Derailing a bit, but to clarify what I meant:

My understanding of the problem is that two or more more players can sometimes increase their EV's by changing their strategies together, even if neither one could have achieved that by changing his strategy alone. This is called an "alliance".

An alliance is not collusion (as in information sharing), each player operates on his own, but can anticipate certain actions from his opponents, because it makes sense for them to do so. Like everybody checking to showdown when a short-stack is all-in at a tournament FT, because everybody gain when he is eliminated, and they maximize the chance of that happening by not forcing out each other before showdown.

You can always find a Nash equilibrium (where one player can not increase his EV by deviating alone), but the forming of alliances can lead to some players gaining by deviating from it.

So the question is: Is "GTO" well-defined for multiway pots? If it isn't, how can you claim that your algorithm can get there? And if it is, how can you approximate it well in a 6-max game, when even HU NL is nowhere near solved? Smart people with math degrees are encouraged to comment.

So you think it is not GTO, but you have not even downloaded it? They have a website and you can download the program and it will show you the entire strategy. They made it completely open.

It would be nice if you guys instead of hating on it actually look into it, understand what it does so we could actually talk about it.

How does downloading the program and running hands through it teach me how it works? And why should it be my job to check that it's actually the GTO strategy? Not hating, but would like to see some science behind it, as opposed to pseudoscience. When somebody claims "X = Y", they should prove it, not leave it to the reader to disprove it.

So, if you know the program, please tell how we can get to the strategy contained therein, because I am curious (sceptical, but curious). How should I go about to verify that it's GTO? You seem to believe that it is. Why?

I've downoaded the program. I ran some hands through it. I did not see any way for it to show me "the entire strategy"

Actually to be perfectly clear, I didn't even really download it. There is a "free trial" link and when you go there, it starts downloading the program on it's own.

RustyBrooks wins thread

Mindblowing how people can think like this. Power of marketing i guess.

You can use the scenario builder.

It provides you with a pre flop chart for its range against any possible situation, then post flop it shows all possible moves and %ages.

It's extremely complicated obviously, but the entire decision three is there and quite nicely presented.

They are not saying they are done by the way they are still calculating it and they have the bit size limitations of course.

But from a practical perspective this is the first time for me to actually see what GTO looks like. I have never seen anything where I can check what a GTO strategy looks like.

I was pretty quickly able to learn HU this way.

Im sorry clicking buttons is so hard. Maybe try again ?

I'm sorry but you are all acting like crybabies when it's right inf root of you.

Why do you keep saying stuff like this?

I'll look at the scenario builder.

I'll be interesting to hear where u think this thing is flawed. I have not been able to find much. I remeber there was one spot where my coach clearly disagreed with snowie when it reraised a TP on paired board.

I did not get the preflop-limp HU range and thought it must be exploitable, hence I opened the thread about it. But know I think i get actually why its balanced (enough).

What confuses me about snowie is that is often recommends less EV moves over higher EV moves.

Doh, because it's not exploitive?
Jesus ****ing christ... is this really so hard to understand?

^^

lol'd

We have no way of knowing whether or not it's flawed, because 1) nobody knows what the GTO strategy looks like, and 2) the program has not been tested to measure how far away from GTO is is (which can be done, even if we don't know the GTO strategy).

For starters, they could put PokerSnowie into the Annual Poker Competition to see how it performs against other bots. They probably haven't done so, because they don't think they're doing any better than other research groups, which are very far from the GTO solution to NLHE. And this would hurt their sales, especially if they were badly beaten.

Secondly, they could test PokerSnowie with algorithms like the one discussed here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...5&postcount=62 to measure how far from the true GTO strategy its approximation is.

Believing PokerSnowie has a good approximation to GTO just because you see some percentages and their marketing teting tells you it's good percentages is naive.

from what i take from the podcast, they have a limitation in the scenario builder on how many hands you can analyze (time based as i would guess). with a bit of help from the community it shouldn't be too hard to bypass this and pit it against some known bot.

edit:
thinking again ..because this just dropped into my head while typing. isn't this the way to bypass any protection mechanisms: dedicate some of your snowie time to a pool of players (virtual or not)? a bit of load balancing here and there and you get something approaching full coverage in return.

Im not going to double check this in my copy of mop but I'm very sure that chen and ankenman showed that there are no loss leaders in a gto solution of poker just how there are no loss leaders in a gto solution to any game.
Never playing a dominated strategy, that means playing one with lower ev than the alternative strategy, is simply an inherent feature of a gto solution.

sent from phone, lol auto correct

^ You are right that a Nash strategy never includes line choices with a lower EV than the alternatives when calculated against the other Nash half-strategy.

("Dominated" has an even stronger meaning though. If a choice is dominated, it means that it has lower EV than the alternatives against every possible opponents strategy.)

I don't know what exactly snowie displays as EV, maybe someone can clear this up. Is it the EV when other players are assumed to play with the snowie solution? In that case it should only ever play the highest EV option, and any exception to this indicates that snowies strategy is exploitable.

That algorithm only works for limit afaik.

The pokersnowie guys actually admit at some point that pokersnowie is not perfect. But that does not stop them from promoting their product with phrases like "perfect No-Limit Hold'em gameplay" as often as possible.

Yea I don't know either. They display EV in bb. And basically always take the choice of highest EV. If two options are the same they balance by playing both at certain %ages mostly.

But obv. it is focused on ranges and being able to exploit. It is very clear thats the purpose of snowie (and GTO of course).

However what happens is that snowie displays your bet size and 1/2 pot, pot and 2pot (or all in) and shows you the EV for every move.

It also recommends a bet size (which means it puts this hand your looking at into a certain range vs that of the other bet size)

Usually the bet size with the highest EV is the optimal bet size according to snowie, but sometimes it is not. That confuses me.

the makes also point out that snowie has some limitations which make it play wrong. they also say its not perfect and are using this method of finding GTO since they can't solve it scientifically. But this is the closest they can get to GTO.

No, they are saying it is perfect. When you read interviews and other things they admit it's not perfect. They market it as perfect.

What do we really know about them or their motives for trying to sell it now? Maybe they reached a conclusion that the program wouldn't get better playing itself over and over again and they realized they wouldn't be able to solve it better so they just try to sell it. They did put down a lot of resources into it, they need a payoff. Meanwhile the program is clumsy and far away from being a 6max solve, possibly so far off people will lose a lot of money trying to emulate the style, no matter what some "NL500 ZOOM beast" from albania or whatever have been paid to say.

I don't mean to be condescending, I'm just too skeptical to trust companies like this. They have a lot to gain and until shown otherwise, nothing to lose.

This is the first paragraph of the weaknesses of snowie page.

They have dedicated an entire site to the topic of what makes it imperfect. Yet you accuse them of claiming it is perfect.

I still have not seen anything useful in here what makes bad or exposed any weakness of it.

I am not familiar with pokersnowie, but after reading this thread, I elected to dowload their 10 days free trial. I was very very surprised by some of the advice it gave me. I am not well versed in GTO, but is this really supposed to be a fold?

lol

ps: And htf does PokerSnowie know the holecards of the other guy? Only if it went to showdown obv. But it's misleading for the decision-making process.
I guess you were just lucky there that villain didn't have TT/99/22/KK+ which would be the huge majority of his cbetting range.

[] poker is solved

Well, if villain before me opens 11% of his hands in this position (QJ+, 66+), it represents 150 combos. The range you put villain on represents 30 combos. On this flop, villain should cbet almost all his range. So I beleive that I am ahead 4/5 times. I just doubt that snap folding to a half pot cbet from the player with the initiative is optimal, but because I am not familiar with the GTO concept, I am asking