The Combonator is a study tool for Hold'em games to count combinations and analyse ranges.

To understand exactly what that means, you can see a screenshot and watch a short introductory screencast on the homepage:

http://combonator.com

If you can't stand 8 minutes of a British accent, I suggest you just go ahead and download it, there's a short 4-page presentation when you load the program:

http://combonator.com/download/

I would recommend you either read it or watch the screencast because parts of the interface are unique to the program and things might be a bit confusing at first.

The Combonator has been out a while now and is used by a small group of users. I've finally finished a 3-part tutorial and put more information up on the website, so I thought it time I started to announce it publicly. If you want to learn more, the tutorial is up here:

http://combonator.com/help/

If you are an old v1.0 user or beta tester, you may not realise that version 1.1 is out with a bunch of improvements to the outputs tab. You can learn more on the blog here:

http://blog.combonator.com/31204374

The project first started out as just a tool for personal use, to fill the gap left by the demise of Stoxcombo (whilst fixing some of the bugs and a more intuitive take on the interface). But since then it's grown in to a much broader bag of tricks for looking at opponents ranges and balancing your own range, and board texture analysis (a la flopzilla).

The program is free to use, but there is a paid 'pro' version that unlocks a couple of features. I wanted to make sure the tool is is fully functional and useful in the free vanilla form, so there's no time limit, no nag screen. I hope in v1.2 to expand the feature set of the pro version significantly.

Hood,

This looks really nice.... but similar to StoxCombo. What do you consider the major differences, if any?

Like I say in the OP, I'm a user of stoxcombo and started developing the combonator for my own use, as stoxcombo is no longer 'available' (although many of us still have the executable). I also found some "showstopper" bugs in stoxcombo (incorrect combo counting and some fatal crashes) that pushed me to develop an alternative (as stoxcombo is no longer developed).

As for main differences in I would suggest you try it or watch the screencast and you will soon notice a lot of fundamental differences. In addition to the bugs, I eventually found stoxcombo too cumbersome for day-to-day use. An autoselection might take me a couple of minutes to set up in stoxcombo I can do in the combonator in a second or two. A few of the major ones:

- A very different take on the interface. Much simpler/intuitive auto-selection and manual selection that's all done on one screen.
- Greatly improved range selection.
- There's no 'calculate' button button, changes are reflected instantly in the output window.
- The output is a lot more useful/detailed, saving the grid to file, automatic naming of selections, exact combination output.
- Exporting specific ranges to equity calculators.
- Reducing a range based on the selection to allow 'next street' analysis. So you can set a flop check-raise range based on flop textures, then reduce the range to what's selected to move on and analyse a turn.
- Flopzilla-style of selected ranges (this is one of the 2 pro-only features)


There is one downside with combonator - it doesn't quite have all the specific auto-selection features stoxcombo has (you can't do all the boolean logic etc). In practice I found that this is a non-issue. For me, in practice, Combonator is much more of a fluid process (add some combos, do an autoselection, see results, make some tweaks, see results change, do a remove autoselection etc). Stoxcombo was always too rigid (set up really complex range scenario, click calculate, realise you did something wrong, go back and start again...).

Wow this looks sick. You are a scholar and a gent Hood

Just released a new version (v1.11) that fixes an issue with the main window sometimes starting up off-screen.

Thanks for those who reported the bug. Download available on the site.

Thanks for another great tool buddy

Hey Hood,

If I buy the registered version, and then get a new laptop, do i have to buy it again?

Thanks,
gm

Really nice Hood, thanks again!

Looks really really good. Never used Stoxcombo before. You mention in your video the export to PS or Slice...why don't you just integrate the equity in your tool? Would make it perfect.

No you don't have to buy it again, just contact me and i'll issue a new license code.

Because it's not something 'just' easy to do, and it originally wasn't a direction I wanted to take. However after multiple requests and thinking about it further I can definately see some real advantage havign simple equity calculations (hand vs range only) in the program - that way you can select combos based on equity, for example.

It won't get in to v1.2 (which i hope to get out next week), but I'm going to try and get it in for v1.3.

Thanks for all the kinds words!

Any plans for PLO support + equity calculations.

If you can do that and have the equity emulate propokertools, you have a product that will sell like hotcakes

how exactly would you envisage the combonator with PLO support?

This will probably be very hard, but his is what is ideal:

Instead of AA**, you could type in AA** and then every possible of AAxx would be displayed. It's just very useful to be able to calculate a wide range of combos fast.

Example:

My pair vs his AAxx: with 3 clean pair outs, 2 clean outs, 1 clean out, back door FD, etc.... This is currently impossible without spending a ton of time. So, 789T on K932vs AA** (** = not 7,8, or T), AATx, AA8x, AA7x, AAT8, AA** w back door flush draw, AAKx, etc....)



Also, having a way to connect to your database to look for marked hands would be pretty awesome too.

Just being able to define a PF range (as a % i guess) and being able to see how that range hits a board broken down into the combos of made hands and various draws would be very cool. I agree with steel that anything like that for PLO would be a really popular piece of software.

Hi,

Just tried out the software, but doesn't seem to be working. Anyone else has problems starting the app?

On windows XP?

I've had 2 other reports of issues starting Combonator on windows XP. I've yet been able to replicate the problem on my XP test machines nor isolate the problem.

Yeah Win XP

Works for me on XP, although when I close it I get this:

Error occurred

See the logfile...

Exception in thread Thread-1:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "threading.pyo", line 532, in __bootstrap_inner
File "threading.pyo", line 736, in run
File "program.py", line 1435, in check_for_updates
File "wx\_core.pyo", line 14590, in __getattr__
PyDeadObjectError: The C++ part of the MainFrame object has been deleted, attribute access no longer allowed.

Hood, your accent is awesome. It's like a British accent with a British accent haha.

Also, no need to make fun of how I sound in my recordings since I absolutely hate it

Anyone else tried this and it has worked good? I am very paranoid when it comes to compunters and software and when an application makes the comp think a little bit and then nothing happens sets of a lot of alarm bells.

However, Hood's post count + longtime membership looks good as well as it seemed fine when i scanned it.

Sorry for being a bit rude, but considering how many people get their accounts hacked these days you can't be too careful.

And this looks like a great app, really looking forward to try it out. Wp there Hood

Really sorry you are having problems. In the next few days i hope to release v1.2. Once that's out I'm going to try and work with people having issues and try various different things to try and find out what the problem can be.

This bug will be fixed in the next version.

(it occurs when you shut it down fast before it's complete a background task - nothing nefarious, just a check for updates)

Ha guess I'll take that as a complement!

Always smart to be cautious, no offence taken.

I've been around a while and released a bunch of tools (mostly free, one other successful poker tool i still support and sell). In my profile there's a link to my blog which lists all the stuff i've released. There's at least a couple hundred users of combonator now and lots of them are happy customers It also should be featured in a poker training vid in the next day or two. So there's quite a few good testimonials around now.

"when an application makes the comp think a little bit and then nothing happens sets of a lot of alarm bells."

I consider purchasing this software. Is it possible to pay using Neteller?

Sorry, I can't take neteller as I no longer use my account. I can take moneybookers if that helps. Shoot me a PM or email (support@pokeramics.com) and i'm sure we can sort something out.

is it possible to weight certain hands?

Not right now. It's on the ideas list, but it's below equity calculations in priority. It's definitely something i want to add if I can work out how to present it intuitively.

The very rough roadmap looks something like:

v1.2 (ETA the next few days, 95% complete) - Save/load functionality, better charting, quick-loading of board/hero cards from clipboard, plus about half a dozen small features from user requests including support for relative pairs ('top pair', 'middle pair' etc) in autoselection.

v1.3 (this is all maybes right now)- basic equity calcs hand vs range, undo/redo

v1.4 - Weightings, additional output tabs