A guide to creating an Excel to help mix up your play and keep the enemy guessing

As a brief introduction the purpose of this article is to lay out a framework that will hopefully allow you to custom build a s/sheet to help mix-up/randomise whatever elements of your play you feel need some variation.

I will not be telling you what to build specifically just how to build it (hopefully). I'm a mac user myself so if there is demand I can try and do for libre office suite etc.

These suggestions are just that, suggestions, the tool you build shouldn't replace any information you have picked up on the table, or be followed religiously, an element of judgement is still required unless you are mathematically certain to be ahead. 

They should not replace your spidey senses either, for example if the river spells trouble or something just smells off. Sometimes prudence will save a few chips and glean some info, nothing worse than getting re-raised when you could have checked and seen if your read was good.

With all that in mind I will go through the basic tools at your disposal and some options therein. 

Within excel there are various functions to generate random numbers, RANDBETWEEN, RANDARRAY etc.  For our purposes the most simple option is randbetween, expressed as follows:- 

• =RANDBETWEEN(bottom, top).
• Example (1 to 100): =RANDBETWEEN(1, 100)
• Note: This includes both the bottom and top numbers as possibilities

So we can generate a random number, what now, next you decide what particular probability you want to use and define the number range for example if you want a 20% random trigger to play any two cards, then set 1 to 5 assign one value to play hand the other 4 mean don't play. Now that sounds a little messy yeah, especially if you have sequenced decisions like 1) Should I play 2) If 1 is yes do I limp, raise, shove 3) if raise what % of pot/how many BB etc? Agreed, messy, so how to negate? Excels got a few tools for that.

My preferred option here is conditional formatting where a decision is required. if value = X colour = green (go go go) Value = Y Amber (check check check) Value = Z Red (fold fold fold) basic cell colouring based on conditions. If an simple integer is required then just output that using the IFS function:-

=IFS(A2=1, 33, A2=2, 66, A2=3, 100)

For a range we can use the IF function as follows:-

=IF(AND(A2>=1, A2<=5), 1, 0)

This will output 1 if 1 is generated and 0 if 2-5 is generated.

Once you get the basics you can then start to stack your randomisers and introduce further if conditions to allow you to run sequenced decision sets in one click even when there are non-dependent steps. Once you start stacking them then you can start stacking rows based on different openers, rows for options on each street, if you want to get really advanced then you can copy this across 6/8/9 tabs depending on the tables you play and customise your requirements for each position based on your own ranges/criteria. Want to go even further start creating multiple versions for different stages of tournaments early play, middle stages and end game. Once you have something you are happy with you can start copying that and changing things up for different types of tournament, different aggression levels based on starting stack and level frequency etcetera.

Once you have your layout defined then you can automate the whole lot by assigning your nested statements to a button.

I know it is light on technical details but I am assuming a certain level of knowledge (I'm 51 and I can build it is my kinda thinking). If I am again over estimating LMK what you want help with regards the excel code and I will do my best to answer. I've just found it easier than flipping coins, rolling dice and assigning different segments of your watch face to decision points (it's also more random as a lot of hands get played at similar speeds ;) )