Honestly I'm a bit confused by this, but if it makes sense to you and you think you're on the right page then I wouldn't worry too much.

There's often a minimum amount you need to defend before an opponent can profitably raise any two cards.

For example, if you bet $5 into a $15 pot on the flop and villain raises to $15, you need to defend at least 50% of the time here or else your opponent is making an immediate profit on his raise. That can't make sense here, since if villain can profitably raise any two cards he'll never fold.

So, we know we need to defend at least 50% of the time vs villains raise, but we'll also need to defend more than this because if we defend by calling our opponent will have a chance to get lucky on the turn or river with his flop "bluffs raises." Exactly how much more than 50% we'll need to defend no one knows and it will depend on multiple variables, but probably substantially more than 50%.

The same concept applies pre-flop. You have to defend a LOTTTTTTTTTT more than just enough to prevent your opponent from being able to profitably 3-bet with any two cards since every hand pre-flop (even the weakest of "3-bet bluffs") has a ton of equity. So my guess is one of the numbers you're referring to is the minimum defense frequency vs 3-bets (the amount you'd defend if you only 3-bet or folded) whereas the other larger % is how much I recommended defending at the time if you often defended by calling.

If your range is pure nuts (100% equity) and pure air (0% equity) then no it wouldn't change.

As you move away from the model and "value bets" have less than 100% equity and "bluffs" have more than 0% equity things will get much messier and trickier.

I like a lot of things about Snowie. I think Snowie is very good at finding highly +EV but high variance lines that are underused because poker players are human and they don't like taking a risky, difficult +++EV line when an EZ PZ +EV line exist. I also think it's works quite well as a leak finder and if it says you made a "blunder" you likely (but not always) did. Software is also very easy to use and you realistically probably don't have 6 hours to analyze 1 hand and Snowie just gives you input super fast.

I assume Snowie is talking out if its robot ass when it gives mixed stats. I imagine when it says "raise 92%, call 8%" it just thinks the EV is close and is guessing, and it never recommends a mixed strat of call/raise/fold which I also imagine happens reasonably often. I also have noticed it uses thresholds pretty ineffectively in spots. Like if I call a 22BB bet on the turn with some pair it will say "Whoa, huge blunder calling their" but if I call a 22BB bet it'll say "Nice job, call is standard" and it will give EV values that can't realistically make any sense for a 1BB difference. As for features specifically, I don't know all of Snowies features but I mainly just care about it's EV estimation for different lines and bet sizes.

Thank you for your clear and detailed reply

Oh.. I did not know robots sometimes talk out of their ass, but now I do

Thanks for the reply, it's taking a long time to get through this book.

Did you mean 22 bb vs 21 bb?

22 bb vs 22 bb is what is posted

Yes exactly, thank you

Is there value on trainning by simply playing Snowie?

If so how many opponents should be in the train game?

.. HU, 2,3,4,5,6 7,8?

Hi Matt!

i am a 180man grinder who wants to make a transition to cash games. Ive just finished your book and i really enjoyed it. I am currently reading this thread (page 15 atm, so long way to go ) but i already have a couple of questions. Hope you can answer them.

1. on page 3 you give a 3bet range for sb vs b and bb vs sb. but these images cant be seen anymore. could you upload them again?

2. with the somewhat recent gto solvers (like piosolver) coming out. do they confirm most of your findings? Like value:bluff ratio on flop/turn/river. defending freq vs a bet IP, etc.

3. do these solvers make your book now somewhat obsolete?

Thanks in advance.

Leia.

another question:

on page 42 you calculate maximum 3bet ranges. to get the value part you seem to multiply the max3bet range with 0.40. Which probably comes from the fact that we need to defend 40-46% of our 3bet range. But i wonder, why did you use 40%..instead of say 43%.

On page 61 the formula for were the button will be called 21.7 percent of the time doesn't seem correct.

The book says

(0.08 * 0.86) + (0.2 * 0.74) = 21.7%

But i think what you mean is:

(0.08 * 0.86) + (0.2 * 0.76) = 22.08%

The 0.76 is made up of 1-(SB calling% + SB 3-bet%) which is 8%+16%=24% hence the 76%.. i'm guessing if a mistake is made it's that the SB has still been given a 10% calling range in your example instead of 8%. Not sure and maybe i'm in over my head.

Is this correct or am I missing something?

Hi guys,

I'm kind of a newbie in this world. Been playing for a year, and I've already read The theory of poker, No limit holdem theory and practice and Tournament poker for advanced players.

Now I've been recommended to read Dynamic full ring poker as next step. Should I read that or it is more profitable to just go ahead with this one in this thread?

anything will help, thanks, I'm kind of lost

I like it but I tend to think there's a mix of value from using videos/books/solvers/Snowie/posting HH/discussing HH/etc.

I've used it for HU, 2 opponents, and 5 opponents mostly and thought all three game types were productive. I also like using it for short stack situations.

I think you need a decent understanding of poker before Snowie will be useful, but not as much as you need for solvers (my opinion on this may change come December when I hopefully have the time to start using solvers).

Not at home with the book right now, but you're likely correct. I wouldn't worry about a 0.4% change anyways and for pre-flop I'd recommend Snowie or more modern hand charts than what I recommended. The pre-flop section is the one section that I think unfortunately aged really poorly, whereas more material in the 2nd half of the book (especially regards to bet sizing) aged very well.

1. I'm not home at the moment but i'll send this to you relatively soon, at least by the end of this weekend (I got your PM).

2. This is actually really hard to answer, especially since I haven't gotten to play with solvers much. Most of what I've been shown from solvers uses very mixed strats and can be hard to interpret. The book is more emphasizing models and understanding whereas solvers emphasize very very complicated solutions to pretty complicated toy games.

If I can change your question to "Do you think after reading this book you can get close to playing GTO" I'd say "Absolutely not."

3. Not at all. I suck at chess and don't like chess. But if I wanted to learn chess I'd learn it from a book/friend/video etc that explains how to play chess clearly. I don't think I"d learn all that much from a perfect playing chess bot, at least not at first.

An already expert chess player would probably learn a ton from the solver though. It depends where you are in your learning and how you like to learn for what will work better from you. I'm glad you enjoyed the book so now maybe your next step is using Snowie or a solver if you think you'll be able to interpret why the software is doing what it's doing and apply it to other situations.

Probably just a rounding thing.

I'd recommend checking out Snowie's PF ranges.

Wow! Thank you.

A rounding error seems weird to me. we need to defend 40 or 46% of our range depending on which player raises us. So, to me, 43% makes the most sense to use..but i was just wondering why you chose the 40%.

I will check out snowie's PF ranges. Thanks for the tip. And will wait for your PM regarding the ranges of the blinds. Thanks for that as well

Cheers.

Hi Matt,

Can you send me the range also ?

Thanks.

Hi Matt,

Got a question about the cbet turn % of Sample hand 8.

This is the situation of a CO opener and a B caller. On the turn your ranges advice the CO opener a turn cbet of 52.9%.

I must be missing something. Because in the chapter on value:bluff ratios on the flop. You write that we need to have a roughly 1:2 value to bluff ratio on the flop. And then bet the turn with a freq of 70%. And then the river also 70%. where 70% of our bets are value nets.

So is the 52.9% turn cbet not too low? Dont we need to bet more?

Hope you can shed some light on this

Thanks in advance!

got another question:

on page 311 you mention jamming the turn in a 3bet pot with a balanced range. i am trying to construct such a turn jam range for this spot.

we jam 75bb into a 50bb pot. This means that villain needs to win 37.5%. Does this mean that 62.5% of our jamming range should be for value and 37.5% should be bluffs? But thats only when our bluffs have zero equity. Which is not the case. So i would assume we can have a higher value:bluff ratio on this turn jam. But how do you calculate this?

i have tried a method you used in the book (on page 114). But then i get an even higher value bet %.

Assume our value bets have 0.8 equity and our bluffs 25%

0.8 * x + (1-x) * 0.25= 0.625 -> X = 68%

So i am probably making a mistake somewhere.

If you have a perfectly polarized range (0% or 100% equity), then villain will never bet once you check and once you check you'll always lose (as you would have bet all your good hands).

In reality after betting on the flop and being called, your hands don't have 0% or 100% equity on the turn. Because of this your opponent will sometimes bet and you'll also defend your checks by both check-calling and (usually) check-raising. Because of this you don't need to bet the turn at such a high frequency to make your opponent indifferent to calling on the flop with his "bluff catchers" since you'll sometimes check-call or check-raise the turn which punishes his flop "floats" pretty severely.

PM me your email address

You have writen on this topic but time has gone by and I know some good players who have changed their ideas..


Default Open Raise Size on Button

Some people:

Raise their default raise size when on the button

Some lower their default raise size when on the button

Others keep it the same

Thoughts?

Thoughts on exploitive deviations from a default button raise size?


-------

Example thoughts:

Raise smaller on button as we have a much wider range, we can deal with 3 bets easier and do not mind a high SPR

or

Raise larger because we like playing big pots on the button because our positional advantage is large