SECT: Showdown Equity CalculaTor

Let’s say you have AA on the button with 100bb stacks. You misclick and accidentally raise to 99bb. Villain, a crazy billionaire railroad tycoon, has 27 offsuit and decides to call. The flop comes 222 and the pot is 198bb. Villain shoves his last 1bb and you obviously call.

HEM and PTR will calculate your EV only when you go all-in. In other words, you have 0.1% equity on the flop (when you went all-in) and that translates to about 0.2bb in EV. That is obviously painting a very distorted picture…

But that’s where SECT comes in. It calculates EV street-by-street. So in other words, 99bb went in when you had 88% equity and 1bb went in when you had 0.1% equity. SECT will report your EV as 174bb (a much more accurate representation of what’s happening).

SECT only works for cash game hands and it reads off an HEM database (sorry PTR folks, you’re out of luck).

To install:

1. Download the latest Java update.
2. Download SECT
3. Uncompress the .rar file (you might need Winrar)
4. Edit the XML file in notepad (see steps 5 – 7)
5. Replace “HoldEmManger” with the name of your database
6. Replace “postgres” by your postresql login
7. Replace “postrepass” by your postresql password
8. Run SECT_v3.2.7.jar

Forgot the name of your database or your login information? Here’s how you can find it in HEM.

HEM Database Information

In the example above, my database name is 2008.  You’ll see your “Login name” and “Password” once you click on “Database Management”.

Props to Pprofesseur and Victor118, the  two French poker players who developed SECT.

You'll see the biggest gains if you improve your play when you're running bad

Seth Godin had a great post on his blog today.  Even though he’s talking about marketing and customer service, his advice applies really well to poker.  Let’s say you have a bike race coming up and you obviously want to have the best time you possibly can.  The thing is,  everyone goes super fast on the downhill sections (limited only by physics and safety) and it’s really hard to get an edge on your opponents there.  On the uphill section though, through athleticism and will, you have a chance to actually make significant gains and do what your opponent cannot.

Poker seems like an easy game when you’re running well.  You’re hands keep hitting and you’re opponent keeps paying you off.  Well guess what, fish run hot too.  And when they do, they probably think poker is an easy game.  The truth is, a lot of your edge comes when you’re not running super hot – those marginal situations where a fish has no idea what he’s doing and you do.  Those are the uphill battles that you should set your sights on.

As Seth put it:

Most of your competition spend their days looking forward to those rare moments when everything goes right. Imagine how much leverage you have if you spend your time maximizing those common moments when it doesn’t.

Downswing Lifetime Graph

I’ve had 2 really major downswings.  In a little over 100,000 hands, I’ve had one downswing for 26 buyins and another one for 24 buyins.  This just goes to show how important bankroll management is to a successful poker player.  So, how many buyins do you need for heads up cash games?  Here’s what you need to consider

1. Psychological Devastation:  If you’re playing with a 30 buyin roll and you lose 25 buyins, you are going to be psychologically crushed.  Your bankroll is down over 83%!  If you have a 50 buyin bankroll and you lose 25 buyins, that’s only a 50% decrease.  Still pretty brutal, but you are much more likely to recover and continue on your poker career.
2. Moving Down: Some people are very disciplined and move down after a certain stop-loss, say 5 or 10 buyins.  I’ve never been too good at that.  My stoploss is usually 20 buyins…  If you are very disciplined and are willing to move down (unlike me), you can have a smaller bankroll.
3. Winrate: The better the player the fewer (and less brutal) the downswings.  If I had to guess though, I’d bet you’re overrating your skill level.  You will run worse than you ever though possible.  I guarantee it.

So here’s the gripping conclusion.  I think a 40 buyin bankroll is a good starting point for heads up cash games.  Consider the 3 factors I mentioned and adjust accordingly.

For further reading on dealing with downswings, I highly recommend this 2+2 post.

Anyway, I want to give credit to MasterLJ for bringing my attention to the tool and more importantly, Kimberly at FFD Poker Forum for creating the spreadsheet in the first place. I made some minor adjustments and tweaks and I think you’ll find it really useful to help you get a better grasp of what you can expect.

To give you an idea what kind of variance is typical, I’ll share some of my results.
In the next 100 hands I play, there is a 34% chance I will make between $9.65 and $141.81. On other hand, there is also a 34% chance I will make between $9.65 and -$122.51. The probability that I am a long-term winner in the game is 96.6%. My average profit per hour is $32.48.

I’d love to hear what your stats are. Download the spreadsheet and fill in the values using Hold’Em Manager or PokerTracker3.

Update: Here’s another post for further reading about downswings and bankroll management.