FAQ

FAQ

Devoted to

Frequently Asked Questions

What is this site all about?

This site is dedicated to helping you improve your Open-face Chinese Poker strategy. We are designing and introducing tools that can help you identify your leaks, and fix them. We also want to make users aware of possible cheating and "bot" using that may be going on in the OFC community. We are dedicated to spreading information, but are strongly against using our tools, or any computer assistance, during actual gameplay.

What the heck is Pineapple Open Face Chinese and why would anyone pay money to learn how to play it?

Pineapple Open Face Chinese poker is growing in popularity across America, Europe, and Russia. The game originally started as Chinese poker, evolved to Open Face Chinese poker, and now Pineapple is the most popular variant of Open Face Chinese. Players can play the game across multiple different apps and websites for free, for real money, and even for bitcoin. The game is also played at the World Series of Poker, and has its own championship hosted by TonyBet (more info here). It is a game of skill where outwitting your opponent will lead to lasting profits in the currency of points. If you can study the game and become better than your opponents, you could beat them out of real money at the poker table. We aim to provide the best training platform for the game by providing the most accurate solutions to some of the toughest situations the game has to offer. From there, it's on you to study and become a better player so that you can beat your competition.

What do I really get for my monthly subscription?

You get access to our advanced simulator, expanding library of Hand Histories, and custom rating system thorugh these 3 major tools:

  1. Hand Input - Input tough Pineapple Open-Face hands and find out which play is correct.
  2. Tactics Trainer - Take a never-ending quiz on difficult Pineapple Open-Face hands, and study the results.
  3. Player Rating and Leader Boards - See where you match up vs. the other users on the site.

Various other features that we will be offering soon include:
Early Street Solutions - currently we only offer hand analysis from 5th street on, and 5th street is backlogged for almost a year. This has to do with the added complexity in solving early street problems. To give you an idea on the level of complexity. Right now we run every possible outcome of each situation to get the answer. 8th street (we have 4 cards opponent has 2) is nearly instant, 7 takes a few seconds, 6th takes a couple minutes, and 5th takes 2-10 days. 4th would take about 360 days using the current method, so we have to rework the simulator to have a bit more intelligence than the current model. Starting Hand Solutions - Obviously the most complex aspect to the game. This should be up and running around the same time as the early street solutions, as they will be using a similar algorithm. Vs FantasyLand Solutions - We are working on a solution that will be able to calculate the value of moves vs. an opponent with a random 14 card FantasyLand hand, but we are not pursuing solutions for playing in FantasyLand as that is fairly straightforward. Tactics Trainer Seed Quizzes - Want to compete vs. your friend on our site? You can both enter the same Seed number and be given the same 10 quiz questions. Compare your scores and see who wins, while at the same time gaining experience and improving your rating.

What are you actually selling?

We are selling access to our database through our Hand Input and Tactics Trainer web apps. We designed these tools to train you in playing perfect Pineapple Open-Face Chinese. We are the first site to openly offer 100% exhaustive solutions (meaning each answer was simulated to the very end, as opposed to sampling which can be highly inaccurate but get a result much faster). While we continue to build out the site and web apps, we are offering huge discounts on the upcoming subscriptions.

Why should I want your products?

Fair question. It's about getting better at Pineapple OFC in order to beat your opponents for more points and more money. OFC EV Simulators and other strategy information, programs, and tools are already out there. Everyone is constantly improving their strategy and it's important that you keep up. Some people have even created their own simulators for personal use, and may have even been using them as "bots" to beat people out of real money. Even if they were used in a more professional manner, the players are undoubtedly strengthening their games each time they use these powerful tools. If you don't work on your game, you will start to fall behind, and find yourself playing against players that are consistently beating you, and that isn't what you want.

How is your simulator different than Play Warren?

Play Warren uses a neural net approach to reach estimated solutions to each hand question. We use an exhaustive simulation approach and simplification techniques, which means when we research "this" hand, our simulator has no knowledge about any other hand we have simulated in the past. Play Warren is not enumerating 100% of each situation, which can quickly lead to accuracy issues, and have you doubting the solution. There is nothing worse than running the same simulation twice and getting two different answers Our simulator will never do that. We always enumerate 100% of the hand, using logical shortcuts, which guarantees an extremely high degree of accuracy. So while they may be able to get a 5th street evaluation in a few seconds, we get the actual answer in a few hours. We believe having the right answer is more important than having a fast answer, especially in very close situations.

When does my subscription start?

If you have signed up for a subscription, your subscription will not start until the end of your free trial, at which point you will be notified via email.

What games do you currently support?

We are currently focused on building tools for Pineapple Open-Face Chinese. We find the game to be more fun and engaging than Traditional Open-Face Chinese. We will also be working on 3-player, 2-7 Middle, and Progressive Pineapple variants of Pineapple, but have put work on traditional OFC simulators on hold as we believe traditional OFC will die out completely over the coming months.

What if I want to input an early street hand or starting hand?

Early game solutions are complicated and will require a different approach in order to get a reliable solution. To give you an idea, a street 5 calculation (14 cards on board and 3 in your hand) takes 2-7 days, while a 6th street only takes 3-180 minutes. So if we were to use the same process for a 4th street calculation, it would take about a year on a single dedicated server. Therefore we know that we need to use a different process. We will use machine learning to automatically trim decision tree branches and make early game calculations possible with a relatively minute change in accuracy. It's going to take us a while to get there though, so please be patient. There is plenty to learn from the late game, I promise you that.

What happened to SolvingOFC.com?

That site was a great start for our product lines and taught us a lot about the limitations and capabilities of OFC simulators. After reviewing the market and the power of our current simulator, we decided to pivot our business plan, and Open Face Solutions is the result. We wanted to create a global community where people shared their love and knowledge of the game, and we thought we needed a better name to fit that model.

Why should we trust you?

Me, Derric Haynie has been a professional poker player for 10 years and has a strong reputation in the poker community. He has written a book on poker, called "Quantum Poker," and continues to participate in the community as an educator, columnist for Card Player Magazine, and a coach in the online forums and training sites. Helmuth, Our CTO and technical GENIUS, has been a software developer for the poker community for many years, and has helped conquer many of poker's greatest questions using software he designed. Maintaining a strong reputation in the community is the most important part of providing our services, and we look forward to working with you and providing excellent customer service.

I'm a nerd and wondering...how exactly does your simulator work?

Some Simulator specs:

  • - Runs on Dedicated 8-Core "Process Optimized" Servers
  • - Average of 240 Million simulations / second
  • - Always does a complete analysis - 100% exhaustive.
  • - FantasyLand Valued at 7.5 Points
Our Simulator works by finding the Game Theoretically Optimal - GTO - play at every decision point from "this" point in the hand onward. It never makes a guess or approximation of the answer using a sampling method, but instead takes an exhaustive - or fully enumerative - approach to ensure precision. In order to achieve maximum speed with the simulator we added a few proprietary shortcuts, But these shortcuts have been tested and have a very very small impact on the accuracy of our calculations (almost always under .1). And when you are playing POFC, you know that a difference that miniscule is irrelevant. For all practical purposes our answers are always right. Our simulator limitations: Value of hidden information on "this" street - even though the enumerative value of hidden information on all of the future streets does not change the underlying values of the answers, their is a little bit of value in hiding information on "this" current street. Right now we value these two plays the same: a card that is of equal value to us, but exposes a valuable card to our opponent and a card that is of equal value to us, and gives no additional value to our opponent. So, for example, if our opponent needs an Ace in the middle to make a pair of aces, hiding an ace might help us a little by getting them to make a different decision down the road. Assuming the ace changes absolutely nothing for the value of our hand, we value discarding it the same as discarding any other card that doesn't change the value of our hand, even though it is clearly better to discard the Ace. The simulator does not account for this, because according to its enumeration, the ace is already a dead card, or permanently out of the deck, regardless of whether we play it or not. In order to properly account for this we would have to create either a highly complex and slow algorithm, or a neural net, both of which take away from the current power of our simulator. And since discarding the ace is only about 0.1 points better than the alternative option, it's really not a big deal. Anyone paying attention to the hand in question should be able to logically deduce that secret bonus value of hiding the information. Early-Street Calculations - because we literally run every possible answer all the way to the end, early street calculations (which can require literally a billion trillion simulations) can take a long time under the current simulation method (like 7 days+). While we are working on a new method, specifically machine learning, or advanced branch trimming, we will be limited in our access to early street solutions. We know they are among the most important solutions out there and look forward to providing them as soon as we can.

What will you do with my e-mail address?

We have taken the proper training in usage and handling of e-mail addresses, e-mail lists, and sending newsletters. We will never give your e-mail address to a third party. We will only use it keep you updated on our products, articles, and promotions. If at any time you wish to stop recieving e-mails from us, you will have a safe and easy unsubscribe option. We strongly value your privacy, and respect the trust you place with us when giving us your e-mail address or other information. For any additional questions, comments, concerns, bugs, or issues please contact support@openfacesolutions.com We love to talk about it and are very open about our process.