Believe it or not guys, I'm really not trying to hide anything.
I thought I had pretty much laid everything out in the old beta thread... but I know not everyone has read all that (nor would I expect anyone to).
In fact, I consider that the success of SnG Solver is going to be directly tied to my ability to educate the poker community about how it works and its benefits... its *exact* benefits. To this end, I'm working on a couple blog/ariticles that detail the algorithm, gives side-by-side comparisons, etc...
This will take a little bit of time though (as SnG Solver is pretty much a one-man operation for now)... but for anyone who may have missed the old thread, I'll give a quick rundown and an example here:
In most ways, SnG Solver works just like any other strategy calculator you may have used. And, if you set the "Predictive Simulation" mode to "off", you will see that the results will be essentially identical to those "other" calculators.
All equity/strategy calculators do, fundamentally, the same thing: they calculate the risk vs reward of situation. And all
tournament equity/strategy calculators do just one extra step that makes them different from a regular equity calculator (e.g. PokerStove): they convert chipEV to $EV. Thats it. Everything else is just window dressing.
In most programs (well, all of them except SnG Solver), this conversion from cEV to $EV is done with the ICM equations.
A program like sngwiz then calculates the $EV for the different possible outcomes of a situation ( what if I fold?...what if I call and win?... what if I call and lose?.. etc..) and then presents them for comparison.
If one sums up all of the "what-ifs" for a hand, you arrive at a kind of "composite $EV" for each stack.
So now rewind a bit... back to when I mentioned using ICM to convert cEV to $EV. What if, instead of using ICM to convert cEV to $EV, we use this "composite $EV"? What you get is a new $EV that has taken into consideration the future round of play. In other words, we calculate the "future $EV" to find the present $EV. This process could then be repeated
ad infinitum (or until every possible future game state is evaluated and the game is "solved").
This is what the Predictive Simulation algorithm in SnG Solver does. It recursively evaluates future $EV to arrive at $EV for the present situation, thereby properly considering the effects of position, impending blinds, etc... Of course, in order to evaluate a future situation, you must know how each player is going to act. This is where the "Predictive" part of the algorithm comes in. For each potential future, SnG Solver computes an approximate Nash equilibrium and assumes that that is how each player will act. Naturally, not all (or even any) players will be playing exactly according to a Nash equilibrium strategy, but such a strategy should be *reasonably close* to what a solid player would do and it ultimately make a good theoretical foundation to build on.
To see this in action, consider the following hand:
BB/SB: 1000/500
Payouts: 65-35
Stacks-
BTN: 700
SB (Hero): 600
BB: 7700
Hero is dealt 52o.
SB folds, Hero?
Any ICM based program will tell you that the SB must call with ATC, and therefore we call with our 52o.
There is no good player that would agree with this analysis (if you do agree with this analysis, then I have a prop bet I would like to make with you
).
It is also true that the Predictive Simulation Model of SnG Solver does not agree with this either. SnG Solver recommends calling with a range of about 17%. I think you'll find that most good players will agree that this is a reasonable range.
In case anyone missed it, here was a post where I made some more comparisons with some other ICM based programs:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...2&postcount=38
So, I hope that helps to remove some of the "mystery"... by all means, if you've got questions, ask away. Like I said, I'm working on a number of articles to further illuminate what going on under the hood of SnG Solver.
Also, I should mention that the "Details View" as it stands now, is just the start of whats to come. Eventually that panel will contain so much data it will probably be considered
overwhelming and you'll begging me to hide things from you.