CrazyCookie

So I've started maybe 5 journeys on this forum now, a few of which spanned over a year and tracked me beyond 10nl to 50nl where I then halted at for ages without really progressing. It got very depressing not moving up, being able to beat 50nl for 3-5bb/100 and then losing shots at 100nl grinding again at 50nl/25nl and not moving forward. Then having to move down recently because I withdrew my bankroll for life purposes and playing 10nl was not stimulating. I realised that looking back I have never really broken through and part of that is because I've never really gone off and studied a lotttt on my own. It was always play and study not really learning new things or really working on anything other than maintaining my game....

I was the equivalent of a golf 15 handicap player practicing maybe 1/2 times a week then playing 4-5 rounds of golf. Sure I would get a little more consistent in my results, have areas of my game I knew inside out BUT not a huge amount of improvement. I know this because I was at that kind of stage playing golf for AGES and it wasn't until I practiced JUST 50 yards and closer for 3 months that I was able to break through to about an 8 handicap. I've also noticed similar improvements with my crikcket where I have invested in coaching material applied it and feel my game is at the highest level ever. So lets apply the same to Poker!

Most will be able to relate to me as they feel they put in loads of time to poker and simply go no where. 10nl players grinding hours and hours maybe moving up to 20nl yoyoing between the two eventually sticking at 20nl but not moving up to 50nl. Taking a break, then coming back and starting the journey we have all seen 50 tiems that month: "Fresh and ready to go starting a new challenge at 10nl and will try to move back up to 20nl in 2 months then 50nl by June blah blah blah". No plan, not really studying just grinding making small improvements in mental game, small in certain areas but not ACTUALLY improving much more than the curve they are on.... In other words DESTINED TO NEVER MAKE IT.

So this journey is going to be different. I'm not going to play online again until I have the roll to deposit for at least 50nl and while I work on that I will will be improving my game 100% of the time I put into poker. Not play 60% study 40% like I was before (and by study I would often look over a few hands, work out how bad I ran maybe look at a few flop textures/week).

I'm going to be mostly using Poker Snowie for this but am not going to use it how most people do: try to play like Snowie making the smallest amount of mistakes and copying his (his lol) play. That simply isn't feasible given how he mixes his frequencies in a completely random way when he needs to and with very precises percentages of the time per hand. My plan is to take the ranges my friend and I created for opening, 3betting, 4betting, defending etc. and find the best way to play them on different boards in different spots, against a fairly competent villain.

Now I don't know how good Snowie is, I have read conflicting reviews on a certain poker forum we all know well, and my conclusion is it is likely to be tough for me to win but equally using Snowies strategy is probably guaranteed to make me lose as I won't be able to play exactly like him and therefore will be taking it on at its own game.... Can only go well right

My plan isn't to judge my success on how much I beat or lose to Snowie as I will likely only get 30-50k hands in so the variance will skew results enough without us really looking at them- although a challenge will be fun

I will be tracking success simply by how well I think about spots in terms of my entire range and how quick I get at these decisions. Eg I have TJ on a Q64 board BTN v BB, this is clearly a cbet but why? It is in a portion of my range too weak to check, I have a fair amount of Qx, sets, and overpairs to bluff a decent % of the time and this hand has good blockers, backdoor equity etrc. Then what portion of my value bets and bluffs to I plan to cont OTT? Simple spot but same thought process for the tougher ones.

I want to know my ranges inside out and the best way to play them and best thought process so that when I jump back in I give myself the BEST chance of moving up and crushing the low/midstakes.

I'll have a challenge against Snowie to see where I am at after 30k hands, see who holds bragging rights! This is what I plan to update with:

- 30k hands (50k?) challenge v Snowie
- Interesting spots I look into in more detail after my challenge sessions to put forward my thought process for ti to be challenged by the more advanced players on here
- Mistakes I think aren't mistakes based on my range being different from Snowie to discuss
- Anything else that seems interesting that I come across/study in this time!

Where we are at right now after 2193 hands playing 0.5/1:

Attached Image

($40 of my Blunders came in one spots where I had KK on a QQxQx and got check shoved on OTR.... I figured I couldn't fold as Snowie couldn't have AA and possibly only have AQs given he called a 3b OOP so sigh, threw up, called to see AQs eugh!.)

Will be interesting to see the improvements I make and how quickly I make them! Any thoughts on Snowie VERY welcome!

Last Post 8 years ago by

CrazyCookie

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https://www.pokervip.com/thread/view?forum=my-poker-journey&slug=snowie-study-and-challenge&nav=56ca50a1d39043a35b8b45da

Wooooooow this should be very interesting

Can't wait for this thread to kick off! I've heard great things about Snowie!

Subscribed!

Thanks colly, I've heard some people say it's an essential tool for anyone who wants to study and improve and others say it's borderline scam :')

I think a lot of people play it and think pffft that can't be right or plug in a scenario and say "but v a fish bluffing here is awful" and discredit it. Or they go the other way and try and have as few blunders as possible and this probably doesn't help much in games where you want to be exploiting players.

I read one guy say that around 5-6 is where you want to be as any lower becomes a little too gto focussed to be able exploit fish and weak regs, so I'm hoping to stay in world class throughout

Looks interesting and very +EV! Really interested to see how much it will improve your gam!
Did you 100 shots failed due to tougher games or just cards?

Oioiiiiiiiiii

Here we go again! Very excited to follow this and learn more about the great snowie and also to see if you feel what you learn actually rubs off on you and produces a higher win rate and well if it basically works.

Yeah get to be a Guinea pig

Great thing with what I'm doing over using Snowie ranges to try and play gto approx is we can get into spots where Snowie thinks value betting sucks but because our range is constructed differently to Snowies it may well be +EV. It means we have to learn the logic and reasoning behind the bet and not just see if Snowie says it is +EV or not.

What I know for sure is missing your train home by less than a minute because the tubes decide to stay at the station is worse negative varience than losing a 60/40!

Bad news on the train. Hope you get back in decent time. I was inspired by this and got Snowie as well. I only got the cheap one. Cross post below from my Journey just because some of it confused me and be good to get your view on some of it

It seems to undervalue off suit aces and overvalue suited aces. I guess I might be skewing that as on Unibet TP is the nuts but vs good opponent they are not good opens. It also seems quite call heavy preflop, and even does a bit of limping. It does seem to be happy to let limp buttons or complete SB's get to flops and then folds a lot. Interesting though and getting me thinking about spots a bit more.

Sometimes the blunders it gives me though I just don't get. Today it told me I was making a massive blunder for not calling A2 no club to a PSB on 755KA with 4 clubs. It also told me I should have called a cbet with 96hh on KcJd3h. To do what exactly? Most of the time I can see the logic of things but every hundred hands or so so far it does something I just cannot explain. Its hard to analyse why it thinks a play is good when you can't see the rest of its plan on later streets.

Only other gripe is 2x open from all positions doesn't make sense vs play on most limits so makes ranges a bit odd in some spots. Like calling UTG opens for example.

2x actually makes quite a lot of sense

Means that we have a bigger pot to stack ratio post which is how we can maximise our edge v villains. Also it probably takes the EV of raising the worst hand it its range, realises that anything over 2x is -EV so goes 2x and therefore bets the same size with its entire range.

I believe it undervalues offsuit aces as there are so many combos of them so playing them all means it will have a very wide bluff range and not enough value combos post flop whereas Axs blocks nfd so he uses them quite effectively to bluff.

But yes there are spots it is just clearly not what we do IRL but that is good so long as we can quantify it. If we just say oh villain never bluffs here I have to fold we should probably look at how often we are calling and see how exploitative we are actually being. IF we are in a spot where we think villain never bluffs and we fold 90% to a 50% bet then we might actually need to reevaluate and call wider to avoid him exploiting us without our knowledge- it is very unlikely we will know someone well enough to know if he bluffs OTR and going just of stats won't work as we don't know how he plays his range post in different spots

Going for a session against Snowie now, had shopping and chores to do this evening so will only be 300 hands max I guess.

No I can understand why you might do 2x, its just that no-one actually does. So you end up working on spots that will never come up or on ranges you won't need.

I'm liking playing Snowie as well. I'm maybe $50 up so far. He just could not laydown 2 pearz.

I just play as if it is 3x from EP-CO. Use Snowie to improve your game not practice against his odd spots

Got in about 250 hands and was really happy with how I played. Had a few spots I will post up tomorrow, one is around bet sizing and how we might change it compared to what I always perceived to be best- it is a little counter intuitive ha.

I think the spots I found tough were also mostly where I had a hand that was either too low EV to check back or where I had A high on boards I want to bluff a fair amount on, would check nfd so should bet the non fd Ax but end up potentially not having enough value hands andddd Ax is going to be one o=f my better EV checks.

Thought of the day: In a spot where we have a narrow range (4bp for example) we really can't ever slow play TP or overpairs as we are unlikely to have many mid strength hands in our range to protect and our bluffs need value hands to bet. Therefore bet strong hands 100% (or close to) and choose our highest EV bluffs to bluff with, don't en d up being tricky and having a bluff heavy range!

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In. Been out of the poker loop for a bit. Not sure what Snowie is.....but I'm intrigued.

As somebody who has been looking into starting to use Snowie the last month or so I am pumped to follow this! Great idea!

as somebody who hasnt studied more than 6 hours during the last 2 years ,though havent moved up aswell ,im very interested in your project.
would be great to see some hands examples also.
can you elaborate snowie is only hu program or it plays like 6max games or what.
maybe a short explanation to complete stranger

@minerboy23 AI programming that has played itself trillions of times to create a close to gto strategy (or so it claims). It is effectively super balanced and tells you if a play us a mistake by looking at its ranges and the range it gives villain etc. Etc.

@jef147 get the free trial! Id also suggest using combonator just to look at ranges on differnet flop textures.

@lennuk plays anything from HU to full ring. Will share hands when I can, won't be going into loadssss of detail in regard to my ranges (give it away

but will probably put forward suggested bettig and checking ranges in spots to see what you guys think

Will get on this probably tomorrow as this evening is superrr busy for me and post some hands

So as mentioned here are some questions/hands to ponder:

Should we make our bets bigger on dry flops? Reason being we have more bluff combos on say a Q73RB and will actually be checking back our weaker Qx and 2nd pair to protect our totally check flop give range. Therefore our betting range OTF contains a lot of bluffs (which is in line with what Snowie suggests in these charts:

Attached Image

Given we need to bet bigger with more bluffs it kinda makes sense to bet big on textures we bluff a lot on. The reverse theory would be that we will be slow playing nutted hands on this board and we expect villain to fold a lot so bet smaller as we a) have kinda capped our range and b) exploit villain folding so much.

Proposed solution: I'm tempted here to have two bet sizes 1/2 pot and close to pot. the close to pot will be polarized with the sets we have (probably 33 and some 77 on the texture given) along with our lowest EV hands that are going to give up a chunk OTT and then some which will turn into triple barrels (JT, KJ being good ones as they block TP. We would then bet a fairly decent size OTT with nutted hands and blockers to TPSK to then triple pretty much our entire range. Then the 50% will consist of the other 77 combos, the Qx we have to bet to protect our betting range and then the hands which we can bet as they get folds and probably block some mid pp/2nd pair type hands. I would check back some Ax, QQ, aome AQ and our hands taht don't block TP or second pair. We can then use most of these in our betting range OTT when checked to.

Thoughts?

Hand: Attached Image

So we 3b A6s SB v BTN and Snowie calls. Flop 2c5c8h. Should we cbet here or give up?

I basically went through my range and worked out which hands we are best to bet.

Value bet: TT+ (27 combos)(check raising AcAx)
Bluff range: Ac9x (4) AxKx (12) J9s,Q9s,K9s (FD/BDFD)(6) 76s (4) AQ/ks (BDFD) A2s (3) A6/7s (FD/bdfd)(2) AK/Qs non FD (36 combos)
Check call range: T8s 98s 78s (9) AKs/AQs (FD)(2) A5s (3)(14 combos)
Check raise range: A3/4s (FD+GS+OC), AAw/c (3)
Check fold- 39 combos (32.2% of range)

I feel we end up being very exploitable facing a raise here given we bluff so much and we also x/f around 60%. It isn't a board a board we smash so probably one we should check a little more. Finding this one a bit difficult to construct a range for without being too bluff heavy when betting or too much x/f in our range.

Snowie suggest we should bet the A6s (no fd) but to also mix in some checks but Snowie does have all the sets here with my range atm having none.... I should therefore be checking a fair bit more than Snowie which makes this spot tough!

Thoughts

This is a nice way to use Snowie. I'm struggling a bit to read the ranges and work it out but not sure how else it could be done.

Are you 3betting A9o then? That's a bit wider than me. I guess you flat AJo and ATo then. Is A8s and A9s a flat for you as well as don't see that in this range and it would be in there for me generally.

I like the ranges though and yeah I'd be x/f A6s (no FD) as well unless exploiting guy who overfolded.

Ye A9o fell into my 3b bluff range I'll have to double check the A8-Js I think they maybe be flats which feels a little odd!

I guess it's a board we just miss so badly with a lot of our range that we need to be checking quite a bit. Probably a few more value hands maybe all AA to protect our air. Wether we then say OK let's check raise our op and flushes idk, I feel that we will tend to only gii v sets with that maybe some pp that put me on a fd but not loving it!

1) The idea is interesting, but it requires some testing in play imo. I use just 1 sizing with whole range (around 55% (I assume we are only taking about playing vs regs in this thread)).

2) I think betting A6s (no bdfd) would be a spew in limits up to NL50 (idk how 100 plays). We'll end up x/f turn way too much. So yeah, I'm not keen to cbet

Yeah just the regs, I too would typically have one sizing but I may play around and try and polarized my bigger sizings when I get into it. Works well be Snowie, he tends to play back more v smaller sizes as I suppose we are more likely to be capped.

Probs a hand we can't go wrong with giving up with but can be used to exploit someone who folds too much post

I think giving up with 30% of our range is ok from a GTO stand point. I think in Ed Millers book he reccomends taking 70% of your range to the next street. I ahven't read hs entire book so could have misinterpreted it.

What are your thoughts on 3betting your smaller pairs? I tend to have 22-55 in my 3betting ranges as they are difficult to make profitable calling OOP.

I would actually put the AK and even the AQ into my XC range rather than my bluffing raneg as we can get weaker Ax/Kx to bluff and then barrell the turn when they hit. Or even barrell when they bluff with other hands. That would also mean that we can put more hands into our bluffing range.

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