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I'm really interested in your program but I have some questions...
1. What are the differences compared with flopzilla?
2. There are any videos or tutorials in order to understand combonator and use it very well? I'm asking you this because flopzilla has tutorial vids con Cardrunners...

just downloaded and registered. very excited to give it a try Hood. will post my review here. looks great at a first glance

Bump

It's fundamentally a very different program. Flopzilla is all about texture analysis. Combonator does that, but it also does a whole lot more. Preflop range vs range equity calcs, postflop range analysis, street-by-street analysis, custom calculator for things like fold equity calculations etc... flop texture is just one part of the package.

First I would start with the 'theatrical trailer' on the homepage. Then go to the youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/pokerfusecom) where you will find a 7-part tutorial on using the program, which shows all the individual features.

There is a lack of 'combonator in use' style videos right now, showing how to use it in practice. I believe it has featured in videos on Deuces Cracked, Drag the Bar and Leggo. You won't find any on Cardrunners though (and FZ and StoxEV and now owned by CR).

I haven't seen the Flopzilla/CR videos, but I've been told by Combonator users that they've watched them and found they could do what the instructor is doing on FZ using Combonator in a fraction of the time. All the stuff that is done with notepad on the side to do the math? This is all done inside Combonator itself, usually calculated automatically for you, in an intuitive process.

[this isn't meant to be a slight on FZ, it's a great program, it's just they are fundumentally different; FZ is a simple tool great at one job, combonator is more about range analysis with flop texture added in. Combonator also costs 2x what flopzilla does]

Ty for answering man, def I'm gonna check your program out

re this, i saw the HM2 devs posting that they are working on some kind of Developer Mode in the program that will help creating the queries, once that is available i should be able to add it.

Meanwhile, though, you should be able to right click > copy to clipboard in HM2, then click 'get cards from...' and select 'clipboard', so it's a fairly quick process already.

Perhaps you can try a few experiments, samples to see if it is possible with your program, as a post flop omaha trainer that a person can spend time studying is much needed. I know i am looking for an omaha type of post flop trainer!

Btw their reply to this was that HMQL "in development" should be able to help you. But it keeps getting pushed back.

Is there a possibility of getting like a (full) trial ?

Short answer: Sorry, no.

Longer answer: The reason why I can't offer trials is the way the licensing system is designed; i wanted something that was very passive and didn't "phone home" to a licensing server each time you run the program, so you don't have to be connected to the internet, there was no privacy problems etc. The downside of this is that there's no way I can invalidate a license once its purchased. So trial licenses aren't possible.

All I can suggest is to use the free version, which should be a pretty good indication of what's possible with the licensed app. For some of the pro features, you can see what they are capable of from watching the demo vids on the youtube page which goes through all the features in quite a lot of detail.

I'm probably being a massive idiot here but where's the option to save preflop ranges? I've saved ranges before but the little '+' button seems to have disappeared. I'm using v1.7.3 and it's registered.

All the options have moved to a right-click context menu.

I'm a complete noob to combonator, but what am i doing wrong here?

I have a board

and want to select all A, K and J flushes. In group one i have

but when i go to add Flush->J High, Kicker->Any it says no hands matched.



If i select Kicker->Ten or worse, it then gives me 100% of hands?

Likewise, if i wanted to add all high card hands which don't have a flush or overcards, same thing

Because there's a Q on the board, the worst possible flush is queen high. So doing "jack high flush or better" returns zero.

For all "QJxxx" flushes, then do "Q high, J kicker".

This requires 2 steps. First do "flush Q high, T kicker or worse." But this will select everything worse than a "QTxxx" flush, including non-flushes. If you want to "just flushes, "QTxxx" or worse, you then do a second removal step - "straight, any, any or worse - *remove*. this will deselect all straight-or-worse hands from your group, leaving you with just your "QTxxx" flushes and worse flushes.

A couple of confusing things going on here.

First, there is a bad label in the program that i will change. It shouldn't say "no overcards", it should read "undercards" (or more accurate, 'hole cards are lower than the third board card').

The only 'undercards' on this board are 43, 63 and 64. If you do a selectoin without the 'no FD' component, then you'll see them selected.

However, note that the dropdown here is 'flush draws', not 'flushes'. no hand on this board has 'no FD'. That's why you got nothing selected. There are 4 diamonds on the flop, so every hand has the possibility of making a flush by the river (playing the board on a river diamond).

What you want here is just 'hand value: overcards to second pair'. This implies no flush, no overcards.

Cool ty. I'm sure this will not be my last question

I have a suggestion for a feature that would make setting up the ranges a bit easier for some users.

Once you’ve selected a Group, you’re allowed to select a portion of the range according to Absolute, Relative, Range %, Vs Hero, and Equity. Those are all awesome features, but I think one more option along these lines would be very useful: the option to paste hand range “syntax” from another program.

It’s for when you’ve used another program to begin analysis of a problem. You started with a preflop range, and then made some assumptions about Villain’s postflop continuing range. You could just paste the resulting syntax into Combonator.

That way users could easily select ALL the other hands in that range without having to go through each individual category again to find the exact inverse.

Here’s an EX:

I have a flop setup where I’m pretty sure my opponent will continue with the following set of hands (which is a subset of a larger preflop range):

continuance range:

TT+, 77-66, 9s9c, 8d8h, 5d5h, 5d5c, 5h5c, 76s, AsKs, AsQs, KsQs, AsJs, KsJs, QsJs, AsTs, KsTs, QsTs, JsTs, As9s, Ks9s, Qs9s, Js9s, Ts9s, Ad8d, Ah8h, Qd8d, Qh8h, Jd8d, Jh8h, Td8d, Th8h, As7s, Ts7s, 9s7s, 8d7d, 8h7h, As6s, 8d6d, 8h6h, Ad5d, Ah5h, Ac5c, 7d5d, 7h5h, 7c5c, 6d5d, 6h5h, 6c5c, As4s, 6s4s, 5d4d, 5h4h, 5c4c, As3s, As2s, Ad8h, Ah8d, As8d, As8h, Ac8d, Ac8h

I want to be able to use Combonator to input the preflop range:

22+, A2s+, K9s+, Q8s+, J8s+, T7s+, 97s+, 86s+, 75s+, 64s+, 54s, A8o+, K9o+, Q9o+, JTo, T9o

and then use the new feature described above to input the continuance range (select it as a Group).

Then when I’ve done that I can go to the Combos tab and select Ungrouped to get the inverse (which would be the folding range).

If I’ve already been working on a problem in a different program, I would be able to do the above without having to go through each of the selection processes.

Combonator already lets you use input and output ranges from other software, so I thought this might be possible and very helpful.

Is that 2 simulataneously? I reformat windows every so often, for example Tableninja lets me use the program on 2 different machines. When I reformat my laptop I have to change the license to be assigned to my new windows installation, would combonator let me do that?

Yes and yes. 2 simultaneously, and if you need to change in the future because you reinstall your OS or change machine etc, just contact me and i will deactivate an old computer.

Is there a way to do this (mostly interested in this for HU scenarios). I input a 100% button open. I set a calling range for bb and fold the rest of hands. I set a flop, the bb checks all hands and then I have an idea for the frequency i'd like the sb to be cbetting. Rather than editing conditions for hands that i cbet, is there a way that Combonator can run a simulation and tell me the top x % of the sb's range on this board taking into account random board runouts and given the bb's calling range? When i know about how often I'd like to be cbetting a certain board, it would be nice for me to figure out the best hands to be cbetting by being able to drag the bet slider or input a %, much like how i'm able to do that preflop. However, i realize that it's not always best to be cbetting middle - low pair type hands on certain boards so i'd like to bet able to exclude hands as well and have Combonator give me the next best hands. So let's say i want to cbet a K82 flop 65% of the time, and i'd like to exclude 8x,66-33,2x and some slow played hands from the orginal 65% that Combonator would orginally return, then run another simulation to get 65% of my hands taking into account that i've excluded the above hands. Sorry if this isnt' clear or if there's a better way to do this.

Also, if Combonator is not able to do this, are you aware of any other software that does?

So to boil down your question, you're asking if you can rank a range of combos vs another range of hands; the very short answer is no you can't. The only software I know that can do this is exactly is StoxEV. However, constructing a scenario in sEV takes minutes rather than seconds like in combonator; i think it's much quicker to just construct the range manually.

Longer answer: There are tools in combonator to make close approximations; plus often doing simple x% vs a range is not really what you want to do anyway.

I'm going to paste in a much longer response i sent via email to a user who asked a similar question. It's a common question and one that deserves a decent answer.

---


Range vs range isn't supported; i want to add it, but it's a bit tricky to add whilst keeping the program fast. However, though range vs range by equity for range construction would be cool, it's not necessary and in many cases, and might not be what's desired; building up a range manually is often more representative, and it only takes about 10-15 seconds to do.

Now it definitely would be nice to do 'top 80% vs my preflop opening range of 40%', for sure, and for that you need Cardrunners EV right now.

But, what you can do instead is do top 80% vs some weak made hand. In your example, top 80% by equity vs 32o (BPBK) produces:



This looks really close to what a sensible continuing range might be; all pairs and Ax, gutshots, flush draws, folding the weaker Kx, Qx.

(there's one anomaly here, A3o and K3o, and that's because we're up against 32o; so we need to add these 2 in manually; It's certainly a bit of a 'hack' and it would be better if we could do this vs an actual range rather than some kind of weak pair, for sure)

The other alternative is to build up the 80% naturally using the auto-selectors, and imo this produces the best results - because pure showdown equity does not represent well good continuing hands (we need to account for hands with good implied odds vs those with RIO, hands with semibluff equity on future streets etc, playability etc...).

So instead of thinking 'my opp will continue with hands based on equity', you take the more natural approach of 'my opponent is going to continue with all hands of value, hands with draws, bluff catchers'.

So here, I start by adding 50% by pure hand value, then all flushdraws, then all gutshots, then all backdoor straights + backdoor flushes (i did them in separate groups just to demonstrate, but this can all be added into the same group):

(This sounds like a lot of work, but really it takes about 10 seconds once you are familiar with the program.)

This is 75% of the range. So then i might manually add in manually a combo here or there to bring this up to 80%; i added in A5o, A4o, and the remaining combos of A5s and A4o to get 80.2%.

Please add POSTFLOP weighting mode too. Very usefull when we are making new ranges for villain's actions.

Perhaps not exactly what you want, but there is postflop weighting for groups (right click a group button to enter a weight).

This could be work..., thanksss.

Check if you can add this:

In the values tab, when we mouse over each strenght type of a combo highlight the hands on the grid.

I was testing the group weighting but I'm having problems to split ranges.

If I want to do 2 groups, 1 for his flating range and 1 for his raising.

If I select for group one for example 30% of the time he will flat with tp+fd, then I can't add the other 70% of the time to group 2 because its returns 0 hands. Because they already put those hands on group 1....

How can I achive this?