Sklansky Bucks Calculator: PokerEV

[Phil153]

There's been a lot of requests for this so I'm releasing an old version (free, obviously) while I continue with improvements. When the last version was out a lot of 2+2ers requested an FAQ so here it is:

What is PokerEV?

It's a Sklansky bucks calculator and game analysis tool that runs off your PokerTracker database. It supports Holdem, Omaha and Omaha Hi/Lo ring games. There is no tournament support yet.

Is it free?

Yes. I'm working on a database backend and improved filters/analysis but until that's done (at least a month away) it'll be free. I originally wrote this for my own use and have other things to do beside programming, so if I don't get it to a stage where I'm happy selling it, it'll remain free.

What sites are supported?
Party, Stars, Full Tilt and iPoker

What's it used for?
Mainly to analyze your game and provide hard to get feedback and filters not found in PokerTracker. A lot of people use it as luck grapher though.

So this will tell me if I'm lucky, right
Yes and no. It will calculate what you should have won based on all in hands, and compare it with what you have won. This represents a fairly large component of luck for NL games (but not the only part). You can still get heatered or coolered in terms of getting good/bad cards and situations. Think of it as a tool to cut through some of the variance and get a better idea of your overall play during a session.

How do I know it's accurate?
Anyone can verify the accuracy of the calcs/graphs by doing their own calculations of the hand history and comparing it to PokerEV for each entry. Preflop enumeration is monte carlo for speed, which is an approximation that will be slightly higher or lower than the true value, but it doesn't affect cumulative results (such as the graphs) and barely affects each individual result. If a lot of money goes in preflop, you may have NetSB reported as $99.54 instead of $98.33, for example.

The old version calculated Sklansky Bucks based on all hands (not just all-ins), but for some players this caused problems with accuracy as the set of available showdown hands was skewed by either very tight or very aggressive play. The calculations are still done on all hands for the purpose of game analysis, but the "Luck Graphs" tabs contain only all-in adjustments, so you can know they're not skewed.

How do I use it?
The best way is to load it up after each session and go through all of your hands. If you felt you got outdrawn a lot, you can check this with the graphs to see if you actually did. The analysis tab is laid out with hand type and Net Sklansky bucks. I usually click on the NetSB column to order it and review the big mistakes in the hand replayer. You can also review by hand type and use the comprehensive filters to review particular situations.

When looking at longer term results, the power of the program is in the filters. For example, to examine all flops where you have only TPTK and put significant money in, use the following filters:



All the data has this filter applied, and you can view graphs of this information or replay them one after another in the replayer:



The graphs show hard to get aggregate information in more detail. For example, this graph allows you to examine known equity vs $ put in pot on each street:



I've clearly got a leak getting involved with one pair hands on the flop.

Is there a timeout on the software
Yes, one month from now. However, a new version will be available before then with additional features.

Known issues:
- The stats tab computes stats from non all-in hands as well, so don't rely on the results for luck analysis. The "Luck Graphs" tab is all-in only
- There are various features which aren't finished and some obvious things lacking here and there.
- Due to the structure of the PokerTracker database, importing large numbers of hands is very inefficient and could cause memory problems. I'll be fixing this by storing results in a database, but for now anything over 50-100K hands at a time could cause problems, depending on your machine.
- Omaha preflop values in the replayer are approximations, accurate to around 0.5%. Omaha calcs take around 5sec/hand otherwise. All holdem equities in the replayer are correct.

I'm not providing support for this as I don't have time at the moment, but I will fix obvious bugs and help out if you get stuck.

Download is here:
http://www.pokerevsoftware.com/download.html