CardsChat Learning Series - Studying Poker, Part 3: Poker Tools

[CRStals]

Part 3 of our CardsChat Learning Series: Studying Poker is focusing on tools you can - and should - use to help you study off the felt. The number of tools that are available out in the world today are infinite: some legal and useful while others infringe on cheating, especially if you use it WHILE you play. We are going to focus on tools that are accepted as legal to use and condemn the use of RTA tools that won't be reviewed here.

Hand Range & Charts

You have probably heard of numbers like the average poker player's VPiP is between 15 and 20%.

• What does VPIP mean?
• What does 15% VPIP represent?

VPIP stands for Voluntarily Putting Into Pot. Essentially, it asks the question: how often does a player call or raise pre-flop? This is going to be an indication to how big of a poker range they are playing pre-flop, and can be an indicator if someone is playing tight or loose. This does not count hands we are in the blinds and fold, but it would if we were in the blinds and called a raise. But, have you thought about what this represents?

The charts we are about to show are a representation only - actual ranges are going to be player specific so take these as a guide only.

This is what a 15% VPIP chart could look like:

This is what a 20% VPIP could look like:

The difference between them are subtle --> a 20% VPIP player could be playing:

• A2s
• A9o
• KJo
• Q9 and J9s
• K8 and T8s
• T9s
• T8 and 98s
• 97s and 87s
• 33 and 22

In other words, the fringe hands a 15% player might play would be played by a 20% player more - not necessarily consistently - but they are more likely to show up.

How do you use this?
Provided you have enough info on your opponent, you can use a hand range chart to understand the hands that your opponent may have and help to construct a likely range for your opponent in a hand. There are a ton of variables that you have to consider when it comes to forming a range:

• Position of your opponent
• Cash game vs tournament
• # players dealt in the hand
• Stack size
• Phase in tournament

The idea behind using hand ranges & charts like this is to develop a starting point in a hand for a player. Even if you don't have a lot of hands against a particular player, knowing the most likely range of their hand gives you somewhere to start to understand what you are up against. But - what you should become familiar with is what the percentages in your HUD could mean - you are going to see a LOT of percentages when using a HUD...understanding the info that it's telling you is going to be important for your decision making process.

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PokerTracker4
This is a tool that has changed how I play poker. Be sure to check PokerTracker Guide here! PokerTracker4 uses a two-prong approach to improve your game:

• In game, developing a customizable Heads-Up Display, or HUD, to provide real time info on PAST hands that you have in your database
• After the game, to review your play, identify leaks and help you focus your studying

The poker world is at a point where if you are not crunching data on a constant basis, you are going to be left behind - plain and simple. We're going to focus on the HUD part of PT4 first to tie back to the hand ranges we referenced earlier.

Take this example:

Here, we should be able to construct a really solid range for Villiain 1, 2 and 3 given the number of hands we have on them. Villain 4's stats are not as solid as there is 90 hands in our database - so we have an idea but that isn't enough info to feel sure about building a range on them. Villain 5 we have nothing, so they are going to be a wild card for us.

Let's focus on the most reliable player Villiain 3 - the HUD is teilling us the following:

• Their VPIP is 25% - meaning they are playing more hands than the average player. In this case, we have seen them put money into the pot voluntarily 211 hands out of 845
• Their PR is 3% - meaning they have raised pre-flop 3% of the time, or roughly 25 of 845 hands. This is considerably low for a successful poker player.
• Their 3B is 1% - meaning they have three-bet pre-flop 1% of the time, or roughly 8 of 845 hands. This is extremelly low.
• Their CB is 100% - meaning every time they have raised pre-flop, they have bet the flop.
• Their FCB is 66% - meaning every time they have called a raise pre-flop, they are folding to a continuation bet from the pre-flop raiser 66% of the time.

So using the above info, let's run some examples and potential ranges:

• Villain 3 is on the button, and we raise from MP
• They call & all other hands fold.
• We can confidently put them on this range:

The flop comes King-Jack-Three, off-suit. Should we bet? I'd say yes - two reasons:

• There are not a lot of hands in their range that are going to hit this flop. Yes, they could have a King, but they aren't likely to have AA or KK - we'd expect a three-bet from their 1% range.
• We know they are going to fold to a c-bet 2 out of every 3 hands, so it makes sense to continue - and if they call, we can confidentially narrow their range down to having a pair of Kings, Jacks, or potentially two pairs. They also could have a set of three's but not a single pair of threes.

Now let's say that we again raise pre-flop, but now Villain 3 three-bets. Based on our info, we know almost for sure they have AA or KK:

Knowing this is extremely powerful information to determine if we want to continue to try and crack aces or kings.

Having an operational HUD with it set-up to your specifications and a database of hands to build reliable ranges off of is a huge advantage to you when you are playing poker, and in conjunction with a hand range calculator, you should be able to use both to help you build hand ranges for your opponents, and define what they have almost down to one hand. This is a big reason why professionals who play live are successful - they can build and update ranges in their head on the fly and put opponents down to one hand with little effort.

Now, a disclaimer: HUD's require hundreds of hands to be able to build ranges effectively. If you do not have enough data, your HUD is going to tell you data with a wider margin - meaning that a 20% VPIP player may not be a 20% VPIP player.

Analysis and Leak Tracker
The other side of PT4 is the analysis of your play - they have built in statistics and graphs to review your play, as well as to do a deep dive on your play to identify leaks. This could prove very useful when studying off the felt and identifying areas you want to work on. PT4 can lead you into very specific areas to focus on - the output from PT4 is broken down into small areas that will be easier to focus on when you look to pick something to study. PT4 does a nice job breaking down what each of these means, and provides a basic lesson on each stat for you to review if it suggests you need to work on it.

There are some significant don'ts when it comes to PT4 or any poker tracking software and HUD's that are on the market:

• Players with limited hands will show data that is not reliable and should be taken with a grain of salt
• PT4 will not be able to be used on all poker sites - you need to ensure that a poker room allows this software to track hands and update HUD's in the background
• These tools are an indication and a foundation only - they don't tell you with confidence exactly what a player is doing so taking good notes while playing is huge - we spoke about this in part 2 but let's quickly expand on this:
  When you are playing and a hand goes to showdown, if your opponent shows a hand that is OUTSIDE of the hand range you'd expect, note this in the client. PT4 will also note these hands for reference in the HUD, but you want to ensure if someone is playing outside of a range, this can help you define it better next time you're in a hand.

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Poker Solvers
The other tool that is on the market are poker solvers. These are algorithms that calculate the best possible poker strategy in a given situation. They are designed to maximize the EV a player achieves in a given hand. They will pit these algorithms against each other after the user defines the hand and the inputs of their opponent, and the tool outputs what the player should do at that moment - both in terms of calling, folding, or raising, but also how much should they raise.

Solvers are highly complex tools requiring a lot of inputs to provide accurate results, and we are not going to cover their use here. If you are interested in solvers, you are best to research them on your own. Check out our guide on online poker software and tools as a first step.

Solvers come with a lot of controversy as solvers are designed to be used off the felt when players are reviewing their sessions. However, some tools have the ability to take information directly from the online poker table and provide guidance to the player playing - essentially playing like a bot would, except it's an actual human simply doing what the tool tells it to. These are highly illegal and banned from every website, as well as banned from live poker. Any player suspected of using a tool in real time are going to have their accounts froze by the site, so be warned not to use them in real time!


In summary, poker studying is a combination of things you do on the felt and things you do off the felt. There are plenty of tools out there that can improve your game, and you should be using them in conjunction with playing and studying - all with the end goal of improving your game!!

Next time, we're going to jump into one of the other big areas of studying off the felt - reviewing your hands!
Make sure to subscribe to our CardsChat Learning Poker Thread Series Index, and turn your notifications on.

Check out parts 1 and 2 of the Studying Poker Series:

• CardsChat Learning Series - Studying Poker, Part 1: Studying Off the Felt
• CardsChat Learning Series - Studying Poker, Part 2: Studying On the Felt

 

[pirateglenn]

This is a truly great thread, one of the best posts i have seen on CC and super valuable to anyone wanting to expand their knowledge and skill level. Credit to CRStals for continuing to provide us with such detail.

 

[Tero]

If you are trying to embed hand examples all we can see is numbers

 

[CRStals]

If you are trying to embed hand examples all we can see is numbers
View attachment 379570

No it was a photo of what that range looked like and it comes through for me - you can't see this:

 

[Tero]

I attached a screenshot to my previous post. So no, I do not see that chart in your article, but I see it in your response. Same thing is happening in your Mystery Bounty article. Just seeing numbers

EDIT.
I checked this thing further. Usually I use Firefox, now I tried with Chrome. Now it shows a tiny image icon in front of the numbers.
Right clicked that to open in a different tab, and...

Oops! We ran into some problems.​

You do not have permission to view this page or perform this action.

So something in your articles is only viewable to Mods and up ?

 

[Tammy]

I attached a screenshot to my previous post. So no, I do not see that chart in your article, but I see it in your response. Same thing is happening in your Mystery Bounty article. Just seeing numbers

EDIT.
I checked this thing further. Usually I use Firefox, now I tried with Chrome. Now it shows a tiny image icon in front of the numbers.
Right clicked that to open in a different tab, and...


So something in your articles is only viewable to Mods and up ?

Ah, yeah if they were originally posted in mods area, they wouldn't show here if it was simply moved. I will fix this. Thanks @Tero