Game Settings
Configure your game in PocketSolver: set starting pot, effective stack, rake, board, and solver thresholds to balance accuracy and performance
1. Introduction
When you open the setup menu, the first panel of options you’ll see is the Game Settings. These control properties of the entire game — they are not player-specific.
2. What Does Each Setting Do?
Starting Pot Required
Defines the amount in the pot at the start of the hand.
You may occasionally want to scale this value (along with the effective stack) to improve precision for fractional bet sizes. For example:
- With a pot of
2, a 25% bet and a 50% bet both round to1(since 0.5 is invalid). - With a pot of
10,000, those same bets become2,500and5,000, preserving precision.
This setting is required for the solver to function.
- Allowed Range:
1 to Infinity
Effective Stack Required
This is the smallest stack between the two players (for multiway pots, it’s the second-smallest). The effective stack limits how much can be bet — the larger stack cannot win more than the smaller one.
You should keep this value as small as practical, because larger stack sizes increase the number of possible bets, creating a larger and slower game tree that consumes more memory.
This setting is required.
- Allowed Range:
1 to Infinity
Rake Optional
Defines the percentage of the pot taken by the house at the end of the hand. It’s typically used in cash games and should not be applied to MTTs.
Setting this to 0 disables rake.
- Allowed Range:
0% to 100%
Rake Cap Optional
Specifies the maximum rake that can be taken. If the rake percentage exceeds this cap, the rake is limited to this value.
This setting only applies if Rake is enabled.
If set to 0, the rake cap is ignored.
- Allowed Range:
0 to Infinity
All-In Threshold Optional
Defines the percentage of the starting pot at which a player’s bet is automatically treated as an all-in.
This setting helps reduce tree size and limit deep action branches, slightly sacrificing accuracy for performance.
If set to 0, it’s ignored.
Mathematical definition:
bet >= effective_stack * all_in_threshold
- Allowed Range:
0% to 100% - Suggested Range:
33% to 67%
Merging Threshold Optional
Determines how close two bet sizes can be before one is removed. When two bets fall within this threshold, the smaller bet is discarded. This is useful since nearby bet sizes usually have similar EVs and strategies, allowing for a simpler, faster solve.
Mathematical definition:
(100 + larger_bet) / (100 + smaller_bet) < 1 + merging_threshold * 0.01
- Allowed Range:
0% to Infinity - Suggested Values:
5% or 10%
Max Actions Optional
Specifies how many consecutive actions can occur between players before all further bets are treated as all-ins. This setting is extremely effective at reducing tree size while maintaining high strategic accuracy — since deeper action sequences already heavily narrow each player’s range.
If set to 0, there is no limit.
- Allowed Range:
0 to Infinity - Suggested Range:
4 to 10
Target Exploitability Required
This is one of the most important settings. It defines how close your solution should be to a true GTO equilibrium.
It represents the percentage of the pot a player could lose, on average, if an opponent knew their exact strategy and played a maximally exploitative strategy (MES) against them. Please note this doesn't mean you will lose with this strategy on average, only if you are playing against a superhuman MES opponent.
For example:
If the target exploitability is 0.5% and the pot is 100, then — in the worst case — a player would lose 0.5 chips on average.
Lower values mean more accurate solves, but also significantly longer runtimes.
- Allowed Range:
0% to Infinity - Suggested Values:
0.3% or 0.5%
Board Selection Required
Selects which board you want to solve — either:
- Flop (3 cards)
- Turn (4 cards)
- River (5 cards)
This setting is required for the solver to run.
- Allowed Range:
3 to 5 Cards
3. Decreasing Tree Size Tips
- 📝 Lower SPR: Reduce the stack-to-pot ratio — smaller stacks mean fewer potential bets.
- 🧠 Simplify the Tree: Remove unlikely actions or redundant bet sizes.
- ⚙️ Raise the Merging Threshold: Combine similar bet sizes into one representative option.
- 💾 Increase the All-In Threshold: Turn large bets into all-ins to limit deep branching.
- 🔍 Limit Max Actions: Cap the number of consecutive bets to keep tree size manageable.
Need Help?
If you encounter any issues while setting up your game:
- 📧 Email: [email protected]
- 📝 Contact Form
- 📚 FAQ Section