We thought it would be useful to show you how often players won and lost with different starting hand ranges. Big pairs in the hole can win you tournaments or bust you out early. Small suited connectors can crack aces or tempt you to bluff off your chips.

The cards chart shows you how often a player was dealt everything from big pairs to two big cards to suited connectors. And you can see how often any player should have been dealt the different starting hands on average and how often they won or lost pots with them. After ever hand is played, FlopZoom knows all the cards that you were dealt, all the hole cards that the villains flashed, and even all the hole cards that your opponents mucked at showdown.

Here's an example session. As mentioned in the users guide, the number of times you should have been dealt any range of hole cards is indicated by a horizontal line in or above each bar. A black line above any of the colored bars shows that you were dealt that card range less often than the statistical average. A yellow line above any of the colored bars shows that you were dealt that card range more often than the statistical average. Below we see that our hero was dealt big and medium pocket pairs just one more time than the theoretical number. And overall he received fewer ace-X hands than he could have expected.


 

Hole Card Ranges
So what, exactly, do "small pair", "ace-baby suited", and "big cards" mean in the cards chart? Here are the descriptions of the hole card ranges:

	Hole Card Range	Specific Cards
	Big pair	AA, KK, QQ, JJ
	Medium pair	TT, 99, 88, 77
	Small pair	66, 55, 44, 33, 22
	Ace-face suited	AKs, AQs, AJs
	Ace-face unsuited	AKo, AQo, AJo
	Ace-mid suited	ATs, A9s, A8s, A7s
	Ace-mid unsuited	ATo, A9o, A8o, A7o
	Ace-baby suited	A6s, A5s, A4s, A3s, A2s
	Ace-baby unsuited	A6o, A5o, A4o, A3o, A2o
	Big cards	KQ, KJ, KT, QJ, QT, JT
	Small suited connectors	T9s, 98s, 87s, 76s, 65s, 54s, 43s, 32s

These ranges might not correspond exactly to how you think of your hole cards, and in future releases we might add a preference for you to tweak the ranges. But for now, just remember what FlopZoom's hole card ranges are when you're on the cards chart. You can click on the bars to get a description of all the ranges except big cards and small suited connectors. (There are too many in those categories to fit in the text area.)  

No Streets
Unlike the hands chart, the cards chart won't let you click any of the street buttons. Your hole cards are the same on all streets, so the street buttons are disabled.


 
Opponent Count
You can instantly see how often the selected player was dealt different starting hand ranges at a full table, short handed, or heads-up, or against any number of players. Just click the full, short, any, or heads-up buttons.

 
Position
Click a position button to see what position the selected player was in when they were dealt their hole cards.


 
Intervals
Just as in the hands chart, you can see whether you or anyone else was being dealt good hole cards over any period of time. Check whether you lost with big pairs more often this week than last or whether your suited connectors worked for you yesterday or today. You can try changing the way you play certain hole cards from certain positions for a week, then compare your results and see if it helped.

Click on one of the interval buttons to select your range. Then click on the previous / next arrow buttons to compare how often the player was dealt the different hole card ranges. And compare how often they won or lost hands with those ranges.

 

Click for Detail
Click on any of the bars to see how many times the selected player won with that hole card range. The number of sessions in the interval range is also shown.
 

Instant Playback
If you are looking at a single session, you can click any card type bar to play back all the relevant hands. If you click back to the playback pane you'll see just the hands in which the selected player was dealt that hole card type loaded into the hands list.
 

Example: Short Handed
When it gets down to just a few players and the blinds are high, you need to get aggressive and steal blinds. But you can't win unless you bust people, preferably your heads-up opponent to give you the win.

On this particular session, FZHeroPlayer1 never got to heads-up play. He did get to final table short handed play, so let's see what kind of cards he got. We click the short handed button:

Well, he definitely wasn't card dead. He won with his big pairs both times they were dealt to him, which isn't a surprise. He also seems to have won his fair share of hands with other hole cards too. To see what happened with his big pairs, we can use the "instant playback" feature of the statistics and analysis panes. Just click on the "Big Pair" bar (making sure we're in the "session" interval) and click over to the playback pane. Our hero's big pair hands are now in the hands list. Clicking on the second one (hand 323) we see that he got the pocket rockets but action only up to the flop:



So why didn't he win? We can click over to the playback pane, choose the last hand of the session, and click through the streets and actions. His opponent, fz_testplayer_101 on the button, flopped bottom set and moved in. FZHeroPlayer1 flopped top pair medium kicker and called all-in. Three handed, there may have been no way to avoid this. He was drawing thin until the turn:

Stone dead. His opponent turned quads. Did our hero really need to make that call? Well, without looking at all the other hands he played against fz_testplayer_101, it's hard to tell. But we can look at his M number on his last hand.

We click over to the session pane to look at his M. Was he in danger of being blinded out?

Not anywhere near being in danger. So, although we can't really call this a blowup, he could definitely have folded and picked a better spot. He was nowhere near pot committed, his M was more than 20 putting him in the green zone, and he had plenty of play left. On the other hand, when you flop top pair short-handed you're usually good.

Oh well. That's poker.
 

Summary
Sometimes your hole cards don't matter at all. Heads-up against an inexperienced weak-tight opponent, you don't ever really need aces. But at a full table with solid, aggressive players, good hole cards really can help. The cards chart can help you see whether you were dealt good cards in these situations and whether or not you won with them.