Well, as soon Nutraisin is not in the tables, I start winning. Coincidence? ♦
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Solver is a P*ssy!
That was the slogan I created during PLO Visions stream. The idea is that solver loves passive lines. And why wouldn't it, cos it has to be balanced. It's playing against another solver, who is also playing balanced.
In that Visions stream, there were many hands where I would cbet happily at small stakes for value. But solver didn't. Solver is fixated to balance. That means it has to have strong hands in passive lines too. It seems to decide the action between bet and check based on the side cards. In solver strategy the key is in blockers and backdoors. And backdoor blockers. It doesn't understand the ranges of small stakes players, nor that they are often capped with passive lines. Because it is playing against solver, who doesn't have capped ranges.
So one thing is crystal clear. Solver is far from optimal strategy for any stakes, especially small stakes.
But. (There's always that plot thickening "but" coming after strong statement)
We should not ditch solver strategy. Small stakes is an interesting environment in PLO. Most of the players are recreationals or beginning regs (or ones who just haven't put effort in studying and learning), which means that they have very often problems in following areas:
- hand reading/range definition, and how to use that information
- Understanding relative hands strength
- Adjusting to aggression
- Using aggression in right places
Keyword would be uncertainty. They are uncertain when to be aggressive, how to fight aggression, when the hand is strong (non-nutty) and when not etc. And when people are uncertain, they are afraid to do decisions they are not sure about. In PLO the outcome is that they play very often according to their hand strength. And the outcome of that is that aggression very often equals strong hand. Average raise cbet in HU pots at PLO25 is below 10%. Average 3bet is 4%. That means we can use aggression as our standard strategy vs. player pool, as most of the opponents don't know how to respond to aggression. We can make a lot of money by being aggressive in spots where opponent doesn't have strong hands often enough, as they don't fight back without a hand. And it works wonderfully at small stakes.
Problems arise when opponents understand what is going on and know how to respond. Then the aggressive strategy backfires. Currently that happens at PLO50. There are players at PLO25 who will exploit our aggression, but not many. So if you plan to hit PLO50 or play with a lot of good PLO25 regs, you need to have balance. The backfire of aggressive cbetting is that our checking range is really weak and our cbetting range has a lot of weak hands. So either one we choose, the opponent can exploit our unbalanced range. Especially in OOP aggressive cbetting vs good opponent leads to bigger pots oop with weaker hands. And we would like to have it the opposite ways. We don't have to be super balanced, just balanced enough.
From Mastermind I picked up an interesting thought about blockers. When bluffing, we would like to have blockers to our opponents calling range and not have blockers to his folding range. I have mostly analyzed different boards and runouts versus overall range. So my to-do list now includes exploring how much different blockers to opponent's ranges actually affect. I would have done it now, but there is something wrong with my PokerJuice.
When bluffing, we would like to have blockers to our opponents calling range and not have blockers to his folding range. I have mostly analyzed different boards and runouts versus overall range. So my to-do list now includes exploring how much different blockers to opponent's ranges actually affect. I would have done it now, but there is something wrong with my PokerJuice.
When betting for value, then, the reverse would be true.
Sorry, I couldn't think of any PLO examples, but in 5-Card Draw if you're betting with a pair of Aces, you don't want to be throwing Kings, Queens or even Jacks, since you want your opponent to be calling with these weaker pairs, and if you had 'em it's less likely that they do.
Easiest example in PLO is when we have Ahigh flush, we don't want to have K or Q of that suit.
So does software you use allow defining range for villain after certain action(s) to look for maximally exploitative line? Or does it simply calculate GTO lines?
Yeah blockers are relevant in holdem side especially for bluff combos so I would assume those to be even more relevant in omaha.
All solver softwares assume the opponent is playing solver strategy too. I haven't seen a software for PLO where you could manipulate opponents range and frequencies and then calculate the optimal play.
wow Flushhype nearly emptied yr stream today with that 8 minute horrorsong 
Nice with another winning session, glad yr graph is going all north these days 
Originally posted by Kyyberi
All solver softwares assume the opponent is playing solver strategy too. I haven't seen a software for PLO where you could manipulate opponents range and frequencies and then calculate the optimal play.
Yeah probably would need so much more calculation compared to holdem that it's not feasible in sensible time.
Yeah, at the moment the calculation of a sim takes 1-2 weeks, with rented cloud server (to have enough RAM).
There is a short break to streams, I uploaded the ones I remembered to save to my Youtube: www.youtube.com/kyyberi
I am working night shifts for whole weekend, so I won't be streaming until next week. But I am using this time to focus on that oop cbetting in HU pots, hoping to get some clarification on how solver logic works there and then construct around 40% cbetting strategy for PLO25/PLO50.
Little update:
One month is way too short to learn this shit.
Although I have been doing a lot of other stuff, it became quite clear that solver strategy itself is so complicated that to learn it to at least moderate level would take a lot of time and effort. There are no shortcuts and rule of thumbs you could follow. And in the end, playing with exact solver strategy is far from optimal. It would be optimal if all the opponents would play with solver strategy. Or if they would be a lot better than you so they could exploit all the unbalanced things in your strategy.
I wish I had more time to go through Mastermind content. The approach is pretty much exactly what I think too: use balanced base strategy (assisted my solver) and then modify it according to general population. Meaning that at the small stakes our base strategy already exploits some general population tendencies.
I have been trying to focus on playing single raised pots are preflop raiser HU OOP on the flop. I had some problems with PokerJuice (which are now fixed) so I hope I can come up with something during the weekend and next week. And I will post my findings and thoughts for you too!
I wouldnt put toooo much emphasize on the spots where you get flatted. You never know what the flatrange is anyway. I would focus on Blinds vs BU/Co. Happens very often and thats where the profit is coming from. Putting effort into the spots which matter the most. If you make good profit with a highcbet frequency, whats the incentive of putting in lots of hours in "pushing" them a little more?
Cos cbetting a lot (especially oop) doesn't work at PLO50+ nowadays. Worked in the past when no one knew how to play. And I am in a spot where I need to come up with more balanced strategy that I can teach to players who are entering PLO50.
I do agree that playing from blinds is extremely important. But I will focus on one thing at a time. Being oop as preflop caller is second on the list.
PLO Visions stream coming up tomorrow (Monday) in the afternoon. Probably around 2-3pm CEST. No delay, lots of strategical content!
Today's PLO VIsions session was bad. I was a bit tired and my head wasn't working at all. Going to do another tomorrow, with better head (I hope!). I will also do a preflop range comparison between PokerJuice ranges and PLO Matrix ranges, how different they are. Probably starting at afternoon, so stay tuned!
Best way to know when I start it is to follow the channel (www.twitch.tv/kyyberi) or twitter (@Coach_Kyyberi).
Before a strategical recap of June, I made a 43min video about the softwares and sites I used. Are they (Matrix, Visions, Mastermind) worth the money? See it yourself, along with some hot-running PLO25 action:
And here is the preflop video I was talking about earlier. Complete guide to PLO preflop opening ranges:
nice Videos, do You now the upswing poker Pro Lab? stubbled over it, and wondered if it was any good or if the Mastermind is much better?