Interview With Michael Lehrer – Creator of TimeMojo Poker Tool

During a time in which poker seems harder than ever before, poker tools have become necessary to beat the games online. Everyone seems to be aware of the most famous and popular tools such as Hold’em Manager and PokerTracker, but other tools are starting to come out that provide players with a new way of gaining an edge. Michael Lehrer, creator of TimeMojo, was kind enough to grant us some of his time and he gave us the full story on what his tool does and how it can help your poker game.

Lehrer is from Houston, Texas and has been involved in the poker industry since 2005, when he started playing for fun. As he developed his game he eventually went pro in 2009, and poker was his main income until a few months after Black Friday in April of 2011. It was around that time that he came up with the idea for TimeMojo, as he needed to find a new edge to stay competitive in the game.

The basic idea behind TimeMojo was finding timing tells on players at the table. Lehrer had found the games had gotten tougher, but also noticed that some regulars had a leak that he could exploit.

“I actually got into timing tells when I moved up to $2/$4 and higher, because I found the games to be more difficult and needed an extra edge.  So with that, I started noticing that several regulars were taking a lot longer to three-bet preflop when they had a weak hand. I would start taking notes on these regulars such as “time down 3bet weak”, and eventually started four-bet bluffing them with such a success rate that they started five-bet bluffing me out of frustration. Even the tightest of players would resort to this strategy. So once I realized that I needed a timing HUD to really maximize my profits, I began developing TimeMojo,” Lehrer explained.

Lehrer, who has a background in computer engineering, did most of the work on TimeMojo himself. He did however work together with some of his friends on some of the more difficult aspects of creating a timing HUD.

Originally Lehrer created TimeMojo for personal use, as well as for his poker-playing girlfriend. But Lehrer decided to stop playing poker full time and he made the decision to make the tool available to the community. This decision has led to an amazing journey of TimeMojo, which has evolved from being a tool that only shows you the time that a player takes to make an action, into being a great HUD that presents you with all the vital information you need for timing tells.

The Development of TimeMojo to the Product it is Today

The very first version of TimeMojo was very rough around the edges and didn’t include anything but a timing counter that could be used along with notes to gain an edge on the regulars at the table. When Lehrer decided to make TimeMojo commercial, he also knew that he needed to add additional features to the program to make it interesting for other players.

He gathered a small team to help him take TimeMojo to the next level and began putting in 50 to 60 hours weekly towards creating a usable poker tool for the serious player. The design got a massive overhaul and features such as logging timing actions to the user’s computer were included in the new version.

Another important feature includes the HUD Pop-up, which shows opponent’s action timing and betting amount, allowing the user to see timing details of all actions made in a hand and also to create a timing sample size, so the users can compare the current timing of a player to what the player has done in the past.

To help players avoid having a timing tell of their own TimeMojo also offers a so-called “Randomizer” feature, allowing players to enter a specific range of seconds that their actions should always take. This means that if you want all actions to take between 7-9 seconds, the randomizer will automatically delay any action that takes less than that, and makes it be between the specified time range.

“The Randomizer is great for those who wants to avoid giving away a timing tell themselves and it can be adjusted with the click of a mouse.”

“For now TimeMojo is only working with Pokerstars and Full Tilt and has been approved as a legal tool to use for players.” Lehrer said.

Here you can see some of the settings that you can change in TimeMojo, including the Randomizer’s Timing Range, allowing you to not give away any timing tells to your opponent

More poker sites and networks may be added along the way, as Lehrer explains, “Once I feel the database version provides the average user, who is unfamiliar with timing tells, all the tools to start profiting off of them with minimal effort.”

When the tool was initially released for purchase, Lehrer started a thread on the 2+2 poker forums, where he explained what the tool could do and how it could help players gain an edge. The first version only included to time counter and was not received very positively by the community. But instead of getting offended, Lehrer decided to develop TimeMojo into the tool it is today and the reception of the updated version has been much better.

Some players believe that timing tells in online poker do not exist and Lehrer doesn’t mind that there are those who believe the program is not useful. He can see that many of those who tried it gained an edge in their game and continue to use the tool alongside their other poker tools.

One of the common problems for any poker tool creator these days is that many of them are quite difficult to set up, as well as having so many features that most don’t quite understand how to use. Installing and using TimeMojo is quite easy though.

“The only thing you have to do in order to use TimeMojo is to install the program and ensure that you have the “everything” option enabled in the dealer chat. Once you sit down at a table, the HUD will automatically appear on the table and begin to gather data, which you can use to get a tell on the opponent,” Lehrer explained.

While a timing tell is not for a rookie poker player, it is relatively easy to understand the concept behind TimeMojo and start exploiting the opponents. “The HUD will show all timing actions on all streets in the current hand and the database will ensure that you have information about previous hands as well, which you can use to compare for the hand you are currently playing” Lehrer said.

The “front” page of the TimeMojo program, where you can start and stop the Timing Hud and Randomizer, as well as see how many hands that you have played in your session.

Should players still have questions towards what TimeMojo can offer or need any sort of help with the program, Lehrer and his team are available through many different channels.

“We have a 2+2 forum thread where we talk to current users of the tool, but we can also be reached through Facebook, Twitter and of course email. We are here to help and make the experience for the user as good and smooth as possible.”

The Future of TimeMojo

Even though TimeMojo has already seen a major overhaul in all aspects of the tool, Lehrer and his team will continue to develop new features that can benefit their users. For him it is important to continue to develop the product, not only to gain new customers, but also for the players who have already purchased a license.

“The next feature is database functionality. This will include a HUD that has average times for specific street by street actions,” Lehrer explained, “There will also be a more advanced analysis on the HUD for actions such as Check/Fold percentage based on timing ranges, 3bet/Fold to 4bet percentage based on timing ranges and many more interesting and useful features.”

“The average timing HUD is in beta test phase right now and the advanced analysis will be in testing phase most likely this week. Some of the more distant features will be based on the database system, such as offline analysis and similar features,” Lehrer added.

One thing is for sure and that is that everyone who has at one time purchased a license for TimeMojo, will be able to update with all the latest features completely free.

“There will not be any additional charges for users who have already purchased a license. While the price may change in the future, it will never affect our current users”

The future looks bright for TimeMojo, as Lehrer and his teams continues to develop new features, more and more players begins to see the value in timing tells in online poker. It’s a great addition to having a regular HUD with important stats of opponents and is usable even for micro stakes players.

Try TimeMojo for Free

Should you be interested in trying out TimeMojo then you can try out their 30 days free trial. You’ll have access to all the features the program offers and get to know the program before purchasing a license.

After 30 days of use you can purchase a full lifetime license for $39.