JohnnyUtah

The only hand that is an open out of the above is 7766 ds. About 3/4 of your UTG RFI range should have an ace.

For the hands headed by an ace: most of the broadway pairs with an ace are opens. Most of the Ace hi single pairs with a suited ace that are 3 gapped or less are opens. All of the 4 cards 9+ single and triple are opens. Almost all of the AJT8 type stuff are opens. Almost all of the double suited Ace hi hand with another broadway are opens (with the exception of hands that have a 2 or a 3 in them.) Most of the A[k-t][9-6][9-6] unpaired w a suited ace are opens. Last but not least, having a 2 or a 3 in your hand is almost every bit as detrimental to your utg rang (really even up through the co) as having an ace is beneficial. You need to avoid 2s and 3s like cancer with the exception of some of the single and double suited pairs and double suited AKQ2/AJT2/AQJ2 type stuf. Even hands like AKJ2/AQT3 suited to the ace and unblocking the k/q hi draw is a fold in most games.

The rest of the range should consist of double suited highly connected hands (2 gaps or less if not ace high, 1 gap or less if less than 2 broadways), double suited kings, double/single/triple suited TT+ with 1 gap or less (slightly more than 1 gap for KK, very very slightly more than 1 gap for QQ), pure rundowns single suited T high and higher, A few other heuristics that are useful: no rainbow or monotone unpaired hands. All pairs below TT need either a suited ace or another pair (playing middle and bottom set is just incredibly tough to do profitably 3 ways first to act.) Hope this helped.

Just catching up on this forum and I wanted to add something as this is something I struggled with for a while as well.

The statement preceding this sentence is not correct.

"by definition, a GTO strategy is such a strategy that if our opponent deviates in their strategy (by "calling too much") then our expected return would be better than if they played the original (GTO) strategy."

The ONLY thing that a GTO strategy will do is guarantee a minimum amount of EV. It will not maximize your EV against an opponent who is playing poorly as it is not designed to counter act whatever specific mistakes your opponent is making. Only an exploitative strategy can maximize mistakes. Since this is such an important distinction, I recommend an exercise. If you have a NL solver input the following (if you don't just pony up the $80 and get GTO+ as understanding this concept will make you considerable amounts of money.) Set stacks of 100 for both IP and OOP, input a bet size of 100 for both IP and OOP. Input a board of 222 2 3 and ranges of all pocket pairs 55+ for both players. Run the sim and then notice the EV for the node where OOP has checked and is facing a bet and has to either call of fold. From there, node lock IP's betting strategy when checked to and then change OOP's calling strategy to either pure fold or pure call the hands it mixes with and run again. You will notice that the EVs are IDENTICAL regardless of whether or not you chose call or fold for the hands it mixes with. Once you have done that, go in and node lock OOPs strategy to calling all hands it mixes with and unlock IP's betting adjustment. Note how IP's betting strategy changes. Finally look at how IP's betting strategy shifts when OOP folds all hands it mixes with at equilibrium. Make sure to notate the EVs in all of the above scenarios. You will notice that IP's EV will dramatically increase once it is allowed to adjust whereas it will stay exactly the same if it sticks to an equilibrium strategy.

In small and mid stakes PLO games, your opponents are NO WHERE NEAR FUCKING CLOSE to playing a GTO strategy. If your opponents were playing GTO you would pick up the blinds almost exactly 1/2 of the time that you raised from utg at a 6 max table. Does that ever happen in ANY game you have ever played? No, me neither. At equilibrium, if a gto utg opener tightened up its range such that it only played hands that were massively profitable at equilibrium, then it would never get any action and its overall EV would decrease. The range that a solver calculates is structured such that it has achieved a finely tuned balance between strong hands and just enough weak hands such that it can maximize it's ev across all potential scenarios. A major part of this balance is having the ability to get action with its strong hands. In poker geek terms, it structures its range such that it gives its opponents some incentive to give its stronger hands action. The opponents you are playing with do not need that incentive and are willingly going to give you action even if you're the biggest nit in the world. They may say differently, but let's face it; degens gonna degen. As a result, because most of these games are so wild, you can exploitatively fold a good chunk of the bottom of a gto range (I have data to suggest that it is upwards of 30%). This bottom chunk would actually LOSE money even if a perfect GTO bot were playing it. And here's the other kicker. You are not a GTO bot. Neither am I. Neither is Sauce/Galfond/Whomever the best player is in the history of history. As humans we need to rely much more heavily on hands that realize their equity and have playability. The AAA combos are pretty much trash in a loose game. While the 2 aces are indeed very strong, the third is a dangler unless you have opponents who can actually regularly fold about a J hi flush. By electing to vpip these combos before about the cutoff, you are willingly sacrificing a card and effectively taking a knife to a gun fight.

Damn, sorry fellas. I haven't logged in to RIO in a while, and am now just getting this. Normally I get notifications via email. crazyriver, the two are similar, I probably prefer PLO Trainer bc I can slice and dice things up better. That said, I haven't used visions in a few months, so I don't know about any updates. Yeah, Flopzilla is a reaasonable comparison, but I would say that PLOCalc is like flopzilla on steroids given the powerful syntax. To be technical, PLO Calc is not a solver though. It is a very powerful equity calculator and range explorer. And yes, it is only for heads up pots, unfortunately.

Darren Chandler I personally use visions or the plo trainer tool from plo masterminds when i look at an equilibrium solution. But, if I'm doing any type of in depth study on a particular hand, I would guess that I spend 80% of my study in plo calc. I find that you can create much more realistic models of how humans actually play in plo calc. That said, there is a learning curve to the software as filtering through that many isometric combos can be cumbersome.

This is going to be a reasonable starting spot. I did something similar 2-3 years back when I first started playing plo as my main game. Those ranges, however (and my guess is that the PJ guys would agree) are moderately obsolete. I would also disagree with the frequencies in that post. First off 15% utg is definitely too wide at most tables 1/2 and below. If you're going to use the PJ ranges strictly, I'd stick with the 12% utg, the 15% in mp, 25 in the co and 50 otb. In reality, when working with my students and in my own game I prefer a pretty strict 12% utg and 16.5% in mp, and then more fluid ranges in the CO and BU with 26.5 and 45% being reasonable defaults.

The poker juice ranges are based on the PPT rankings which is going to make them favor raw equity over playability. Because of how passively you're going to need to play two tone boards out of position in PLO you really don't want to be playing as many rainbow, monotone and triple suited hands as the PJ rakings recommend. Further, their ranges are going to be way heavy in pairs. I personally don't like playing any pairs 99 and below that don't have a suited ace or another pair until the cutoff as middle and bottom set are just difficult to play well out of position. I also found the PJ ranges to be too heavy in some of the weaker TT-KK combos (consider how shitty it is to have JJ33r on JT5 two tone in a 3 way pot oop.) As a very quick general rule, I would add a lot more AXs and double suited 3 broadway hands as well as connected 55-99 headed by a single or double suited ace to the PJ ranges and . You really want to prioritize having an ace in your hand especially from up front. This serves two purposes. One, Axs hands will have a lot of robust equity on a lot of boards. Two, when you have an ace in your hand, the frequency that someone at the table has AA goes down which will reduce the occurrences you will get 3 bet.

As I mentioned previously, I had a similar problem as the OP did a few years back. Ultimately the best solution I found was to find a very solid set of GTO ranges and remove all pairs below TT that didn't have the above qualifiers. I then threw everything left over into PLOCalc (the best software on the market imo) and trimmed down what was left such that I would get about 12% according to their vs25 ranking system.

To answer the OP's initial question, the rankings that the PIO guys did in PLOCalc is the best thing I have seen in terms of ranking a top X% of hands. What I really like about the PLOCalc rankings is that they actually have 7 ranking systems built into the software in terms of how loose or tight of a range you are facing. PLO is an incredibly dynamic game and having a ranking system is not going to be all that effective unless it factors in the range it is up against.

I have bought the course and am planning on doing a review at some point here soon. He recommends opening 12-16% utg, which I think anything higher than 13 is going to be too loose at 98% of all tables you will encounter below about 2/5 online and 5/10 live.

When I take on a new student who is not yet beating the games for a good clip, there are two things that I pretty much do always. The first is to get them used to the fact that winning small stakes plo is pretty boring and that they're going to be called a "nit" a ton. The second thing I do is to get them to know a proper 12% rfi range like its the back of their hand. In many disciplines there are a lot of "hacks" or 80/20 type pieces of knowledge that if applied, can get someone proficient very quickly. In ss plo, a proper 12% rfi range is one of them as it is a range that is used SO often. A profitable 12% RFI range is designed such that it will thrive in multiway pots. Thus, you really don't need to make adjustments from 6 max to ring unless you're playing at an extremely crazy table where all pots are 5-6 ways and usually 3 bet. In that case, you can go ahead and cut down to 9-10% from these positions, but 12% would still be profitable (it would just be higher variance.)

Count me in for one that prefers this style of vision video!

Oh hell yes. Your spreadsheet system is brilliant. And there is a lot of science that indicates that writing something down helps us retain knowledge more effectively (writing by hand is best, but more difficult to store etc.) Thanks for sharing! I’m confident the ideas you have presented in the first few minutes of this video will pay for my subscription here for years to come.

2 Richard G's* ;)

You're welcome! Since watching this and looking at your sheet a bit closer, what I am doing now is recording all the sessions with loom and having a running stopwatch on screen. Depending upon how many tables im playing, ill either press the lap button, or if i want to go into m ore detail, I will write out the time on the stop watch along with the hand (AKJ6s KKT9d etc.) and then a brief questions (defend? what are good bluffs on this board etc.) What I like about yours is it looks like you have the makings of a primitive database such that you sort them out according to srp/3bet pot etc. Looking forward to more!

Welcome! Great first vid. What really intrigued me was your spreadsheet in the background. I personally play on 3 different sites and none are accessible to HEM. I would love to see you go in more depth on it and how you utilize it. There is a ton of content on the market about how to improve ones PLO game utilizing hem/pt/etc but i have yet to find anything on ways to systematically improve on sites that don't support the use of these softwares.

I don't mind the above advice about check folding, as it's likely what I would do in game. But I think the thought process sucks as we definitely have a range advantage. As far as GTO is concerned, a Bu flat of an mp 4 bet with (jt,kj,kt,kk,jj,tt,aq,q9) removing the seven known cards (As,Ad,2s,6d,Js,Kh,Td) occurs 16.5%. Human at this level, are going to be wider than this and are almost certainly 3 betting more KK than a solver is. However, I don't think its going to be enough to consider check folding imo. I also don't know of any regs that are going to be fucking around in this spot. If my math is correct, he has 129 behind on the flop and the pot is 72. I actually love a bet of $15 on the flop. I can't see a single good 100 player who is raising anything other than AQ and of course you have that blocked. I would then tend to ship any queen or spade, say "shit, what do i do here?" on an ace, and then for the rest of the deck besides a K/T/J I like betting small again such that we can set up a bet to fold out all hands we lose to but kk+ on the river. $25 sounds about right as that leaves us with a bet of 89 into 150.