Inside PokerSnowie's brain reveals the work of the Snowie AI Team. It explores first hand how the brain of PokerSnowie evolves and learns advanced strategic concepts, on its own.

PokerSnowie's ultimate aim is to produce the perfectly balanced game, find the ultimate un-exploitable equilibrium for all No Limit Hold'em configurations. Join us on this fascinating journey, which is just starting, into the future of poker.

The PokerSnowie Video Quiz series aims to answer the question: "what is the right play?" It is a set of poker coaching videos presented by French professional poker player Sharp. In each video, Sharp sets up an interesting hand in the "Scenarios" tool of PokerSnowie and explains how to analyse the situation and learn from PokerSnowie's advice, based on the Game Theory Optimal model.

PokerSnowie Video Quiz: Continuation bet in position

Continuation bet in position

In this week's PokerSnowie Video Quiz, Sharp continues his series on GTO play on the flop.

The situation is the same as last week's quiz, but this time vilain is in the small blind.

Pre flop, Hero opens with AJs and vilain calls from the SB. On the AT5 flop vilain checks. What should hero do?

  1. Cbet Pot
  2. Cbet for half pot
  3. Check back for pot control?

Discover the surprising answer in the Video below

 

 

Johannes

PokerSnowie Video Quiz

Sharp is a French maths postgraduate and a probability engineer turned professional backgammon player in 1999. French number 1 for 4 years, having won all the largest Backgammon tournament titles, he moved on to Poker in 2004. He has since then built an impressive record and stands amongst the best French MTT players. Nowadays Sharp spends most of his time coaching and producing coaching videos, in particular for poker-academie.com, where he is one of the lead instructors.

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Comments

It was quite eye-opening to see that Snowie chooses the opposite of what I would normally do based on being in or out of position. It was helpful that you explained about people fearing the check-raise when in position. Snowie has no fear! ;)
In the example you open for pot. Snowie likes opening for half pot. Not many players other than the Montenegro players will open for half pot here, but most people will open for 3bb. reduce the open size 3bb and snowie says check here. Same for snowies recommended half pot open. And for these smaller open sizes the betting size is set to pot on the flop.
Hello Andy, I am playing since 2004, and standard sizing in the opening has varied a lot over the years. The trend is to open with smaller and smaller sizes. If you watch a MTT video from 2008/2009, the instructor could say “this guy opened for a mini raise so he is likely to be a fish”, today you would rather ear “this guy opened for 3bb so he is probably a fish”. So it is very likely that in a couple of years most of the regulars will open for ½ pot or even for a mini-raise. Even if it is not optimal, it is perfectly possible to build a sound game opening with a different sizing. One of the best no limit player, Sharknebula is known for opening 4bb. And I don’t think this makes him exploitable. Since PokerSnowie was trained with 3 betting sizes (1/2 pot, pot and 2pot) I prefer to use one of those sizing to have stronger evaluations. Now for the bet sizes on the flop, it is all about building a pot and playing around commitment. If you open for ½ pot pre-flop you want to cbet pot otherwise you would have to overbet massively on the next streets to get stacks in. If you opened pre flop for pot, now betting ½ pot on the flop is enough. If you get called you can overbet for twice the pot on the turn and threatening to play for stacks.
why did you use pot open when Snowie would use 1/2 pot open? if you did use 1/2 pot Snowie's advice on the flop is to check with AJ and it uses PSB sizing when it does CB with other parts of it's range? if we use Snowie's suggested sizing we will be checking back most of our Ax combos and taking a pot control line - this seem like the complete opposite of what you suggest in the video?
Hello Mike, I used the open pot because most of the players are opening for 3bb. So the situations are more familiar than if I was using ½ bet pot open. With smaller opening sizes, ranges are larger and post flop play is different. True Snowie advice a check when UTG opened for ½ bet pot, but this texture is a bit of an exception. The presence of an A a ten and a five brings a lot of gutshot possibles. Snowie would cbet ATs on AJ5 or AJ on A94 for examples and it is only a 0.03 mistake to cbet. The important point is that Snowie is more eager to cbet when in position and to “pot control” when out of position. For example with a ½ bet pot opening Snowie would cbet 52% of its range against the small blind and only 33% when the caller pre flop is in MP on the flop AT5.
Thanks for the clarification I just ran the scenario using 3bb open and Snowie CBs 1/2 pot with 70% of it's range including AJ. If we or most regs are using 3x opens should I use 3x in any scenarios that I look at? Is there some advantage to running this scenario with pot open instead of using 3bb?
Hi Mike, There is no much of a difference between a 3X and a 3,5X open in most of the situations Snowie’s evaluations will be similar. When I am analyzing a hand I am using the opening size as played. But when I am building scenarios from the scratch to study theory I prefer to use pot or ½ pot size bets. Why? Because Snowie works on pattern recognition, the neural network has been trained over trillions of hands using 3 sizing: ½ pot, Pot and twice the pot. So it has more experience to deal with pot size open and therefore I think the evaluations are slightly better.
thanks again for taking time to answer:) I am too slow to 9 table and type in bet sizes and there are no decent hotkey programs for the sites I play. So what opening size would you suggest a player use? Do you think 2x or 3x is closer to a Snowie strategy in practice? I was 2x all seats except the BUT and SB but then I noticed in two of your videos you used PSB open - thoughts?
Hi again, This is a good question thank you. Both sizing are perfectly fine. If you open for 2X you will be able to open with a wider range. If you are having good results with the 2X sizing, you should not change since it is optimal. Most of the opponents are not defending enough their blinds and there is a lot of money to be made. In order to exploit that leak, I would recommend opening from the button with a smaller size and a larger frequency than Snowie does. A ½ pot size bet opening raise from everywhere but the small blind would be my choice.