Hey guys, if anyone has seen the ranges in preflop advisor I was wondering if their tightness makes sense to you? Suited connectors under T9 and pocket pairs under 44 aren't opened at all from UTG or MP. Meanwhile "optimal" solver ranges like those made with minkersolver do open these from EP.

Same goes for 3 bet call and 4 bet range tightness. It just seems very nitty to me.

The only counterbalance to this is how liberal the BB squeezing range is, and perhaps this is why snowie is so tight from EP.

I'm not particularly interested whether or not opening something like 67s is profitable or not at small stakes, clearly it is at the right kind of table.

My question is if more theoretical and about optimal play. Could it be Snowie just converged on one of many solutions and simply adjusted it's postflop play to suit the tighter preflop range? And could an argument be made that it's -EV to open connectors from UTG with a 5% rake?

Anyone have enough personal hand data to show how profitable or unprofitable EP opens with connectors have been?

Thoughts?

Again, it's obviously +EV to open these hands vs a weak field. I guess my question boils down to why is Snowie contradicting solvers.

Hunter Cichy's book Advanced Concepts in No Limit Holdem is the most Poker Snowie oriented poker book I have read. If you want to understand Snowie, this book will help you.

I think, the reason, why these "implied odds" type hands are dumped by PokerSnowie from early position is, that are they actually massively unprofitable. At least this is completely confirmed by actual results from my own database. The idea of implied odds is, that when you make your hand, someone is going to hand you over their entire stack. But in real life that just does not happen, unless your opponents are extremely bad. So actual equity tend to matter a ton more than those "implied odds".

On the other side - and I am guessing now - solvers might be very concerned with balance and therefore want you to play losing hands to for instance have board coverage on low boards. Whereas Snowie on the other hand simply look at, what is going to be profitable hand for hand. Would be very interesting to hear some imputs from someone with a better idea of, how solvers actually work

Originally Posted by fundiver199

On the other side - and I am guessing now - solvers might be very concerned with balance and therefore want you to play losing hands to for instance have board coverage on low boards. Whereas Snowie on the other hand simply look at, what is going to be profitable hand for hand. Would be very interesting to hear some imputs from someone with a better idea of, how solvers actually work

I know from limited reading that Snowie does not use a "GTO" model for balance and tends to lean more toward data driven decisions based on previous results so this is in line with that idea. If we are less concerned with GTO and balance and more concerned with exploits and results I can understand why the differences exist.

Is there a place we can access / compare these ranges without actually buying the software? You have Monker and Snowie?

Originally Posted by c0rnBr34d

Is there a place we can access / compare these ranges without actually buying the software? You have Monker and Snowie?

I had Snowie for 1 year but did not renew. I am mostly playing MTTs now, so I just signed up for ICMizer to get better at the push-fold game.

Originally Posted by fundiver199

I think, the reason, why these "implied odds" type hands are dumped by PokerSnowie from early position is, that are they actually massively unprofitable. At least this is completely confirmed by actual results from my own database. The idea of implied odds is, that when you make your hand, someone is going to hand you over their entire stack. But in real life that just does not happen, unless your opponents are extremely bad. So actual equity tend to matter a ton more than those "implied odds".

On the other side - and I am guessing now - solvers might be very concerned with balance and therefore want you to play losing hands to for instance have board coverage on low boards. Whereas Snowie on the other hand simply look at, what is going to be profitable hand for hand. Would be very interesting to hear some imputs from someone with a better idea of, how solvers actually work

Thanks man , this explanation really hits the nail on the head for me and makes a ton of sense. I really appreciate you sharing what you know about connectors/SP's from your hand database.

Now my question is at what stakes are these hands still profitable EP opens.

And also if board coverage is an important enough reason to keep these hands in our EP range.

Originally Posted by ventrolloquist

Now my question is at what stakes are these hands still profitable EP opens.

At no stakes. They are always losing hands to open from EP. But of course it depends. 66 UTG is certainly better than 22 UTG. My sample is not really large enough, but players are obviously worse at say 2NL, so probably implied odds work a little better than at say 10NL or 25NL.

Originally Posted by ventrolloquist

And also if board coverage is an important enough reason to keep these hands in our EP range.

At mid to high stakes probably yes but I have not played these so no personal experience. At micro and low stakes definitely not. Most players at these stakes are either fish or robotic regs, and they dont think all that much in things like ranges and board coverage. And they certainly dont make a note of it, if you show down 65s after opening UTG.

Originally Posted by c0rnBr34d

I know from limited reading that Snowie does not use a "GTO" model for balance and tends to lean more toward data driven decisions based on previous results so this is in line with that idea. If we are less concerned with GTO and balance and more concerned with exploits and results I can understand why the differences exist.

Is there a place we can access / compare these ranges without actually buying the software? You have Monker and Snowie?

Zenith poker has fully solved preflop solutions done with monker for 9max using a huge amount of RAM. (Yes they're free ). But mostly I was comparing to upswing poker's ranges. Both are looser than snowie.

Poker snowie has a browser and phone app called preflop advisor that also has full preflop ranges for 6max. (It also costs $0 ) .


(Keep in mind there is a possibility the monker ranges may be incorrect because I read somewhere monker preflop might have had an error that calculated rake wrong, but I don't know the legitimacy of these claims since they were made on the page of a competing product)

Originally Posted by ChickenArise

Hunter Cichy's book Advanced Concepts in No Limit Holdem is the most Poker Snowie oriented poker book I have read. If you want to understand Snowie, this book will help you.

I'll check this out, thanks

Poker snowie's preflop ranges are slightly tighter than GTO ranges. However, the ranges aren't very far from GTO ranges. Lower pocket pairs and low and medium suited connectors are often folded in EP, only occasionally opened for balance.

Originally Posted by fundiver199

At no stakes. They are always losing hands to open from EP. But of course it depends. 66 UTG is certainly better than 22 UTG. My sample is not really large enough, but players are obviously worse at say 2NL, so probably implied odds work a little better than at say 10NL or 25NL.



At mid to high stakes probably yes but I have not played these so no personal experience. At micro and low stakes definitely not. Most players at these stakes are either fish or robotic regs, and they dont think all that much in things like ranges and board coverage. And they certainly dont make a note of it, if you show down 65s after opening UTG.

I agree with this.

Back in say 2005 playing live limit holdem at the Taj Mahal, I found 87s and 76s to be profitable open raising hands. AJo and A9s and 77 were also profitable and these filled out your range. You usually got a lot of caller with big cards and you could only be raised from 2bb to 3bb, and even if you got double raised you could call against two high cards cands for only 2bb more.

The looser GTO strategies often include them some/all for similar reasons bc they mostly rfi to only 2bb, have fairly wide pf calling regions, and 3bet in position by less than a full pot giving good odds to call.

They may be good hands for LAGs to play in tournaments early to fight to become the big stack at the table, and even better against a tight table on the bubble or in the money. Or at loose live NL games that look like old limit poker PF.

But I have never seen any hand data showing them to be profitable in early or early middle positions in raked online NL. And they greatly increase your variance as well. GTO solvers maximize their value by aggressively betting, raising, and check-raising with them on draws, and using them as bluff catches with bottom pair I believe. It's completely different than calling for draw value against a lot of players in limit or even raising with a strong draw for value against four other players given the small bet sizing.

I also did a lot of work before GTO solvers finding my own Nash Equilibria for rfi and calling and reraising at all positions and reaching remarkably similar results to these GTO solvers. Basically, these hands don't make it in to the ranges based on win percentages, not to mention failing to block all the strong 3-bet handing hands and being harder to capture value out of position in NL! That's working forward. But if you use smaller flop and turn bet sizing generally, work backswords from the river and turn, and want to have much wider ranges of made straights and flushes and two pairs and bottom pair on the river, then these are still the best hands to include.

They are also much better as PF reraising hands against players who mostly call three bets. They have fold equity, pull ahead more often on the flop, and a very tricky. But against players who aggressively 4bet preflop, in my view they are terrible three-betting hands despite what solvers like to say. They don't usually have aggressive 4-betting.

Originally Posted by ventrolloquist

Thanks man , this explanation really hits the nail on the head for me and makes a ton of sense. I really appreciate you sharing what you know about connectors/SP's from your hand database.

Now my question is at what stakes are these hands still profitable EP opens.

And also if board coverage is an important enough reason to keep these hands in our EP range.