We've divided the tutorial into basic, intermediate, and advanced sections. The basic tutorial covers how a beginner can use FlopZoom to help improve their game. Likewise, the intermediate and advanced tutorials show intermediate and advanced players how to maximize FlopZoom's analytical power, to improve their own game and to detect weaknesses in other players' games.

The basic tutorial explains how to use the playback and session panes. These panes show you the who, what, when, and where of your sessions. The intermediate and advanced tutorials explain how to use the statistics and analysis panes, which show you more of the how and why.
 

The Playback Pane
The User Guide explains all the features and controls of the playback pane. Step through each action, street, and hand in a session, and search through the hands in a session for specific actions, hole cards, and situations. You can also search the list of sessions for player names, session names, tournament or ring game types, and dates.
Continue to the playback tutorial.


 

The Session Pane
The session pane shows you what happened to all the chips in a session. The stacks graph shows you chips in up to four players' stacks. You can see the player's stack changes on all hands, or only on hands where the players were in a specific seat or in early, middle, or late position. And you can show the Magriel-Harrington M values for up to four players.


The pots graph shows you chips in the pot and who won and lost them. The hero player's hole cards are shown when you click on a hand, and you can quickly scrub back and forth across hands in the session to find your hole cards and win/loss amounts. Just click, hold, and drag left or right.


Together, the playback and session panes make it easy and quick to review all the details of who did what when, and how much everyone won or lost on every hand of every session.
Continue to the session tutorial.
 

The Current Hand
You can choose any hand in a session in the playback pane (by typing the hand number, or by clicking the previous / next hand buttons, or by clicking on a line in the list of hands.) And you can click on any hand in the session pane's stacks graph or pots graph.



Either way, you're setting FlopZoom's "current hand." This makes it easy and quick to see exactly what happened on each hand of a session from two different perspectives: the table view of the playback pane and the charts in the session pane.
Continue to the current hand tutorial.
 

M Values
Knowing your Magriel M number, as described in Dan Harrington's essential "Harrington on Hold'em" series of books, is crucial in tournament poker. Your M is a strong indicator of how many hands you should play, what positions you should play from, and how often you should bluff.

As you move between different M ranges, you hit what Mr. Harrington calls "inflection points." Your style of play should change as you move through inflection points.

FlopZoom can show you up to four players' M values around the inflection points throughout an entire tournament.
Continue to the M inflection points tutorial.
 

Results and Big Blinds
FlopZoom can show you how much you won or lost in any ring game session. You can display a "results" window with the net result in cash and big blinds for each player you choose.

And in ring games, you don't necessarily need to vary your play depending on your M value. In fact, your M is nearly irrelevant because you can change it at any time by buying chips. It's more useful to think in terms of the number of big blinds (BB) in each player's stack in cash games.

FlopZoom can show you up to four players' BB values throughout a tournament. You can also see where players were sitting out: their stack lines are thinner and dashed.
Continue to the M inflection points tutorial.
 

Summary
Together, the playback and session panes give you a complete picture, literally, of everything that happened in a particular session. Every action, every hand, every pot, and every stack change is just a few clicks away.