The power of Match Poker Online’s ranking system lies in recording a vast array of data about player performance in duplicated hands. This data is not only useful in benchmarking and ranking skill – we can also use it to display interesting, helpful and educational material to our players.

At every “Match Over” screen, we can show you, in real time, how you placed among the thousands of users who played the same hand as you. A major challenge in doing this, however, is that there can be a massive number of data points to display. That’s why we have chosen to display this poker information as a “Heatmap”.

The heat map shows you the results of all players – and the concentration of those who won chips (coloured green) and those who lost chips (coloured red). The yellow coloured sections show chips won or lost by the rest of the players (i.e. there are players who won/lost chips in those places, but in very low proportions).

Example of Match Poker Online's Heatmap for a given hand
The Match Poker Online™ ‘Heatmap’, shown after every hand.

In the above example, we can see that:

  1. most winning players won between +100 to +350 chips (shown by the green band);
  2. around 40% of players were in this group (starting at roughly the 40th percentile and ending at about the 80th percentile);
  3. your score is shown by the figure in a circle. You won 300 chips;
  4. this beat 74% of all players who played your hand;
  5. the 50% mark of all players (i.e. the “median” – represented by the vertical line) was around +150 chips;
  6. a lot of the players who played your hand lost chips, with most of those losing from between about 25 chips to about 275 chips, with the average loss around 150 chips;
  7. it is clear that most people are winning chips in this position, however it is also observable that a number of players are losing chips at around the -150 chips mark (and that this number is not insignificant). Further, if you lost about 150 chips, then you only beat around 20% of past players.

Some other conclusions you could draw are that:

  1. people who play this hand from your position are mostly winning a small number of chips;
  2. a significant portion of players play the hand differently and lose a small number of chips. (This point is certainly interesting, and you might want to review the hand in The Lab to see what it is about the hand that might make people play differently and go from winning slightly to losing slightly).
This kind of insight into poker strategy is made possible only with Match Poker Online’s unprecedented and revolutionary big data approach to benchmarking poker performance. Learn more about our ranking algorithm here!
Match Poker Online's Heatmap Annotated