[LL] “I found another poker calculator that’s for Windows but runs great using Wine on Macs: Equilab“, Leroy the Lion reported back.
[NN] “Is it better than Poker Stove?” Nate the Natural asked.
[LL] “It has more features. The most useful are the dozens of canned hand ranges (e.g., Under the Gun Open Raise), plus you can create your own custom hand ranges and save them for reuse.”
[NN] “That’s pretty neat.”
[LL] “And while Poker Stove and Equilab both let you copy the results as text, Equilab can also generate BB code.”
[FF] “What’s BB code?”
[LL] “It’s an HTML-like language1 that’s used for formatting posts on some web message boards.”
[NN] “‘BB’ for ‘bulletin board’, I think.”
[LL] “Oh, and I quickly discovered why both of the apps have Monte Carlo simulations.”
[FF] “I thought you said they were plenty fast”, Figaro the Fish commented.
[LL] “They were… until I ran a complicated scenario with two hand ranges against each other. The number of combinations blows up exponentially! A complete analysis still took under a minute, but if you just want a quick and dirty answer, then the faster estimate worked well enough, getting within one tenth of a percent in only two seconds.”
[NN] “And you definitely need the simulation if you’re running an app on your cell phone.”
[LL] “What app are you using on your iPhone?”
[NN] “I bought Poker Cruncher, which also has Android, and Mac versions.”
[LL] “How much did it cost?”
[NN] “I paid $4.99 for the Advanced version, although it’s currently $5.99.2 Don’t bother with the Basic version.”
[FF] “Why not?”
[NN] “It doesn’t support hand ranges. The Advanced version seems to be pretty similar to Equilab feature-wise, with built-in and savable hand ranges. But it also lets you save hand scenarios.”
[LL] “Equilab may let you do that on a PC or a good emulator, but it doesn’t work in Wine (it just pops up an empty error dialog box). I also crashed Wine when I tried to cut and paste using CONTROL-X/CONTROL-V, so I’d use Parallels if I ever wanted to run a lot of calculations.”
[NN] “What do you use away from your Mac?”
[LL] “I usually run PokerSniper, which handles just about everything I need. It’s limited to four players, but that’s enough most of the time. It supports hand ranges but only if you type them in (including percentage ranges). I got the iPhone app when it was on sale for $0.99, but it’s currently $2.99.”3
[LL] “But when I need more power, I use Poker Odds Pro, which is currently $3.99 in the App Store. It supports custom, savable hand ranges like Equilab, although the interface for specifying them is clunky (the percentage doesn’t update as you move the slider, and you need to repeatedly tap the ‘Add’ button when you’re building a range by hand).”
Footnotes:
- So much like HTML that there are numerous simple translators like this BB Code to HTML converter and this PHP conversion code, which is under a thousand characters.
- All prices are as of November 28, 2014 and are not only subject to change but quite likely to.
- There’s also an iPad version of PokerCruncher currently selling for $6.99.