Why study with a solver?
Poker is far too complex to solve through intuition alone. There are simply too many variables for a player to be able to determine the optimal strategy in every situation.
The role of solvers is to calculate Game Theory Optimal strategies, so that we can understand and learn from what optimal play looks like. They output the frequencies at which each action should be taken with each hand.
At first, these charts can be overwhelming. With the solver using multiple sizes, mixing frequently, and taking unintuitive lines, how can we turn all of this information into strategies we can actually understand and use?
The answer is not to bother memorizing individual frequencies, but to simplify the solution by studying ranges, grouping similar hands, and looking for repeatable patterns that we can apply across spots.
Look at the range first
Think of your range as a team. Every hand you can have in a spot is a member of that team, and each plays a different yet crucial role in your overall strategy.
Some hands will bet for value, some bluff, and others help protect the checking range. On their own, individual hand frequencies are rarely insightful, but make a lot more sense when viewing them as part of the full range.
Before inspecting an individual hand, first try and understand what your entire range is doing. Pay attention to overall frequencies, preferred sizing, and how the range plays as a whole.
Study hand classes
The next step after looking at your full range is to narrow in on specific hand classes.
Hands in the same hand class tend to play similar roles within your overall range. Instead of focusing on individual combos, we can instead observe the behaviour of entire groups of similar hands. The “Composition” tab comes in handy for quick grouping by hand class or equity bucket.
This makes important thresholds easier to recognize, such as the weakest hand that can value bet in a specific spot, or the strongest hand that begins folding.
Hands in the same class will not always play identically, but analyzing further differences will offer insight into why suits, blockers, and other factors can matter.
Focus on the bigger picture
Studying a single spot can be useful for review, but poker is not learned one spot at a time. Real poker improvement comes from finding patterns that repeat across many similar situations, making it necessary to focus on the bigger picture when studying with solvers.
In the same way that we can study hand classes instead of hands, we can also group turns and rivers.
Aggregate reports for flops, turns, and rivers are one of the best tools for doing this. Instead of studying one runout at a time, we can group strategically similar runouts to drastically speed up our study time. Even though there are 49 possible turn cards, many can be grouped into just a few strategically distinct categories. The same philosophy can be applied to both the flop and river.
Common mistakes
Players new to solver study often:
- study individual hands without first looking at the range
- attempt to memorize individual frequencies
- pay too much attention to hands that mix
- draw conclusions off only a single runout or spot
- learn “what” the solver does instead of “why” the solver does
- spend too much time focusing on rare spots
Key takeaways
Study overall ranges before individual hands, and break your strategy down into how each hand class plays. Look for patterns across similar boards instead of isolated solutions.
The purpose of solver study is not to be able to reproduce solver output exactly. It is to understand why those strategies are chosen and to apply that understanding to new situations.