Knowing whether your SnG play is profitable or not needs a lot of tournaments to be played.

Even 1,000 SnGs gives you just a rough estimation of you true return of investment. Since a big part of SnGs are push or fold decisions, streaks of luck or bad-luck can be extremely long and this makes it so difficult to assess even small strategy-changes.

I'm working on a way to take the luck factor out of the equation by comparing each all-in situition with it's statistical-expectation. This accelerates the process of estimating SnG-strategies dramatically. It can tell you e.g. if you are just a lucky bad player or an unlucky good player and calculates a correction-factor for your true ROI.

For now, I have developed an application which I call "SnG Luck Analyzer" and I would like to introduce a first beta version to any interested poker player.

So far it only works for Full Tilt Poker. [Edit: and only for 9-player tournaments]

How does it work:

1. It scans each hand played by reading the hand history file for all-in situtaions. Either Hero is all-in or Hero calls someones all-in. All other hands will be ignored.
2. The chip movement will be weighted and translated into an equity change based on the Independent Chip Model theory.
3. This equity change will be compared with the statistically expected outcome of the same situation. The difference is what we call luck (or bad luck).

Example 1:
6 PLayers left
Blinds are 30/60
Hero has 2815 chips, his equity (compared to the other player's chip stacks) is 20.1%
Hero goes all-in with KK and gets called by Opponent with 44 (Opponent has Hero covered, total pot is 5630)
Hero is 80.9% favorite but looses
Equity change is -20.1%
Statistically expected equity change is +16.3%
Luck is -36.4%

Example 2:
8 PLayers left
Blinds are 40/80
Hero has 1335 chips
Hero goes all-in with JJ and gets called by Opponent with AA (total pot is 2790)
Hero is only 18.9% favorite but wins
Equity change is +16.0%
Statistically expected equity change is -13.0%
Luck is +29.0%

Here is a screenshot of SnG Luck Analyzer.



The left hand side shows the last 50 all-in matchups.

The bar-graph on the bottom (Match) shows whether Hero was favorite or underdog.

Above (Chips) the chip movement is displayed as well as the expected chip move movement by the small lines within the bar graph.

Above (equity) the chip movement is translated into an equity movement based on ICM. Expected equity movement is displayed by small lines again.

On top (Luck) the difference between actual and expected equity movement is displayed.


The area in the middle shows detailed informations about a selected hand. Basically the same as on the left hand side.

The graph on the top right shows the accumulation of statistically expected equity change / actual equity change / the difference of both (let's call this luck).

Below you see the status of your luck in percent as well as a translation into bucks (chipEV -> $EV). This dollar value is the actual ROI correction factor, when added to your overall ROI, which is calculated be several third party applications, e.g. sharkscope.

Below you see various filters which can be set by right-clicking them.

We tested this apllication with more than 20k hands but still you can't expect a 100% working release. This is a beta version and bugs have to be expected, so please bare with me. I can't guarantee anything. It has a time-limit of 30 days. No manual is available yet but I think this apllication is pretty intuitve to handle. You can get it from this free file hoster (click "Click here to Download your file" and run it):

SnG Luck Analyzer

First thing to do after installation is to point to the hand history folder you want to scan by clicking the "File" button on the top right (remember: so far only Full Tilt hands will be processed). The last folder selected will be monitored and new all-in hands will be captured in real-time.

Now, I'm looking forward to hear any comments about this approach and this application itself.

Thanks!

Bodypull

Is it supposed to work for HU SNG as well?

No, not yet.

I forgot to mention: It only works for 9-player SnGs so far.

But HU or 6-handed tables can be added if people are intereseted.

Seems to work well, much better than what others have called Beta recently. Just a note it's not recognizing PT processed files so you need to delete the date prefix if you have PT move your processed files.

This looks sweet!

Love the real-time feature.

BUT NO POKERSTARS?

Doesnt seem that much more work to support their Handhistories.

Imported 7K hands in a couple minutes, only one hand caused an error. Not sure I fully understand the results though. My luck was pretty bad (-230%), but my expected results were already in the negative before factoring in luck. I guess my play was -EV over the small sample, I look into the results more after today's session I was mainly concerned with getting it working.

Is there a way/script/software to convert Stars HH into FT HH?

I would think it would be easier for him to just add Stars support, in the hopefully near future.

Juk

Looks very cool. One question. Does it analyze hands that are reraised allin? I selected a tourney that I lost on the first hand just to test it. It went raise, I reraise allin and they call. When I try it, with just this HH in the folder, it shows nothing. And the program seemed to be working on my HHs in general.

Also, it doesn't seem to be handling SNGs from the SNG Madness promotion.

Ongame please!

Will add this.

A screenshot would help but usually if your expected result is <0 then you were more often an underdog than a favorite. This does not necessarily mean bad-luck.

As soon as the all-in action happens before the flop it will be processed. There is one exception: if no chips are beeing moved (tied pot) the hand will be ignored. Most likely the hand history of this particular hand is incomplete. You may pm me this special hand if you don't mind.

New Release (v0.1.1)

• Added support for processed Full Tilt hand history files by Pokertracker
• Added support for "Madness" Sit & Go's
• Graph drawing performance increased
• Fixed a bug interrupting the scanning algorithm which slowed down the scanning process

People who have installed a previous version can use the online-update feature. It will prompt you automatically next time you start SnG Luck Analyzer.

Full install version can be downloaded from here:

SnG Luck Analyzer (v0.1.1)

I removed the target of the link in my previous post before realizing that the edit button disappears after a while. This link is now dead and I can't update it.

Is there a file I can delete to start over? I'd prefer just to see my daily data when doing real time, I don't really need long-term database.

You can set the filter "From" and it will only process:

• Today: events from your local day on (00:00h)
• Session: events from the moment on when you started SnG Luck Analyzer
• Now: events from the moment you click it on

You are correct. This was from the 1st hand of a SNG where the hand was a partial and I ended up allin preflop. I think Full Tilt may have recently correctly this bug though. I'll have to check. But as is, it causes an error and the program crashes.

Another instance where it returns an error and crashes is when I'm allin in one of the blinds and I don't have any raising or calling action preflop.

Just found another error when I was allin for less than the amount of the big blind, but I wasn't in the blinds this time. Also, there were multiple players in each of these pots and there was betting postflop (after I was allin preflop).

I'm on a roll I suppose, so here goes.

It doesn't seem to recognize the $69+6 buyin amount. That's a Tier 3 SNG that has a normal 5/3/2 payout. The HHs have "Tier Three $69+$6 Sit & Go" as a title.

It ran my hands from this buyin and gave me a luck %, but the buyin amounts were N/A so no Luck $ were calculated.

Doesent pokertracker only work for ongame ringgames?

This program doesn't require PT.

Apparently I am little slow, where are the filters located? (I have a feeling it is my security suite blocking a popup)

What should the luck % be for a good player?

You need at least 50% luck if you want to make money, 120% if you want to you want to go pro.

I tried importing my HHs from this month. I got through like 1100 of 1400 tourneys before it crashed.

I get an error msg.

Line -1:

Error: Subscript used with non-Array variable.