Poker solvers for dummies: part 4 (adjusting to opponents)
Few people play optimally, especially not at low / mid stakes. Adjusting solver outputs is key to adapting properly.
Part 1: The basics
Part 2: Types of solvers
Part 3: The easiest solvers
Part 4: Adjusting to opponents (you are here)
Part 5: Post flop and ICM
This post has affiliate links
In our last post, we looked at GTO Wizard and a hand scenario where we learned to fold A7o in the SB vs a raise from the CO. But what was the CO raising? Well, here is the optimal range that GTO Wizard assigned the CO:
So this means that your decision to fold A7o is based on your opponent raising this range. But what if you think your opponent plays much tighter? Maybe they would not raise 96s, or Q4s, Q5s, J5s, A5o? This was one of the weaknesses we discussed about web-based solvers: you cannot manually adjust your opponent’s ranges.
But what does adjusting your opponent’s range look like, and how much does it change how you should respond? Let’s take a look at a native application solver that does allow you to do this: Holdem Resources Calculator (HRC).
I can simply drag the slider on the bottom to a range percentage, or even select and deselect individual hands to include, and then rerun the hand scenario again to see how I should respond.
In reality though, the ranges don’t change dramatically. If I think the player in the CO is tighter than optimal, I may knock 5-10% off their range. How that changes your response is the solver will remove about 5-10 hands off your range. So if GTO Wizard recommends you respond with this range:
You know to take 5-10 of the “bottom” hands out. So this means folding A9o, K3s, K4s, T7s, 22. Those are the bottom of your range (with hands like AA, KK, AK obviously at the “top” of your range). And you’d be pretty close to what a native application solver might tell you to do. Will you be as precise? No. Does it really matter? Actually no, and I’ll explain why.
First, you’re likely not a professional that has all the time in the world to sit around studying simulations. So you will need to make tradeoffs with your limited time. You will need to choose how to spend the few hours you have a week to get the results you want quickly. So using a heuristic like an educated guess will often serve you well. While in the middle of the hand with a tighter opponent, you may know you’re supposed to fold A5o, and call with A8o, but not sure about what to do with all the hands in between. In this case, I would definitely fold A7o, and then adjust by folding A8o, and possibly even A9o. And you’d be mostly correct in doing so. But, you will notice that I did know to fold A5o and call with A8o. And that knowledge can only come by taking the limited time I have to study hand situations on a tool like GTO Wizard, which would then be how I could even made an educated guess.
I should mention, there are card removal considerations to take into account (which solvers do very precisely). For instance, if a tight opponent’s range has a lot of aces in it, you may respond by removing more Ax instead of suited connectors. But we can cover card removal and blockers in another post.
So putting the time in is very important, but using educated guesses when you can’t manually adjust your opponent’s range is just fine. Native app solvers can take a long time to process adjusted ranges, which will slow down how many hands you can study per hour, so again, choose your time wisely. In fact, most professionals will type out the results of their many hours of solver study onto spreadsheets so they can quickly access this info without having to run solutions again. But you have jobs and families and other things going on. So tradeoffs are important here, just like they are in many other aspects of life.
Another reason why educated guesses are ok is because solvers are not perfect to begin with. As we discussed previously, very few of your opponents will be playing even remotely close to optimal. So whatever a solver is telling you will never be perfect, so you’ll always be slightly adjusting your plays anyway. Not to mention all the different ways a hand can go postflop. GTO Wizard is also great for quickly checking if a line you took in an interesting hand was correct or not, and we’ll be covering post flop play in an upcoming newsletter.
Over time, you will get a good sense of which hands play well post flop with specific stack sizes from specific positions, and also the tendencies and patterns of certain personas of opponents. And you will adjust your game some more. And they will adjust to you, and then you will adjust some more. So the most important thing is building a good fundamental basis in your poker game by studying solvers, but then you just have to go out there and “play some poker”, as they say. And using your best judgement will be the optimal solution in most spots.
Let’s take one more example of adjusting a preflop spot on GTO Wizard against a tight opponent. Let’s say the effective stack in this hand is 80bb. UTG raises, UTG+1 3bets, and it folds to you in the SB. Without looking at the solution below, try to guess which hands to call, vs raise, vs fold. What would you do with TT? AJo?
Now let’s take a look…
You have to be very tight against a UTG raise and a UTG+1 3b. Fold TT, but also fold JJ a lot. Not only do you fold AJo, but also AQo. But what is UTG raising, and UTG+1 3betting?
Here is UTG:
But what if UTG is pretty tight, and folds A3s, A5s, A6s, K8s, K9s, T8s? What about UTG+1? They are raising a very tight range:
But what if they are also tight, and would never raise A4s, A5s, K9s, AJo? Well then your range needs to tighten up too. So I may respond by then always folding JJ, even if GTO Wizard says to call sometimes, as well as ATs, AJs, and only call with AQs sometimes. And this educated guess will usually be close enough, especially given the tradeoff of being able to study more hands with my limited time.
So this isn’t being lazy, it’s being smart with your time. Make sure you continue to study with web based solvers like GTO Wizard, ask a lot of questions, be inquisitive of spots even ones you thought you were pretty sure of, and challenge your assumptions always. Then, just adjusting to your opponent’s tendencies by knocking a few bottom hands off, or adding some bottom hands in, will be good enough to get you through most spots correctly.
Up next: the last part of this series, post flop play and ICM.
But future episodes of this newsletter will cover a wide range of topics, from mindset, to adjusting to late stage play in tournaments, and much more!
Links in this newsletter:
Laugh of the week
In the news
