QQ IP

It is villain depended, but stacking off pre-flop against a aggressive villain would be a decent option as well.

As played I would most likely play the same way. Sizing on the flop could be smaller. $1,20 seems big enough.

Cheers,
SDK1987

Agree with the smaller bet on flop. Turn is ok.

Thanks and what do you think of Villain's play with AA? He check-called all the way through.

Well, he played it passive. You should make a note on that and watch carefully what he shows on showdown when he plays aggressive postflop. There may be good tells there.

having strong hands in your X/C range is necessary. you need stable hands that you can calldown over 3 streets.

AA are a prime candidate here and solvers would X/C them w high frequency.

Stable hand range on NL5 seems not necessarily. On higher limits with better players you can expect it more I think. That's why solvers aren't working that well on micro limits against unpredictable villains I think.

working w solvers is well in the sense, that you get an understanding of the game. it does not mean, that you have to play GTO. quite the contrary, i would argue. you can even ask questions like, what to do vs opponents, that are unbalanced in certain spots.

having balanced ranges works best vs unpredictable opponents, because it enables you to show up w strong hands in every line, too.

AA with heart is good option to check-call, block mamy combination flush draw on flop. Bet or check-call is decision which make when opponents are more passive or more agressive. Vs normal regular player check-call here is good too.

Thanks guys, really interesting thoughts. I'm thinking having a balanced range vs unknown and vs good regs is something I should start implementing. Without overdoing and always try to play exploitative. But playing too straightforward makes me exploitable vs the savvy players as in this case.

The Ah usually would be an extra reason to get more aggressive for many but I can see how it can be a strong calling hand (especially OOP?) too.

The difficult part is when recognizing the right spots to do this. But that's all practice and experience I guess.

What is solvers?

That's interesting for sure. Offcourse it's basically inpossible to play it perfectly.

Originally posted by SDK1987
impossible to play perfectly.

i do not claim that. but i have picked up a lot of stuff.

That's always good and you need always to improve your game. Maybe in a few years solvers are different as well, but time will tell.

Clearly I'm not an expert but I think solvers are overrated and they are not the holy grail for winning poker. This is especially true at the low stakes games. Too many variables. Don't solvers only work vs theoretical perfect players? Am I completely missing the boat here? Creators of these programs will obviously state different but in all honesty I doubt if investing your time and money in solvers is worth it or even has any real value for small stakes players.

If solvers only worked against in theorie perfect players it would be useless to use I think. No player will play perfectly.

It actually doesn't work either against elite players who play (close to) theoretical perfect poker. The goal is to play as profitable as possible that's not at all what solvers teach you. It doesn't mean they are completely useless. The true merit is in being not exploitative yourself, helping constructing ranges, as a study tool for specific situations etc. But it's really not easy to use it in a correct way and it can hurt your game more then anything if you don't use it properly. That's the main reason why I'm keeping away from them at least for now. The picture presented in the video posted by @Pokamon paints a pretty accurate picture I believe. It's like having the best armor in the world but it blocks your sight and has some holes in it.

Goal of solver studying is to basically understand concepts solver uses in different spots. Why does it make sense to use certain sizing or when to take hand into certain action tree. What to do with certain exact hand is not really such big deal but about overall frequencies.

When we understand roughly how situation works from our and opponent view on gto we can then also more effectively find exploits versus strategy specific opponent seems to apply.

I think one issue that solver uses probably run into is they focus on very specific situation with exact hand. Where as its overall more beneficial to first ask what my overall range is supposed to do. So start from wide view and then in steps go to more specific concepts.

So goal of using solvers is not to replicate it while playing but to learn to adjust better versus different players.