Mailbag: Using Poker Stove

Q: How would you recommend using Poker Stove to get better? Especially since I can only play live these days.

A: Your caveat at the end there threw a wrench in my plans for building a post around what I think is an innovative idea for the popular no-limit hold ’em odds calculator. You see, I often recommend Poker Stove to my students as a hand reading aid. While playing online, you can make real-time use of the feature that graphically displays a hand range.

Start with the entire grid of possible starting hands highlighted. When you get involved in a pot, de-select all of the hand combinations that you believe your opponent would have folded pre-flop based on the action and his position. Continue to de-select combinations each time he takes an action.

This is what you should be doing in your head constantly. For many people, having something visible to manipulate is a good starting place. In particular, this exercise prevents you from re-introducing hands into your opponent’s range that you’ve previously ruled out. I often have students tell me on the flop that they think an opponent would have bet his flush draws but then they are afraid to value bet when the third flush card comes on the river. Their minds have a fear response on that river that blinds them to the hand-reading work that they’ve already done.

But that doesn’t really address your question, nor the needs of all my American readers who are no longer playing online (this seems an appropriate time to say that I’m thankful for all of you who continue to read the blog despite a dramatic decrease in your opportunities to play poker). So how can you use Poker Stove if you’re an exclusively live poker?

Detailed notes are the key. If you have an iPhone, there’s an app called Poker Live Notes that helps you record key information like your hole cards, the board cards, and the action on each street. Although I have an Android, I’m not familiar with any similar apps for that platform- please comment if you know of one! Of course the old-fashioned pad of paper method works, too.

Take particular note of pots where you got or considered getting all-in. When you get home from the casino, use Poker Stove to input what you believe to be realistic stacking off ranges for the Villain or Villains in question. Look at the equity that your hand had against those ranges- were you getting the right odds? What other hands that you could have held (i.e. that you would have played the same way up to that point) would have had better equity? The answers may surprise you, as draws sometimes have better equity than seemingly strong made hands.

With repetition, this exercise can build up good instincts to help you estimate your equity in real time and make tough decisions. I encourage you to make it part of your post-game routine. Thanks for the question and good luck at the live tables!

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