Resolver One Texas Holdem Hand Evaluator Tutorial

 

This Basic tutorial will walk you through the features of the Resolver One Texas Holdem Hand Evaluator spreadsheet. To start, download the spreadsheet files from the following URL:

 

http://www.resolversystems.com/exchange/sheets/63/

 

Note: if you do not have Resolver One you can download a free Player version from: http://www.resolversystems.com/products/player/

 

Next, extract the files to your computer and open the “Resolver One Texas Holdem Hand Evaluator V03 2009APR23.rsl” file with Resolver One. It should look something like this:

 

To start, lets take a look around the spreadsheet. The first section to notice is the Yellow cells at the top left. These cells are where you enter your pocket cards and the board cards for you hand.



Input Cells

PK1

First Pocket Card

PK2

Second Pocket Card

Flop

Flop (First 3 board cards)

Turn

Turn (4th board card)

River

River (5th board card)





Card Value

2-9

Two-Nine

T

Ten

J

Jack

Q

Queen

K

King

A

Ace



Suits

s

Spades

h

Hearts

c

Clubs

d

Diamonds



 

Cards are entered using a combination of Card Value and Suit. Ac is the Ace of Clubs, Jh is the Jack of Hearts, and Td is the Ten of Diamonds. For the flop, enter a space between each of the three cards, such as “2c 3c Js”.

 

Before the flop cards are entered, the spreadsheet will display pre-calculated odds for each of the 1326 types of hands. These hand types range from the 13 pocket pairs (pocket 2s to pocket Aces, displayed on the diagonal) to Suited pocket cards (displayed on the right hand side) and all the other hand combinations. If you hover over one of the cells it will tell you the data for that hand type:

 



For instance, the top left cell in the grid is AA for Pocket Aces, and when you hover over it it says there are 6 possible ways to get that hand, and the Starting Win Odds are 85.2% (this is the best possible starting hand in poker).  At the top right you will see a color grid that lists the color codes for the strength of each hand for different rounds. Preflop, a cell needs to win >= 65% of the time to get a red color code, or >=50% to get a light red, and so on. This helps you quickly find which hands you need to watch out for.

 

 

After entering in the Pocket Cards and Flop cards, the grid will change the win percentages as each new card is dealt by using a Monte Carlo Simulation. It will also display the total number of hands that were calculated, the number of valid and invalid hands, as well as any that were skipped. A running score is kept at the bottom to show your hand’s odds of wining, losing or tying vs a random player.

 

 

If you hover over a cell, it will again give you more detailed information about that hand type. For instance, in the hand above (Pocket: Qc, 5c, Flop: 4c 5d Tc, Turn: 9d, River: Not Dealt Yet) you already have one pair of fives, which has a 68.8% chance of winning the hand. The grid however shows that a hand including a five and a four (displayed as 54 in the grid) has a >50% potential of winning also. To see why you can hover over the cell and find that out of 1200 hands tested in the group, 818 were invalid (duplicate cards on board or in the hand), which leaves 382 valid hands left. Of the 382 valid hands, the opponent won 238 of them, where as you won 144 of them. The best final hand recorded in this group was 2 pairs, Fives and Fours with an Ace kicker.