We have already talked about the usefulness of software that collects statistics and information about your opponents at online poker tables. If you are a serious online poker player, you cannot avoid using at least one of these products such as Holdem Manager 2 or HUD.
But what about the software that allows you to evaluate your decisions as a player? Are they worth the price? The answer is yes, but… Let’s take a look at what these tools can and cannot do.
All of the above tools are primarily intended for testing and observing situations outside of actual sessions, but can certainly be used in-game if you have enough time. They are of course not allowed in live play, as the use of tablets, smartphones or even laptops is generally prohibited there.
On one hand, you can go into any situation pre-flop or post-flop and calculate what your odds (equity) are. For example, you can calculate what percentage you have with JTS versus AKo. Those are the basics, but it gets interesting when you can define “range” by pre-selecting a range like “top 25% of all hands” and then see what hands are in that range to calculate the odds of your hand against it. . Or you can select specific hands that you think your opponent would play and then calculate your odds.
Additionally, you can import your hand history and calculate your odds for a hand you’ve already played to find out if you played optimally. It’s a lot of work, but it helps a lot in finding gaps in your game.
In practice, these tools can be of great help. Let’s say you have a player on whom you have a lot of statistics. For example, according to Holdem Manager 2, the player raises very often as the first player, say 25% of all hands. According to Flopzilla, this means that he raises every hand. Pairs, all connectors suits for 56s and higher, A4s and higher, A9o and higher. K9, Q9 and all Broadway hands.
Now you can evaluate your hand and see how often it wins you against that range. In theory, if your hand has more than 50% equity against that range of hands, it would be OK to 3-bet, especially since you also have fold equity (i.e. there is a chance your opponent will fold to me) before the flop, and because as a 3-bet player you can often win the pot after the flop with one more bet.
So far so good, but what are the catches?
First of all, these tools are best suited for cash games. In tournament play, there are other considerations, namely your survival in the tournament or even the percentage of your stack you have to risk. In cash games, I can always reload, and mathematically correct play is important, otherwise the opponent could identify weaknesses and exploit them again and again (exploitation game).
In tournaments, it is important to maintain your stack, especially before the bubble and when you are already in the money and payout jumps make survival lucrative. Getting involved in 55/45% situations over and over again will lead to total loss in the long run.
Another big problem is to exploit the full potential of ICMIZER, for example considering the following:
My opponent has 10 BBs left, is in middle position, the hand has not raised yet and is all-in. I have K9 in the big blind and I have 20 big blinds. Using ICMIZER, I could now calculate which hands my opponent could be “theoretically profitable” with to go all-in, then put my hand against it and determine that calling would be mathematically correct because it would give me XXX chips in the long run. .
But here even powerful software like ICMIZER reaches its limits, because:
Can I really assume that the opponent is all-in with the theoretically correct range? If your overall range is much narrower, the calculation is a waste.
What if I lose my hand? It would go from 20 BB to 10 BB. With 20 BBs I have many more options in the tournament (for example a preflop raise followed by a c-bet), whereas with only 10 BBs left before the flop there is almost always only one question: all-in . . or not?
Diploma:
This software is great for training and analysis purposes (Flopzilla and ICMIZER are highly recommended), but the player must always take other aspects into account when making the actual decision. Especially in tournaments, it would be a big mistake to rely only on the recommendations of such tools!