Thanks for good discussion. I'm hoping others will also give their thoughts on this feature.
1) Re. a warning alert for this feature -
Yes definitely, if we implement it in your form. But my suggested form for this feature doesn't require a warning alert which may be a sign that it's a more intuitive and natural way to do it. I understand that there are always exceptions though e.g. I've added a warning/info note for the Deal-To-Flop/Turn/HoleCards feature.
2) Re.: I feel checking a lot of checkboxes, especially at a small screen, might be a pain too. -
You'll only need to do this the first time. Your checkbox selections will be remembered in the state of the app. Can also save several sets of checkbox selections e.g. for if Villain flat calls in position, raises in position, out of position, for different styles of players, etc. But I'm getting ahead of the main issue.
3) Re.: I feel the scrollbar might be more easily appliable technically and consequently sooner to implement -
Yes your suggestion is easier to implement than mine. But I'm still not as convinced about the good benefits it will give, as I'll explain further below, so I'd rather do the more work feature if it will give better results.
Why I'm still not sold on your suggestion (cut cells that have < x% equity), call it suggestion A:
4) I think suggestion B (cut/retain cells based on hand types and draw types) is the way people think when they're playing and analyzing hands, and is more natural. E.g. if you look in many strategy threads on this forum, when people construct ranges they write something like "for Villain's range I'll include overpairs and sets and TPTK and the Ace/King high flush draw". When I play hands this is how I think too e.g. "he's prob. got an overpair here but he could have AK some %age of the time, so for now on the flop I'll just call with my low pair and see what he does on the turn". I think people think in terms of hand types, not in terms of range cells' individual equities against the range Villain is putting me on.
5) I think suggestion A can lead to bad cell cut/retain results. I tried this example similar to yours in the app:
Player 1 (Us): Top40% (this is the range Villain is putting us on)
Player 2 (Villain): Top30%
Flop: 3s Qd 9c
Now I look at Villain's heat map (attached below) and want to cut all cells that have < 30% equity. I choose 30% because I want to keep good draws like open enders which will have >= 30% equity (like the JT open ender possible here).
JTo has 45% equity against our range.
But note that ATo has 44% equity.
So JTo and ATo have pretty much the same equity against our range and so these two cells will be treated the same way by Suggestion A's cut/retain logic.
But JTo and ATo are very different hands in this scenario. One is drawing to the nuts and can win Villain's entire stack. The other is much less valuable. If I were narrowing down Villain's range after the flop action, I'd keep JT for sure, and prob. won't keep AT (or may keep just one or two combos of AT to weight it downward). Since Suggestion A keeps both of them, I think it may actually be doing the user of this feature a disservice!
So I'm still leaning towards Suggestion B. Would love to hear your further thoughts on this, or other readers' thoughts. Thanks.