Now that I have finished my work on the book portion of Excelling at No-Limit Hold’em, I have a little free time. Instead of going out and partying, I am going to sit in my room and study poker. I have heard great things about PokerSnowie, a training program designed to help you learn to play fundamentally sound poker by testing you against its robust poker bots and I wanted to give it a try. I decided to record my first session for you to watch. Within my 30 minutes of play, I found two somewhat significant leaks, which I discuss in the video. If you want to improve at poker, I strongly suggest you sign up for a FREE trial with PokerSnowie.
I have spent some more time with PokerSnowie since the making of this video and I am proud to say that I have found (and fixed) a few more holes in my game. I am confident that if I continue practicing, I will have “perfect play” down in no time. If you want to improve your poker skills, sign up for a FREE trial with PokerSnowie.
I really enjoyed the video replay of your Pokersnowie session, do you think the Snowie player calls you if you make a full pot bet, with the 47 against the a6, the way it suggested, or was any rvr bet getting called? I noticed it critiqued the hand about your preflop action and not the rvr bet. at the 24 minute mark
There is almost no way the program would fold what is effectively the nut bluff catcher on the river. Maybe if I bet 3x pot it would have folded. The program seems to check marginal made hands for pot control on a regular basis and doesn’t fold to reasonable bets, as it shouldn’t.
Too bad PokerSnowie doesn’t have stuff for tournament play. Do you think it’s because that’s too complicated ?
It is because chips constantly change in value. That value depends on the payouts and all of the stacks in play. That being said, it certainly works well for early level play.
Jon, really liked the video, and can definitely see how it would be useful to tweak someones game when they are regularly facing tough opponents.
Was curious though whether for lower limit players (1/2, 1/3) who are trying to maximize their earnings against decidedly poor playing opponents, whether by tweaking my game in this manner it will actually hurt my win rate against these opponents.
Im playing 1/3 live and because i dont feel my opponents are exploiting me, I do a number of things that I believe are +EV given the situation, but im sure pokersnowie would frown on in tougher games (for example i typically limp my small pairs in EP because i want to play them, but feel that raising with them puts me in a tough situation postflop).
What are your thoughts on lower limit players using pokersnowie?
I think learning to play a fundamentally sound game is a required strategy, especially if you expect to be able to hold your own against strong players. I never recommend playing a default strategy and never adjusting. I make it quite clear that you should alter your play based on your opponents. If they are constantly making huge errors, as you suggest your opponents are, you should get out of line to exploit them. If you look at all of the best players in the world, you certainly cannot categorize them as “tag” or “lag” or anything like that. They play well and keep you guessing at all times. If you play one specific strategy all the time, unless your opponents never adjust, you will be leaving money o the table. I strongly suggest you learn how to play fundamentally sound, like a maniac, like a nit, etc as they all have their uses.
” I just downloaded the free trial and uploaded my last 8000 hands or so where I ran pretty bad. So far, it has suggested I fold A9 on KK9K and not reraise the flop against a maniac with the nuts. It claims I am “advanced”, whatever that means.
Just looking through my small errors it suggests:
not squeezing on the button with J9o
not betting mid pair 3 ways when checked to
checking with a set 3 ways when checked to on draw heavy board
not cold 4betting ATss vs lag open and lag 3bet.
I do not agree at all. I will probably play around with it a bit but I dont think these programs that try to suggest GTO play are much use in the real world where you will make much more money by exploiting your opponent’s tendencies”
“Fwiw, I put in around an hour playing the challenge mode at $3/$6 6 max(I dont know if the buy-in level is relevant) and it was super easy to run over. I ended up being up $1,200 pretty much all from fold equity. I dont think I ever went to a significant showdown. Obviously small sample size. The program would raise and reraise but as soon as I wanted to put in significant money, it would fold so I proceeded to bluff it lots preflop and on the turn/river with 1.5x pot overbets. This is not how poker works in the real world at all, at least in my experience at $2/$5 and $50/$100 zoom. The main problem with bots is they tend to very exploitable in a few specific situations.
Over the 120 hands or so, it said I made 3 “blunders”, all of which were light preflop calls or 3bets with the intention of winning the pot postflop. As far as I know, if your opponent is going to be weak postflop, you can pretty much do whatever you want within reason preflop because your opponent will give you the pot most of the time postflop.
I also noticed the program was fairly face up in its play, betting with air and strong hands and checking with mediocre made hands. Again, this is not how good players play in the real world. While playing in this manner is probably optimal in a vacuum, as soon as your opponents realize what you are doing, you will get destroyed”
Hi Jonathan,
Those two quotes above are your from different forum. I think its been wrote about a year ago. Would you mind explaining a bit what happened that you changed your mind about Snowie? I am not trying to be mean. I love Snowie myself.
Regards,
The developers of PokerSnowie improved it quite a bit over that year. When I played around with it a bit more, it seemed to play significantly better.
Thanks for your reply. I was just watching your video and your were talking a lot about paying attention to stack sizes. What do you think about learning and applying m-zone concept. Is it still valid? Its the question from live tournament (and maybe some online but not as a heave grinder) perspective.
I have personally never used the Harrington on Hold’em “M” theory, mainly because I am not concerned with completely blinding out. I figured out how to play poker long before that book was released. I have always used effective big blinds combined with actual big blinds to figure out my strategy. For a full treatment on how I think about poker, check out Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 1.
I totally agree with Kris. the program is fair to ok. not great.
I saw a LOT of questionable advice without listing it hand by hand.
If you played that advice in a real life game you would be getting pushed off all kind of good hands
and not getting max profit when you were WAY ahead.