Poker solvers for dummies: part 3 (easiest solvers)

Time to get our hands dirty! Web-based solvers are perfect for low / mid stakes players trying out solvers for the first time.

derek kwan

Oct 27, 2022

Part 1: Basics of solvers

Part 2: Types of solvers

Part 3: The easiest solvers (you are here)

Part 4: Adjusting to opponents

Part 5: Post flop and ICM

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As we discussed in our first two parts, poker solvers can be incredibly important for your growth as a poker player, even for low / mid stakes players. Native application solvers are resource intensive, but can handle many complex spots with customizations. Web-based solvers are fast, accessible from any web browser without having to install anything, and can handle most simple spots you will encounter.

Jason Koon (@JasonKoon) / Twitter — Jason Koon has said solvers completely transformed his poker game

Time to get into some web-based solvers!

The best in class right now for both completeness and simplicity is GTO Wizard. It has one of the best interfaces and is simple to use, and at this point has been in the market long enough to have its accuracy well assessed. It’s also used by many professionals, so has a good reputation and track record.

Let’s take one of the questions we asked in the first part of this series: What should I do with A7o in the SB vs a CO raise at 100bb deep?

You will step by step go through each position and choose an action. Notice bet sizing is not adjustable, nor are opponent’s ranges or stack sizes, but it’s super simple to use. For any position, click the up arrow near the bottom of the screen to open up the range viewer to see what the solution is. The range viewer image below shows all the hands you should call (green), hands you should raise (red), and hands you should fold (blue) from the SB.

Who guessed that A7o is a pure fold? What else is interesting from the result? A8o is also entirely a fold. But A8s and A7s are sometimes a 3bet. If some of these are surprising to you, just assume that there are many other spots you can learn from… you just haven’t asked enough questions yet 😊

Also notice that some hands, like Q5s in the image above, has half the box in green and half the box in blue, indicating you should call sometimes and fold sometimes. How do you decide which time to do what? This means in this spot, you should deploy a “mixed strategy”. One way to play a mixed strategy is to completely randomize when you choose one over the other. This makes you more unexploitable when opponents can’t find a specific pattern behind your decisions. But in my opinion, randomizing is a massive waste in low / mid stakes, where your opponents often don’t have the skill level to exploit you, and are themselves extremely exploitable. So choosing how to play at these stakes should be highly dependent on your opponents’ tendencies. Here, I might call an aggressive player, and fold to a tighter player, since the tighter player’s range will be stronger. However, if the tight player has shown they will fold to 3bets often, then I may even get spicy and choose to 3bet.

There is much more to do in GTO Wizard, and you can view all the features on their website. You can also use a limited version of the app for free. I would recommend everyone start with the free version and play around, get used to the interface, and watch some of their video tutorials on how to use the app before deciding if you want to pay for one of their monthly plans.

If you do decide to upgrade to a paid plan, use this link to get 10% off.

For hand analysis in the Not Pro Poker newsletter, I will be mostly using GTO Wizard (as I use it pretty much all the time now anyway).

Honorable mention goes to Odin Poker, which as of now is less complete than GTO Wizard in spots to solve, but does have a nice visual interface for setting up hands. Odin also has a free plan if you’d like to give it a try as well. They also have tutorial videos directly on their website. For me, I started with Odin for a web-based solver, but eventually moved to GTO Wizard almost six months ago as I felt it was a superior product, but try them both for yourselves!

There are also other web-based tools and mobile apps. I will mention one web-based tool that I use more than anything else. And it’s the range viewer tool on Pokercode, which specifically gives you correct preflop hand ranges for most scenarios. Note that Pokercode is not a solver, but rather a training site from Fedor Holz and Matthias Eibinger. Having two high stakes tournament crushers on the same training site is what attracted me to them, but they also have probably the best community of any poker training site, with a Discord where all their coaches are easily accessible in chat, with constant lessons, trainings, and practice sessions every week. It might be a little overkill to sign up for a training site just to use their range viewer, but it really is the simplest, fastest interface to look up preflop spots:

Pokercode range viewer: just click whatever options you want on the right and the viewer updates instantly

I literally just use this constantly after I play live hands to see not only if I played the hand correctly, but which hands I might have wanted to raise instead of call, or call instead of fold, because it’s so fast to get results with just a few clicks.

If you are looking for a training site and / or want to try the range viewer tool, I can’t recommend them enough. They also have a free plan with limited access that you can try out, just use this link to sign up.

There are also training tools, where you get presented with various hand situations, and need to pick the right choice out of multiple choices. DTO Poker from Dominik Nitsche is I believe the most popular training tool, and is available in your web browser, as well as a mobile app in the app stores.

DTO Poker app gives you hands to play through, and will score you on how close you got to optimal

Note that GTO Wizard also has their own version of a training tool, but this is DTO’s bread and butter, and the single feature that they focus on perfecting. You can use DTO for free for a limited number of hands, but if you do decide to upgrade to a paid plan, use this promo code to get 20% off: KWANSOLO

There are many more solvers and tools out there in the market. I have recommended the ones I personally use, and I know are used by much of the professional poker community. But this doesn’t mean there aren’t other good apps and tools outside of these, especially new and upcoming ones. But the ones I mentioned are all proven and will get you accurate and speedy information on how to play poker better, and are fairly simple to use. Spending a few weeks with any of these tools will have a high probability in making a positive difference in your game. You just have to be sure to ask the right questions, be curious to learn, and just stay consistent and disciplined on executing your newfound strategies. So get to it!

Up next: adjusting to opponent’s ranges

Coming soon: post flop play and ICM

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