Flop Falcon 101 (The Official Quick-Start Guide)

Today I’m excited to introduce you to Flop Falcon. Flop Falcon is a new piece of software. If you’ve never used it before I want to simply show it to you; show you what it is, how it’s useful, and let you see if this is something that you can see yourself using in your own off-table study and workflow. So without further ado, let’s start walking through the software!

Flop Falcon is a PC-only software that allows you to get extremely granular when it comes to flop exploration. I want to run you through the UI first, so you can get a general feel for what’s going on here.

On the left side of this half, we have our range and our hits: we’ll talk about what hits are in a moment. On the right, we have their range and their hits. On the far, far right, we have the board selectors, so we can either look at general flops or very, very specific flops by digging in here. Over in the middle is where we have really important stuff: This is going to be the matrix that we can really dive into and start getting very, very granular when it comes to our analysis.

Let’s just say that we’re going to start with a very, very simple example. This is how I would set up our problem in Flop Falcon and look to start finding the solution.

Say that I have my range over here on the left. By the way, it’s very simple to select hands very quickly, just pop in the matrix and click around. Everything that’s red is yours. You also have quick selectors too, so if you right click here, you get other options. If you want to quickly add any pair, any ace, or any two broadway cards, it makes life very, very simple when trying to select hands and/or ranges. Yes, you can do individual hands here if you want, but for the moment I’m just going to do this as our range. This is our opponent’s range, and we’re going to do some general exploration.

As always, start by selecting hands and/or ranges. Next, you want to start by selecting hits. We’re going to do a full video in the future all about what a hit or miss is and how to generalize strategy around that, but for the time being we’re just going to do very broad strokes here. Essentially, with hits I’m going to be selecting all the hand strengths and hand categories that I think are strong enough to continue with on the flop.

For this moment, obviously, this is a very set mine-y range. I’m obviously going to include the super-strong stuff: quads, full houses and trips. I’m going to include overpairs because if I have TT on a low board, I’m obviously going to be continuing a large chunk of the time. The rest of the stuff doesn’t really apply to me. If I catch a flush-draw, I’m probably not going to continue a ton of the time. It’s probably going to be a pretty weak flush-draw, but straight draws will almost certainly continue for at least one. I’ll also add some basic stuff like underpairs.

You notice that with these kinds of hands, in general there’s actually a lot of different ways to make two pair. You can have two pairs with yours as the overpair. You can have it where you have this middle-ish thing. I’m going to select a lot of two pairs. The chances are, I’m going to be continuing for at least one card when I have two pair. That’s just typically how I tend to float and peel off on flops.

These are my hits over on the left. Next I want to select how my opponent hits their hand. So thinking about the kind of hands that they are going to continue with if they hit the flop, what are they not going to be folding with?

A lot of the time I think this is probably pretty fair. Top pair, better? Yes. Flush draws, straight draws? Yes. I believe that gut shots as a hand category are coming soon, I just don’t think they’re out right this moment. Do I think there’s anything else I’m going to continue with? Well, probably 1.5 pair. What this means is, say someone has KK on an Ace high board, that is 1.5th pair. It’s not 2^nd pair, but it’s definitely 1^st pair, so it’s 1.5th.

I think that’s probably pretty fair – a middle pair – because based upon the way they would catch middle pair I think that’s pretty strong, so that’s what I’m going to consider them hitting with in this scenario.

Again, step 1, select your range and their range. Step 2, select the hits both for you and for them. Step 3 is to actually start analyzing things. For this, I’m just going to do a general 100%. This means it’s going to look at all flops. Down here, I’m just going to click a thousand more flops. I’m going to do that real quick. I’m going to do it one more time as well because I like to add as many flops as possible. When I’m actually doing this in my off-table exploration, I tend to use at least two or three thousand flops, but this will work for the time being. And because we’re looking at all flops, everything meets that criteria.

So this right here, just don’t be confused. This is not mean that we’re only analyzing a 964 board. This is just a proofer to make sure that the flop is actually meeting the criteria that you were looking at. Obviously, with a 100% flop, this will meet any sort of flop criteria. You’ll see what I mean in a moment when we do something more precise.

Down below, what the heck are we looking at here? You may be looking at this matrix and saying this is incredibly confusing. Well, at first, this may seem confusing, but I assure you, it’s not too bad.

You notice here what this means is that 41% of the time, we both hit. Remember, a hit just means that we have one of these and they have one of these at the same time, so that’s how often we’re both hitting. 20% of the time only they hit, 20% of the time only we hit. 11% of the time, we’re both missing. Here is just everything added up for us to be nice and easy.

So what are we really seeing here? Well, one of the big things when you are set mining, or you’re going to be playing a suited connector, or you’re going to be playing some hand that has a lot of implied odds or you’re hoping has a lot of implied odds, this is one of the first places you want to be looking. Where are we both hitting? And when we both hit, are we doing really, really well or not really, really well?

Because we selected a lot of these dumpy two pairs – well, obviously, because when they catch two pairs, it’s going to be pretty darn strong and stronger than us – you notice that we only have 30% equity. That’s what we’re seeing here – how often, when we both hit, what does that look like? What is the average for that, or average equity, when we both hit based upon the qualifiers we chose? We are going to have 30% equity and they’re going to have the other 70% and there we are.

This shows you the general breakdown. You notice a large chunk of the time we’re going to have very, very low equity. Some chunk of the time, we’re going to have a lot of equity, but it’s not happening all that often. So this is a scale, along the bottom of this histogram, from zero to 100%

This is important. This red line just gives us the average.

You notice what we both missed, 66%. That makes a lot of sense based upon the qualifiers that we gave them for “hitting”. When they don’t hit, they most likely have something like Ace-high. Obviously, our pair is going to beat Ace-high and we’re going to have decent equity against that, which is why we have so much equity when we both miss. This is a bare, broad strokes look at what Flop Falcon can do you.

Now, over the next bunch of weeks, we’re going to talk about how to use this from a strategic point of view. So, right now, we’re just doing a bare-bones, this-is-how-to-use-the-software. In the future, we’re going to look at how do we use Flop Falcon to answer questions like should we be set lining in this situation? Should we play a suited connector here? Should we call with Ax suited? Should we 3bet preflop with AQ? How should we bluff c-betting? All those kinds of questions, we can answer very, very easily, but it’s one of those where I need to show you what the software looks like and how it operates before we can jump into the really technical stuff and answer things in a very strategic way.

Again, this is the bare, broad strokes look at it. I also want to show you the flop selectors. So we can go over here and we can select different kinds of flops. These are just the bare bones, basic ones. Notice we have paired and suited, we have trips, we have dynamic flops, we have monotone flops. We can also look specifically at paired ones made a bunch of different ways. We can look at straighty kind of boards, and we can also do fully custom selections. Let’s just say we wanted to do a basic first, so I can explain something to you.

Let’s say we want to look only at monotone boards. We select monotone, do a thousand more flops. Give it a moment. Excellent. We’re going to click it one more time. I know it takes a little moment, but what are we going to do with three or four seconds? Just going to wait and let it chuck up. Excellent.

A couple of things I would like to know here. First and foremost, we notice 5% of all flops are actually going to be monotone. A lot of people don’t know that and this is something very good to know. Again, this is something bare bones and basic that Flop Falcon can teach you. Even though it’s definitely not the main thing you’re supposed to be getting from the software, it’s just another nice, added bonus to get this kind of information.

Again, we’re not looking specifically at A53 of hearts. In fact, this is just a proofer. We’re just making sure that the actual flop is meeting the criteria that you set. So this is really good, especially when you’re doing fully custom stuff to make sure that everything is doing what you want it to do.

In this situation again, when the flop is monotone, it tells us exactly. Based upon both hitting, we’re doing that 46% of the time, and on average, we’re going to have 30% equity when that happens. When only they hit, that’s going to happen 37% of the time. On average, we’re going to have lower equity because we’re not hitting at all and we’re going to have 22%. When we both miss, you notice that we’re actually doing very, very well at roughly 75% equity.

This is how you break it down this way. Maybe you’re looking over here and you notice all these bar chart kind of things. Doug Hull, the guy who created this, is extremely nerdy, but also extremely talented when it comes to visualization. There’s a lot of stuff happening all at once. You notice that there’s two general numbers here.

If we look at, say, trips, there’s a 15% on top of it and a 27% underneath it. You notice that that’s all over the place. What this means is the number on top is showing you how often this range in general is going to catch trips. The 27% says of the times that they hit, what density of hits is going to be trips?

Overall, this is going to catch trips 15% of the time. If we’re only looking at hits, trips make up 27% of that density, which is very important information. This is the general. You can also go into custom and you can do very refined things.

Say you only wanted to explore flops that were Ace or King high and you wanted to look at them that were unpaired for sure. We’re going to untick paired. So we’re going to do that, do a thousand more flops. We’re going to keep our eye over here just to make sure that’s meeting our criteria. Again, this is our proofer right here. Good. Everyone notice how often flops come Ace or King high, which is very, very important for us to know if we’re trying to do general, how often are dry boards going to happen?

So we could say, “Okay, maybe instead of it coming Ace or King high with a Queen or a Jack,” we could say, “Okay, let’s just remove those cards.” Then we’ll do a thousand more flops and get really, really granular.

You notice that the number drops down a little bit. If you want to get really precise, you might click this a couple of times. Again, that’s typically why I click a thousand more flops two or three times, just so it kind of weeds through this. It gets me a little bit more precise. The bigger the sample, the more precision you’re going to have. Good.

You notice that the flop proofer is doing exactly what it needs to do. Let’s just see. Okay, we did pick the right kind of board that we’re looking to explore. Then we get to see exactly how our range compares versus their range in a hit versus hit way on this exact kind of texture.

Again, over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to look at Flop Falcon to answer some of the kind of questions that lots of players have. Again, should set off a lot of preflop questions, but we’ll also look at some postflop things. You may be wondering why the heck we’re using flop software to analyze preflop. Well, a lot of that is because when we can understand how certain hands connect on the flop, we can actually change our preflop range in a more profitable way, not in a results-oriented way because the flop came exactly like this, now all of a sudden we can do something preflop. No. It’s actually saying, “Okay, this is a situation where I know that my kind of hand is going to connect this way, so could I add more of those hands? Or is my opponent missing so often that I can add certain hands into my preflop range instead?”

This is the kind of off-table exploration that allows you to become very, very technical. Trust me, that’s going to be a huge benefit to you in the long run.

That’s going to wrap it up for this video. Hopefully this gives you a really good idea on what Flop Falcon is used for and how to use the software overall. If you’re interested in picking up your own copy, you can do so at redchippoker.com/flopfalcon.

Hopefully you enjoyed this quick start guide and enjoy the software whenever you start playing with it yourself. It’s pretty awesome!