SideBar: Hand Evaluator
The Hand Evaluator panel in the SideBar provides you with
immediate summary information about your hand as well as your immediate
pot odds. The summary information displayed for your hand depends on
whether the current action is in the preflop or postflop stage of the game.
Preflop Hand Information
For preflop decisions, your hand is described according to its
preflop hand value. Your preflop hand value is determined
by seeing how highly your hand is ranked out of the 169 possible distinct
preflop hands. This value is displayed both in terms of the percentage of hands
your hand is ranked higher than and also as its actual ranking
out of the 169 hands where a rank of 1 is the best possible preflop hand
ranking and a rank of 169 is the worst possible preflop hand ranking.
There are 169 preflop hands when you ignore the specific suits of your
preflop hole cards and instead just look at whether your hole cards are
paired or unpaired and suited or unsuited.
Postflop Hand Information
For postflop decisions, your hand is described by three components.
Hand Name
The first component describing your hand is the name of the best 5-card poker
hand you currently have. For, example, if you have JdTd as your hole
cards and the flop is 9dJhQd then your hand would be assigned the name
"a Pair of Jacks".
Strength
In addition to your hand name, the immediate strength of your hand
will be shown. The strength of your hand is an estimate of the
chances that your hand is currently better than that of all your
opponents. This estimate takes into account the number
of opponents you are up against. The estimate shown also takes into
account opponent modelling information to bias the strength estimate
based on past observations of your opponents.
Potential
The final piece of information presented to describe your hand is
the estimated positive and negative potential of your hand. Your
hand's positive potential is the percentage of situations where
you have a hand that is currently behind but that ends up ahead
on the next stage. Your hand's negative potential is the percentage
of situations where your hand is currently ahead but will end up
behind on the next stage.
Pot Odds
Your current immediate pot odds are shown both in percentage form and odds form.
When your amount to call is zero, your pot odds are displayed as "n/a".
When you are out of the hand your pot odds continue to be updated
despite the fact that you are out of the hand and you do not have an actual
amount to call.