Hi guys, I'm doing work on learning the very basics of poker as I sort of skipped it in the beginning, learned from courses, charts and other sources whilst missing the core knowledge and understanding of why some things are right or wrong.

Right now I'm trying to create my own ranges as those available on the Internet or in the courses are for some reason different from what Monker suggests.

For example here's MP open and reaction to HJ-CO-BU 3bet from Preflop Bible:


Whilst here's what Monker suggests opening (5% rake):


And this is how Monker reacts to HJ 3bet:


Based on Monker I've created a chart and it looks like this:


According to this our raise-call range is only 2% and raise-4bet is 4%.
Whilst in Preflop Bible numbers are 5.7% & 3.7% accordingly (although range from Bible is not vs HJ only, but common vs HJ-CO-BU, but still).

I do not intend to blindly follow the chart, I understand we need to adjust in game, i.e. if people 3bet rarely, we can increase our raise-fold range by adding more hands to play, if people 3bet a lot, we do not widen our range, but we call vs 3bets more.

I would appreciate an opinion on the results, I'm not quite sure if I should change Monker results and how.
For example there are a lot of hands that are super close in terms of calling vs 3bet or 4betting, like AJs:


Calling AJs is slightly better EV wise, but Monker is choosing to 4bet it, whilst

KQs is absolutely equal between calling and 4betting, but Monker is almost always 4betting:


QJs was a 100% raise-call in Bible ranges, but Monker is just always raise-folding it:

Honestly your ranges seem fine. A bit on the tighter side, but that's probably correct for microstakes.

I would consider adding hands like ATs/KTs/TT/99/Qjs to your calling range against looser players, or against a reasonable BTN 3bet. Maybe remove KTo from your RFI if you want to stay tight.

The main variable that's missing here are the bet/raise sizes. Obviously you must defend wider against a small raise, and tighter against a big raise. The size of your open determines how wide you should open. The other variable is the rake cap. 5% rake is standard across most online games, but the cap would be anywhere from 1bb-50bb depending on the stakes. That makes a big difference.

For reference, I would recommend checking out the free charts at Zenith Poker. They have solved charts against various 3bet sizes from all positions.

If I were you, I'd color code a "looser range" and a "tighter range", and use make a judgement call for hands in between.

Thank you for your reply! Calculations are based on 2.5x openraise size 2bb cap 5% rake.

I tried Zenith, but website says you need to be a student to be able to see ranges, although maybe that just means you need to register, I'll take a look.

My biggest concerns about ranges received from the calculations is that our raise - call range is just tiny, 2%, we are mostly 4betting or folding, maybe that's right, but seems a bit counter intuitive.
And also the fact that we are raise - folding 66%, whilst in Bible ranges recommend keeping it close to 50%.

Created range MP vs HJ based on Zenith:


Comparing to what I received from Monker:


Overall opening wider by 1%, but I guess that's cause they base their calcs on 2bb open, whilst I did 2.5bb.

Less opens in weak Kx suited section and 50% folding A2s, but much more opening in baby pairs and low suited connectors section.
4betting is more polar, low suited connectors go in 4bet sections, whilst a lot more calling in suited broadway section, calling ATs, KTs, KJs.

I'll try to make conclusions, gonna compare selected hands in Monker.
Most interesting and significant difference is how much we play low suited connectors, baby pairs and the biggest difference is calling of suited broadway.
Comparing EV in monker shows:
1) Calling low connectors is better than 4 betting, so we can exclude that from 4 betting range, their EV is pretty good as well, so we can raise-call the bottom suited connectors, but avoid 9T 89 combos due to collision with broadways on straighty boards.
2) Babypairs EV performance is actually pretty good comparing to other hands, so probably it makes sense to open them more, especially knowing that population 3bets less than solvers.
3) KTs KJs ATs is folded by solver, but Zenith ranges suggest calling significantly more. This one is tricky, gonna figure out hands by hand.
AJs: EV wise performs slightly better as a call, but monker is mostly 4betting it, not sure why, dunno how to figure out atm
ATs: EV of a call is not great, 4betting is slightly better, don't think this is a good candidate for a call
KJs & KTs: same as AJs tbh, EV of a call is slightly better, better than ATs btw, so we can 100% 4bet or fold ATs, but how to figure out these 3 hands: AJs KTs KJs?
Their EV is worse than low suited connectors, guess their are dominated a lot, so if we call, we are going to hit pretty good hands that would be dominated often and hard to fold post, so we are loosing money with these I guess?
So maybe it actually makes sense to 4bet or fold these hands as well due to domination factor.
I guess this pretty much proves monker based ranges are better than Zenith.
Okay, gonna keep working with monker on creating more ranges for different spots and positions.
Dunno if this is even interesting to someone, but even if I'm talking to myself it is actually helping a lot to keep thoughts organized.
If I'm wrong in any of these conclusions, I would appreciate being told! thanks

It's worth noting that while GTO will always choose the highest EV action for each combo, solvers won't necessarily. Solvers are only approximating GTO, and their EVs will have some margin of error. Since the EV's will never be exact, they would never be able to employ mixed strategies if they always chose the option that had .01 greater +EV or whatever. I'm not sure how solvers choose frequencies, but it's probably in a way that minimizes the EV of the maximally exploitative counterstrategy or something like that, rather than maximize the EV against the last iteration's strategy. However, I'm speculating here.

What are you using to create the matrix's?

Also worth noting that hands like ATo and KTo are going to perform better than low suited connectors shorter stacked and the reverse when deeper. Solved ranges prioritize these "immediate equity" holdings over low/middling SC's whereas preflop Bible and such has a tendency to feature heavily in their ranges and thus decide to flat 4b's w/ 65s etc for how they perform against the nuts. If you watch the best players they are mostly mixing opening 65s-98s but at micro rake structure we can likely pure fold. FWIW my 50z solved ranges fold these pure and ofc OR T9s pure and have similarly low flat 3b% and these were from simples abstraction techniques!

I'm using Oranges Calculator, it's the only tool I found that allows mixing colors in 1 cell.

Since this is a fully solved tree based results, future play is involved, I believe solver is not only selecting hands that are 0.1 EV better due to equity, but takes into consideration how is it being played postflop vs certain range.

As for shorter stacks, totally agree, but I'm right now focusing on 100bb depth.
I guess Bible is actually correct about SC as they show good EV vs that range.
Same goes for PPs, they also work well.

What I don't like in the Bible and I think is misleading, which is probably why I started doing this is that it recommends calling 89s, 9Ts, QJs, QTs, ATs, KJs, KQs

The EV is calculated based on all possible future outcomes in the solved tree. AFAIK solvers don't even know what equity is.

One thing I'd recommend is planning out what hands you plan to stack off with, and what hands you plan to fold to a shove.

I prefer 4bet bluffing AQo instead of suited connectors for the blocker value. But SC are ok too. I think your new range is calling quite wide. That might be ok for like HJ vs BTN, but if you suspect villain is using a linear range (pure value), you'd want to call significantly less.

By new which one are you referring to?
The one from Zenith?

How Monker can call vs 3bet 98s, 86s, if they aren't in his opening range?
(I'm referring to the images in starting post)

That's the inconvenience of Monker, it shows weighted raising on the openraise stage, but then the response showing weight of a response.
I found it weird that those hands are displayed in the response, I figured solver is opening them, but super super small % of the time, like 1%, so you can't even see it on openraise stage, but then since response to 3bet is showing weight of a response, whilst omitting weight of the raise, it is shown as raise-call 100%.