The Broken Line

Ever since I downloaded Hold'em Manager, I've been obsessed with the red line.  What red line am I referring to?  The gist is this -- the red line measures all-in equity and since frequent all-in situations occur in tournament poker, the line is supposed to be a more accurate representation of future earnings than your profit.

Only mine isn't.  It hasn't been for some time.  I discovered a flaw a while back where the equity was 'zero' on each tournament that ended on the first hand.  Even if I was a 99% favorite, losing resulted in the red line dropping by that particular tournament's buy-in.  After attempting to fix that, I wondered if there were other issues with the software. 

Today, I noticed a tournament where according to Hold'em Manager I lost three buy-ins worth of equity.  For those unfamiliar with the program, two buy-ins in one game is a lot.  So I decided to take a closer look.  The result?  Something is awry.  Below is a detailed account of the all-in situations with the size of the total pot, followed by my equity in that pot (the percent I am to win).

1)  246, 71%
2) 1444, 86%
3)  992, 44%
4) 1018, 40%
5) 1883, 22%
6) 2125, 70%
7) 1470, 58%
8) 2328, 65%
9) 3192, 35%
10) 3078, 61%
11) 2844, 64%
12) 2048, 27%
13) 2348, 52% (20% tie)

I didn't get it in bad enough nor often enough to justify such low equity.  The the worst spots (#5, #9, and #12) are more than offset by several other hands (notably #2, #6, #8, #10 and #11).  Honestly I'm not familiar enough with the mathematics of the program to crunch the numbers and see what my true equity should be, but it damn sure should be more than negative three buy-ins. 

So what does this all mean?  Well, I emailed Hold'em Manager in hopes of downgrading my version to one that has been shown to work correctly.  And for the near future, I won't be putting as much stock in my red line.  Instead I'll have to rely on the cashier and recently, that line is going up.