapping hotkeys.
• Tools: Highlight frames, reverse highlight and activating the table under the mouse.