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How to study and improve How to study and improve

12-11-2017 , 09:30 AM
Hello guys,

How many hands analysis do you do per month?

How would you approach studying? I'm looking at piosolver and GTO+. How do you apply so many different frequencies these solvers give you in game?

For example AK they tell us to cbet on certain board 46% of the time. Do you usually round up to multiples of 25% or 50%? And how would you approach studying in general and apply it in game.

Would you pick a specific hand you ran into today and look at what the optimal play is like for that hand? Or do you look at certain boards and look at how we should play our entire range? Seems like a lot of information to be taking in and then applying at the tables.

Any suggestions for studying and then applying at the table?
How to study and improve Quote
12-11-2017 , 01:52 PM
Everyone has different methods of studying.
When I was relatively new, I'd try to develop the habit of looking at the 5 biggest pots I played the day before, using Equilab to see how my hand fared against the likely range I was up against. That gave me a better idea of how much hand equity or fold equity I had in the spot that I was analysing. By doing so, I gradually learned which hands were the obvious value-bets and bluffs, and which hands might have done better as calls or folds. That kind of study was very useful for learning about relative hand strength. (e.g. AA on 852r is still very strong when villain gives action. AA is much less strong on 987tt).

These days, I use Snowie for my training, and usually just play 50 hands in a warm-up session each day, then look at all the spots where it said I made an error. (It's usually just 3 or 4 errors, because a lot of hands are easy pre-flop folds). Where a spot is close, or I'm mystified by the error, I'll look at the ranges and bet-sizes recommended, and that can be quite eye-opening. e.g. I might find that I should be checking my range at a very high frequency, or alternatively it might be a spot where I should be bluffing a lot more than I would have thought. Just from repetition, I've learned general rules of thumb like "This is a good turn card for an overbet" or "I should be check-raising this flop at a super high frequency", or "KK-99 are standard check backs on this flop".
I've also made some spreadsheets to show the betting/raising/folding frequencies on various board textures, in order to spot patterns/trends. (e.g. UTG doesn't c-bet very much when OOP vs the BTN on low boards, and usually uses a small size, but the BTN can bet at a high frequency on most boards when his PFR is called by the BB.) The patterns are not always simple or clear though, as ranges are so complex (an A95r looks pretty similar to an A96r to me, but the GTO strategy might actually be quite different), and I continue to make errors.

I'm not sure of the best way to learn from solvers, as I don't use them, but I think learning how to play your range as opposed to learning to play a specific hand is the important thing. If you can get to a place where you instantly recognise "This is a much better board for my range than villain's, so I'll bet it at a high frequency", then you've gained a step on typical micro players that just think "I have top pair" or "I have a straight draw, so I'll bet it."
As for the actual frequencies, I'd just look for the ones that are most extreme, and try to make the decision that is correct most often. e.g. If the solver says to only bet a specific combo 4% of the time, then just put it into your checking range. If something is 55/45, it doesn't really matter what you do. It's very important to try and get the combos that have pure strategies (100% or 0%) correct, however. e.g. If you have TT on AT6tt, and the solver says you should always bet your set, that's what you should do. It could be a huge blunder to check that hand, whereas hands like A8 work fine as a bet or a check. I'd recommend studying some flop situations and taking notes on what are the "most obvious" value bets and most obvious bluffs. Before long, you'll develop an ability to divide your range into categories that give you reasonably simple decisions. i.e. "These are my value bets, these are my bluffs, these are my mid-strength check backs, these are my give-ups".
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12-12-2017 , 01:01 AM
Okay thanks. !
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12-12-2017 , 02:43 AM
Does pokersnowie give a GTO solution for the spots? and can we alter opponents strategy/betsizings to let snowie come up with a counter strategy?
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12-12-2017 , 04:02 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by mikesfans
Does pokersnowie give a GTO solution for the spots? and can we alter opponents strategy/betsizings to let snowie come up with a counter strategy?
It provides what it thinks is the optimal strategy against all the possible strategies it has 'trained' against. In that sense it approaches a GTO solution (poker is far too complex for a full solution), but the problem is that in "defending" against some bad strategies, it can lose (or at least lose EV) against good ones. A related problem applies to solvers like Pio. Pio can give you a near-perfect solution if you know the other player's range and strategy, but if that player doesn't play how you expect him/her to act, the 'solution' isn't exactly useful. (It makes no exploitative sense to have a balanced river shoving range of value bets and bluffs if the actual villain calls 100% instead of the 48% or whatever Pio says they should call with, for example).
Unfortunately, Snowie can't be adapted with user-generated ranges, and it also gets "confused", by strange betsizes or action sequences. (It plays "weirdly" against limps or mindonks, for example). It can only make best-guesses based on what it's seen in the past. I find it very useful for pre-flop and the early streets, but its river play is sometimes quite alien in relation to how real people play, so its suggestions for that street are less useful. What I like about it most is its speed. Its "solutions" might not be perfect/optimal, but at least they are instant. Pio/GTO+ take too much time for my purposes, but other people (with faster computers than mine) have learned a lot from grinding hundreds of study hours with them.
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12-12-2017 , 11:53 PM
Hem/poker-tracker database analysis have been what have helped me make my biggest improvements recently. You can filter by stake & position/board texture to see where the population folds vs you alot & then make both exploitative & balanced adjustments based off of the data you have. For eg. on A high boards i'm getting 45ish% folds to a cbet, hence instead of being balanced i just exploitatively cbet my worse hands small & expect it to be +ev in a vacuum, where as on J high & lower people are folding roughly 36ish% of the time hence i can either choose to play more balanced as an adjustment or play more exploitatively ott & river in that spot as appose to cbet n c/fold alot as tis burning $ from database analysis.

If you really are a beginner then no clue why you would use any solvers or want to, micro to small stake games the player pool has huge leaks in their game & therefore the gto/optimal line is to be very unbalanced & exploitative in most spots, it's for you to figure out which spots & apply the correct strategy.

p.s flopzilla is also awesome for understanding both your own & the aproximation of your opponents ranges which will help you develop your strategy postflop.
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12-13-2017 , 12:16 AM
what are the general differences from the starter to the pro versions of PokerSnowie? Shouldn't the AI play similar whether your a pro or rec player ??
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12-13-2017 , 11:55 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by BagOfChips
what are the general differences from the starter to the pro versions of PokerSnowie? Shouldn't the AI play similar whether your a pro or rec player ??
Pro Snowie has nothing to do with pro pokerplayers. It is just the name of the most expensive priceplan. With pro you for example get range advice according to the web site, which you son't get with the other plans.

If you think about it, Snowie should actually play different against beginners, since they are more prone to make misstakes. I have never used Snowie so I don't know if it does, but I would guess that it doesen't.
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12-13-2017 , 01:51 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by BagOfChips
what are the general differences from the starter to the pro versions of PokerSnowie? Shouldn't the AI play similar whether your a pro or rec player ??
It plays the same no matter what subscription you paid for. The "pro version" just supplies you with more range analysis tools and allows the import of more hand histories per month. i.e. The cheapest version can tell you which hands you made errors with, but it won't tell you how Snowie would play its entire range. In a way, the cheap version is like a teacher that marks your maths homework and gives you a bunch of crosses for your wrong answers, but doesn't tell you how to get the right answer. In short, it doesn't teach. The full version allows you to look under the hood a bit more.
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12-13-2017 , 08:22 PM
Ahhh cheers. Im considering purchasing it so i appreciate that.
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12-14-2017 , 06:33 PM
You can also take a very interesting hand and go super deep into it. Work out all the combo math by hand, find ideal bet sizing based on opponent's range and tendencies. You can examine their tendencies at great length by looking at all their hands in PT/HEM. You will learn a lot about player types by doing this and it will help you attack that particular reg in the future.
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