Thank you.

Extrapolating, I imagine they can be helpful when considering bluffing the river as well.

They definitely are. They can be a huge deal on rivers, especially when overbetting.

In the preflop recommended hand charts, what's the reason for such big differences in the SB and BB 3betting ranges? I would guess the SB would 3bet more hands you don't wanna see multiway since the BB is still left to play, except in this chart the SB's range has a lot more small pocket pairs (which I've always heard have more value in multiway pots).

Amazing book.

How would the ranges Janda present in the book, fair against the ranges most people play today?

Thanks.

Most of the hands that work well as 3-bets in the BB are going to work well as 3-bets from the SB too, so the ranges shouldn't be that drastically different (at least against a button open). Keep in mind 3-betting in the SB is more expensive than 3-betting from the BB and you also risk the BB coming along.

As for pocket pairs, it depends on the opening size and the position of the open for whether or not calling, folding, or 3-betting a small PP in the SB will be best. PokerSnowie does like calling with some pocket pairs in the SB against earlier position opens (at least it did last time I checked), but again this could easily be swung by the opening bet sizing and of course 66>22 so it's hard to know exactly where to draw the line.

I'm not the best person to answer this question, but the "ranges most people play today" is going to be a lot different if you are playing NL$10, NL$100, or NL$1000. So to get better insight from others you may want to mention a certain game or stakes. I think especially at low stakes you'll see people continuation bet too much in MP vs button type situations, whereas at higher stakes players will be better at check-calling and check-raising some good (and bad) hands as well.

Great book

To follow up on the above question, what would you say could be the more optimal ranges to follow in a stake such as 10nl for example? do you have a link to something you find similar to what you would say or would u give a quick summary? rfi and more importantly flat and 3betting ranges?

also would u say following snowie's would give players a smaller winrate that they could achieve exploitative in such stake?

I've never played NL$10 (switched to NLHE from limit and just started playing higher) and honestly right now my school work: poker ratio is probably something like 15:1. So I'm not the right guy to tell you how NL$10 plays in 2016.

I will say this though:

1) Good poker is going to be good poker at pretty much any stake. Playing a table of unknowns, 95%+ decisions are going to be the same against an unknown NL$400 opponent as a NL$10 opponent, regardless of site.

2) The further your line is from theoretically correct is, the stronger your read should be.

3) Once you give me stats (say VPIP 45%, PFR 12%, and 3-bet 3%) I'm going to play the same against him regardless of whether it's NL$5000 (I don't play near this high, just making a point) or NL$10. Once you have stats, it doesn't matter what the stake is, it's just the units you're playing for.

4) I don't have a great sense of how Snowie plays against "bad" lines and how huge the rake is relative at super low limits. So, maybe if Snowie just has a slight/moderate edge at NL$2-NL$10 (from where I assume you see senseless lines from opponents pretty often, but again not the stake I play) it might not overcome the rake, or at least not by much. I really have no idea. Despite really liking PokerSnowie, for this reason if you are playing that low PokerSnowie might not be the best learning tool and you may want to stick with forums/books/videos until you're playing higher. Once you're playing a bit higher I think you'll be able to utilize Snowie more effectively.

I plo plo25, trying to get into the gto topic. Is this a good book for it?

In the first part of you CR bet size video you say that we should use an ascending bet size when the turn and river makes our range stronger. But based on the reasoning in Applications of NLHE shouldn't it mathematically be the opposite since our range is so skewed towards value hands?

I think it's probably not. I think it's going to be hard to apply NLHE concepts to Omaha concepts at that limit and this probably isn't the best introductory book for theory.

But if you're able to borrow a copy from a friend, it may be worth reading the introductory chapters of the book which explain basic theory concepts.

You consider betting big when your opponent can't be strong. This will usually happen on the turn or river when the board texture was wettish (3h7c8c) anbd the turn card didn't improve many/any hands in the opponents
flop calling range (as would be the case on a 2s turn).

Even if your range was really, really skewed towards value hands, you'd bet at a high frequency and probably still bet very big (again, assuming your opponent can't be strong) to deny your opponent the ability to realize his or her equity. For example, if you did ever find yourself with a range of 80% nuts and 20% air, you're probably just going all-in and winning what's in the pot 100% of the time. But in reality things will never be this extreme and if you find yourself with tons of good hands and very few weak hands you probably got very favorable flops/turns/rivers.

I bought your book a year ago, but just skimmed a little bit and right now I want to study it carefully. I asked this once, but I'm ******ed and I can't find my post in the thread, so I'm going to ask again (sry for that).
IIRC, you said the preflop section was wrong and we can just skip that, is that right?

Ty

Hello Janda, you say in your book that when being ip and facing a bet, raising should be done with a ratio of 2 bluffs for every 1 value bet. However in your hand examples you don't follow that rule. Still haven't read the whole book so I don't know why this happens. For example in A 8 7 board you value raise: A8s, 87s, 88, 77, T 9 , 6 5 and J 9 , while for bluff: 97s, 76s, 75s, JTs, 54s, 86s and 6 6x.

For total: 14 Values, 21 Bluffs . In other hands the ratio might be closer to 1:1. Being a little confused right here. I am doing hand analysis lately and I am trying to get 2:1 on flop in general. Am I missing something?

I think the ranges turned out poorly so yeah, I would skip it. There's still useful stuff you can take from the section but I'm not sure it's a better use of your time than other books/videos/etc.

The ratios come from a model. In reality it's not always useful to classify hands as a "bluff raise" or "value raise," since hands won't have 100% or 0% equity and you won't always know when you do have the best hand on the river.

Don't worry about hitting any sort of specific ratio. What you should take from the models/hand examples/etc is "It's ok to bluff a LOT on the flop, a fair amount on the turn, and you can't bluff too often on the river." So, if you find yourself raising 9 set combos, 2 flush draws, and 6 gutshots (it sounds silly typing this now, but this used to be very common) then your opponent can almost certainly exploit you by folding even very very strong hands.

Also note the bluffing: value raising ratio will change greatly based on stack depth. So if you are playing in a tournament and only 30BB deep, you cannot "bluff-raise" as many hands.

Nice. Thanks

Hello Janda, I am analyzing lately different scenarios where I am in the BTN flatting a CU open. I am using the range from your book, having modified it a little. The problem is however that PokerSnowie uses a much tighter range for flatting raises PreFlop in general. So does that mean that the range I am using is too loose? Is PokerSnowie correct? Or it plays too tight? Is it because it fears squeezes?

My range for that scenario is 162 combos to call while the one in the book is 170 combos. PokerSnowie calls too tight compared to the above...

What should I do? Also what's your opinion about PokerSnowie? I want to purchase a software to learn Theory but the ones like PioSolver, GTORangeBuilder are too expensive. So I am thinking of buying Snowie but the Starter plan of it for now. Is it worth? Would you recommend it for learning theory optimal strategies?

Neither one is right.

Against weaker opponents you can call a lot in position. Against strong opponents you likely cannot as you get squeezed too much.

It's probably a pretty common occurrence that the GTO line will be to fold a pretty good hand in position but a very strong player would tell you "that's insane to fold there as calling is clearly +EV."

I haven't explored PioSolver or GTORangeBuilder almost at all (not much time for poker atm), but one of those two programs will likely be the next piece of software I start working with. It's hard to say what software is best for you when I don't know much about your game and skill level and realistically different software/learning tools probably appeals to different people.

The problem is that I can't afford buying a program like GTORangeBuilder or PioSolver. If I had the money I would choose one of these but I cannot do that atm. Also I cannot wait until I'll be able to have the money for those. So I thought that it might be good to purchase the cheap version of Snowie since I really want to analyze hands from a theoretical prespective. But I am not very sure if Snowie is that good as their developers claim, that's why I am asking you. But you said that you haven't explored PioSolver and GTORangeBuilder almost at all so you might haven't done for Snowie as well. Don't know what to do

I've explored Snowie a lot (wouldn't shock me if I've spent 100 hours or so total with it, which IMO is a lot) and I like it a lot. But, it's not perfect and I've been pretty vocal about how some of the claims Snowie has made have been over the top and/or outright misleading. Unreasonable claims aside, I still think it's a really cool program I've learned a lot from. I also like how easy it is to use, but that may be more important to me than to others who have more time.

I would imagine both PokerSnowie and PioSolver are going to be programs that are best suited for players who are already quite good. The same with something like CardRunners EV. But I could be wrong about this and I'm sure everyone's opinion is different. If you want PioSolver, then I would just wait until you grind up the $250-$500 to buy it. If you're struggling to grind that much money, then no offense but I would imagine a solver will be quite difficult for you to fully utilize and benefit from and probably shouldn't be what you first rely on to improve you game anyways.

Hope that helps and best of luck on whatever you decide. Also, I imagine you have already, but perhaps you can look to find trials and see which one works best for you (I just checked and PioSOLVER has a free version).

I'll try Snowie then. Thanks

Hello Janda, it's me again You often speak in your book about Range comparison of both players postflop and that we should take that into consideration. My question is how do you apply this? (I am a little confused) I give an example:

CU opens. BTN calls. FLOP: A Q J

CU Preflop Range:

-22+,A2s+,K7s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T8s+,97s+,86s+,75s+,64s+,5 4s,ATo+,KTo+,QTo+,JTo (334 combos)

BTN Preflop Range:

-TT-22,AJs-A8s,KTs+,QTs+,J9s+,T8s+,97s+,86s+,76s,65s,54s,AQo-AJo,KQo (170 combos)

CU: 2Pair+ 19.3% 52 Combos
BTN: 2Pair+ 15.2% 22 Combos

So at first I thought that a quick shortcut would be to count quickly how many combos each player very strong hands has on the flop. However in the above example CU has more than double, strong combos than BTN and the percentages don't have that huge difference so that shortcut might be incorrect. Another sollution could be to memorize how many combos, ranges have preflop and then do a rough quick approximation on the flop for how many combos get removed from each range. And after that do another approximation of what percentage of very strong hands each range has. But I don't think this can be done at the tables. Unless each player has 5 minutes to act Or perhaps it can be done if you practice that a lot... don't know.

I made that question because you say in a part of your book that good OOP play requires to have a good understanding of each player's range and who's got the range advantage. Perhaps I may seem perfectionist here about this one... In the above example I defended less than 57% vs a 75% PSB letting my opponent profitably bet any 2. In order to defend more I had to call with hands like 99, 88 which I don't think it's profitable and this flop hits very hard CU range giving him 9 combos of sets while us none. Also I didn't raise 2pairs since he has a lot of strong hands and KT 16 combos (not sure if this strategy it's correct). So this flop greatly favours CU. Anyway about my question, how do you think we should compare players ranges on the flop? Can this be done at the tables or is it learned mostly while studying and at the tables you just do it intuitively?

I think most will agree that range comparisons come through study away from the table. As you progress it will become more and more of an intuition. Also think of the 57% as an average to aim for across all possible scenarios - each scenario will vary and is a function of flop texture, whether you are IP or OOP etc. Don't sweat if you can't find justify enough hands for a particular example, the important idea is to think through the process and try to come up with a balanced defending range. For example KTs (4 combos) might be part of your value raising range...can you find 8 bluff combos to go with it ?

A few things:

1) That button calling range is probably too weak in theory but likely good against a lot of players, especially when the blinds don't squeeze aggressively.

2) If you find you are constantly folding that much to a 0.75 PSB on the flop (IN POSITION... NOT BB VS BTN), it means you're not defending aggressively enough and/or you have too weak of a pre-flop calling range.

3) In general, if you are raising a very polarized range, you want to have some sense of how many "value combos" and "bluff combos" you have. As your raising range gets less polarized, things get more complicated.

4) You mostly just get really fast in assessing how strong each player's range is. So here, since button has no straight combos (or 4 combos if they call KTs), it might be hard for the button to raise much and CO can probably CB more aggressively. But on a AJT board, if you think button calls with KQo combos, then that board probably hits the button very hard and you should expect to be raised a lot. Raising AJ on the flop may also be reasonable if the CO is continuation betting too aggressively and/or won't ever 3-bet bluff the flop (and most won't).

So long story short, it's hard to compare ranges especially at first, since you have to look at the overall equity of each range as well as how equity is distributed. You're right that having the nuts (or very close to it) is a big deal and a range that is "capped" will often be in a lot of trouble, especially on the flop.

Hope that helps a bit as unfortunately this isn't something that can fully be addressed in a few paragraphs.