The Global EV tab

The Preflop tab gives you a direct comparison between what you did and what you should have done. The Postflop tab gives you clues about your deviations through the comparison vs Reg. The Global EV tab, on the other hand, tells you how much each hand makes you, in each situation.

The name Global EV comes from that: this tab lets you study your EV globally, hand by hand, situation by situation. It's the most powerful tab in the tracker, and the densest one conceptually.

A quick vocabulary note: the EV displayed in this Global EV tab corresponds to the CEV you already know from the Chips won tab of the Dashboard . Except that here it is displayed in bb per hand.

The classic mistake in Spin is to stay glued to the EV (chips) curve (which, as a reminder, is what your CEV is computed from): it tells you whether you win or lose over the long run, but neither where, nor why.

The real work begins by breaking down your EV situation by situation, to see precisely where you generate it, where you let it slip away, and isolate the leaks.

That's exactly what this Global EV tab does, and what the global curve will never be able to do.

To carry out this breakdown, the tab provides four complementary tools, each one deserving an in-depth explanation:

• the standard grid, what you see when you first land on the tab
• the Compare to GTO mode
• the Compare Actions mode
• the Best Action mode

We'll go through all of this in detail. Hang on.

When you first land on the Global EV tab, no mode is active. The grid directly displays your average EV in bb per hand for each combo played.

Those used to solvers will recognize the format: these tools often display the theoretical EV of each hand in a given situation. The Global EV tab displays your real average EV instead.

By real EV, we simply mean the EV you actually made at the tables.

Here is an example on the situation BTN 3-max, 20 bb+:

Reading example: from the image above, we can deduce that on average on the BTN, at 20+ bb, you win 0.61 bb every time you're dealt K8o.

You can see a gradient going from red to white to green. What does all this mean?

Each value is compared to folding

I lied a bit to keep things simple. The number in each cell is not the absolute EV of the hand. It is the EV of playing it, compared to the EV of folding it.

That makes the grid very simple to read:

• Green: you win more by playing this hand than by folding it.
• White: you would make as much EV by folding as by playing.
• Red: you would simply be better off folding this hand.

On this grid, still on BTN 20 bb+ but with a lot more hands, we start to seriously wonder whether this player has a leak with their low suited connectors and low J suited: the pattern persists despite the volume.

For now, these are only hypotheses, but they deserve to be dug into. Good news: as we'll see, the tool knows how to answer that.

The KPIs at the bottom of the grid

At the bottom of the grid, you'll find a few very important pieces of information:

• Avg EV bb/hand: your average profitability weighted by your volume across all combos. On the screenshot below with 2,211 hands, the player makes +0.61 bb/hand on BTN 20 bb+.
• CEV/hand: the translation of that average EV into net chips.
  Watch out for the trap: this is the net chip gain, blinds invested included (unlike bb/hand just above). In SB for example, if you fold 100% of the time, your CEV/hand will be -0.5 bb while your EV bb/hand will stay at 0, as we explained earlier.
• Hands: the total number of hands aggregated in the grid.

• Avg cell uncertainty and Total uncertainty: the statistical margin of error of your data, at 90% confidence. The larger the sample, the smaller the uncertainty.
  Total uncertainty is the uncertainty on the Avg EV bb/hand value at the bottom of the grid (which we just talked about).

This last KPI is very important. It directly answers the question we asked above:

How do you use it concretely? You compare the uncertainty to the value displayed in each cell.

• A cell displayed at -2 bb with ±0.75 uncertainty: the true EV is likely between -2.75 and -1.25 bb, so still negative. The signal is solid.
• A cell displayed at -0.5 bb with ±0.75 uncertainty: the true EV could very well be positive (between -1.25 and +0.25). It's too tight to conclude anything.
• A cell displayed at -1 bb with ±0.75 uncertainty: the true EV sits between -1.75 and -0.25, so negative. Serious signal, but with a margin.

Now look at the red zones we suspect of being a leak. Even if some individual cells are close to the uncertainty, the cluster of negative-EV cells in a coherent area changes everything: the probability that all these cells are simultaneously negative by chance is very low.

Where an isolated red cell could be a coincidence, a cluster almost never is.

Tip to gain volume

You can always add a neighboring stack size in the sidebar to combine hands and reduce uncertainty.

Note that uncertainty decreases with the square root of the sample: to cut it in half, you need to multiply your volume by four.

That's why the Global EV tab only really becomes usable from several thousand hands per situation onwards, and why the rare areas of the grid (low pairs, marginal combos) stay volatile for a long time.

The Estimate Range toggle

You may have noticed an Estimate Range toggle in the sidebar. It fills in the gaps in the grid: it uses your real tendencies as a base and the GTO skeleton to reconstruct a complete grid.

Very useful to enable for easier reading, but worth turning off from time to time to keep a clear view of your real data. As always with this kind of tool, keep in mind that these are estimates.

The limits of this default grid

This grid looks nice, but it's actually only indicative and won't be very useful as is.

Why? Because outside of this question:

... the grid won't give you many answers.

Let's take a concrete example. If you considerably over-fold in HU SB vs BB (which is often the case for beginner players), the HU SB vs Fish grid will show you white cells (EV = 0) for all the combos you folded.

And it's the same everywhere: nothing in this mode tells you whether you're winning "enough", "not enough", or on the contrary whether you're crushing your pool in the studied situation. You only get access to your raw data.

It's a bit like analyzing your chips won curve from the Dashboard : over the long run you know whether you win or lose, but the analysis barely goes further.

This limit is what justifies introducing the Compare to GTO mode. But before that, let's take a moment to introduce the situations covered by the Global EV tab.

Global EV is organized around 7 parent positions.

Parent situations in 3-max

• Button: every time it's your turn to open on the BTN.
• SB facing the Button: every time the BTN entered the pot and it's your turn to act in SB.
• SB facing the BB: every time the BTN folded and it's your turn to open in SB.
• BB facing the Button: every time the BTN entered and it's your turn to defend in BB, regardless of what the SB does.
• BB facing SB: every time the BTN folded, the SB acted, and it's your turn to respond in BB.

Parent situations in Heads-Up

• SB: every hand where you are in SB.
• BB: every hand where you are in BB, regardless of what the SB does (including when SB folds and you win the blind).

For example, by clicking on SB facing the Button, you can see the total EV of your hands every time the BTN entered the pot, then break it down by what they did: vs limp, vs raise, vs all-in.

This lets you analyze your EV more precisely in the SB vs BTN raise situation, for example.

In this example in SB facing a BTN open (Fish), we see that the player would apparently make more EV by folding a whole part of their suited range.

Uncertainty is still large (±1.88 bb per cell), but this cluster of negative hands is probably not a coincidence where a single isolated red cell could be. It deserves their attention.

Or maybe the action they choose isn't appropriate against recreational players? Once again, good news: we'll see a bit later how to decide.

Before diving into this mode, we need to lay down some foundations.

This section is a bit theoretical, but it's indispensable to understand what you'll read next, and to really make use of the tool.

A starting point: poker is a zero-sum game

If you play a Spin against 2 opponents at your level, you will win 0 chips per Spin over the long run.

And that's true regardless of player type: 3 fish playing each other will make 0 CEV the same way 3 regs playing each other will.

So in Spin, when you look at your CEV, you're comparing it without knowing to a reference that equals 0. Having +50 of CEV means you're exploiting your opponents at the rate of 50 chips per Spin.

Without realizing it all this time, you've always been comparing your results to an equilibrium of 0 to measure your edge.

But a situation or a hand is not worth 0 EV

Let's go further. If playing against opponents at your level gives you 0 CEV overall, this absolutely doesn't mean that all your actions in all your situations are worth 0.

It's the sum of all your actions in all your situations that adds up to 0.

This gives us two important points:

1. Each situation in poker (BTN, SB vs BB, BB vs BTN, HU SB...) is not meant to make 0 EV over the long run, even against opponents at your level. The total yes, individual situations no.
2. Each hand in a given situation isn't meant to make 0 EV either. Strong hands earn, weak hands lose.

Structural EV: your reference per situation

This introduces a key concept: structural EV.

It's the EV you're supposed to make in a given situation if you play against 2 opponents at your level.

Your total structural CEV is 0 (equilibrium = 0, as we just said). But on the BTN, your structural CEV might be +20. In SB, maybe +4. In BB, maybe -24.

So it's on the BTN that you need to dig to find your room for improvement, while the raw read would have suggested the opposite.

How do we know this structural EV? Thanks to solvers.

They have computed the theoretical EV in every situation for every combo, and let us know exactly the expected EV in each case.

The Compare to GTO mode

Now that these concepts are in place, we can talk about the Compare to GTO mode.

We could also call it:

or...

Now, concretely, what does this mode do? It no longer shows you your raw EV: it displays the gap between your EV and the expected EV in GTO.

In other words, your earnings compared to those expected in a balanced environment.

The tool calibrates the comparison by stack depth (in 2 bb brackets: 6-8 bb, 8-10 bb, ..., 20 bb+), then weights it by the volume you played at each depth.

It's an "apples to apples" comparison: your EV at 10 bb is not compared to the GTO EV at 20 bb.

Don't worry if this isn't perfectly clear, we're going to take an example with a lot of data: HU SB All-stack vs Fish, with the Compare to GTO mode enabled.

This is often the situation with the largest cumulative volume, so uncertainty drops very low and you can start reading the grid with confidence.

Reading the colors

The big difference with the default grid is that, without Compare to GTO mode, red = you lose money.

Here, red = you may be winning money (or not), but less than theory would win against GTO opponents.

Green = you may be losing money (or not), but you lose less than GTO would lose vs GTO.

Interpretation markers by level

• Small stakes: your grid should be mostly green. The pool makes a lot of mistakes, and every avoided mistake translates into a positive delta vs GTO. A white grid at small stakes is a bad signal: it means you're not exploiting anything. Again, we'll come back to special cases, read on to the end.
• High stakes: it naturally moves closer to white. The game is harder, opponents' mistakes are rarer. But to beat the rake and stay a winner, your overall average must still lean slightly toward green.

Three traps to avoid

Trap 1: don't focus on combo-by-combo values

Let's go back to our HU SB All-stack vs Fish grid. We can notice that your pocket pairs 44+ and most of your suited broadways appear in red, while the rest of the grid is rather green.

The uncertainty on each cell, ±0.33 bb, is still high, but a trend in this direction is taking shape.

If you've followed up to here, you might tell yourself:

It's tempting, because we're not winning as much as GTO would win in a balanced environment.

But be careful: we are technically "exploited" on these combos compared to theory, but that does not at all mean there is a leak.

What is actually happening?

The most likely hypothesis is that recreational players in BB won't ISO much, and more generally will stay fairly passive postflop, letting you realize your equity.

Too passive means you'll less often have to pay their ISO followed by multi-barrel or all-in ISO while you hold AA.

Conversely, you'll see flops more often with hands like J3o, J2o, T3o.

Another warning

This does not mean you should change the way you play your strong hands in this example.

It simply means you win less than theory on these combos. Maybe you're already winning the maximum possible against a fish opponent, and that's perfectly fine.

What really matters

Without diving into combo-by-combo detail (which mostly serves to understand EV dynamics and the way the pool plays), what matters is to look at whether your entire range globally makes more EV than theory.

If yes, you have an edge on this situation. Otherwise, you lose on it.

And as usual, look at the total uncertainty to make sure your read isn't noise.

Trap 2: don't isolate a child situation

The second trap is even more insidious. You'll inevitably face it as soon as you drill down into a child situation (HU BB vs SB all-in, vs SB open, vs SB limp, etc.).

Let's take an example by looking at our EV in HU BB vs SB all-in (Fish), All-stack:

Looking at this grid, you might think at first sight that this is a disaster:

But not so fast.

What's actually happening? We can hypothesize that recreational players don't open-shove enough across all stack sizes.

The consequence of this lack of OS is that your strong hands won't get paid often by an opponent who would hold a dominated hand. These kinds of strong hands therefore make less EV than theory would have, against a competent player who would have OS'd often with dominated hands.

And that's exactly what's happening. Let's now look at the child situation vs SB limp:

We make a lot of money vs fish in this situation. Why? For the opposite reason: if fish don't OS enough, it also means they limp too much.

And if they limp too much, they let you realize your equity more often than expected, so you win more than theory would win against a competent player who would have limped less.

Then what's the point of combo-by-combo and child-situation analysis?

One can legitimately wonder why drill down into combo-by-combo detail (trap 1) or into child situations (trap 2) if these reads can be misleading.

To find your own leaks, two complementary approaches:

• Look at the total EV of parent situations. That's what tells you, at your scale, where you really win and where you lose.
  Note: the Analysis tab we'll see later does exactly this synthesis on each parent situation vs Fish and vs Reg, to let you read it quickly.
• Apply critical thinking to red cells. Ask yourself if they match a pattern consistent with opponents' leaks (in which case there's probably no leak on your side, just an EV transfer), or if on the contrary they form a suspicious cluster independent of known pool dynamics, which would then deserve to be dug into.

Trap 3: variance

It's the same problem as for all tabs, but even truer here. Global EV really needs a lot of data to produce reliable signals.

Always remember to read the uncertainty at the bottom right of the grid and rely on it before drawing any conclusion.

Ignore isolated red cells. A lone red cell in the middle of green cells is almost always statistical noise. On a limited sample, the EV of an isolated combo can swing strongly due to a single big hand lost. Don't over-react.

One last point to note: on some atypical situations (multi-limps, certain 3-bets), no GTO reference exists and this mode is disabled.

So if you can't enable this mode, it's not a bug: it's that no reference exists to compare against.

Now let's get to the Compare Actions mode, another very powerful tool built around EV.

The Compare Actions mode answers a question no other tool tackles as directly:

To enable it, click the Compare Actions toggle in the sidebar. This changes the color of the cells and opens a floating panel (movable, collapsible) with two columns: Action 1 (blue) and Action 2 (orange).

You check the actions to compare in each column.

A concrete example

Let's take the 3-max SB vs BB position. We can ask: between open 2x and open 2.5x+, which sizing makes the most against Fish?

So we select 3-max SB vs BB vs Fish in the right-side panel, we check the 14 bb+ stacks to get the most data, then in the panel we set Open 2x as Action 1 and Open 2.5x+ as Action 2.

How is each cell computed?

The difference between your average EV with Action 1 and your average EV with Action 2, on this combo. Simply.

In practice, the tool takes every time you played Action 1 on this combo, averages the EV obtained, does the same for Action 2, then displays the difference.

If Action 1 made more, the delta is positive and the cell is blue. If Action 2 made more, the delta is negative and the cell is orange.

The footer at the bottom of the grid summarizes the whole thing: for example "Call makes +0.35 bb/hand more than Raise on this sample".

Reading the screenshot

On our example, the footer displays -0.41 bb/hand with the mention "Bet Big yields more EV than Bet Small". Overall, Open 2.5x+ would have been more profitable than Open 2x on this sample.

If we look at the individual cells, we find an intuitive coherence: big hands (AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, 99) and some suited broadways lean toward Bet Big (orange), while several marginal Axo and Kxo prefer Bet Small (blue).

Consistent with the idea that you extract more value with a big sizing on the top of range against a fish.

Multi-selection

You can check several actions per column. Example: "Fold + Call" in column 1, "Raise + All-in" in column 2.

This is useful to compare strategic aggregates (passive vs aggressive, for example) rather than atomic actions.

Concretely, in each column, the tool merges the checked actions into a single group and computes the average EV of the group, weighted by the volume of each action.

If on AKs you've played Call 80 times (+0.6 bb of average EV) and Fold 40 times (which equals 0 EV in bb/hand by grid convention, as seen in section 1), the average EV of the "Fold + Call" group becomes:

This group EV is then compared to that of column 2.

Which combos are displayed, and how is the total computed?

For a cell to be displayed on the grid, you must have played each compared action at least 10 times on this combo.

This is intentional to avoid drawing conclusions from two or three hands, but worth keeping in mind: rare combos or actions unusual to your style will stand out less easily.

Conversely, the footer computation (total delta and uncertainty) takes into account all combos, including those not displayed. As soon as at least one occurrence exists on each action, the data contributes to the volume-weighted average.

The traps of Compare Actions mode

The Compare Actions mode is a very powerful tool, but it has an essential intrinsic limit.

Between the two, there are four major traps to know about.

1. Selection bias

Imagine you call your KJo at 20 bb deep mostly against very aggressive fish who seem to open-shove one hand out of two, and you fold the same combo against tighter fish.

Your sample of "Call with KJo at 20 bb" is then a biased selection: it only contains contexts where the call already made sense (the opponent's range is so wide that KJo is profitable).

Compare Actions will show you "Call worked better than Fold", but it's not Call in absolute that's better, it's Call in the specific contexts you chose (against these ultra-aggressive fish).

How do you know if this bias plays a big role in your case?

If you always play the same range vs Fish without really adapting by profile, the question doesn't arise: your sample reflects your overall strategy well.

But if you adapt a lot (which is often the case), "Call worked better" is only a snapshot of your choices in specific contexts, not a truth applicable everywhere.

2. Variance

We say it in almost every chapter, but here too you must beware of the number of occurrences of the actions you're comparing.

If one of the two actions has very few hands, its average is extremely volatile and the displayed delta can be totally misleading.

Compare Actions can then display "Raise is better" when it's purely variance on the small sample.

Conversely, over 1,000 hands of Call, the average is solid.

3. The silence trap

If you've always played a single action on a combo (for example 100 times Call and 0 times Raise), Compare Actions has nothing to compare and the cell stays empty.

But this silence is not a validation of your choice: it's simply that no alternative has been tested. The absence of comparison says nothing about the quality of your decision, it just says it can't be measured.

And it's even trickier when three actions or more are possible. Imagine that in HU SB you can limp, open 2x or all-in, and that you never use 2x (only limp or all-in depending on the day).

Compare Actions might tell you that all-in is better than limp, but you will never know that open 2x was maybe by far the best option.

4. The postflop trap

Compare Actions doesn't compare theoretical strategies: it compares your real EV on each of the actions. This EV includes everything that happens after preflop: flop, turn, river.

If you play your raises very well but you play your limps poorly postflop, it will display "Raise is better than Limp". It's not a theoretical truth: it's just that you don't play limp as well.

In theory, with optimal postflop, limp could even be the most profitable option.

Keep in mind: the result of Compare Actions depends as much on your postflop style as on the preflop choice itself.

To finish, the Best Action mode extends the logic of Compare Actions to all available actions.

For each combo, the tool selects the action that made you the largest average EV, among those you played at least 10 times.

Cell display

The color of the cell corresponds to the winning action:

The number in the bottom-right of the cell displays the average EV of the best action (in bb/hand).

The higher this number, the more this action made you on average on the combo.

Example: +0.35 indicates that the winning action made you 0.35 bb/hand on average on this combo.

When the two best actions are nearly equivalent in EV (gap below 0.1 bb), the cell is split vertically into two colors to signal that neither really stands out.

A first example: HU SB 16 bb+ vs Fish

You can read the strategy at a glance on this grid:

• The top of range (pairs, suited broadways, high aces) comes out in yellow (Open 2x): these combos are the most profitable with an open.
• The bottom of range comes out mostly in green (Call/Limp), with a few blue cells (Fold at 0) when all attempted actions would have been losing. You can feel that limp is slightly better than fold on these combos, but without a big margin.

A second example: 3-max BB vs SB limp (Fish)

Now let's enable the Best Action mode on the situation 3-max BB vs SB limp (Fish), on 14 bb+ to combine volume.

What can we take away?

The top of range comes out in red (non all-in ISO), sometimes with very high EVs (5 to 7 bb/hand on big pairs and suited broadways).

The bottom of range stays in green (Call/Check).

A few gray cells appear: these are combos rarely or never played in this situation, so without enough data to decide between actions.

No cell switches to blue here: in BB facing a limp, fold isn't a legal action (you can check for zero), so the tool never proposes Fold = 0 as an alternative.

The per-cell uncertainty stays very high, even though the total uncertainty is reasonable.

At this stage, we can formulate hypotheses: your non all-in ISOs seem very profitable compared to check, suggesting that widening your ISO range a bit could pay off. For the rarely played combos (gray cells), you'll need more volume before deciding.

This lets you visually compare the best action displayed to the action you normally take in game.

Important warnings

All the traps identified for Compare Actions (selection bias, variance, silence of an absent action, personal postflop play) apply fully to Best Action mode.

Best Action mode therefore gives you two types of useful information:

• A mapping of your past: on which combos did you get the best results with which actions, across your entire history.
• Hypotheses to test: if Fold comes out winning on combos you were tempted to play, that's a lead to dig into.

If you're reading these lines, congrats: you didn't give up, and you were right not to! Global EV really is a very powerful tab for those who take the time to tame it.

So take your time. Don't necessarily try to understand everything on the first pass. Have fun using the tool, and bit by bit the analyses will become clearer and clearer to you.

To sum up: Global EV breaks down your EV hand by hand and situation by situation, through four complementary tools.

It's the richest tab in the tracker, but also the most demanding to interpret: you need to know what to read, and above all what not to conclude too quickly.

In the next chapter, we put it all together: the Analysis tab automatically consolidates your biggest leaks from the Preflop, Postflop and Global EV tabs.

It's the synthesis that tells you where to look first.