Btw, looking forward to seeing how this develops. Your intro is exactly how I felt at the back end of last year and have ade an effort to study, study study instead of mindlessly grinding 10NL for $2 an hour.

Was considering x/c the AK/AQ and like it so long as we also check back some more value hands- otherwise we x/f loads ott haha. 22-55 I'll have to check my range, I think my friend and I worked out as didn't need them in there to be defending enough. V a reg folding too much I would add these first I think

Another session down v Snowie and I think I played the first 50% crappy when I was put into tough spots where my range was kinda weak and I was getting a bit hung up on folding so much so decided to try calling a bit light/bluffing a bit too much. Didn't work lol. I then started playing quite well, thinking about my range a little better and using two bet sizes quite effectively.

This I think has helped a bunch (two bet sizes) as it makes you think how you are using your range. So I'm trying out betting normal 50-60% OTF with our mid strength hands (that I realised we need to bet if we want to bluff lol) and then bet a similar size when betting say strong draws or hands which do well at blocking TP combos, have back doors etc. I quite like then raising my size slightly OTT giving up with some of my weaker hands that block less TP combos and checking back some of my weaker value hands. Then I continue with my stronger mid strength hands and good blocking bluffs then similar strat OTR.

I am then betting closer to pot with my more nutted hands along with combos of hands that fall into the "can't really check them all back as we fold OTT but can't really bluff them all". I tend to stick with my bd type hands still in this category first. board texture also effects this as dry boards I will bet more of my range in the 50-60% size (maybe 100%) where as dynamic boards I'll vary the sizes.

Thought of the day: Try not to worry too much in spots where our range is particularly weak, we don't have to defend it because if villains range is stronger than ours, putting money in is just burning money, try to lose the least in these spots and don't play our value hands fast as we don't play our weak hands as bluffs.

Todays session:


Not surprised at error level or blunders but AM surprised at the blunders it picked out. Not the ones I thought which probably suggests that spots I was talking about bluffing too much I probably player closer to snowies GTO approximation BUT IRL I think these are a way off being non mistakes. I also ran good in an All in spot so my -$30 is slightly low but hey poker variance can be kind too and snowie is a machine so has advantage, I need some EV

Really annoyingly it didn't save last nights hands for some reason so I can't use those and I think Snowie was up on me there (KK

I'm still yet to have a losing session vs Snowie. I'm beating it for a few BI now. Which is just LOL when I'm getting ruined at Unibet NL4.

I wish I ran as well as I do vs Snowie in real life. Nuts all the time and semi-bluffs either getting through or hitting cards.

Like the thought of the day. When you say our range is weak and there's is strong, are you referring to middling boards hitting calling ranges better and A high and K high boards hitting raisers ranges beter? Or do you mean when we ahve a wide range such as a button open?


Do you have a donk betting range at all?

Do you try to polarise your betting range and merge a mid-strength XC check back range?

Inspired by the thread, Ive splashed out on the POker Snowie App for HEM. So I'll be following the thread closely to make any comparisons.

Just innitially playing around with it at the moment. but I did find a strange pair of hands. The first, I was 3bet and called IP with 88 which snoiw agreed with and the 2nd, the CO opened and I called with 77 on the BT which snowie disagreed with. I knw that due toa strger range I am more likely to stack my opponent in a 3bet pot but surely we still have more implied odds in single raised pot due to the signifiantly larger stack to pot ratio.

Thought that was strange.

Given that Snowie min opens CO normally as well I find it hard to believe folding 77 IP would be a good plan. I've got the preflop advisor on my phone and that does say call 77 but fold 66. Personally though I'm calling every PP on the BTN to a CO open, especially if its a min raise.

This is what Snowie is great for though for me. Even if I disagree with his strategy, it makes me think about why. What boards do we like? What does it do for my ranges pre and post?

When I look at ranges It's typically going to be in spots where we 3b a polarized range and then the board is 89x kinda texture. We have a decent amount of over pairs yes, but those are not going to want to stack off OTF and probably only want 1 or 2 streets. Therefore we checking those OTF so we shouldn't really bluff as our better hands we can't value bet.

On a dry low board on the other hand JJ+ will go for 3 streets so we can also bluff a lot as we just have a lot more triple barrels in our range. Similar on a AQ8 board where we have QQ,AA,AQ to value bet, AK maybe also so we can bluff our Kx Jx hands a couple of streets also.

I haven't yet looked into donking ranges, typically I don't think they are great seeing as we probably have to bet a hand strong enough to barrel off and if we do so our x/c range becomes weaker. The being said, it is certainly something I want to look into

The board texture and preflop action will really determine by betting range OTF. In a spot where I have a lot of butted hands I will polarize my range with a slightly bigger sizing (80% pot probably) but then I will also take a smaller betting range with my medium hands and bluffing hands that block villains calling range/have realy nice equity.

On some boards I won't have loads of nutted hands but will ofc still have some, I will then bet my entire range 50-60% pot.

" merge a mid-strength XC check back range" This can work, but often the value of bluffing decent blockers mixed in with some mid strength hands is going to be higher than checking them all and bluff catching, also we get some hands with lowish EV but still equity to fold rather than seeing a turn.

Hope that helps!

Preflop I would say you are MUCH better creating your own ranges and having a look to make sure they aren't tooo far away from Snowies. If you open an extra 5% then you might want to cut it down, but if it is close with a slightly different mix of hands I would stick to what you feel most comfortable playing with.

Can you post a screengrab of Snoie app in HEM, not seen it yet and interested!

This is a video of it. Probably better than me screen grabbing several pages.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Wd1qTMbaLyQ

Doesnt have the play vs snowie thing but it uploads the hnds youb've played. Does mena you get quite a few hands vs fishy o Nitty players but like Paul said, it get you thinking about hnds and ranges.

Gosh, how come I've missed that little masterpiece over here!?!?!? Going to read it now and then post some thoughts!

Sooo, I am through. That is already a lot of content you could argue about for hours haha
Can't make a statement at every single post but what I can say by now is:

I truly admire your work ethics and that huge effort you put into your work, kudos! I only wish I would be that disciplined. Your work makes my stuff I do to develop look like shit. And I always thought I am doing pretty good when I analyze spots lol. Anyways, I promise to improve I think your approach is pretty much the nuts. Putting in so much work just CAN'T be wrong, and I am sure, when you got that 50nl roll, you will definitley crush!

Ok, now some content ( I try my best to not talk nonsense )

On dry-ish kind of textures, like A72r, Q46r, K33r... we can have to different kind of approaches:

One is to bet quite large with nutted hands and strong hands, plus bluffs that have a) back door potential, b) block villains calling range and c) are just not strong enough to check back. We are then checking back weak TPs, mid-Pairs and stuff like this. So generally speaking we are betting big with a polarised range, which makes sense, right? The drawback of this approach is, that we somehow cap both of our ranges, our betting and checking range. But that is not that important, as this is a kind of texture, villain should not attack our capped ranges, as he just can't bet or raise much.

The other approach would be to bet a condensed range with a smaller sizing. This allows us to bet more for thin value.

Example: 99 on A72r. We could check back, if we decided to go for a cBet around 3/4 PS with hands like A7, 22, AK...and 65s BD, K2s BD, J9s BD and so on. Or we bet it around 40% of the pot and go for 2 or 3 streets on most run outs. Then we should bet most Ax, Sets, 2 Pair, Mid Pairs with good Kicker and BD, bottom Pairs with BD and so on.

This is very basic stuff, which works in theory and practice, but it is never wrong to take a closer look. Because in-game, most of us will bet either to much or too little very quickly. We fall into autopilot mode and yeah... end up making lots of mistakes.

It is very hard to know your range, when ranges get super wide, like in BTNvsBlinds scenarios. And I struggle there too. I think there came up at least 10 spots every single session, of my last 20 ones, where I was not sure if I should continue betting or not. I guess I don't have to mention that being fucked up in those spots, increases the potential of making even bigger mistakes on further streets. So as I said, taking a closer look is very necessary.

In practice, imo we should take the first approach against villains, that we consider playing "good" which means they know that they just have to admit autoprofit and have to overfold on those kind of textures.
The second approach, we should use against weaker opponents, that are more sticky, which allows us to go for more thin value.

Against unknown, where we have to assume that they are playing good, which means correctly from a theoretical point of view, we should choose the first approach as well.


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Snowie seems to do so. It suggests the first approach, where we bet big and polarised. I have no clue how it would affect the EV of our range, when we start to check back some of our nuts, just because we don't want to have a capped check back range and we block so many Top Pair Combos. In reality, I guess that could make sense, as an exploit somehow. Imo people just start to bet against missed cBets way too much, so it could be good to check back AA there from time to time, but otherwise I guess our range is protected "enough" cause we still have hands like A6 that did not bet the flop and we definitley want to bet our nuts because we have shitloads of bluffs. It gets pretty interesting, when villain chooses to overbet turn, due to the fact that he wants to take maximum pressure on our weak holdings. I saw people doing that on high stakes, but never on the micros and low stakes, so I guess we can ignore that. But that would be one of the rare situations it could make sense.

Anyways, this post just took me around 2 hrs or so I typed in some words, read over it, and deleted them again and again. It is late, and my brain is fried now haha. I truly hope some of my thoughts make sense though

Ok, I am looking forward for some more nice posts and can't wait to hear your thoughts!

Good night fellas!

Boomboom we have a serious study group potential for this

When I get on my laptop layed I'll respond my thoughts on this, I think that I prefer on drt textures to slow play nut nut hands then bet large with the rest nutnut hands, our weakest bluffs that have bd potential then smaller with some our strong hands (maybe like AJ-AK on the A72 kinda board) along with our JQ, JT kind hands blocking his best Ax holdings and also bd potential. These hands can thrn mix into double and triple barrels as I think 3srreets w/AK there wouldn't be awful so long as we maintained a 60% 60% 75% pot size bet for flop turn and river

Another session in v Snowie, was a hilarious session really, lots of big pots and had a number of over bet bluffs which was great. In terms of EV I think it was pretty close, I had AA v KK in one spot where we gii OTR and another where we gii OTF me with AKs (2OC+NFD) v QQ which I lost so probably about right. Early spots my bluffs didn't really come off but later on they did.

Few hands:

Call KQs OTB v MP flop AJ7 and I figure this is perfect to bet in my 50%-60% psb when checked to as blocks a lot of hands villain calls with (TPSK 2nd pair KK, QQ) and has a GS and will fit into the range with my top one pair hands where I triple barrel 55%-65%-80%. Snowie x/c. Turn is T so we now have the nuts. Our range consists of nut straight, 98, tp and some other hands that block draws. I decide that we should continue with our TP hands, straights and bluffs to then bet a polarized range of straights and bluffs OTR. Villain x/r. I figure we can mix it up here but we can't really bluff shove so probably best to call with all our straights and maybe AT which turned two pair if that is in our flop cbet range. river is a blank and we call the shove v AA.

Call Ax9h BB vCO. Flop 6h8h3x. Not sure on x.r raising range here. We have all sets and some combo draws so guess we x/c over pairs, TP 2nd pair some fd and then x/r some fd some sets and combo draws. Put this in my x/r range as we also block 99, 89, 97.

EP open AQo 3b and we 4b (range KK+ AQo) call. Flop KQx. Decide I have to check AA here so should also with KK and therefore AQo. We can x/c all our range as we have the nuts, AA and AQ which blocks AK, QQ, KQs. Turn is blank if v bets we fold AQ and gii with AA/KK. x/x Deide we should value bet AA/KK here so can shove AQo to get him to fold Kx. Board did pair OTR (running 8s) so best to do so here as we beat KQ which maybe he checks back sometimes OTR? Expect SNowie says this is a blunder and we can check but then we also should check some AA/KK hands and I think shoving them is a higher EV.
LOL just checked the AQ hands and c4b pre is a blunder, calling OTF is a blunder and shoving river is a blunder. welll fu Snowie looks like x/c is much better v him which makes a lot of sense really now I think about it.

Beautiful bluff shove spot:

3b A5s v EP. We have super tight range here like AKs KK+ A5s 54s 65s. Flop is 2s4s8x. Figure we should cbet everything here as we have 12 combos over pairs 16 combos of suited hands with 2 nut flush combos, 6gs 3 btm pair 2 GS+FD. Bet call. Turn fd gets there but Ks. so we have one nut flush 3 sets, 6 AA some one other flush then pair. Decide to now check some KK/AA along with 54 and bet everything else. River is another spade and we literally now have 2 nut combos i one straight flush and a few A5s non flush combos.... shove everything and what you gonna do eh?

Finished about +$13 in 312 hands, will get another session or two before the end of today and put up todays results

Good luck with this new journey and energy you're investing. It is always important to come back. No matter how long it takes as long as you make it...

Yo everyone,

I have PM'd @CrazyCookie but figured it would be a goodish idea for me to write it in public as it is quite an interesting spot to be in.

First off I trust the man behind Cookie and consider him a friend and well without him posting on the forum from close to the start to present it would not be the same around here. Also as just someone to shoot the shit with he's a top guy. So this is nothing to do with trust or me believing the purpose is for anything bad will related.

However I did PM him asking for him not to advertise his Skype here for a study group. So i figured i would explain the reasoning why similar things have been deleted in the past.

1. It takes away content from the forum. I know you guys have no obligation to post here but i love to see the forum grow and personally would love to see all that chat on the forum.

2. Someone inside the group may be trying to make money so they get our contacts instantly.

I would never say/ask to shutdown such a group and really don't even like asking/talking about it but i thought i would just put it all on here as its such a weird spot.

Anyways from what i understand the group is already active so all i can say is good luck and i hope to still see you all on the forum

Good luck

I'm just amazed by the near 10million VIP points

all makes sense, I'll be very clear that if people don't post on the forum I'll kick them

Sorry if I overstepped the mark a little with the group, it's a subject that is tough to really get the most on without chatting about it and Skype trumps all forums for that

I'll never get to make money/let anyone just swooping in for contacts to take part and so far we've really only discussed the same stuff I've posted in here. I know Paul has since posted on his journey about his planned studies so will hopefully see people talking bout what they study in their journey.

If we see people post less I'll have to close the Skype group :'( massive respect for Jon and his community here, he and the whole pvip team have done a dope job so will obviously not be fighting them much on this! Want to strengthen the community and the players skill within!

Won't be shouting about it and can remove the join ID if you like?

This all OK jbone?

chip dumping must be a bug as 1 mirrion seems too much let alone 10 mirrionnnn

Yeah, you should only have about tree fiddy or so points.

Hope that's all OK with PokerVIP. I feel the same about this community. I'll be posting just the same. Probably more if I get a bug to study again properly. We could also put transcripts up on here maybe? So others can follow the flow of the chat? Dunno if Skype does that like I can on the Outlook based thing I use on my work computer.