Poker RTA explained: what real-time assistance is, how it works, and which tools exist in 2026

1. What RTA means in poker

RTA stands for real-time assistance. It is any software that helps you make a decision while the hand is still being played. In practice that means one thing: solver output for the exact spot in front of you, shown before you have to click.

The term came out of the solver era. Once tools like PioSOLVER and later GTO Wizard made game-theory-optimal (GTO) strategies available for study, the obvious next step was to consult them during play instead of after it. Poker sites drew a line there: studying the equilibrium away from the table is fine, consulting it during a hand is not. "RTA" became the word for crossing that line.

A HUD tells you what an opponent has done. A solver tells you what the equilibrium does. An RTA tells you what to do, now, in this hand. That last part is what makes it RTA.

2. Manual vs automated RTA

Manual RTA

You run a solver, a preflop chart or a range app on a second screen and type the spot in yourself: positions, stacks, the action so far, the board. This is slow, error-prone and only realistic preflop or in a single deep spot. It is also how most RTA was done between 2018 and 2022, and it is what most "RTA detection" stories from that period describe.

Automated RTA

The software reads the table itself and solves without input. Two ways to read: from the client's memory or hand-history files (fragile, site-specific, and the first thing a client's anti-cheat looks for), or from the screen pixels, which is how the current generation works. A pixel reader sees what you see: cards, board, stacks, bets, pot, whose turn it is. The advice appears the moment the action reaches you.

Automated RTA is what people mean by the phrase today. The rest of this guide is about it.

3. How an automated RTA works, step by step

Every modern RTA, whatever the brand, is the same pipeline:

• Capture. A frame of the poker window several times a second. Browser-based tools use the browser's own screen-share; desktop tools capture the window directly.
• Layout. Find the table in the frame: the felt, the seats, the plates with names and stacks, the bet labels, the board, your hole cards, the action buttons. Each site animates and lays out differently, so a serious tool has one layout detector per site.
• Read. Turn pixels into facts. Card ranks and suits from glyph templates, numbers from on-device OCR, names once per seat. Good readers confirm a card over two frames before trusting it and remember a seat that is briefly hidden by an animation.
• Track. Turn a sequence of reads into a hand: who posted, who raised to what, which street, what is in the pot, whose turn it is. This is where most cheap tools fall apart: a missed fold or a bet label read as a stack produces confident, wrong advice.
• Solve. Look the spot up. Preflop comes from charts. Flops come from a precomputed library of solved boards. Turns and rivers are solved live by a solver that starts working the moment the card lands, so the answer is ready before the action is on you.
• Show. Frequencies and sizes in a small window on top of the table: "Bet 33% 72% / Check 28%". The better tools also explain why.

Latency is the quality bar. A read that takes four seconds is useless on a 15-second clock. The current tools answer in well under a second for a spot they have seen, and in one to three seconds for a live turn or river solve.

4. What the advice is based on: GTO, and its limits

Almost every RTA shows GTO output: a Nash-equilibrium strategy for a simplified version of the game, computed by a solver. The equilibrium cannot be exploited, which is its whole appeal, and also its limit. It assumes the opponent plays the equilibrium too. Against a player who calls too much, bluffs too little or folds every river, the equilibrium leaves money on the table by design. It does not know who it is playing.

That is why professionals study GTO and then deviate from it. An RTA that only shows GTO gives you a floor: you will not be exploited, and you will not exploit anyone either. Against the typical online field, the edge is in the deviation, and the deviation needs a read on the player.

5. RTA with player profiling: GTO plus the exploit

The newest kind of RTA does something no solver can: it watches the opponent. Every showdown, every bet size, every fold under your login is logged against that player's name across sessions. From that log it builds a profile: how often they fold to a river bet, how often they c-bet, whether they ever bluff-raise, how far their numbers sit from the population baseline, and how much evidence there is behind each number.

A sound way to do this is Bayesian. Each tendency starts from a population prior and is updated hand by hand into a posterior with its uncertainty kept, so a player seen for 20 hands moves the line a little and a player seen for 500 hands moves it a lot. An exploit is applied only when the evidence clears the noise, and its size is damped by the sample.

The result is two lines on every decision. The GTO line: what the equilibrium does. The exploit line: what to do against this player, with the reason. "GTO says bet 33% here. This player folds to river bets 18% of the time over 120 hands, so bet 75% for value." Add a language model over the numbers and the reason comes out in plain words instead of a frequency table.

To our knowledge, GTO MAX AI is the first RTA to put a per-opponent Bayesian profile and an AI-written exploit line on top of the solver, live, on GGPoker, Natural8, ClubGG and PokerNow. The comparison in section 9 is written by us, so weigh it accordingly.

6. Where RTA is allowed

Using RTA is not a crime. It is a breach of contract wherever the site's terms forbid it, and nearly every real-money site does: PokerStars, GGPoker and the GG network (Natural8 included), partypoker, 888, WPT Global and ClubGG all name real-time assistance as prohibited. The penalty is account closure, usually with confiscation of the balance, and sometimes a public notice.

Where it is allowed, or at least not forbidden by anyone:

• Study and coaching. Replaying your own sessions, reviewing with a coach, running a tool over play-money tables to learn what the equilibrium does in spots you keep misplaying.
• Home games and private clubs whose players have agreed to it. Many PokerNow home games run exactly this way, as a shared learning table.
• Play-money tables. No money, no complaint, and the sites rarely police them.

Every reputable tool, ours included, says this in its terms and asks you to confirm it before the coach starts. If permission is unclear where you play, do not use it during play.

7. How sites detect RTA

Three layers, in rising order of how much they catch:

• Process and screen scanning. The desktop client lists running programs, known solver binaries, screen-capture hooks and overlay windows. This catches manual RTA on a second monitor badly and desktop RTA tools well. Browser-based tools that read a shared window are not visible to it, which is why the newer tools run in Chrome.
• Timing. A human's decision time varies with the difficulty of the spot. A player who takes the same 1.8 seconds on every river, or who always acts exactly when an overlay would have updated, stands out.
• Statistical fingerprinting. The one that matters. Over thousands of hands, how closely do a player's frequencies and bet sizes track the equilibrium? Human regulars drift; a player glued to a solver does not. PokerStars has said this kind of analysis finds the large majority of RTA users it closes. It is also the only layer that catches browser-based tools.

Two consequences. First, "undetectable RTA" is a marketing phrase: nothing beats the statistical layer except not playing the equilibrium exactly, which is, ironically, what a profiling tool with an exploit line does. Second, the only way to be certain is to use the tool where it is permitted.

8. RTA vs HUD vs bot

The line between RTA and bot is clicking. An RTA advises; every action is still yours. A bot plays. No tool described in this guide places bets or plays hands for you.

9. RTA software compared (2026)

The field is small and changes quickly. What follows is how the current tools differ on the things that matter: whether they read the table themselves, how they solve, whether they know the opponent, whether they explain the line, where they run, and what they cost. We make GTO MAX AI, so read our row as a claim and the others as our understanding of their public pages at the time of writing.

The honest summary: everything on the market reads a table and shows GTO. The differences are speed and read accuracy, which you can only judge in a trial, and whether the tool knows anything about the player across from you, which today only one does.

10. How to choose an RTA

• Test the reader, not the demo. Share a real table (play money is fine) and watch the live read for ten hands: every stack, every bet, every board card. A tool that misreads a bet label as a stack will give confident, wrong advice. Report buttons and visible "what it reads" overlays are a good sign; they mean the maker expects to be checked.
• Time it. The advice must be there when the action is on you, on every street, including a live river. Count seconds.
• Ask what it knows about the opponent. If the answer is nothing, you are buying a floor, not an edge.
• Ask why. A frequency without a reason teaches you nothing. A tool that explains the line makes you better when it is off.
• Prefer nothing installed. Browser tools leave nothing on your machine and work on any computer you sign into.
• Read the terms, theirs and the site's. A tool that pretends the site rules do not exist is telling you how carefully it was built.

11. FAQ

What does RTA mean in poker?

Real-time assistance: software that helps you decide while the hand is being played, usually by showing solver output for the live spot. A HUD shows statistics with no recommendation; a bot acts for you; an RTA advises and you act.

Is poker RTA legal?

It is not a crime, but almost every real-money site forbids it in its terms, and accounts caught using it are closed with funds confiscated. Study, coaching, home games, private clubs and play-money tables decide for themselves.

What is the difference between automated and manual RTA?

Manual: you type the spot into a solver or chart during the hand. Automated: the software reads the table from the screen and solves without input, so the advice is there when the action is on you.

How do poker sites detect RTA?

Process scans catch desktop tools, timing analysis catches robotic clocks, and statistical fingerprinting over thousands of hands catches anyone who plays the equilibrium too exactly. The last one also catches browser tools, which is why the only safe use is where it is permitted.

What is the best poker RTA in 2026?

Judge on three things: does it read the table itself, does it know the opponent, does it explain the line. Most tools do the first. GTO MAX AI is the only one we know of that does all three.

Does RTA work on GGPoker, Natural8 or ClubGG?

A pixel-reading RTA works on any client it has a reader for; GTO MAX AI ships readers for GGPoker, Natural8, ClubGG and PokerNow. Whether you may use it there is a separate question: the GG network forbids real-time assistance in its terms.

Is an RTA the same as a HUD for GGPoker?

No. GGPoker withholds hand histories, so conventional HUDs do not run there. A pixel-reading RTA builds its own player log from what it sees, which gives HUD-style statistics as a by-product, plus the recommendation a HUD never gives.