This is the support thread for PokerCruncher, which is an odds calculator for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad.

Please Please Please make it for the Blackberry Storm as well!

I bought it a couple weeks ago and use it all the time. It works great, no problems so far and easy to use. Nice work. Only thing I would like is to be able to put in a % range of hands like Pokerstove. Maybe a space in the hand range section where I could just put in 12% say and it would select that range.

Hi guys, thanks for the feedback.

Yes if the BlackBerry AppWorld becomes anywhere close to as big as the AppStore I should port the app to it.

Thanks for buying the app, great that you like it. That's a good suggestion, I've put the "select top x%" feature on the update list. I want to make it a slider for easier input instead of a textbox (if I can find space for the slider).

Another customer suggested:
- Save/load hand ranges.
- A text indicator showing what %age of the total possible hands are selected by your hand range. So if you select just AA (or any specific pair) it would show "0.5% selected" (1/221), then if you add AK to the range the %age would go up over 1%. This overlaps a bit with the "select top x%" feature but is easier to implement so I may implement it first.

The next update V.2.2 is about 1..2 months away (I've released two updates in the last month and can't make these too frequent per the AppStore's guidelines). This also gives some time for suggestions to come in. The app will keep getting better ... (and already it can do things that even PokerStove can't, like Deal-To-Flop and hand histograms).

Thanks, -RJ

any chance of omaha support?

Hi - re. Omaha support - currently no plans for this in the near term (~ a few months). Hand ranges looks non-trivial for 4 hole cards. I guess for hi-lo we can use 2 hand ranges per player, one for hi and one for lo (?). Haven't thought about it much though. Near-term I'd rather focus on the additional hand range features customers have suggested, think about BlackBerry, G1, etc. I think this would impact/help more people. If anyone thinks I'm missing something do let me know, thanks.

obviously i should be able to take a picture of the flop and auto-import

(Disclosure: I'm the developer of PokerCruncher.)

Hi guys just fyi that V2.2 of PokerCruncher went live on the App Store yesterday with these new hand ranges features (suggested mostly by customers like in mksmipalla's reply above):

1) "Select top x% of hands" slider. Selects the top x% of the 169 grid hands (like in PokerStove). (Pic attached below.)

2) %age indicator for the hand range you're building: Shows the %age of all possible hole-card hands that are in the hand range, taking assigned (non-live) cards into account. This is also the odds of the player getting a hand in the hand range.

3) Save/load hand ranges (up to 6 ranges).

PokerCruncher will continue to get better. It already can do things that even PokerStove can't e.g. Deal-To-Flop and hand histograms. However the "scan picture of flop and auto-import" feature sounds pretty advanced and may have to wait . Thanks for reading ...

Picture: (Select top x% of hands):

i use this everyday. pretty sick doing pokermaths sitting in chipotle.

well worth $5. ty

every poker player that leaves the house should have this. better than pokerstove imo

Another request for BlackBerry Storm please!

This app looks awesome. I'll def be putting it on my iTouch, but it would be cool to have on the Storm too.

I use it as well, it's all that's advertised and more. I actually just spent the last 20 minutes reading documentation because I realized as useful as it has been, I'm only using the hand range feature. Now that I've learned how to do the deal to flop/turn/river analysis, use the hand range dialog for sklansky and other hard coded ranges, and that the author has added hand range percentages, I really think it's way better than PokerStove.

The only thing PokerStove can do that this can't, is let you shift select ranges manually, but that's a limitation in the IPhone interface, not PokerCruncher, and the hard coded ranges dialog and percentage slider fill the gap enough that it's only a tiny impediment.

And I'm not a shill for this guy, go back to my other thread on software asking for something like this months ago. I bought SidePod before which is okay for fixed hands but other than that pretty useless. I'm the biggest critic in the world and right now this app pretty much exceeds every expectation I had.

(Disclosure: I'm the developer of PokerCruncher)

Guys - many thanks for your positive feedback! I'm just an independent software developer (and an amateur poker player, not sure which is 1a and which is 1b here..) and don't have any serious marketing/sales dollars so your reviews and word of mouth are very helpful.

kara - Yes porting to the Storm is on my list, but I can't guarantee it yet. I've also gotten emails on this.

99killed, DesertCat - Thanks for your reviews. The feedback especially on this forum means a lot to me because this is a real players forum.

Re. the Deal-To-Flop feature you mentioned - yes this is very useful and I hope people have noticed it. One way I use this is to see where some speculative hands I play would stand on the flop. Say a tight solid player raises preflop - enter e.g. top 5% of hands for him. You pick up one of your speculative hands say a 1-gap suited connector - enter this range for you using the Built-In ranges screen. Then set DealTo = Flop and see how often you can expect to get that 'miracle' flop - a made straight or flush or trips, etc. Then tap the "Draws" button in the stats view to see how often you'll flop various draws e.g. flush draw, open ender, double gutter, etc.

Then compare how often these good things can happen to how much more you need to put in pre-flop, then compare to the stack sizes, your position on him, your opponent's style / tendency to bust out, does this opponent give you fold equity on your semibluffs or bluffs, etc., a bunch more factors of course. No app/numbers can make a decision but the numbers can be a guide.

Thanks, and do keep sending suggestions, questions, feedback. -RJ

Hey Cat! Haven't seen you posting as much. Maybe it's me but I always think you posts are excellent!

Based on your review I am going to but this program.

For the Developer, If you looking for idea's for other software a ICM program for the Apple OSX like SNG Wizard would generate pretty good interest from the native apple guys!

Is there a way to enter specific hands into the hand ranges?

For example:
Player 1: {A2, AK, KK-JJ}
Player 2: {QQ}

(I'm the developer of PokerCruncher)

Not Lolo - Thanks for the suggestion. The latest app review on iTunes also suggests ICM.

cl0r0x70 - Not yet, but you'll be able to enter this in the next update (a few weeks away).

At least several people have asked for specifying specific suits in hand ranges. This was in the plans but I've been rolling out the features incrementally. In the next update you'll be able to add e.g. "Ahxh", e.g. if the flop has exactly two hearts and you want to put the villain on the nut flush draw. Or if the flop is all hearts then you'll be able to add "Ahx" as the nut flush draw.

Thanks for your interest guys. Stay tuned.. -RJ

I bought it last night from the itunes store keep up the good work!

second plug but i use this alot. esp when talking w ppl about ranges, math and ****.

i love breaking down shortstack shoving calling ranges while taking a ****.

this is sweet and any poker player w an iphone should have this.

Thanks 99, NotLolo - reading good feedback like this makes all the work and TLC I put into the app more than worth it! V.2.3 will go live in about 3 weeks.

I am about to purchase this, it looks like you did a good job with it man!
Excited to see all the free updates come out, and where this program goes!

Another data point: bought it yesterday and messed around with it in the car while waiting for my daughter's piano lesson to finish. Great value for five bucks. Thanks, Raju.

Thanks jewbelieve, sapientia for writing. For me it's not really about trying to make a lot of $ one copy at a time (but nice if that happens), but just to have a darn good mobile calculator that will be useful even for advanced players. You can count on this app getting better. More later..

On the deal to flop stuff, could you create a histogram that shows the equity after the flop vs the range instead of the distribution of hands by type. A lot of the types of hands overlap which makes a big difference. Knowing that you're going to flop a certain hand x% if the time is not that helpful. Basically what I'd like to see is the % of the time a hand is going to have >90% equity, 90-80%, 80-70%, etc.

Also have you looked at any performance enhancements? It's kinda slow. Are you using the open source pokersource code?

The odds seem a little off vs pokerstove. For example AhAc vs 8c7c, pokerstove shows 78.094 vs 21.906, your app shows 77.7 vs 21.9(btw what is that number you have equity underneath that says 77.9 vs 22.1). I guess you're adding the ties into the wins? If so you should put the equity at the top and the win% separate. Then on AcKc vs AhKh it says the clubs are a .2% favorite... Something is wrong.

Hello Av9114, thanks for looking at the app closely.

Re. deal to flop - Yes I'll consider the histogram you're suggesting in a future update (but not the next one). But it will be in addition to the current hand histogram view not a replacement because I think the current histogram does give useful info. E.g. you may want to limp or call preflop raises with marginal/speculative hands like 1 or 2-gap suited connectors and the current histogram view shows how often you can expect to get miracle flops like trips/straight/flush, and also shows how often you can expect to flop strong draws e.g. a flush draw or an open ender. This helps to decide if you want to pay for that preflop raise (bunch of other factors of course like position, stack sizes, amt of preflop raise, player styles, etc.).

Re. performance - yeah I'd like it to be faster too and think this can be improved. Part of the reason is the CPU speed vs. desktops but the other reason is I'm using a "naive" ad-hoc evaluator not the open source ones. One reason is that PokerCruncher computes a lot more stats than these optimized evaluators (not just win/tie/equity), e.g. odds for flopping various draws (including gutshot draws), or having top pair or better on the flop, or having an overpair on the flop. So I made a more stats and generality vs. speed tradeoff. But this doesn't mean I can't make it faster in the future at least for some common cases.

The number at the top for each player is Win%, then Tie%, then Equity. I like your suggestion to put Equity at the top because it's the most important stat. The only reason I put Win% at the top is that I think people understand this stat better and it's more familiar. Some people have sent emails asking what Equity means, totally understandable, whereas they understand Win% right away.

Re. the odds being off - I'm going to need more evidence! I simulated AhAc vs 8c7c in the app fives times and got: 78.0, 78.1, 78.4, 78.0, 78.1. You said PokerStove shows 78.094. PokerCruncher does a Monte Carlo simulation not exhaustive so a few tenths of a percent error is within the error range (the 77.7 that you got). Same for your AcKc vs AhKh case where the app says the clubs are a .2% favorite; this is within the limits for any Monte Carlo simulation. PokerCruncher does do complete exhaustive enumeration for some "easy" cases e.g. if all player cards are assigned and are specific cards and the flop cards are assigned, so only the turn and river are unknown which is just ~1000 combinations so the app enumerates them all and computes the exact answer.

If there's something wrong with the numbers I'll definitely fix right away but can you pls. give more evidence/cases/info.? Can you run your cases a few more times and compare? Anyone else see problems? Thanks for getting the app! I'll repeat my mantra - the app will get better. Thanks for the feedback everyone, -RJ

Thats exactly what I was asking for. Honestly, I think the current ones are pretty pointless. In fact I'd go so far as say that if you actually make poker decisions based on them you should re-examine the way you think about the game, but I do understand why some people would want them and it doesn't hurt to have them as well. Actually I've gone back and forth regarding how useful the deal to ____ is in general, one of the reasons I know about the open source libraries is because I was thinking about making this myself.


I don't think its a CPU issue, pokerstove uses almost no CPU time on my computer. I just tested a preflop all-in and it hit 5% for a second on a vista VM. From what I've read about PokerStove, there is a ton of optimization built in. I feel pretty confident that you could get PokerStove type optimization without losing the extra stats. I do realize that this is a much more complicated solution and would require a lot of work.

If you put equity at the top it won't have a label and people won't ask questions

okay. I didn't realize that it was a monte carlo. For the record I only really bought it because I believe that you want to make it better and it is moderately useful as is. I'm probably going to continue to use twodimes.net if I have any sort of internet connection though, even though being a couple tenths off isn't a big deal its going to bug me.

You're the first person to tell me that the Deal-To-Flop feature and the additional stats are pointless or even detrimental to good poker thinking. But I can understand this; different people think about the game differently, which is what makes for good games. But note that a couple of iTunes reviewers on this app have talked about this feature favorably e.g.:

"Also, PokerCruncher has some nice displays for the odds of catching draws of various kinds which helps you to understand whether or not your opponents might have hit a flop, for example."

and,

"... one that I like is how often will your pair of 10s see an overcard on the flop (or turn or river)."

I'm not saying there's a right or wrong answer here. If I get more feedback to the effect "this is bad, get rid of it" of course I'll rethink this feature. It would be great if others could give more feedback on the Deal-To-Flop feature and the hand histogram stats and the odds for draws stats. Afaik no other odds calculator anywhere combines Deal-To-Flop and these additional stats so I admit this is a new non-standard feature.

I'm hoping I can move you into the "very satisfied" camp on the app (and off of twodimes, doesn't even have hand ranges!) at some point in some app update in the future. May take a long time, even in V.3.0 and I may have to work hard on e.g. performance or a non-Monte-Carlo exhaustive but fast technique (that can still compute this variety of stats), but, it's not supposed to be easy right .

Thanks for feedback, always good to get both positive feedback and ways to improve feedback, -RJ