HM Quickie 32 Equilab Is Great But Should Be Used Cautiously
Equilab is a popular and free equity calculator. You enter your hand or range along with hands or ranges for one or more opponents. The program will then provide your showdown equity, either through simulation or computation.[1] Not only that, you can also enter flop or flop and turn cards for an equity result.
So, with Equilab (and other similar equity calculators) providing this important factor, your winning chances, what is the concern? It is that an equity calculator assumes the hand gets to showdown, which, of course, is not always true. On an early street, hands get to showdown if a bet is all in or all players check down. Hands don’t get to showdown if all but one player folds. And folding is not an uncommon action. Also, of course, estimating your opponent’s hand or range is subject to error, something which Equilab doesn’t directly consider but you can apply it over a range of inputs.
This leads us into the notion of equity realization, the chance that you will actually realize or even better the showdown equity. I would suggest that 33 has lower realized equity than 89s although it usually has higher showdown equity than 89s against a specific range. For example, 33 has showdown equity of 46% against a top 25% hand while 89s has a lower equity of 37%. But, if the 3 pair doesn’t hit on the flop, there is a good chance it will be folded while the suited connector often will flop a straight or flush draw along with possibly hitting a mid-rank pair, a total probability higher than the 12% chance of the 3-pair setting.
This is not to suggest that Equilab is not useful. Showdown equity provides a first cut to your chances of profiting. And, by recognizing that folds, either by you or your opponent is possible, it’s value can be used as the baseline for equity adjustment depending on the particular circumstances. It would be nice if an equity calculator can also provide realized equity but that would most like have to rely of analyzing many millions of hands under many varying conditions for there is no theoretical or simulation way of obtaining fold equity as far as I know.
As a final point, estimating your equity should not only take into account future folding possibility, by both you and your opponents, but also their calling range as the hand proceeds. An opponent may limp preflop with a top 80% range, but depending on the board, his calling range will almost surely narrow unless he is a maniac bettor. How much it narrows is a challenge a poker player must address.
[1] Equilab does a lot more, but we shall not discuss that here.