I'm pleased to announce the re-release of HMFA, with new features, additional FREE video resources, and a dramatically reduced price! I want to thank everyone who contributed feedback and advice in the earlier thread-we listened, and this is our reply. Read on for the details, or just check us out at www.holdemforge.com !

What it is:

Hold Em Forge is poker analysis and training software which uses game theory and the processing power of your computer to provide approximate answers to the 'Hold em or Fold em' decision when facing a bet in Hold em games. You can use the software to develop a strong, intuitive feel for postflop poker play without having to learn by experience (and lost pots!). With our new downloadable library of poker hand ranges, setting up a poker situation to ask the software often only takes a few clicks---allowing you to analyze many different situations in only a short amount of time.

Here are just a few of the questions Hold Em Forge Analytics can help answer:

• I called a reraise from a tight player preflop, (I think he's re-raising with about 5% of hands) and want help deciding which types of hands to call his 2/3 pot continuation bet with.

• I'm facing a really weird betsize, like a 1/3 pot size bet, or a three times pot overbet! What do I do?

• I'm not familiar with how to play on boards with 4 cards of the same suit out. What types of hands should I be calling and folding to bets with?

• I have a read that my opponent is betting with a good hand, but I don't trust it completely: how can I act on this information in a limited way that doesn't expose me to too much risk?

Our Models

For years the state of the art in poker analysis were "hand evaluators" which can tell you what percent of the time each hand wins if the action goes check-check all the way to showdown. HMFA assumes that players bet/check/call/fold intelligently over up to 2 rounds of action, resulting in a dramatic improvement in accuracy. The software also incorporates three game theory engines to compute strategies according to important game theory paradigms within our models---so instead of a raw equity number, you get the hand EV, and a suggestion to call or fold with each hand.

Why Relaunch the Product?
We've added new features and video resources to the website, such as downloadable libraries of common poker hand ranges, that should make working with our software easier than ever before. We've also changed our marketing strategy and have decided to ditch the high price point, 'exclusive' image our brand was acquiring---we think our software can help players of all skill levels. By making our product more accessible to everyone we hope to have a win-win situation: a healthy business, and help more people to learn good poker strategy!

If the above sounds interesting, check out the free videos, documents, and trial version of the software at www.holdemforge.com !

Sofa.

Is it allowed by Stars?

To my knowledge no decision has been made on this yet. Our hope is that HMFA will be approved for use away from the table as a training tool, but not for use during play. Thanks for your interest!

Here are a couple of screenshots!


The input screen-use a pokerstove-style input to ask your computer a poker question!


The output screen-see your EV's, and best strategy, broken down by starting hands, hand strength, etc.

looks sik

could you talk about the "strategy engines"?

turn c/c decisions include which river options? only c/c again or c/r and donking as well?

edit: ha just found those, looks v good http://www.holdemforge.com/cms/index.php?page=documents

Thanks for checking it out, and if anything isn't clear just ask me a question in this thread and I'll do my best to get you an answer!

Do you really need approval for analyzing your own game away from the tables?

tedd_e_KGB,
My understanding is the PStars position is that if it's their site, they get to make the rules. But it does seem tough to enforce restrictions on software not for use during play. We'll see how things develop.

Can you give examples on how the program calculates the ev of the play? i mean, i can make a program that says the ev of a certain play is Y... so how can i trust your program? Maybe give us the calculations regarding the board on the trial version.

What about a second license? Or if i format my pc, or buy a new one, will we receive another number?

Can you compare/contrast this to StoxEV?

Tucanjo,
Our model is based on a simple game tree we call the 'calldown' game that's either one or two rounds long. It has some good properties; for one, it's a 'bounding' model in that your EV in the full game over up to two rounds will always be greater than or equal to the EV given by the model for the Nash analysis type. You can read about its properties in the 'modeling details' document available at www.holdemforge.com. In terms of specific EV calculations, here is a sample formula for calling hands on a one round analysis:

EV (hand i) =
Pr(op bets | you have hand i) * ( EQ ( hand i vs. op betting hands) * (pot+2betsize) -betsize) + Pr(op checks | you have hand i) * EQ (hand i vs op checking hands) * (pot)

For a two round analysis, we basically just find the EV for each hand on the second round first, then multiply things by the probability of the earlier round action and the particular board card. One thing you can do to check the EV's is just do a one round analysis, find the pokerstove equity of an opponent checking hand, multiply it by the pot size, and confirm that it matches. It's harder to check 2 round solutions since we assume different play on each possible board card.

Re: a second license, for now we will offer free replacement keys in the event of hard drive failure, new computers, etc. Just get in touch with support using the contact us form and include your serial number in the email. We might offer a free second license eventually but we need to think about technical issues that poses. Any decision to offer a free second license will of course apply to all existing and new customers.

Yes, although I have to disclaim that the following is just my personal opinion. I'll do my best to be fair.

Both products are designed to model poker situations. Both products take as input poker situations, (hand ranges, pot sizes, bet sizes, etc) and output EV's and strategies.

Here are the advantages of Stox EV:
1. Models a wide range of poker situations
2. Can determine the way to maximally exploit an opponent model. (This is sometimes called a Bayes response)
3. Can determine Nash push-fold ranges over 1 round of gameplay.
4) Manual exploration; you can input two complete strategies and play with them to see how adjusting strategies changes EV's, etc.

Here are some disadvantages of Stox EV:
1. Depending on complexity of model, often a long input time.
2. Bayes responses can often be very risky, for an extremely simplistic example, if the opponent folds 51%, your tree might tell you to bet pot with everything. If he folds 49%, you might only value-bet. Both strategies are also highly exploitable, so if you are even a little wrong about your read, you could wind up losing a lot.
3. Can't really find GTO strategies for most situations, although if you are diligent enough you can find something close via manual exploration.

Here are some advantages of Hold Em Forge:
1) Able to find Nash-equilibrium calling ranges within the modeled situation over up to two rounds of action. (Unexploitable, safe, but not as profitable)
2) Able to find Bayes response calling ranges within the model over up to 2 rounds of action. (Maximum exploitable, highest profit potential, highest risk)
3) Able to find restricted responses within the model over up to 2 rounds---these are like a mixture of playing unexploitably and exploitably that keeps your risk (the maximum exploitability of your strategy) below a user specifiable threshhold.
4) Input often as simple as just loading two hand ranges from file and pressing go.
5) Novel output displays display EV's and strategies super intuitively on your screen---you can see them in a pokerstove-style output box color coded by strategy, or graphs of your play by hand type. There's also a handy fast facts box that can makes critical information like your worst calling hand easy to find.

and the disadvantages of HMFA:
1) Software only designed to model continue/fold decisions (and the push/check decision on the river); the more options you allow both players, the less applicable HMFA's analysis becomes.
2) You can't see the entire tree at once; only one street at a time. You have to use the feed forward option to see what to do on the second round of the analysis.
3) Software designed for heads-up play only.

So the bottom line is in my opinion the following. HMFA is great for understanding baseline, GTO ranges, and seeing how these ranges change as you put more or less trust in a read of the opponent.

Stox EV is best for modeling complex situations in which you are considering a lot of action sequences, like a tree in which you bet some hands, get reraised sometimes, called sometimes, folded to sometimes, etc.

I would say if you are just learning poker, you would probably prefer HMFA over Stox. This is because you can build an intuitive understanding of what the sort of default, GTO plays are in a ton of spots in just a short time with HMFA. The fact that HMFA comes preloaded with common preflop NLHE ranges also helps. If you are an advanced player, I think you would spend more time using Stox, although you would probably want to get both products. That's because HMFA can give you a quick and easy answer to some questions Stox can't, and vice versa. (IE, HMFA could tell you what's a balanced range to not fold against a third pot bet while Stox could tell you the EV of raising say two pair+ if the opponent will shove over with x range and fold with y range).

I hope that helped, and again I don't want this thread to turn into a war between stox and hmfa; I think in the end they are each good at different aspects of poker problems.

Thanks. Any plans on accepting stars, ftp, paypal, moneybookers?

Tucanjo,
No problem, thanks for the questions. We are planning on accepting paypal in the future, but for now google checkout offers essentially the same services. PM me for information about other methods.

what restrictions does the trial have?

So right now the trial version has the board cards uneditable. We actually wanted to change this for the relaunch since it does make it a bit harder to test out the software, but unfortunately it's a bit complicated to do this technically since we'd already set the activation process and some other things up to work based on it. To make up for this, we've been trying to post a bunch of videos showing off the functionality of the full version on our website: www.holdemforge.com . There's a possibility of us going back and changing how the trial works to maybe a time restriction, but this probably won't be happening for a while just because of all technical headaches this would cause. If while running the trial version you have any questions about features etc, feel free to ask them here!

wow. thanks for the detailed response. I own stoxEV, but I am definitely going to give your software a go. Probably won't be for a week or two as I am swamped with other stuff. Will also try and post back here afterwards to give some impressions.

Hey no worries, I'm workin here =] Thanks for your interest.

Uneditable board cards in trial in the trial version completely SUCKS.

I can't even try it because I can't adjust it to the my screen resolution/size, or is that part of the trial restrictions?. Some adjustements asking to be done. Also, just to reinforce my previous post, not buying it before I can fully try it.

Moneylover, thanks for your feedback. These issues have been targeted for fixes in a 1.1 release. I'll let you know when a new version rolls out.

how useful would you say this software is for lhe?

Unfortunately I don't have any experience playing limit, so to be honest I don't personally know. The models can accommodate fixed bet sizes as in limit games, so it mostly just depends how often you are struggling with a calldown type situation, or something that is 'close enough' that the models are still useful.

Hi, I looked at your website last night and I had a question or two.

1. It looks much like the hand range tool in hem, just graphically better.

how does it compare that to that ?,
also will you work in a process where people can incorporate hhs from hem into your program where we don't have to input it manually.

2. it only works on call or fold ?
I think as you develop the program that you will be able to incorpate a process where you look at it more multilevel.
I mean before you look at call or fold, You can incorporate some things to first look at bet or fold, then look at call or fold.
You could look at it instead as the next step from call or fold to bet or call
you could put that into your hold them forge next version as it will take you time to develop.
but it will make your program more complete and more people will buy it.

so instead of the emphasis on calling,, it can help on developing an aggressive game with the emphasis on betting.
you know focus on calling first,, then on betting, or walking before running.