# SideBar: Hand Evaluator

The Hand Evaluator panel in the SideBar provides you with immediate summary information about your hand as well as your immediate pot odds. The summary information displayed for your hand depends on whether the current action is in the preflop or postflop stage of the game. For more detailed information on hand evaluation, please see the help information on the full Hand Evaluator.

### Preflop Hand Information

For preflop decisions, your hand is described according to its preflop hand value. Your preflop hand value is determined by seeing how highly your hand is ranked out of the 169 possible distinct preflop hands. This value is displayed both in terms of the percentage of hands your hand is ranked higher than and also as its actual ranking out of the 169 hands where a rank of 1 is the best possible preflop hand ranking and a rank of 169 is the worst possible preflop hand ranking.

There are 169 preflop hands when you ignore the specific suits of your preflop hole cards and instead just look at whether your hole cards are paired or unpaired and suited or unsuited.

### Postflop Hand Information

For postflop decisions, your hand is described by three components.

#### Hand Name

The first component describing your hand is the name of the best 5-card poker hand you currently have. For, example, if you have JdTd as your hole cards and the flop is 9dJhQd then your hand would be assigned the name "a Pair of Jacks".

#### Strength

In addition to your hand name, the immediate strength of your hand will be shown. The strength of your hand is an estimate of the chances that your hand is currently better than that of all your opponents. This estimate takes into account the number of opponents you are up against. The estimate shown also takes into account opponent modelling information to bias the strength estimate based on past observations of your opponents.

#### Potential

The final piece of information presented to describe your hand is the estimated positive and negative potential of your hand. Your hand's positive potential is the percentage of situations where you have a hand that is currently behind but that ends up ahead on the next stage. Your hand's negative potential is the percentage of situations where your hand is currently ahead but will end up behind on the next stage.

### Pot Odds

Your current immediate pot odds are shown both in percentage form and odds form. When your amount to call is zero, your pot odds are displayed as "n/a". When you are out of the hand your pot odds continue to be updated despite the fact that you are out of the hand and you do not have an actual amount to call.