[HN Gopher] Show HN: Level up your poker game with Floptimal. Pr...
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Show HN: Level up your poker game with Floptimal. Preflop ranges
reimagined
 
Author : theshirin
Score  : 45 points
Date   : 2021-06-01 21:28 UTC (1 hours ago)
 
web link (floptimal.com)
w3m dump (floptimal.com)
 
| legitster wrote:
| This looks really cool, but even as someone who has dabbled a bit
| in poker I have no idea what I am looking at.
| 
| Presumably, this is for people who are already advanced to get a
| little bit better? Otherwise, if you want to level up _my_ poker
| game I would need a few lower rungs on the ladder.
 
  | theshirin wrote:
  | This part of the help page will get you started, if you're at
  | all interested: https://www.floptimal.com/help#poker-basics
 
  | ngokevin wrote:
  | This is sort of a modernized web-based PokerStove. It's useful
  | when you are at the stage where you are deep analyzing past
  | hands or perhaps deciding whether preflop shoves in tournaments
  | were good.
  | 
  | But I think even as someone who has used PokerStove in the
  | past, and has programmed some range evaluators, the UI is
  | pretty intimidating for me.
 
    | waprin wrote:
    | It's closer to a web version of pio solver.
    | 
    | Equity and range evaluators got a lot less useful because
    | people figured how to make software that solves the full
    | (simplified) game tree. This is a superior approach to
    | anything other than all-in spots (which have game tree of one
    | nodes.)
    | 
    | Most serious players these days primarily use software like
    | pio and monker because the competition has gotten tougher and
    | old equity calculators are like using a graphic calculator vs
    | a modern computer.
    | 
    | I'm not a fan of this site as it's not as simple as some
    | options but not as powerful as pio.
    | 
    | If you want good preflop ranges just pay $40 for "preflop
    | advantage " as it just uses the solution to give you ranges
    | for all tournament spots you will encounter and doesn't even
    | try to help you solve them.
 
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Using this on the same computer with casino software will net you
| a ban and probably cost you any winnings.
 
  | episteme wrote:
  | False
 
    | eurasiantiger wrote:
    | Good luck with that.
 
| patio11 wrote:
| This is a lot easier to use than sites with similar content
| presented in images.
| 
| Not seeing a color legend on mobile but I can reason it out;
| might be a helpful addition for tournament players who are newer
| to these concepts.
| 
| (Explanation for peanut gallery: if you are playing tournament
| Texas hold'em poker and have relatively few chips, the game
| becomes simpler that at other stages of the tournament: you
| either wager all your chips immediately after given your first
| choice in the hand or fold your chips. The optimal play is far
| closer to a math problem than most poker situations; these charts
| help describe it concisely for people to mentally cache prior to
| play.
 
  | tbavaro wrote:
  | Hey, thanks for taking a look! We were also unhappy with the
  | status quo even though the idea of game-theory-optimal poker
  | sims has been around for a while. Glad you like it too :)
  | 
  | Mobile isn't something we've focused on too much, so the UI's a
  | bit small, but you should see the legend below the action bar
  | on the left. Let me know if it's somehow not showing up at all
  | for you though.
 
| episteme wrote:
| What opponent range does this assume? Does that not effect the
| playable hands?
 
  | hgibbs wrote:
  | Implicit in a range like this one is that you are facing
  | 'maximally exploitative opponents'. Since the game is zero-sum,
  | over enough games the expected value of such a strategy is 0.
  | However, since that expected value is against a maximally
  | exploitative opponent any deviations of the opponent's strategy
  | lead to an increase in your expected value. This is the game
  | theory approach (GTO).
  | 
  | On the other hand, you can try to tailor your strategy to be
  | maximally exploitative of the other players at the table, but
  | doing this can be hard since often it can take a large number
  | of hands to gauge what kind of player somebody is. On the other
  | hand, GTO strategies are naive in the sense that you don't need
  | to know anything about your opponents to guarantee that you
  | Breakeven.
 
  | benmmurphy wrote:
  | its probably nash equilibrium ranges. so you break even if your
  | opponent plays the equilibrium and are ahead if your opponent
  | deviates. however, if you know your opponents ranges then you
  | are leaving money on the table by using a nash strategy.
  | 
  | also, it's a bit more complex because its not heads up so i
  | don't think there is a proper equilibrium. but i've seen a lot
  | of preflop ranges that for these small stacks that claim to be
  | solved using computers. i guess with multiway they use a lot of
  | abstractions to make the problem simpler.
 
  | theshirin wrote:
  | The data was generated in a Nash equilibrium with the sim
  | playing against itself. So the opponent ranges are the ranges
  | you see in the app.
 
| gnicholas wrote:
| First off, great name -- it's portmanteauriffic! This looks
| really useful for beginners and intermediate folks. For beginners
| (like me), it would probably be helpful to have a series of quick
| demo videos that show each of the features.
| 
| You could start off with the basic "if you're dealt these cards,
| should you hold/fold?" and then layer on additional complexity in
| terms of stack size, position, etc. That would make it less
| intimidating/multivariate.
| 
| Can you explain what features you are keeping behind a paywall
| and why? This looks like something that could really help a lot
| of people, that would not have high ongoing costs, and that
| therefore could make a great business.
| 
| Only question -- what is your moat? Not to say you can't succeed
| without a moat from day one, but it changes the calculus on
| growth/revenue (in favor of growing faster to capture the market,
| and then iterating on revenue later once you're the main player).
 
  | throwaway98797 wrote:
  | maybe the moat is the market size.
 
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I think a Poker app that doesn't start with a poker table as the
| primary driver of the UX is going to have a hard time getting
| traction with people who aren't already experts, and at that
| point you might as well just start off charging money.
| 
| Launching anything is extremely hard, congratulations! I hope
| this goes well for you, I do like the layout of information, even
| though (as others have already commented) I don't understand what
| many of the tables are meant to represent. Very clean, if
| inscrutable!
 
  | [deleted]
 
| lxe wrote:
| I have no idea what's going on, but I love the UI -- definitely
| targets the power user well.
 
| gyp5y wrote:
| Is there an API?
 
  | tbavaro wrote:
  | Floptimal dev here, thanks for your interest!
  | 
  | We created our app to make it easy and accessible for poker
  | players who aren't necessarily as computer savvy as the average
  | HN'er, so our focus has been on presentation and the quick
  | ability to dig through the data by hand, as a study tool. If
  | you're interested in the raw data there are tools such as PIO
  | (https://www.piosolver.com/), monker (https://monkerware.com/),
  | and Simple
  | (https://simplepoker.com/en/Solutions/Simple_Preflop_Holdem)
  | that give you all sorts of control and more data than you could
  | hope for. But they do take a very long time to run and need
  | some legit hardware to do it, which is why another common
  | approach is to sell the data. (We use monker and some
  | proprietary things to generate and validate our data.)
 
| toomuchredbull wrote:
| Is there a glossary? I know how to play poker roughly but I have
| no idea how to use this awesome website.
 
  | theshirin wrote:
  | There isn't a glossary per se but we tried covering all the
  | basics and terminology here:
  | https://www.floptimal.com/help#poker-basics.
 
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(page generated 2021-06-01 23:00 UTC)