Joined: Oct '10
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 63 (M)
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While reviewing some hands in SNG Wizard I can across a HU hand where the Wizard recommendation was to shove any two against a villain with a 17% calling range. In this particular case I had 3c2c so I wondered what the equity was against this range.
I noticed that the hands included in the 17% range were quite a lot different when comparing Equilab/Pokerstove (they are the same) with SNG Wizard ranges.
My questions are, which is correct or most accurate, best to use, does it even matter etc?
Edited by jbrooksie (18 February 2012 @ 09:19 GMT)
Joined: Mar '11
Location: Canada
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It's hard to give a definite answer without knowing more information, as SNG wizard bases it's calculations on ICM. I'm guessing since it's suggesting a shove of ATC, that blinds were relatively high? When stacks are around 10BB, you're basically shove/fold anyways, but your calling range will always be tighter than your shoving range due to the gap concept. As your blind size dwindles, your profitable shove/calling ranges widen exponentially. If you or your opponent have relatively few blinds, say 5 or fewer you're generally shove/calling almost any 2 cards.
Joined: Oct '10
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 63 (M)
Posts: 442
I think you've missed my point.
My question isn't about this particular hand I was just giving some background with that. What I am interested in is the difference between the two applications interpretation of the actual hands that comprise a 17% range as I had always assumed that this would be the same.
It isn't just for 17%, it seems to apply to all ranges apart from the extremes.
For example 30% range in Pokerstove is 55+, A2s+, K5s+, Q7s+, J8s+, T8s+, 98s, A7o+, A5o, K9o+, Q9o+, J9o+, T9o
Whereas 30% in SnG Wizard is 22+, A2s+, K4s+, Q9s+, JTs, A2o+, K8o+, QJo
Now I realize that the percentages are not exact as there are 6 more hands in the pokerstove example but this only represents about 0.5% difference and the difference in the actual hands not the number of them is considerable.
Edited by jbrooksie (18 February 2012 @ 11:28 GMT)
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Australia
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That's really strange, not sure you'll get your answer here.. But obviously SNG wiz has a different selection criteria.. Possibly check the SNG Wiz forums or something like that I think.. I am sure you'll find this question has come up before, somewhere...
Joined: Jan '11
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It's when I start reading things like this in the forum or anywhere concerning poker analysis that I begin to think how much statistics / mathematics comes in to play. I don't even understand how to interpret the SnG chart and my backgroud is statistics, but I use for for industry standards / gauge R & R's, Machine setup, etc. I need to do some reading I guess to be able to become a better player.
Joined: Dec '11
Location: Macedonia, The former Yugoslav Republic of
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I ask my self why you use such tools for playing poker.They are many other problems like psihology of players who play very different wheter are tilted or not or they have some stakes or are short stakers.SNG wiz cant predict beheavior of players
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Portugal
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I pay attention to SnG Wizard Hand Range but I don’t let it take control of my own game. The player at the table will know better than anyone or any book what the opponent can do against us. It also have to do with how you were playing before, you don’t take this decision in the middle of the game and then don’t use it any more. Either you trust it, decide to always do it, and handle the consequences, or you just take a look at it but, in the end, you do what your head tells you to.
Joined: Jan '10
Location: Indonesia
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is mathematics really help your skill ? I try before, and I totally lost my instinct / intuition and finally frustrating cos lost to opponent who play with lowest chance. even lost to 2.5% chance. At turn I had flush no full house possibility so I go all in. He called, his hand flush either but lower rank. He win if he got straight flush, and he got it 5 of spade the only one card make he win !!!! Look WSOP final table, they play mathematics ? I don't think so......
Joined: Feb '10
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I think that every poker software or poker tool has it ow definition of hand ranges, it is up to the software developers to develop their own distinct features in their software.
Joined: Oct '10
Location: United Kingdom
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Posts: 442
I posted the question on the Wizard forum and got the following responses from support:
For hero's hand range
The ranking order of hands is different.
The order of hands included in the hero’s hand range depends on the profitability of each hand. That order will change depending on the situation. For example, small suited connectors will usually rank higher when you are likely to have multiple opponents.
The other program most likely use a fixed hand ranking.
and for villains hand ranges
Opponent hand ranges use Sklansky-Karlson hand rankings, which was the default hand ranking used when the Wizard was first published. I will be adding a feature that will allow user to create custom hand rankings for opponent hand ranges in SW2.
Although this literally answers my question it doesn't explain which is better to use when calculating hand equity against a given range.
It seems that Pokerstove/Equilab is more conservative as, for example, TT has 59% equity against the 20% hand range using the Pokerstove top 20% of hand but 63% against the Wizard top 20% of hands. Erring on the side of caution I shall use Pokerstove for equity calculations and consider that marginal shoves in SitnGo Wizard could be folds.
Q12. How does the PokerStove slider rank preflop hands?
The slider interface for setting the top N% of hands orders the hands according to their preflop all-in equity versus three random hands. This rather arbitrary selection was picked because it balances the value of high cards with the value of drawing cards. It is not an absolute ordering, and depending on the specific situation you may want to edit that range of hands when doing equity calculations.
Edited by jbrooksie (21 February 2012 @ 12:45 GMT)
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Australia
Age: 40 (M)
Posts: 6483
It sounds as though SNG Wizard uses a more "dynamic" model, which is generally better. Anything that can adapt to a situation *should* give a more accurate result when compared to a static guide. Assuming they're well thought out adaptation, I think using SNG Wiz figures is probably a better way to go.
Interesting thread, although i fear I may be the only one who understood your OP, or at least - I'm the only one who answered on topic and didn't just ramble on about statistics and programs haha.
