The Initial Hand Quality Pane of the Breakdown window gives you information about your starting hand. This information can be used by you to determine whether you want to stay in or fold. The information presented is different for each type of game played.

For Texas Hold'em, you get hand rank and quality for all 169 possible hand types, for 2 to 10 players. This image shows the statistics for Jack-Ten Suited.

Statics are report for each hand type based on random samples from games involving 2 to 10 players. For each hand type, you get the following:

• No Loss%: This is amount of times the hand won or tied against random hands and a random board. The example image above shows that Jack-Ten suited only wins or ties 58.9% of time in a head-to-head battle (which would be considered just better than average), while against 9 other players it wins 17.9% of time (which is a lot better than average).
• Hand Rank: The hand rank is where the particular hand ranks against the other 168 hand types, based on the no-loss percentage for that number of players. The example image shows that in a head-to-head battle Jack-Ten suited is the 46^th best hand, while against 9 other players, it is the 14^th best hand, based on the random draws.
• Hand Quality (%): Hand quality provides a normalized value for the hand. The Hand quality is calculated by taking No Loss percentage for each number of players and dividing by the average No Loss percentage for that number of players. For example, in Head-to-Head, the average No-Loss percentage is approximately 52%, while for 10 players it is approximately 11%. This score is provided to allow you to see any trends for the particular hand. In this case, the Hand Quality goes up as the number of players increases.
• Hand Quality (Category): One the Hand Quality is calculated, it is placed into one of 6 categories. The categories are only intended to allow those who don't like to crunch numbers another means to evaluate the hand trends. The 6 categories are:
• High Risk: Quality below 1.0
• Risky: Quality between 1.0 and 1.2
• O.K.: Quality between 1.2 and 1.4
• Good: Quality between 1.4 and 1.6
• Very Good: Quality between 1.6 and 1.8
• Excellent: Quality above 1.8

Now, as every player knows, there are many reasons to play or not play a hand, and the reasons change based on how many players are left at the table. As the number of players reaches 2, the Hand Quality field should be used more judiciously.

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