If you don't have this, and you take poker even a little seriously, you need it. It is one of the top 5 poker tools available and it's FREE (don't ask me the other 4 cuz I made top 5 up, but I can't think of 5 others off the top of my head that are more important).
PokerStove: Poker Software and Analysis
Several people here have mentioned to me on skype or on the forum that they don't or didn't know how to use it. So, I'm going to create a little "tutorial."
This is the main screen for poker stove. Several key features.
First, click where it says player 1 and you can enter your hand here 1 of 2 ways. There are 2 tabs on the window that pops up. One lists all 52 cards (with suits). The other lists every starting hand combo. You can choose it either place. If you sim something w/ PoF action, I suggest using your suits. Otherwise it's irrelevant other than to denote it it is suited or offsuit. You can use player 2 etc. for other players. If you want to use any two cards, click the RD button (random) next to the player button.
Second, look at the top right where it says board and dead cards. Board is the flop, turn, river, etc. Dead cards is irrelevant to online play because cards don't get exposed like they do in live games. Click select to enter anything in these fields.
Third, evaluate and clear all are self-explanatory. Click evaluate when you have all the info listed.
Fourth, always use enumerate instead of monte carlo (found below the clear all button). I'm sure monte carlo has some value, but I don't know it.
Fifth, look the small box in the equity column tells you your odds after clicking evaluate. This includes chop odds, scoop odds, losing odds, etc. This is your exact equity. The big white box below breaks your odds down by chop odds, etc.
Let's say you want to know whether ATo is a profitable call vs somebody shoving. For ease, we are assuming you are in the BB, closing the action in a HU pot. First, figure out your pot odds. Let's say he is shoving 8K at 500/1000/125 and there are 8 people at the table. (8*125)+1000+500+8000=10500. You have to call 7000 (remember you are BB). So, you are getting 10500:7000 odds which works out to exactly 1.5:1. To figure out your equity needed, you take 1/(1.5+1) because out of every 2.5 times this happens, you will win 1 time. If it is 1.738:1 you take 1/(1.738+1).
1.5:1 comes out to 40%. Anything below 40% equity means it is -cEV. Anything above 40% means it is +cEV.
So, here's where Pokerstove comes in. Click on player 1, then go to the Preflop tab (it will show every starting combo in a grid shown above in the screenshot) and click ATo and apply (at the bottom right). Then click OK.
Then, back on the main screen (it will take you back automatically) click on Player 2 and go to the preflop tab again. This time, enter 16 in the little text box at the bottom right. Notice that it selects the top 16.1% of hands for you automatically. Click apply and, then click OK. You should be back at the main screen now.
Click evaluate, and wait for it to finish (it will say 33% complete or whatever stage it is at until it is finished). When the equity boxes change color, it is finished.
Notice it says ATo has 47.459% equity here. That's quite a bit above the 40% that you need. So, what I would do, is fiddle with your hand and keep running more sims. Maybe try A7o and KQ and KJ and other similar hands to see what is profitable and what isn't.
It turns out that A3o-A5o, A7o+, A2s+, KJo+, KTs+, QJs, 22+ is the optimal range. Everything in that range has 40.000% or higher EV. Everything not in that range has 39.999% or less EV. I figured this out by doing nothing more than a series of trials and error.
ADVANCED:
Sometimes, you want to weight parts of a range more than other parts. Maybe you think somebody shoves AK every time he has it, but slow plays or makes a smaller raise w/ AA and KK or something like that. You can weight ranges with stove too. Here's how:
You are going to do everything exactly the same as you did before, but this time you are going to assign him a range based on how you think he plays certain hands, not based on a HUD%. You have JJ, and open for 1500 at 300/600/70 at a 9 man table. The button shoves on you for 13200, and everybody else folds. You decide he is shoving TT+, AK, but shoves AA and KK only 1/2 the time (and slowplays or small raises the other 1/2).
You need to call 11700 to win (1500+13200+300+600+630=16230). So you have 16230:11700. So, 11700/27930=41.89% equity needed. We will enter this in exactly the same as we did before w/ 1 small difference. We are going to exclude 1/2 of the KK and 1/2 of the AA combos.
On the screenshot above, look at the bottom right at the various suits. You can select, or deselect those. If it is pushed in, it is selected. Otherwise, it is not. The default is for it to be selected, so I clicked on 3 of the 6 to deselect them. This reduces the weight placed on AA and KK by 50%. You must do this for each hand you want to weight differently individually. It is best to just do them as you go to avoid taking out certain hands from their range. If you click on KK and then AA, and then KK again to weight the range, you will take KK out of the range.
I hope this explains how to use PokerStove effectively. It is a great tool if you know how to use it properly.
Linear Mode
