Using PokerStove 1.1

What is PokerStove?

PokerStove is a tool that allows for exact and fast evaluations of the equity of a single hand in a specific situation. The creation of Equity charts such as ORC and SHC would not have been possible without PokerStove. Furthermore, you are able to gain a feeling of pre-flop equity which enables an even better understanding of pre-flop play than ORC and SHC can provide you with. Your brain also works with charts and patterns, but compared to a single sheet printed on a piece of paper, your brain has the ability to analyze a lot more charts in a shorter time.

I will give you an example of how effectively your brain can work. The starting hands chart always has a general solution for each pre-flop situation, but remember the advanced pre-flop strategy. Because we involved two more options (blind stealing and isolation), and made some more fine-tuning, we have 5 different charts which we should use (ORC,3-bet-korn,3-bet-betout, limp-iso-betout, callchart).
If we want to adapt these charts to the different types of players and to the way they played their last hands, we would get even more “charts”. Nevertheless, your brain is able to use the right patterns pretty much in no time. You can train this ability by using PokerStove combined with practice.

What is Equity and Average Equity?

PokerStove is about calculating equities. Equity is the chance of winning a hand has viewed from a specific time in a game – if neither you nor your opponents could act any more. It is a kind of snap-shot of a hand’s strength.
The average equity has nothing to do with specific hands. It is basically 100% divided by the number of players which are in the hand. For instance, the average equity would be 25% if 4 players are in the hand.

What is the Equity and Average-Equity?

You need both for a qualified analysis concerning pre-flop decisions. If you play hands that have a better equity than the average equity, you will make profit in the long run (flaws in your post-flop play ignored). If your equity is less than the average equity, you will lose money (again, in the long run). Implied odds and reverse implied odds are also important, but we won’t focus on them right now. Anyway, you should raise hands with a positive expected value (Equity - average equity > 0) to maximize your profit, and fold hands with a negative EV.

How do I use this Knowledge effectively?

Generally, you analyze situations if you are not really sure if you’ve played them right. You insert your hand and the hand ranges of your opponents. PokerStove will return your Equity.

Example 1

You are MP2 with QJs. If you are first to act, you know that you are able to raise like it is written in the ORC. If a single player limped in, you can take a look at the limp-isolation-chart to find out if you should try to isolate the limper. If a single player raises, you should use the 3-bet chart for your further action.
But what do you do if 2 opponents limped in? QJs has strengths in all of the three criteria. You hold 2 high cards, they are suited, and connected. It’s have a very good drawing hand which has strength in multiway pots as well as in short handed pots. A fold should not be considered. But should you raise or call? You can analyze your hand by using PokerStove afterwards.
Firstly, you should open Pokertracker. You have to open your database and find your hand at the tab “General Info”. You should open your hand and run it one more time. Of course you don’t have to do this, but most of the times it is better to review the hand before you analyze it. Get your opponents’ stats. For example:

Villain 1
VPIP: 69.81%
PFR: 13.56%

Villain2
VPIP: 66.67%
PFR: 10.46%

Note:
You should keep in mind that your opponents have different ranges, depending on their position. Korn estimates the following for shorthanded:

Very fishy players do not care that much about position. So this rule of thumb probably counts for tight aggressive opponents, but a callingstation is just a callingstation – no matter the position.

I will not use Korn’s estimation in the following to keep it simple.

I can activate PokerStove and insert the ranges:

Player 1:

I click on “player 1”. "Holdem Distribution [Player 1]" – window pops-up. I choose the pre-flop tab and use the slider below. I scroll up to 70%.

This results in the following range:
22+,A2s+,K2s+,Q2s+,J2s+,T2s+,93s+,84s+,74s+,63s+,53s+,A2o+,K2o+,Q3o+,J5o+,T
6o+,96o+,86o+,76o

This is a wide range. The opponent plays pretty much everything. So I don’t have to change that much at the outer boarders. Personally, I think it is unrealistic that an opponent might play 63s but not 73s. Such a player will never think about a better connectedness of 63s. Because of that reason I change the player’s hand range a little bit.

Now I have to remove his raise range (as he did not raise). A raise range of 14% includes following hands: 77+, A8s+, Ato+, K9s+, KJo+, Qts+, QJo
This is the result:
66-22,A7s-A2s,K8s-K2s,QTs-Q2s,J2s+,T2s+,93s+,83s+,73s+,63s+,53s+,A9o-A2o,KTo-K2o,Q3o+,J5o+,T6o+,96o+,86o+,76o

Player 2:

This time I choose 67% and proceed the same way as you can see above. PokerStove calculates this range:
22+,A2s+,K2s+,Q2s+,J2s+,T2s+,94s+,84s+,74s+,64s+,54s,A2o+,K2o+,Q4o+,J6o+,T6
o+,96o+,86o+,76o

10% is a standard raise range. So I remove the following hands:
88+, A9s, AJo, KTs, KJo, QTs

This is more or less the player’s limp range:
77-22,A8s-A2s,K9s-K2s,Q9s-Q2s,J2s+,T2s+,94s+,84s+,74s+,64s+,54s,ATo-A2o,KJo-K2o,Q4o+,J6o+,T6o+,96o+,86o+,76o

Now I can start the experiment.

Note: I recommend using all PokerStove calculations with “Monte Carlo” and not “Enumerate all.” Enumerate is more precise, but “Monte Carlo” will work pretty accurately, too; plus, it saves time. You can find more information concerning this matter here.(stove guide)

Now I enter QJs in the text field right next to “Player 3” and start my evaluation. If I click on “Stop,” a few seconds later I will get the following result:

The most important column is the equity. You don’t have to calculate the average equity because you can see that your equity is much higher than your opponents’. I have an edge and should raise for value.

More Equity Examples

Next we could find out which hands might have an equity edge against these opponents. You should use the following categories to find out the boarders: Axs-off, Kxs-off, Qxs and pocket pairs.
If you have a great equity edge with QJs, what do you think might happen with 77. Let’s check it out:

This is an even bigger edge. Let’s try 33:

This is very close. We should calculate our average-equity. 100%/3 = 33.3%. I have an positive edge with everything higher than 33.3%. But 33.29 is slightly below. In some cases you might stick with a raise because of strategical advantages, but this does not count for 33. We hope to get a set on the flop with a lot of action from our opponents. They might fold if you had been the pre-flop aggressor. If you raise, you will have less opponents on the flop and they even think that you have a strong hand and tend to fold easily. 33 of course has some showdown value even if it is unimproved, but it is very tough to play. So you should stick to a pre-flop call and take advantage of your implied odds.
Let’s continue with Axs. A raise with 44 will be worth it in most likeliness, so I think we can also raise with A2s:

And, well, A2s is quite raisable.

Maybe you can even raise with A2o:

You should also be fine with raising A2o.
Because the difference between Axs and Kxs is not that big, I assume you might be able to raise with K4s, as well:

That’s ok. What about K2s:

K2o should not be raised:

q

But what about K3o.

No, you have a negative EV. We will be there slowly but surely:

We might be able to raise with K6o. We can move on to get a complete chart for this specific situation:

Pocketpairs - 44
As - A2s
Ao - A2o
Ks - K2s
Ko - K6o
Qs - Q6s
Qo - Q8o
Js - J7s/J8s (marginal)
Jo - J9o
Ts - T8s
To - T9o

We have a very big isolation range against these two players. But we will not be able to use this chart most of the times, because we are to reduce this range by using the ORC. Remember: There are still opponents yet to act.

Example 2:

Equity is not only used for isolation raises. Completing the small blind also depends on your equity edge. Therefore, you should read this example if you want to know how it works.

In the small blind, we only need an equity of 70% of the average equity.
You are SB with T6s. 2 players have already limped in. They are pretty loose with VPIP 50 and PFR 10.
You should click on “player 1” and choose the pre-flop tab. Use the slider and scroll to 50%. Remove some hands of which you think they are not so interesting for this kind of player and choose some others. In most likeliness, this player will play 22 as well. I remove all hands he probably raises (10%). His raise range might be: 99+, A7s+, ATo+, KJs+ und KQo.
You should remove these hands, because your opponent just called. This gives you a range of 40.3%:
88-22,A6s-A2s,KTs-K2s,Q2s+,J4s+,T6s+,96s+,86s+,76s,65s,A9o-A2o,KJo-K5o,Q7o+,J7o+,T8o+,98o
You should copy this range for “Player 2” and insert T6s for yourself.

Your average-equity is 33.3%. But as you can read above, you only need 70% for a SB complete. 70% of 33.3% is 23.3%.
If PokerStove promises an equity of 23.5%-33%, you should complete. Everything higher than the average equity (>33%) should be raised, while everything below 23.5% can be easily folded.
Let’s find out:

T6s has an equity of 28.6%. This is more than the required 23.5%. You can complete, but you should not raise this hand.
Ask yourself in order:
1. Can I fold this hand? 28% - 23,5% -> no
2. Can I raise this hand? Below 33,3% -> no
3. You should complete this hand.

We can make another example with 3 loose players in the hand. You just have to copy the hand range of “Player 1” or “Player 2” and paste it at the field next to “Player 4”.
Your average equity changes: 100/4 = 25% * 70% = 17.5%.
Ask yourself in order:
1. Can I fold this hand? 17.5% - 25% -> no
2. Can I raise this hand? Below 25% -> no
3. You should complete this hand.

Let’s see what PokerStove tells us:

You have an equity of 22.3%. You should complete the small blind.
With 6 players, the following result will show up:

Average-Equity:
100/7=14,3%
14,3*70%=10%

1. fold? 14,4% - 10% -> no.
2. raise? Below 14,3% -> no.
Thus, you can complete the small blind in any passive game if there are at least 2 limpers.
But remember: There have to be very bad opponents!

Call against an open raiser

For the expansion of this article, I sat down and calculated just which hands you can call with against an open raiser.

First, I tried using variants of the charts we normally use. Unfortunately, I was led to conclude that I would have to make a prohibitive number of charts and that the interpretation of the results would be very difficult. For this reason, I decided to make my chart like the hand choice field in Pokerstove. This has the advantage of being able to get an additional matrix dimension by adding multiple suits. Secondly, the results can be displayed visually for easy interpretation. And if we're honest, we don't really want another chart, rather we want to develop a feeling for how to play without the chart. For this reason, we want to find out what really makes up equity in the deepest senze. Interpretation is more important here than the playability of the chart. 😉

Procedure

I deviated from the given practice method because of the large amount of information to work through; I did not always try to find the hands for which I had boundary value of 35% equity. Rather, I tried to maximize my effectiveness and reach the proper hand by stoving through the minimal number of hands. A complete analysis from a theoretcal 10% pre-flop raise to 100% gives enough hands that you can stove through different PFR's to gain experience and orient yourself on the results so that you know what to do with the borderline hands from what you know about the others (which hand that I know how to play is similar to my current hand? What makes them different and what could make it so that I don't play the current hand like the one I've seen before?). Trying to interpret what was changing and why during the stoving kept my interest piqued waiting to see what would happen at the next PFR step. I can only recommend that you don't just work through this in monotone fashion, rather, stay alert and always try to read between the lines (and columns)

The "Big Blind vs any Open Raiser" Chart

This chart is structured just like in stove. The diagonals are the pockets, suited hands to the right and offsuited to the left. The table on the right side gives the division of all the pre-flop raise percents for which analyses were performed and their colors. Comparing the color of a hand with the table at the right gives you a PFR value. If you think your opponent is in range of this percent or higher, you can call the hand in the BB. I did not consider the possibility of a 3 bet. This case was done separately. The chart only tells you with which hands you can call for +EV. The black hands with white lettering are hands that you should never call in the BB against a pre-flop raise. Even if your opponent had random hands, the equity would not be enough.

Interpretation

Now then. I will hold back on this point a bit. Think about what this chart says about the character of each hand and post it! My interpretation will follow in due course.