Equity Rate vs Win Rate using PokerStove

Yesterday i posted a thread in which I used PokerStove to determine my win rate all-in preflop with pocket kings vs. a likely range of calling hands. It was a slightly self indulgent rant about how unlucky I've been in those situations and was appropriately posted in the Bad Beat forum. When I logged on this morning I had noticed that there were several inquiries into the use and value of PokerStove and so I promised to post a seperate thread in this forum explaining some of the uses and as usual my attention got diverted to a seperate yet related subject.

Among beginner poker players there's alot of confusion between the terms win rate and equity rate. In that thread I used the term win rate and equity interchangably because in most cases the two agree within a few percentage points but some clarification is in order.

Below is an example from a hand I played this morning where once again my Pocket kings came up short in a preflop all-in match-up vs AJo

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt
1,712,304 games 0.023 secs 74,448,000 games/sec
Board:
Dead:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 28.433% 28.19% 00.24% 482674 4178.50 { AcJs }
Hand 1: 71.567% 71.32% 00.24% 1221273 4178.50 { KcKs }

What this is saying is that I have 71.567% equity in the pot which is not to say that I have exactly that % chance to win. You'll notice that the win rate is slightly lower. That's because equity also takes into account the % chance of tieing. In this case the chances of tieing are very low so the % equity and % win are very close. In other cases, say when paired high cards are matched up with different low kickers which probably won't play, the equity % and win % can be drastically different. Let's look at one of those examples.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt
328,762,368 games 0.036 secs 9,132,287,999 games/sec
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 55.618% 34.09% 21.53% 112071552 70778136.00{A5s,A5o}
Hand 1: 44.382% 22.85% 21.53% 75134544 70778136.00 { A4s, A4o }


In the case above, we ran A5 against A4. The A5 is slightly ahead but there is a very strong chance that niether kicker will factor into the outcome, resulting in a split pot 21.53% of the time, thus the big spread between win rate and equity rate.


Equity is simply your share of the VALUE of something, your house, your car, or your poker hand. When you carry a mortguage on your house you may be required to make a 20% deposit and the bank carries the other 80%. If the house is worth $100,000 and you decided to sell immediately your equity would be $20,000. It's no different with a poker hand.

In the first example above I had KK vs AJ. When I called his shove both our cards were exposed and I'm sure my opponent was greatly disheartend to see that he was almost a huge underdog. But that's not to say that his hand was completely without value. If the action were stopped at that point, the value or equity of our respective hands could have been discussed and a deal could have been made where both hands might profit from an equitable split of the dead money, blinds, ante's, folded hands etc., and obviously I would have demanded a share at least equal to my equity in the pot, about 72%.

Of course this sort of deal is illegal in a tournament, but it happens all the time in cash games. You'll often see on High Stakes Poker two pro's agreeing to run a particular hand two or three times based on their understanding of the value of their respective hands. For that reason alone it might be beneficial to have a good understanding of approximate hand values in certain match-ups.

This is just one of the many uses of equity calculators like PokerStove and Hold 'em Ranger.


Oh, BTW while I was writing this my Pocket Tens sucked out all-in preflop vs AA.


61,642,944 games 0.017 secs 3,626,055,529 games/sec
Board:
Dead:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 19.251% 19.06% 00.19% 11750364 116478.00 { TT }
Hand 1: 80.749% 80.56% 00.19% 49659624 116478.00 { AA }

You play poker with your gut brother. Your playing against people with tendancies and tells, not a set of numbers. Keep studying though.

I just downloaded pokerstove and took a look at it for a sec. I have no clue how to use it. Is there a thread or something that will teach me how to use it?

What does that have to do with anything?

Maybe, but I don't think it's necessary. I'ts pretty simple once you get the hang of it. Just play around with it for a while. Plug some hands in and see what you get. If you have any questions PM me. GL