PioSOLVER is a postflop equilibrium solver for Holdem which you can run on run-of-the-mill modern home PC. PioSOLVER solves full postflop games with arbitrary ranges and stacks. It gets to very decent solution in minutes (for flop spots) and in seconds (for turn/river spots). If you let it run few minutes longer you can get to practically perfect Nash Equilibrium.
PioSOLVER solves arbitrary trees including those with many bet sizes as long as they fit in RAM.

PioSOLVER makes the whole tree available to browse. You can see exact strategy, EVs and ranges for every turn/river card and every betting sequence. Everything is easily accessible and possible to log which makes the results easy to verify and input into other tools.

In short, PioSOLVER is the magical game theory box people were waiting for. In my view it gives more insight into the game than anything written or said before. If you want to know how very good approximation of optimal play looks like - that's the product which gives it to you.

There is more extensive Feature Overview on the website so here is only a quick glimpse:

1. PioSOLVER has very modest hardware requirements and is very fast:

-most trees with one bet size fit in 500MB-4GB range
-high end laptop or few years old i7 desktop are enough to solve those in 2-3 minutes (and for very small ranges even below 1 minute)
-trees with multiple bet-sizes are bigger but it's still possible to fit them under 8GB of RAM is you play 6max. If you have 16GB of RAM you shouldn't run into any limitations (although it's always possible to build a bigger tree)
-more benchmarks and performance characteristics.

2. PioSOLVER offers very compact and quick tree navigation:



-you can see strategies/EVs/equities/ranges as well as ranges for specific actions at any point without any delays and needless clicking: Click to see a GIF
-you can jump between different turn/river card with on keystroke and having the view refreshing automatically, like in this GIF

3. PioSOLVER has many analysis tools built in:

-Range Explorer:


-aggregation reports across turns/rivers which shows how equilibrium behaves across different turns/rivers:


-aggregation reports across multiple flops

4. PioSOLVER is perfect for high volume analysis:

-You can choose size of the save (full memory dump, flops+turns, flops only); in case of small saves PioSOLVER takes care of recalculating missing parts of the tree automatically and the delay is barely noticeable when browsing;
-It's very easy to create and execute scripts to calculate and save the results on many boards.
-Programmers and advanced users can create more complicate scripts as well as access the solver internals from the solver console

5. PioSOLVER makes it easy to share your analysis:

-all the results are copy-pastable from GUI in case you need to make some reports/overviews
-copy-paste as CSV for easy copy-pasting to spreadsheet is available as well
-all the ranges/tree templates are kept in human readable .txt files; they are portable and easy to share with other users
-tree configs are copy-pasteable as well and easy to share on chats/forums

6. PioSOLVER is very actively developed.

Looking at the progress during first 4 months, as documented here, here, here, here and here we hope it's clear that we take our mission to make it the ultimate poker tool very seriously.


For more information:
-our website and a blog with latest news
-technical details
-Feature Overview

We also have a very active Skype discussion group which is a main place to discuss the results, discuss features and get support.

This thread is for suggestions, support, questions and overall discussion about what is or could be possible in the future. Don't hesitate to post!

Looks great !

Can you explain in more details the difference between the basic, Pro and Edge versions ? What does 1 or 2 activations mean ? Is the Pro just faster than the basic version ? Same for Edge ? If I only have a 4-core CPU, is there anything to gain from purchasing the Pro version over the basic ? Why is the Edge version so much more expensive ? What does it have to offer that is so much more valuable than the other versions ?

Are you going to offer 1 week trials ? I'd be interested in flop solutions but Id like to be able to try out the software for flops first before spending 235$

Thanks

ALso is there a feature that can export the ranges into CREV ? This would be very useful and something every user would really like

http://piosolver.com/pages/product-comparison

As of right now there isn't much in edge other than small speed increase which comes from custom compiles and there is a priority support. It will change in the future as the project evolves.

You can use an activation to install software on one computer you personally own and use (http://piosolver.com/pages/licensing). Two activations means that you can use that on two computers of yours.

Again see the link with the differences. For now the difference is ~30% speed on quad CPU's, scripts are only available in pro and pro supports more than 4CPUs.
This may change in the future as some features may only make it to pro or edge but the upgrade is always there as an option.

Edge subscribers will have access to features from development branch and/or can influence what is made (as one of our edge clients already did by pointing out to us what priorities are for him).
It is not a good idea to start with edge at this point unless you are confident you would upgrade anyway at some point. Waiting costs you almost nothing.
As to why it's expensive, well, we can't work forever for 249$ so the plan is to support the current versions, add some features and if everything goes well make 2.0 at some point (maybe in a year or so). There are people who don't want to wait and want to be on, well, the edge. That's for them

The trial is not going to happen. It's way easier for us, makes dealing with piracy easier (as there is no fully functional .exe out there to download and every compile we send is signed individually) and franky I prefer giving people something for free without any annoyances than spend my time making pop-ups to remind them the trial is ending

What is likely to happen though is addition of some things in free version, like for example one hard coded flop to solve. This is not a priority right now though as we already got a small group of customers and we want to fix/add things for them before we make any more marketing efforts. It's getting out of control anyway.
Again, the best option is to wait and see what develops.

I have no idea what range format CREV uses as I've never used it. We would be willing to make our parser accept ranges from other tools (as long as the format isn't completely brain dead) because that's useful for our customers who may have their stuff saved in those formats but the other direction is on authors of those tools.

Thank you for your questions, those are actually asked often and I end up repeating myself over email/Skype a lot. It would be much nicer to have some discussion here so the answers are public.

If your software accepted ranges from CREV or FLOPZILLA, that would save a lot of potential customers a lot of time building ranges. This would save me hours of time. Thanks.

Yeah, this is something we are willing to take care of either by accepting those ranges or making a converter.
For that though I need to know what format CREV uses, maybe someone could describe it, pm me or point me to documentation on it? I don't have either CREV nor Flopzilla licenses.

http://www.cardrunnersev.com/manual/holecardsyntax.html

CREV ranges without weights are accepted into PioSolver directly with no issues. There is a different format once you start to use weights though.

Here is an example, this range:



would output like this in CREV:
AA-88,AKs-A8s,KQs-K9s,QJs-Q9s,JTs-J9s,T9s,AKo-ATo,KQo-KJo,[50]A5s-A2s,87o,76o,65o,54o[/50],[75]J8s,T8s-T7s,98s-97s,87s-86s,76s-75s,65s,54s[/75]

any options for mac?

One customers of ours managed to run it through parallels but I am not recommending nor supporting this at the moment. Maybe try with the free version and see how it goes?

+10

This should be one of your top priorities as every CREV customer is your potential customer and the two programs will work very well together for studying and expanding on solutions. The weighted ranges should be able to go both directions to and from CREV. I do not think you need a paid license to be able to test this CREV feature.

Yupp, being able to export/import weighted ranges into and from CREV is extremely important imo, and would give you a leg up on your competitor right now.

What's the difference between pro and basic? They both solve flop turn river. Is the pro one just faster in outputting the answer?

Refer to:
http://piosolver.myshopify.com/pages/product-comparison

As of now, the pro version:
-is a bit faster on modern quad CPUs (~15-30% depending on the model)
-works with more than 4 CPUs if you have them
-offers two activations so you can use it on two computers of yours
-is scriptable so you can run scripts to automate tasks (like solving 20 trees during the night)

It may change in the future as some feature may make it only to pro but we don't have any specific plans at this moment and just want to make the experience of our early customers as smooth as possible.
There is an option to upgrade if you at some point decide you want what pro version offer. The price of an upgrade is 250$.

Apparently it works via both Parallels and Bootcamp but I can't offer any serious support here as I don't even have a Mac and I've never run the solver on it

Say you have it installed on 2 computers of your own, and buy a new one, can you deactivate an old installation to make installation nr 3?

Yes. Just contact us for more instructions when you want to move your activations.
Don't get rid of the computer you want to deactivate on before the deactivation is done.

Can someone explain the difference between the PioSOLVER basic and PioSOLVER pro to the laymen please? I am interested in buying this but dont understand the difference...mainly the part that says "Limitations: uses up to 4 CPU cores, not scriptable"

It means that basic version:
-doesn't support scripting, so you can't schedule many tasks (say for analysis during the night)
-it will not use more than 4 threads (so maximum 4 CPUs and it won't use hyperthreading on i7s)
-you only get one activation while with pro version you can use it on two computers you personally own and use

In the future some new features may come to pro but not to basic. On the other hand there is always an option to upgrade so if you are not sure if you are going to do heavy analysis the basic version is your best bet.

Kind of a weird UI thing:

Ran a sim where a hand is folded 100% on the turn. Then on the river when its checked to villain he then bluffs that hand 100%.

I assume this is just because its cooptimal since you never get there with that hand, and its not actually messing up the weights thinking that you really have a lot more weak hands?

(Looking at the range it definitely appears to be a glitch in some cases)

This is not a glitch and in fact very common thing in optimal play.

The way the algorithm works is that it tries to improve one strategy, then second one, then first one etc. at every step. To know how to improve the strategy it needs to know what EV of every line is even if some lines are not currently chosen (or are chosen with close to 0 probability). This means there are strategies for hands in spots to which those hands never get to.
As river bluff catching range is very blocker dependent and constructed so to speak with actual opponent's range in mind it's only natural that bluffing with hands which are not actually in that range (or very rarely) are profitable bluffs. It doesn't mean the opponent can exploit it because calling the turn costs money and if they try to call the turn to gain opportunity for profitable bluff on the river that would still be overall -EV for them.

This is I think a nice feature of all of this: you can see what optimal (almost) play is even if a mistake was made before. It may well be that even if folding J9 to a turn bet on AKQ2 board is optimal, bluffing the river is the way best way to recover some of the money assuming you called the turn.

That being said this is major confusion point and we plan to add some features to make a view combining strategy and range to make it more clear what actual range is. For now, if you want to see the betting range in the spot described by you, do this:
Go to the node in which the bet/check decision is made. Click IP player's range, click red rectangle representing a bet. Here is a GIF I made to show one of those situations:

CLICK (imgur link)

What we have here is bet-call, bet-call, check-? line in a 3bet pot.
The turn is As 4d 4c Ts
Now let's consider combinations of Q9s (Qs9s/Qh9h/Qd9d/Qc9c). It's not profitable to call the turn with those unless we have spades. Then on the river when it's checked to us it's very profitable to bluff without spades but marginal with spades.
This is because OOP player "knows" that only spades could profitably make it to this point (or more precisely that most bluff candidates are missed spades) so they are not going to bluff-catch having spades themselves (because that reduces chances of the opponent having a bluff in the first place).

The GIF shows me going through the stages:
1)I am showing that Q9s all bluff, but especially Qh9h/Qd9d/Qc9c and there is ~6-8bb to gain by bluffing those
2)then I show that Q9 other than Qs9s is not actually in river range at this point
3)then I show the betting range itself (by clicking red BET rectangle) to confirm - there are only Qs9s combos in there

Even though say Qh9h can gain 6.3bb by bluffing the river it won't be enough to make up for the turn call (it costs 14.1bb to begin with and then sometimes you have to fold to 3rd barrel and you almost never catch anything with showdown value).

Going one step further let's see what bluff-catching strategy is:

CLICK (imgur link)

I showed QTo combos for OOP player. You can see that bluff catching with a Qs is huge mistake (5bb or more) but queens without a spade sometimes call. Why it's better to call without Qh than with Qh is another interesting point but I think I will go over it another time.

If after reading this explanation you still think it's a glitch feel free to contact me here or email me at piosolver@piosolver.com. I will go through your spot with you. Posting here is ok as well but I think it may become too specific for general questions/answer thread.

Does the PioSOLVER shows flop equity distribution, something that I think is every important to understanding frequencies. Or do I have to use another program in conjunction when studying??

For now it doesn't. It's a very nice feature though so it's on to-do now just not at the very top.
Why do you think it's important for frequencies btw? I think it's important for understanding how EV compares to Equity but I am not sure about frequencies.

I do not see much point in making PIOsolver heavy and copying functions from other software. Simply allowing to export flop, turn and river ranges in formats recognizable by software like CREV and other ones will allow to perform the necessary analysis of range compositions, equities, distributions, etc..Also, from coding point of view it will much easier. That way you can focus your efforts on improving the PIOviewer presentation layer and optimizing the code speed.

Don't think an equity distribution feature is that important when there are tons of specialized softwares that can do that extremely well and give detailed reports. Adding a function to easily import/export ranges into the clipboard would be more than enough and would let you analyze those ranges with many other tools.

You can press ctrl-c in the range viewer. You can also right-click "Copy" on the main range view if you are viewing hero or villain range in some spot.