PokerOrg tracked down Octopi Poker’s CEO Victoria Livschitz at the WSOP to get the lowdown on the recent upgrades to the innovative training site, and how it can benefit and entertain both players and fans of the game.
One of the biggest, and most interesting new developments is the opening up of the previously-paywalled feature, The Vault. We asked Livschitz about this, and how Octopi Poker can be used to break down high level play into useful, meaningful info for players and fans.
'That’s never really been done before'
The Octopi Poker website has a new look and some new features. Can you share a few of the main changes?
Of course. This is one of the biggest releases in the company's history. Until last week, we had a feature called The Vault, which was always behind a paywall.
Essentially, whenever there is a streamed final table, we have technology to get the hands from those final tables into our system.
How does Octopi use this information?
We run numerous sims through our solver. Then, we create tools that make reviewing the final tables a lot of fun.
If you visit OctopiPoker.ai, you'll see a menu item called The Vault. It's somewhat akin to the Hendon Mob for elite players.
In The Vault, you can find information about recent final tables, who won them, and a lot of interesting and cool statistics about what happened at those final tables.
In addition to her role at Octopi Poker, Livschitz is a keen player.What kind of statistics?
We are building statistics similar to other sports, but for poker. That’s never really been done before.
We keep track not only of all the elite players but also share how much money they’ve won, what the biggest pots are they’ve played, and what their biggest scores are.
We also keep track of things like the average place in terms of chip stacks when they come to the final table and what their actual place is when they finish; how often they are a chip leader; or how often they bustout other people.
You can track each player's performance at a final table in various ways, such as this 'stack map'.
'We can see how luck contributes to winnings'
Can you track luck?
Yes! We can measure and quantify some aspects of luck in poker. Luck factors I think are everyone’s favorite. Poker is a game of skill with variance, and perhaps for the first time, we can see how luck contributes to winnings.
One factor we track is the distribution of premium hands such as aces, kings, queens, and ace-king. Some people seem to receive them twice as often as others, while others never seem to get them.
We also track the data on the all-ins. On average, players are supposed to get it 50/50, right? However, some people manage to secure it with 65% equity, while others get it all in bad most of the time. Then we track the outcome of those hands.
With this information, you will begin to see the difference between the equity a player had when they went all-in and how well it played out for them. Some people run far above expectations, and there's some people who run way below.
Also, not all spots are created equal. It's okay to run really poorly in small spots and run really well in the biggest spots, isn’t it? We definitely see that because we keep track of what was a player’s equity in real dollars across these final tables and what were the results.
What we are seeing are players running millions of dollars above their expectation when they're on the good side of the variance or millions below if they're on the bad side.
That sounds like it could be very intriguing.
We definitely think so, and the community seems to agree. It’s great poker entertainment for fans and players. You can follow your favorite players and figure out how they're doing.
One of the coolest things is our comparison feature. You can actually see how players fared against each other. You could see Kristen Foxen versus Alex Foxen and discover who is running better and how many times they've busted each other.
It's easy to make at-a-glance comparisons between any two players at a final table.This is why we’ve decided to open The Vault to everyone. We're also looking forward to using that to enhance the information we are given from our stream providers.
Every sport you watch usually provides you with endless fun statistics, such as who is the best and most consistent free-throw shooter in the NBA, or who holds the record for the most three-pointers in the history of the sport. Poker has never had anything like that. Octopi is hopefully enabling that to happen, and we're just getting started.
We've recently been working with Octopi Poker on strategy deep dives using that final table data, such as Joao Vieira’s win of $4.6M at a $150K Triton event.
We’ve enjoyed partnering with you to create this educational content using data and analysis from Octopi Poker to explain 'the hero’s journey', if you will, and look forward to continuing to share this amazing content with you all.
Our incredible system allows us to gain insights into these final tables. We can share exactly how some crucial hands played out. However, we can also recognize when players played a hand well or poorly, when they made mistakes, and when they made brilliant moves.
Visit Octopi Poker here. Follow Octopi Poker on X. Follow Victoria on X.
