ICM for fuddy duddies.

[RED-DOG]

in SNGWiz Tools>Options>General>Handfilter>Show qualified games    and that will tidy up the "neither"

On Stars, Lobby>Options>Instant HH Options   will show you where your HHs are being stored (assuming you have ticked the 'save my HHs check box)

On FTP, it is Lobby>Options>HHs

You can then inform Wiz to go and scrape those HH folders for you.  Or if you aren't playing many games, as Longy says you can copy the text HH real-time onto notepad (if you have a tough decision in-game for example and want to review it) and load it directly into Wiz.

That's better, thanks.

[RED-DOG]

When I review a hand, can I see what his cards were if there was a showdown?

[Longy]

When I review a hand, can I see what his cards were if there was a showdown?

Go to the edit hand history icon at the top (looks like a notepad) then you can see the raw hh with hands at showdown.

[RED-DOG]

When I review a hand, can I see what his cards were if there was a showdown?

Go to the edit hand history icon at the top (looks like a notepad) then you can see the raw hh with hands at showdown.

Excellent. can I then edit that player's notes, and if I do, will it create - update the notes on pokerstars?

[RED-DOG]

Can't copy HH into wiz. When I click the icon, nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

[Longy]

Can't copy HH into wiz. When I click the icon, nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

Hmmm pass, you have copied an individual hand and then clicked the paste icon, right?

[Simon Galloway]

Save the HH as a notepad file and upload the file into Wiz.

Or alternatively, use the HH as a reference and build the hand from scratch in Wiz, this is a good exercise to do as it opens up Wiz as a modelling tool ~ where you can answer the 'what if' questions.  e.g. would it still be a shove if the chip distribution was a  little more skewed?  Would it still be a shove if the micro stack had shoved first? etc.

[RED-DOG]

Can't copy HH into wiz. When I click the icon, nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

Hmmm pass, you have copied an individual hand and then clicked the paste icon, right?

Correct.

[TheChipPrince]

Nice job.  Wiz is a must have.  However much you can get by with freeware alternatives, $100 is going to be such a piffling expense at the end of a SNG year that it isn't worth trying to evade.

It is a hard subject to deal with from first principles, the only other example I would offer is the old chestnut of 'doubling up first hand doesn't double your tourny equity - so don't go out of your way to flip' and possibly leading into tracing the benefactors of that lost tourny equity.

People moan about SNGs getting much harder, but I still routinely see A4 - v - 66 getting it all in first orbit.

You can also get it included for $175 with a 12 month subscription to sttgrinders, for their full access package...

[thetank]

Sure am good at estimating how long things take.

Going to do some more work on this tomorrow, with the Wiz side of things.

[thetank]

The following is an explanation as to how I use sitngo Wiz. If you need help setting the software up, you're having technical issues or have any questions of that sort like how to automatically import hands*, Sitngo Wiz has tutorial videos, FAQs and a support forum that will be of more use to you than I will be.

*I don't use Wiz like that, but more on that another day.

[thetank]

Sitngo Wiz Tutorial.

SitNGo Wizard home page
http://sngwiz.com/index.php

You might have heard people recommend, when asked about the best methods to learn how to use ICM in your sitngo strategy, "put hands into Wiz and play about with them"
This tutorial looks to touch on the subject of what that actually means.

I'm going to try and explain briefly about entering a tournament structure, manually entering a hand into sitngo Wiz, then we're going to look at the 'playing around' bit. In particular how to interpret the charts that Wiz can generate. These graphs are, in my opinion, the most powerful feature of the program, understand how to use them and you're well on your way to getting the most out of Wiz.


Tournament payout structure.

Obviously what the payout structure is in a particular tournament will have a impact on what to do in a given situation, and the ICM math that Wiz will calculate for you. First things first then is to tell Wiz which kind of tournament (and the payout structure) that is going to be relevant for us.

Wiz has a few of these preloaded, but if it doesn't have the one you want (particularly if it's a MTT SNG) we'll have to put it in ourselves. (We only have to do this once obv, it will save it for us)

From the main screen, at the top, go to
Tools > User defined tournament structures



This screen will come up. We want to click on the top left hand side where it says add structure.



Under description, write whatever you want so that you recognize this structure in future.
Under copy from, pick another comp that Wiz already has preloaded. This way you won't have to manually plug in the blind structure.

Now we've done that we're back to this screen with three tabs. 'General', 'Blinds' and 'Payouts'


In the General tab we want to tell Wiz the total number of chips in the tournament, and the number of players.
We can't change the number of players to more than 10. Don't worry, this is just the number of players at any one table, you don't need to set it to 45 or 180 or whatever.
It is a little crazy though, as it's just set up for single table tournaments. What you want to do is divide the total number of chips in play by whatever you've put for PlayerCount and put that as the ChipCount, a little like I've done here...



Wiz now thinks it's a single table tournament where everyone starts with 7,500 chips. It suits our purposes where we'll be looking for Wiz to perform ICM based calculations on final table scenarios.

In the blinds tab we shouldn't have to do much as we've already copied them from another game on the same site.
If for some reason Wiz has missed a level out that you need to study, you can't insert it in place, but it won't mess things up if you just put it in at the end like I've done here...



In the payouts tab, the most important to get right, enter the % of the prize pool that is awarded to each place.



If you don't know how to convert the actual prize people get into percentages, just post on here and someone will help you I'm sure. (If not I will)
I'm not going to go into how to do that at the moment; it would be a bit of a tangent.
Do make sure you get this part right in the payouts tab correct though, it will make a difference to the ICM math that Wiz runs.

Now we are ready to enter a hand. Press ok to go save what we have done. If we want to go back at any time and make a change, maybe to enter a new blind level, just go into Tools > User defined tournament structures again and select the one you want to edit from the left hand side.

[titaniumbean]

You sir are putting so much work into this. 

[thetank]

Manually entering a hand.

When I am playing sitngos and a hand comes up that I might want to review later, I'll copy and paste it into a notepad file so I can run it through Wiz later.

Other times I'll be on a hand analysis forum and want to enter a hand into Wiz that someone else has posted.

There is a way to copy and paste hands directly into Wiz, but I don't use it so I'm not going to tell you about it. Currently (as far as I'm aware) it doesn't support the hand historys converted by Holdem Manager (but the Wiz people are looking to change that soon.)


The example hand.

I'm going to look at a hand I played on Tuesday in a $69+$6 45 man sitngo on FullTilt.
It's from the 800/1600 blind level and the play is 3 handed.


Quick tangent : We're already nicely in the money, we've just got to sort out who gets the bux and who gets the mad bux. The thing is we can't afford to lie back and think 'toasty life, we've cashed.'
The gaps between payouts here is much bigger than the gap on the bubble. Your play in these shorthanded spots is really important to your long term profitability in sitngos.

Full Tilt Poker Game #18720797745: $69 + $6 Sit & Go (142063269), Table 2 - 800/1600 - No Limit Hold'em - 22:47:03 ET - 2010/02/23
Seat 2: HERO (42,767)
Seat 6: VILLAIN (6,298)
Seat 8: jrock420j (18,435)
HERO posts the small blind of 800
VILLAIN posts the big blind of 1,600
The button is in seat #8
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to HERO [ ]
jrock420j folds

Most of you will recognize that this is a pretty straightforward hand. We shove.
The thing is, we think we know VILLAIN quite well, and that he is going to call us with any two cards here. We're going to put it into Wiz to check that it's still a shove.

We might also want to consider what to do with different hands in this spot, or what to do if the stack sizes are different. We're going to put it into Wiz and have a play


Putting it into Wiz.


First of all, right at the top of the main menu, select the option 'Analyze
a new game' (What we're really doing is analyzing one hand from a game)

Select from the drop down menus the tournament structure we want.
Also we want to put in the blind level we're at when this hand takes place.

Click to see full-size image.

Now we have to enter the stack sizes. Wiz always wants whoevers UTG first (when we're 3 handed the button is also UTG) and then we go round to the left.
In this case the small blind (HERO...yay) will be UTG+1 and the big blind (VILLAIN...boo) will be the UTG+2.



A few tips when entering stack sizes...

1. When you're reading the hand history. Whoever is listed below the big blind is the UTG player.
Start from there and work your way downwards till you get to the last player on the list, then start at the top of the list and work your way downwards till you've got everyone.

2. To save time when entering stack sizes, we want to avoid continually moving our hands between mouse and keyboard. After we've entered the first stack size, keep your hands on the keyboard and just press the tab key 4 times for the cursor to get to the place where you enter the next players stack.

3. Wiz knows the total amount of chips that are in play, so the last players stack will be entered for us. Checking that this matches up is a good way to double check that we've entered all our stack sizes correctly.


Hole

Now we want to tell Wiz our holecards, in the column cards next to every player there will be the word 'Pick'
Click on the one that corresponds to our stack size and the following screen comes up



Here we select from the possible 169 starting hands in holdem which one we have. J8o we want today so we click on that.

Now it will automatically change all the players who were to act before us as having folded. We can change their actions by clicking on them if we wish, and we may well look at that later. As it stands though, the only player acting before us was jrock420j and he did fold and so we're done.



Click the ok button at the bottom, and we're ready to start looking at the hand.



{the next of wiz tutorial to follow when it's ready...}

[thetank]

My list of things to do

1. Do part 2 of the first Wiz tutorial (which I think is part 3 of the whole thing)
2. Revise and update part 2 of part 2.
3. Talk about minimum edge (I don't like it much)
4. Talk about using Wiz to automatically go through your tournaments and flagging hands (not a big fan of this either)
5. more stoof I cannae mind the now
6. Go through and nit at it all from start to end correcting minor errors etc. Then when it's cooked break it all into similarly sized chunks and make a new thread where it's all there nice and neat and complete and easy to read.

Timescale - not going to tell fibs, when I can. Hopefully I'm at the '5. more stoof I cannae mind the now' stage by this time next week.


If people have feedback or questions in the meantime fire away.