# Poker Academy > 1,500,000+ GTO preflop charts for every stack, format and position, a GTO Postflop Solver and a trainer with instant feedback. 3-day free trial. ## What is Poker Academy? Poker Academy is an online poker training platform for No Limit Texas Hold'em. You look up the GTO preflop chart for your spot, solve heads-up postflop spots with the GTO Postflop Solver, and drill the same decisions in a poker trainer with instant feedback. Aggregated reports and free calculators come with it. Every solution is calculated with game theory optimal principles. Nobody picks hands by feel; it is all math. ## Products ### Preflop Charts Over 1,500,000 high-depth GTO preflop charts for No Limit Texas Hold'em, and the library keeps growing. Look up the spot you played and learn the range, from preflop basics to advanced tactics. - Multi-table tournaments (MTTs), 6-max cash games and Spin & Go - Final tables, satellites, BB ante, PKO and more - Multiway pots, blind vs blind, spots against limpers and more - Stack depths from 3 BB to 100 BB https://poker.academy/preflop-charts (full spec: https://poker.academy/preflop-charts.md) ### GTO Postflop Solver Walk a preflop line, then solve the flop on the same screen. Heads-up flop, turn and river, EV and equity for every combo, and nodelocking to test an exploit. - Ranges, pot and stacks arrive from the preflop line - Bet sizes set by stack-to-pot ratio, by hand, or picked by the solver - Flop, turn and river, street by street, heads-up - Lock what your opponent does and see the best response - Heads-up, No Limit Hold'em, up to 200 bb https://poker.academy/gto-postflop-solver (full spec: https://poker.academy/gto-postflop-solver.md) ### GTO Trainer Play up to 4 tables at once, drill the spots you get wrong and get feedback after every decision. Train at your own pace. - Deep-Study and Multi-Table training modes - Flashcards with spaced repetition system https://poker.academy/gto-trainer (full spec: https://poker.academy/gto-trainer.md) ### Free Tools - Equity Calculator: Free Texas Hold'em equity calculator: hand vs hand, hand vs range and range vs range across flop, turn and river. Up to 9 players, preset ranges, share links. https://poker.academy/equity-calculator (full spec: https://poker.academy/equity-calculator.md) - Variance Calculator: Free MTT variance calculator. Simulate several tournament formats at once and see your downswing range, risk of ruin and the bankroll you need. No signup. https://poker.academy/variance-calculator (full spec: https://poker.academy/variance-calculator.md) - Breakeven Calculator: Free poker breakeven calculator: how often villain must fold for your bluff to break even, and how often he must bluff for your call to break even. https://poker.academy/breakeven-calculator - Vegas Calendar: Live Las Vegas poker tournament calendar: WSOP, Wynn, Aria, Resorts World and more. Late-reg countdowns, decision filters, schedule builder and ICS export. https://poker.academy/vegas-calendar - Table tools: Randomizer, Poker Math Cheat Sheet, tournament alarms and Poker Break Workout. Yes. https://poker.academy/tools ## Pricing ### Essential The full MTT preflop chart library and the GTO Trainer, so you fix your preflop game first. - Monthly: €79 / $89 per month (EUR / USD) - Yearly: €69 / $79 per month, billed yearly (EUR / USD) ### Standard The GTO Postflop Solver with a daily limit, plus the MTT preflop charts and trainers. - Monthly: €99 / $109 per month (EUR / USD) - Yearly: €79 / $89 per month, billed yearly (EUR / USD) ### Premium Every chart library, the GTO Postflop Solver without limits and every trainer in one subscription. - Monthly: €109 / $119 per month (EUR / USD) - Yearly: €89 / $99 per month, billed yearly (EUR / USD) - 3-day free trial included. Cancel anytime. All prices are net and exclude VAT. Any applicable VAT is added at checkout. - Trial accounts receive full Premium benefits for 3 days, then revert to your selected plan. Full pricing document: https://poker.academy/pricing.md ## What each plan includes ### Preflop Charts - MTT Preflop Charts (1.5M+): Essential, Standard, Premium - Final Tables ICM: Essential, Standard, Premium - PKO Simulations: Essential, Standard, Premium - Simplify Strategies: Essential, Standard, Premium - Cash Game Charts: Premium - Spin&Go Charts: Premium ### GTO Postflop Solver - No daily limit: Premium - Solve any heads-up spot: Essential, Standard, Premium - Your own bet sizes (up to 5 per street): Essential, Standard, Premium - Node locking to find exploits: Standard, Premium - Solves run on our servers: Essential, Standard, Premium ### Preflop GTO Trainer - Warm-up Mode: Essential, Standard, Premium - Deep Study Mode: Essential, Standard, Premium ### Aggregated Reports - Auto reports for every solved spot: Essential, Standard, Premium - Build your own reports: Standard, Premium - Full 1,755-flop universe: Premium - Two reports solving in parallel: Premium ### Full Hand Trainer - Preflop to river in one hand: Essential, Standard, Premium - Training plans & drills: Essential, Standard, Premium - Hand review with replayer: Essential, Standard, Premium - Unlimited hands: Premium ### Browse & Compare - Spot browser: Essential, Standard, Premium - Solution library & folders: Essential, Standard, Premium - Compare canvas & board sets: Essential, Standard, Premium ### Hand Analytics - Hand import & Leak Finder (MTT preflop): Essential, Standard, Premium ### Mobile App - iOS & Android: Essential, Standard, Premium - MTT Preflop Strategies (1.5M+): Essential, Standard, Premium - GTO Postflop Solver: Standard, Premium - GTO Preflop Trainer (MTT only): Essential, Standard, Premium - GTO Full Hand Trainer: Standard, Premium ## Facts - Free trial: 3 days on any plan. After 3 days you are charged the price of the plan you picked. We email you a reminder 24 hours before that charge. You can cancel from your account in 2 clicks, with no fee and no need to contact support. - Formats covered: MTT, PKO, Cash, Spin & Go. - Game: No Limit Texas Hold'em only. No Omaha, Omaha 5 Cards or 6+ Hold'em (Short Deck). - Stack depths from 3 BB to 100 BB, across 23 different stack sizes and multiple tournament phases. - GTO Postflop Solver accuracy: Our engine reports on average 0.6% Nash Distance. A solve is an approximate equilibrium for the tree and sizes you gave it; other sizes give other answers. - GTO Postflop Solver scope: Postflop solves are heads-up. When three players see the flop, the trail says so. ICM is available on preflop spots in Browse, not in postflop solves. Effective stacks go up to 200 bb, pots from 2 to 200 bb. No Limit Hold'em only. - Poker Academy has computed its solutions on its own servers, around the clock, since 2020. - Platforms: the main application runs in a modern browser with no install; native mobile apps are available for iOS and Android. - Languages: the site is published in 16 locales (en, de, fr, es, it, pt, br, pl, ru, bg, ar, cn, th, vn, in, hi). The blog is English-only. - Social proof: 4.8 · 2,700+ reviews, 10,000+ active players, 130+ active members. WSOP & PCA winners use PA. - Official ambassador: Jon "Apestyles" Van Fleet. - Players quoted on the site: Shannon Shorr, Lara Eisenberg. - Payment: We accept all major credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex), PayPal, and Apple/Google Pay via Stripe. - Affiliate programme: recurring commission for referring players. https://poker.academy/affiliates ## FAQ Q: How does the three-day trial work? A: You get full Premium access for three days, whichever plan you pick. We email you 24 hours before the first charge, and if you cancel before the trial ends you pay nothing. Q: Which poker formats can I study? A: MTT, PKO, Cash and Spin & Go. Which charts and tools you get depends on the plan. Q: Do I need to install desktop software? A: No. The app runs in any modern browser. The iOS and Android apps are separate downloads. Q: Can I use the same work on mobile? A: Yes. The mobile app keeps your charts and training with you when you are away from the desk. What it includes depends on your plan. Q: Can I cancel without contacting support? A: Yes. You cancel from your account in 2 clicks, with no support request and no fee. Q: Is Poker Academy only a preflop chart library? A: No. It also covers postflop study, full-hand training, reports, Canvas and supporting poker tools. Q: What happens after the 3-day trial? A: After 3 days you are charged the price of the plan you picked. We email you a reminder 24 hours before that charge. You can cancel from your account in 2 clicks, with no fee and no need to contact support. Q: Can I switch plans? A: Yes. You can upgrade or downgrade at any time. Upgrades take effect immediately (prorated), downgrades at the next billing cycle. Q: Is there a student/amateur discount? A: We offer occasional promotional pricing. Subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Discord for discount announcements. Q: What payment methods are accepted? A: We accept all major credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex), PayPal, and Apple/Google Pay via Stripe. ## Documents - https://poker.academy/llms.txt (this summary) - https://poker.academy/llms-full.txt (this summary with every per-page document and every blog article appended) - https://poker.academy/blog/feed.xml (RSS feed of the blog) - https://poker.academy/blog/post/.md (any blog article as Markdown) - https://poker.academy/pricing.md (Pricing) - https://poker.academy/preflop-charts.md (Preflop Charts) - https://poker.academy/gto-postflop-solver.md (GTO Postflop Solver) - https://poker.academy/gto-trainer.md (GTO Trainer) - https://poker.academy/equity-calculator.md - https://poker.academy/variance-calculator.md ## Links - Website: https://poker.academy - App: https://app.poker.academy - Blog: https://poker.academy/blog - Poker Equity & Odds: the app for calls your gut gets wrong: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-equity-odds-app (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-equity-odds-app.md) - Poker starting hands: 1,326 combos, 169 hands, and how to write them down: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-starting-hands-combos-notation (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-starting-hands-combos-notation.md) - Hard means hard now: the new hand difficulty selector: https://poker.academy/blog/post/hand-difficulty-selector (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/hand-difficulty-selector.md) - Aggregated Reports: Stop studying one flop at a time: https://poker.academy/blog/post/aggregated-reports-guide (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/aggregated-reports-guide.md) - Practice: Know what your mistakes actually cost: https://poker.academy/blog/post/practice-full-hand-training-guide (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/practice-full-hand-training-guide.md) - A poker study routine that survives tilt: review your own hands, repeat the spots, set a stopping rule: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-study-routine-and-tilt (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-study-routine-and-tilt.md) - Bet sizing and SPR: why the size belongs to the spot: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-bet-sizing-and-spr (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-bet-sizing-and-spr.md) - Board texture and range advantage: how to read a flop: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-board-texture-and-range-advantage (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-board-texture-and-range-advantage.md) - How to Maximize Your Vegas Poker Schedule: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-maximize-your-vegas-poker-schedule (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-maximize-your-vegas-poker-schedule.md) - Poker ranges and RFI: how to open from every position: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-ranges-and-rfi (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-ranges-and-rfi.md) - Texas Hold’em rules and positions: how a hand actually works: https://poker.academy/blog/post/texas-holdem-rules-and-positions (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/texas-holdem-rules-and-positions.md) - From Open Raise to River – The Biggest Update in Poker Academy’s History: https://poker.academy/blog/post/from-open-raise-to-river-the-biggest-update-in-poker-academys-history (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/from-open-raise-to-river-the-biggest-update-in-poker-academys-history.md) - Risk / (risk + reward): the breakeven formula behind every bluff, call and raise: https://poker.academy/blog/post/one-formula-that-changes-every-decision-you-make-at-the-table (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/one-formula-that-changes-every-decision-you-make-at-the-table.md) - BB Ante Explained: Why Your Preflop Sims Are Costing You Money: https://poker.academy/blog/post/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-are-costing-you-money (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-are-costing-you-money.md) - GTO Trainer Update: Smart Trainings & Flashcards: https://poker.academy/blog/post/new-gto-trainer-smart-trainings-flashcards (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/new-gto-trainer-smart-trainings-flashcards.md) - Super System vs the solver: six pieces of Doyle Brunson’s 1979 advice, checked: https://poker.academy/blog/post/doyle-brunsons-super-system-1979-vs-modern-poker-strategy-2025 (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/doyle-brunsons-super-system-1979-vs-modern-poker-strategy-2025.md) - How poker solvers evolved: from Los Alamos to CFR, Libratus and today’s solvers: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-poker-solvers-evolved-from-thermonuclear-physics-to-the-virtual-felt (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-poker-solvers-evolved-from-thermonuclear-physics-to-the-virtual-felt.md) - Why Sleep Is the Most Underrated Poker Strategy: https://poker.academy/blog/post/why-sleep-is-the-most-underrated-poker-strategy (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/why-sleep-is-the-most-underrated-poker-strategy.md) - Mobile App Update: Faster, Smarter Preflop Training: https://poker.academy/blog/post/mobile-app-update-faster-smarter-preflop-training (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/mobile-app-update-faster-smarter-preflop-training.md) - WPT Global Poker Bot Controversy: 130+ Accounts, New Allegation: https://poker.academy/blog/post/wpt-global-poker-bot-controversy-130-accounts-new-allegation (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/wpt-global-poker-bot-controversy-130-accounts-new-allegation.md) - Fuel Your Game: Essential Nutrition Tips for Poker Grinders: https://poker.academy/blog/post/fuel-your-game-essential-nutrition-tips-for-poker-grinders (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/fuel-your-game-essential-nutrition-tips-for-poker-grinders.md) - Introducing Strategy Grid: See the Bigger Picture of Preflop Strategy!: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introducing-strategy-grid-see-the-bigger-picture-of-preflop-strategy (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introducing-strategy-grid-see-the-bigger-picture-of-preflop-strategy.md) - What is a 3-bet in poker: real 3-bet ranges for cash and tournaments: https://poker.academy/blog/post/what-is-a-3-bet-in-poker-a-theoretical-and-strategic-guide (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/what-is-a-3-bet-in-poker-a-theoretical-and-strategic-guide.md) - GTO vs exploitative poker: MDF, node locking and when to deviate: https://poker.academy/blog/post/gto-poker-vs-exploitative-poker (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/gto-poker-vs-exploitative-poker.md) - Short stack poker strategy: how to play 10, 15 and 20bb in tournaments: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-or-less (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-or-less.md) - Heads-up poker strategy in tournaments: solver ranges from 10bb to 100bb: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-play-heads-up-poker-in-tournaments (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-play-heads-up-poker-in-tournaments.md) - How to exploit calling stations: thinner value, fewer bluffs, bigger bets: https://poker.academy/blog/post/crush-calling-stations-your-guide-to-success (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/crush-calling-stations-your-guide-to-success.md) - Continuation bets: how often and how big, by board texture: https://poker.academy/blog/post/continuation-bets-basic-mechanics-and-tips (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/continuation-bets-basic-mechanics-and-tips.md) - How to play against poker maniacs: bluff-catching, 3-bet defense and a solver lock: https://poker.academy/blog/post/learn-how-to-play-against-poker-maniacs (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/learn-how-to-play-against-poker-maniacs.md) - EPT Prague 2024: High-Stakes Poker Meets Festive Magic: https://poker.academy/blog/post/ept-prague-2024-high-stakes-poker-meets-festive-magic (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/ept-prague-2024-high-stakes-poker-meets-festive-magic.md) - Is simplifying poker strategy the road to success? I measured the cost: https://poker.academy/blog/post/is-simplifying-poker-strategy-the-road-to-success (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/is-simplifying-poker-strategy-the-road-to-success.md) - How to exploit nits: steal their blinds, fold to their raises, stop value-betting thin: https://poker.academy/blog/post/exploiting-nits-poker-strategy-you-need-to-know (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/exploiting-nits-poker-strategy-you-need-to-know.md) - Poker Academy Heads to Polish Poker Series in Bratislava: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-academy-heads-to-polish-poker-series-in-bratislava (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-academy-heads-to-polish-poker-series-in-bratislava.md) - How to play pocket pairs from the big blind at 25bb: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-play-your-pocket-pairs (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-play-your-pocket-pairs.md) - Poker hand rankings explained: every hand, how rare it is and why: https://poker.academy/blog/post/17-pazdziernik-poker-hands-ranking-explained (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/17-pazdziernik-poker-hands-ranking-explained.md) - EPT Cyprus 2024: High Stakes, Mediterranean Vibes, and What to Expect: https://poker.academy/blog/post/10-paz-priorytet-ept-cyprus-2024-high-stakes-mediterranean-vibes-and-what-to-expect (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/10-paz-priorytet-ept-cyprus-2024-high-stakes-mediterranean-vibes-and-what-to-expect.md) - Unlock the Power of This Poker Tool: https://poker.academy/blog/post/unlock-the-power-of-this-poker-tool (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/unlock-the-power-of-this-poker-tool.md) - Update: New Table View in Preflop Charts: https://poker.academy/blog/post/update-new-table-view-in-preflop-charts (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/update-new-table-view-in-preflop-charts.md) - Postflop Solver Now Available on iOS!: https://poker.academy/blog/post/postflop-solver-now-available-on-ios (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/postflop-solver-now-available-on-ios.md) - Introduction to Basic Poker Math: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introduction-to-basic-poker-math (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introduction-to-basic-poker-math.md) - EPT 2024: Exciting Facts, Iconic Wins, and What’s Next: https://poker.academy/blog/post/ept-2024-exciting-facts-iconic-wins-and-whats-next (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/ept-2024-exciting-facts-iconic-wins-and-whats-next.md) - Poker HUD stats explained: VPIP, PFR, 3-bet, and how many hands you need to trust them: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-hud-for-you-take-the-advantage (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-hud-for-you-take-the-advantage.md) - New Feature – Upload HRC simulations: https://poker.academy/blog/post/new-feature-upload-hrc-simulations (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/new-feature-upload-hrc-simulations.md) - What keeps you stuck at low stakes in poker: five leaks, measured in the app: https://poker.academy/blog/post/what-keeps-you-stuck-at-low-stakes-in-poker (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/what-keeps-you-stuck-at-low-stakes-in-poker.md) - PKO strategy: how to turn bounties into chips and adjust your ranges: https://poker.academy/blog/post/pko-fundamentals-how-to-play-with-bounties (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/pko-fundamentals-how-to-play-with-bounties.md) - Biggest poker tournaments: How much you could win?: https://poker.academy/blog/post/biggest-poker-tournaments-how-much-you-could-win (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/biggest-poker-tournaments-how-much-you-could-win.md) - 40bb 3-bet all-in from the small blind: chipEV vs ICM ranges: https://poker.academy/blog/post/40bb-is-it-too-big-to-3bet-all-in (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/40bb-is-it-too-big-to-3bet-all-in.md) - Poker variance in tournaments: downswings, breakeven stretches and the bankroll you actually need: https://poker.academy/blog/post/variance-in-tournament-poker (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/variance-in-tournament-poker.md) - Timing tells in poker: what they really tell you, and how to stop giving your own: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-hidden-power-of-timing-tells (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-hidden-power-of-timing-tells.md) - Big blind defence in poker: pot odds, blind vs blind and limped pots: https://poker.academy/blog/post/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-for-poker-players (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-for-poker-players.md) - The WSOP is here. Interesting facts about legendary series: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-wsop-is-here-interesting-facts-about-legendary-series (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-wsop-is-here-interesting-facts-about-legendary-series.md) - What is GTO in poker? Equilibrium, mixing and balance with real solver numbers: https://poker.academy/blog/post/what-is-gto-in-poker (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/what-is-gto-in-poker.md) - poker.academy Now Accepts PayPal for Subscription Payments: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-academy-now-accepts-paypal-for-subscription-payments (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-academy-now-accepts-paypal-for-subscription-payments.md) - Mastering the Game: 5 Steps to Cultivating Winning Poker Habits: https://poker.academy/blog/post/mastering-the-game-5-steps-to-cultivating-winning-poker-habits (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/mastering-the-game-5-steps-to-cultivating-winning-poker-habits.md) - Playing Cards History: A Brief Overview: https://poker.academy/blog/post/a-brief-history-of-playing-cards (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/a-brief-history-of-playing-cards.md) - Introducing Cash Games Plan: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introducing-cash-games-plan (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introducing-cash-games-plan.md) - Old man says goodbye: https://poker.academy/blog/post/old-man-says-goodbye (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/old-man-says-goodbye.md) - If you want to break free?: https://poker.academy/blog/post/if-you-want-to-break-free (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/if-you-want-to-break-free.md) - The best warmup possible: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-best-warmup-possible (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-best-warmup-possible.md) - Mindset coaching is the problem: https://poker.academy/blog/post/mindset-coaching-is-the-problem (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/mindset-coaching-is-the-problem.md) - Roadmap – Explore Our Plans, Vote on Features, Share Your Ideas, Join the Conversation: https://poker.academy/blog/post/road-map (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/road-map.md) - How to eliminate regret: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-eliminate-regret (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-eliminate-regret.md) - The Greatest Poker Show… Ever?: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-greatest-poker-show-ever (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-greatest-poker-show-ever.md) - PKO Series Coaching Sessions: https://poker.academy/blog/post/pko-series-coaching-sessions (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/pko-series-coaching-sessions.md) - Postflop Solver Upgrades: https://poker.academy/blog/post/postflop-solver-upgrades (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/postflop-solver-upgrades.md) - The New Standard For Excellence: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-new-standard-for-excellence (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-new-standard-for-excellence.md) - 🎯 PKO Series – Poker Academy’s October’s Edge: https://poker.academy/blog/post/pko-series-poker-academys-octobers-edge (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/pko-series-poker-academys-octobers-edge.md) - 🔄 Reset, Reflect & Ready Up! 🌟: https://poker.academy/blog/post/reset-reflect-ready-up (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/reset-reflect-ready-up.md) - Be Here Now: https://poker.academy/blog/post/be-here-now (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/be-here-now.md) - Introducing the New Spin&Go with Solver Plan!: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introducing-the-new-spingo-with-solver-plan (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introducing-the-new-spingo-with-solver-plan.md) - I know what you are thinking… (Life Hack Inside): https://poker.academy/blog/post/i-know-what-you-are-thinking-life-hack-inside (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/i-know-what-you-are-thinking-life-hack-inside.md) - Last week? History. This week? Opportunity.: https://poker.academy/blog/post/last-week-history-this-week-opportunity (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/last-week-history-this-week-opportunity.md) - 🃏 The Legend of the Endless River and the Art of Poker 🃏: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-legend-of-the-endless-river-and-the-art-of-poker (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-legend-of-the-endless-river-and-the-art-of-poker.md) - PKO Final Tables are here!: https://poker.academy/blog/post/pa-preflop-sims-updates (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/pa-preflop-sims-updates.md) - Discover Preflop Academy Mobile App Today: https://poker.academy/blog/post/discover-preflop-academy-mobile-app-today (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/discover-preflop-academy-mobile-app-today.md) - Dominik Pańka with another fine performace in the Northern Cyprus: https://poker.academy/blog/post/dominik-panka-with-another-fine-performace-in-the-northern-cyprus (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/dominik-panka-with-another-fine-performace-in-the-northern-cyprus.md) - Equity realization (EQR) in poker: what it measures and how to read it: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-understand-equity-realisation-eqr (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-understand-equity-realisation-eqr.md) - Nodelocking now available in Poker Academy simulations: https://poker.academy/blog/post/node-locking-now-available-in-poker-academy-simulations (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/node-locking-now-available-in-poker-academy-simulations.md) - Be the person who still tries: https://poker.academy/blog/post/be-the-person-who-still-tries (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/be-the-person-who-still-tries.md) - The $12.1 million hand: the WSOP 2023 Main Event final hand, street by street: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-12-1-million-hand-unpacking-the-wsop-2023-main-event-finale (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-12-1-million-hand-unpacking-the-wsop-2023-main-event-finale.md) - Daniel Weinman wins the record-breaking WSOP Main Event! ($12,1 mln): https://poker.academy/blog/post/daniel-weinman-wins-the-record-breaking-wsop-main-event-121-mln (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/daniel-weinman-wins-the-record-breaking-wsop-main-event-121-mln.md) - Who will be the next WSOP Main Event champion?: https://poker.academy/blog/post/who-will-be-the-next-wsop-main-event-champion (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/who-will-be-the-next-wsop-main-event-champion.md) - The most common tournament mistakes, and what the solver does instead: https://poker.academy/blog/post/4-mistakes-to-avoid-in-poker-tournaments-part-1 (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/4-mistakes-to-avoid-in-poker-tournaments-part-1.md) - 2023 WSOP Main Event Record Attendance: Breaking Boundaries: https://poker.academy/blog/post/wsop-main-event-attendance-record (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/wsop-main-event-attendance-record.md) - Introducing Our New Feature: Big Blind Ante!: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introducing-our-new-feature-big-blind-ante (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introducing-our-new-feature-big-blind-ante.md) - Hail to the king – Phil Hellmuth wins 17th bracelet!: https://poker.academy/blog/post/hail-to-the-king-phil-hellmuth-wins-17th-bracelet (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/hail-to-the-king-phil-hellmuth-wins-17th-bracelet.md) - $50,000 PLO High Roller – A once in a lifetime opportunity for PA friend Paweł Chmiel: https://poker.academy/blog/post/50000-plo-high-roller-a-once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity-for-pa-friend-pawel-chmiel (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/50000-plo-high-roller-a-once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity-for-pa-friend-pawel-chmiel.md) - A legend, a trail-blazer, Marcin Horecki becomes the first Pole with a WSOP bracelet!: https://poker.academy/blog/post/a-legend-a-trail-blazer-marcin-horecki-becomes-the-first-pole-with-a-wsop-bracelet (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/a-legend-a-trail-blazer-marcin-horecki-becomes-the-first-pole-with-a-wsop-bracelet.md) - If you think…: https://poker.academy/blog/post/thinking-poker (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/thinking-poker.md) - Best Live Poker Stops – Europe: https://poker.academy/blog/post/best-live-poker-stops-europe (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/best-live-poker-stops-europe.md) - So Close Yet So Far: Jon Van Fleet finishes fourth in the event #44: https://poker.academy/blog/post/so-close-yet-so-far-jon-van-fleet-finishes-fourth-in-the-event-44 (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/so-close-yet-so-far-jon-van-fleet-finishes-fourth-in-the-event-44.md) - Jonathan Van Fleet to compete for the WSOP golden bracelet and a $700k+ payday: https://poker.academy/blog/post/jonathan-van-fleet-to-compete-for-the-wsop-golden-bracelet-and-a-700k-payday (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/jonathan-van-fleet-to-compete-for-the-wsop-golden-bracelet-and-a-700k-payday.md) - Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Kuba Michalak: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-kuba-michalak (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-kuba-michalak.md) - How to gain a mental edge on the poker tables in 2023?: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-gain-a-mental-edge-on-the-poker-tables-in-2023 (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-gain-a-mental-edge-on-the-poker-tables-in-2023.md) - Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors: Mikołaj Zawadzki: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-mikolaj-zawadzki (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-mikolaj-zawadzki.md) - Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Dominik Pańka: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-dominik-panka (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-dominik-panka.md) - Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Lara Eisenberg: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-lara-eisenberg (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-lara-eisenberg.md) - Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Daniel “Jungleman” Cates: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-daniel-jungleman-cates (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-daniel-jungleman-cates.md) - Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Jon “apestyles” Van Fleet: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-jon-apestyles-van-fleet (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-jon-apestyles-van-fleet.md) - The Four Agreements: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-four-agreements (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-four-agreements.md) - We are hiring!: https://poker.academy/blog/post/we-are-hiring (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/we-are-hiring.md) - The 2023 World Series of Poker: What You Need to Know: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-2023-world-series-of-poker-what-you-need-to-know (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-2023-world-series-of-poker-what-you-need-to-know.md) - There will never be another Doyle Brunson: https://poker.academy/blog/post/there-will-never-be-another-doyle-brunson (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/there-will-never-be-another-doyle-brunson.md) - Active Breaks for Poker Crushers – Video Series: https://poker.academy/blog/post/active-breaks-for-poker-crushers-video-series (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/active-breaks-for-poker-crushers-video-series.md) - Preflop Academy Goes Postlop – Welcome to Poker Academy!: https://poker.academy/blog/post/preflop-academy-becomes-poker-academy (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/preflop-academy-becomes-poker-academy.md) - ICM and uneven stacks: why tournament ranges change when the stacks do: https://poker.academy/blog/post/this-why-you-lose-at-poker (markdown: https://poker.academy/blog/post/this-why-you-lose-at-poker.md) - Pricing: https://poker.academy/pricing - Affiliates: https://poker.academy/affiliates - Discord: https://discord.gg/8uZJh2wAee - X/Twitter: https://x.com/PokerAcademy_ - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/poker.academy.official - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/poker.academy - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/preflop-academy ## Contact Email: hello@poker.academy --- # Full documents Everything below is also served individually at the URL given under each heading. --- # Poker Academy Pricing > Poker Academy pricing: 1,500,000+ GTO preflop charts, the GTO Postflop Solver and the GTO Trainer. 3-day free trial with full Premium access. **URL:** https://poker.academy/pricing --- ## Plans ### Essential The full MTT preflop chart library and the GTO Trainer, so you fix your preflop game first. - Monthly: €79 / $89 per month (EUR / USD) - Yearly: €69 / $79 per month, billed yearly (EUR / USD) ### Standard The GTO Postflop Solver with a daily limit, plus the MTT preflop charts and trainers. - Monthly: €99 / $109 per month (EUR / USD) - Yearly: €79 / $89 per month, billed yearly (EUR / USD) ### Premium Every chart library, the GTO Postflop Solver without limits and every trainer in one subscription. - Monthly: €109 / $119 per month (EUR / USD) - Yearly: €89 / $99 per month, billed yearly (EUR / USD) - 3-day free trial included. Cancel anytime. All prices are net and exclude VAT. Any applicable VAT is added at checkout. - Trial accounts receive full Premium benefits for 3 days, then revert to your selected plan. ## What each plan includes ### Preflop Charts - MTT Preflop Charts (1.5M+): Essential, Standard, Premium - Final Tables ICM: Essential, Standard, Premium - PKO Simulations: Essential, Standard, Premium - Simplify Strategies: Essential, Standard, Premium - Cash Game Charts: Premium - Spin&Go Charts: Premium ### GTO Postflop Solver - No daily limit: Premium - Solve any heads-up spot: Essential, Standard, Premium - Your own bet sizes (up to 5 per street): Essential, Standard, Premium - Node locking to find exploits: Standard, Premium - Solves run on our servers: Essential, Standard, Premium ### Preflop GTO Trainer - Warm-up Mode: Essential, Standard, Premium - Deep Study Mode: Essential, Standard, Premium ### Aggregated Reports - Auto reports for every solved spot: Essential, Standard, Premium - Build your own reports: Standard, Premium - Full 1,755-flop universe: Premium - Two reports solving in parallel: Premium ### Full Hand Trainer - Preflop to river in one hand: Essential, Standard, Premium - Training plans & drills: Essential, Standard, Premium - Hand review with replayer: Essential, Standard, Premium - Unlimited hands: Premium ### Browse & Compare - Spot browser: Essential, Standard, Premium - Solution library & folders: Essential, Standard, Premium - Compare canvas & board sets: Essential, Standard, Premium ### Hand Analytics - Hand import & Leak Finder (MTT preflop): Essential, Standard, Premium ### Mobile App - iOS & Android: Essential, Standard, Premium - MTT Preflop Strategies (1.5M+): Essential, Standard, Premium - GTO Postflop Solver: Standard, Premium - GTO Preflop Trainer (MTT only): Essential, Standard, Premium - GTO Full Hand Trainer: Standard, Premium ## Questions **What happens after the 3-day trial?** After 3 days you are charged the price of the plan you picked. We email you a reminder 24 hours before that charge. You can cancel from your account in 2 clicks, with no fee and no need to contact support. **Can I switch plans?** Yes. You can upgrade or downgrade at any time. Upgrades take effect immediately (prorated), downgrades at the next billing cycle. **Is there a student/amateur discount?** We offer occasional promotional pricing. Subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Discord for discount announcements. **What payment methods are accepted?** We accept all major credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex), PayPal, and Apple/Google Pay via Stripe. --- # Poker Academy Preflop Charts > 1,500,000+ high-depth GTO preflop charts for MTT, Cash, PKO and Spin & Go (No Limit Texas Hold'em), every stack depth and position, and still growing. **URL:** https://poker.academy/preflop-charts --- ## What it covers - Multi-table tournaments (MTTs), 6-max cash games and Spin & Go - Final tables, satellites, BB ante, PKO and more - Multiway pots, blind vs blind, spots against limpers and more - Stack depths from 3 BB to 100 BB ## Why these charts - **Deeply Calculated**: We have spent years calculating preflop charts in Monker, aiming for higher accuracy than other charts on the market. Our players tell us how much this matters, so we choose quality over quantity. - **Pure GTO, Nothing Hand-Picked**: Every solution is calculated with game theory optimal principles. Nobody picks hands by feel; it is all math. - **Easy to Use**: Many users recommend us for the largest library and an interface that is easy to use. Good preflop charts exist elsewhere online. What we add is a comfortable way to find and use them. - **Almost Every Scenario Covered**: We cover 23 stack sizes, several tournament phases (direct bubbles, 10% of the field left, 25% of the field left and more) and many scenarios (multiway, vs squeeze, vs 4-bet and more). There are also simulations for PKO, satellites and final tables. ## How to use them 1. **Game Type**: Most of our users pick ChipEV, because it fits the widest range of online poker situations. Learn how to play GTO at every tournament stage. 2. **Hero Stack Size**: We have preflop charts for 23 stack sizes. Seeing how the strategy changes from one stack size to the next teaches you a lot about poker strategy. At ultra-short stacks we have seen how far players' strategies drift from GTO. 3. **Category**: With a short stack, your strategy depends a lot on the size of the open-raise you face. Players asked for 3-bet-only and limping strategies because many are unsure how to respond to them, so we added them. 4. **Table Action Scenario**: Learn to play every scenario you face at the table. The most frequent ones, "Raise First" and "vs Raise First", matter most for your results. 5. **Player positions at the table**: Choose each player's position. A third position is available in 3-player scenarios: vs squeeze, facing a cold 4-bet, multiway spots and vs isolation. ## Questions **What is GTO poker strategy?** GTO (Game Theory Optimal) poker strategy is a mathematically balanced approach where your play cannot be exploited. It focuses on making decisions that maximize expected value regardless of your opponent's strategy. **Why can you trust our charts?** Every solution is calculated at high depth in the Monker Solver engine, using our game assumptions. **What game formats do you support? Do you support Cash Games or Omaha?** Right now we support No Limit Texas Hold'em only. We offer subscriptions for MTTs, Cash Games and Spin & Go. We do not support Omaha, 5-card Omaha or 6+ Hold'em (Short Deck). **Does it work on mobile?** The web app is not fully optimized for phone screens. We also have a mobile app with all the preflop charts, but it lacks some features, such as Edge, Range Selecting and Compare Ranges. You can download it from the App Store and Google Play. For the best view, use the app in a browser. **Why isn't it free?** Our goal is to make poker study easier. Calculating all these simulations took a lot of work (our servers have been calculating 24/7 since 2020), and so did building an interface that makes them easy to use. **Will it also help me play better postflop?** Yes. Preflop ranges are the foundation of postflop play. When you know the correct preflop ranges, you know which hands are in your range and in your opponent's, so your postflop decisions get more accurate. **Is Preflop Academy the same as Poker Academy?** The company started as Preflop Academy, helping players master preflop. Later we built a Postflop Solver to teach GTO postflop play, and changed the brand name to Poker Academy. **Is Poker Academy for beginner players, advanced or professionals?** Players at any level can get value from Poker Academy. Most of our users play at average buy-ins between $10 and $100. ## Plans that include it **Preflop Charts** - MTT Preflop Charts (1.5M+): Essential, Standard, Premium - Final Tables ICM: Essential, Standard, Premium - PKO Simulations: Essential, Standard, Premium - Simplify Strategies: Essential, Standard, Premium - Cash Game Charts: Premium - Spin&Go Charts: Premium --- # Poker Academy GTO Postflop Solver > Walk a preflop line, then solve the flop on the same screen. Heads-up flop, turn and river, EV and equity for every combo, and nodelocking to test an exploit. **URL:** https://poker.academy/gto-postflop-solver --- ## What it does Most solvers make you rebuild a spot before they answer. Here the preflop line you just read already carries the ranges, the pot and the stacks. Press Solve Postflop, and the flop solves under the same matrix, next to the same table. - Ranges, pot and stacks arrive from the preflop line - Bet sizes set by stack-to-pot ratio, by hand, or picked by the solver - Flop, turn and river, street by street, heads-up - Lock what your opponent does and see the best response ## In numbers - Heads-up flop, turn and river - Up to 5 bet sizes, 3 raises - Stacks up to 200 bb - EV, equity and EQR for every combo - 0.6% average Nash Distance ## Setting up a spot - **The spot is already set up when you get there**: Walk a line in Browse. Where it closes with two players, the trail offers Solve Postflop. The drawer opens with both ranges, the pot and the effective stack taken from the line, and bet sizes derived from the stack-to-pot ratio. Pick the flop and solve. - **Set up the heads-up spot you want to check**: Open the standalone solver and build the spot yourself. Pick three cards or a random flop. Set each range with a weight slider, a top-percent slider, the 13×13 grid, or paste it as text. Pot from 2 to 200 bb, effective stack up to 200 bb. ## Bet sizes You never draw a game tree. Choose how the bet sizes are set, and the solver builds the tree from that. - **Auto: sizes that follow the stack**: Bet sizes follow the stack-to-pot ratio of each street, so a deep flop and a shallow river get different menus. - **Manual**: Your sizes, sent to the solver exactly as configured, on every street. Optional menus per street. - **Dynamic**: You give candidates; a fast preview solve keeps the one or two sizes with the best EV, then the final solve runs on those. - **How many sizes** (per decision): Bet · up to 5, Raise · up to 3, 3-bet · up to 2, 4-bet and above · all-in - **Solved on our servers**: You set the spot and read the answer in your browser. The solve runs on our servers, so your computer does not need to be powerful. ## Every combo, with what it is worth The 13×13 matrix shows strategy, EV, equity and EQR. Pin a hand and each combo lists its weight, EV, equity and equity realisation. Beside it, the hands rail breaks the range down by hand category, draws and blockers. ## Pick the turn card, solve the turn, then the river From a solved flop, choose the next card and solve the next street. Each street solves on its own, with sizes set again from its stack-to-pot ratio. The runout map shows how every turn or river card changes the picture. ## Say how your opponent plays. See what beats it. Nodelocking starts from an assumption: at this node, this player checks too often, folds too much, or bets too wide. Lock that, re-solve the street, and the solver shows the best response to it and what it is worth. - **Paint the assumption**: Brush a strategy onto hand classes: Check 100% on BTN's weak offsuit hands here, 187 of 1,326 combos. The impact shows before you solve. - **The other player adjusts**: Calculate Exploit re-solves the current street with your locks. The GTO solve is kept; toggle GTO and Exploit to compare. - **Where the response shifted**: Compare lists the nodes that moved most and the EV difference for every hand, in one grid. An exploit answers one assumption. Not sure what to paint? Pick a profile instead. It locks the player acting at the current node to a known leak, in three strengths from a light touch (S) to an extreme one (L), then you re-solve as usual. - **Nit**: Plays mostly strong hands. Hands that are only just worth continuing get folded instead, on this player's first two decisions in a line. Tests: how much you win by betting into someone who gives up too easily - **Bully**: Puts on pressure. Checks that were close to a bet become bets, on this player's first decision in a line. Tests: how you should defend when someone bets too often - **Calling Station**: Does not like folding. Hands that should fold become calls instead, on this player's first two decisions in a line. Tests: how much thinner you can value bet, and when to stop bluffing ## Heads-up, No Limit Hold'em, up to 200 bb - **Three or more players**: Postflop solves are heads-up. When three players see the flop, the trail says so. - **ICM after the flop**: ICM is available on preflop spots in Browse, not in postflop solves. - **Stacks past 200 bb**: Effective stacks go up to 200 bb, pots from 2 to 200 bb. - **Other games**: No Limit Hold'em only. ## Questions **Do I have to build a game tree?** No. Auto sets the bet sizes from the stack-to-pot ratio of each street. If you want control, Manual sends your sizes exactly as you set them, and Dynamic lets the solver pick the best of your candidates. **How accurate is it?** Our engine reports on average 0.6% Nash Distance. A solve is an approximate equilibrium for the tree and sizes you gave it; other sizes give other answers. **Can I solve the turn and river?** Yes, street by street. Pick the next card and solve it. Each street solves on its own, and nodelocking works on one street at a time. **Does it need a powerful computer?** No. The solve runs on our servers and you read it in your browser. **Can it solve pots with three or more players, or ICM after the flop?** No. Postflop solves are heads-up, and ICM is a preflop read. ## Plans that include it **GTO Postflop Solver** - No daily limit: Premium - Solve any heads-up spot: Essential, Standard, Premium - Your own bet sizes (up to 5 per street): Essential, Standard, Premium - Node locking to find exploits: Standard, Premium - Solves run on our servers: Essential, Standard, Premium --- # Poker Academy GTO Trainer > Practise preflop decisions on up to 4 tables with instant GTO feedback. Train the spots you get wrong and learn online poker at your own pace. **URL:** https://poker.academy/gto-trainer --- ## What it does - Deep-Study and Multi-Table training modes - Warm up before a real-money session - Training you set up yourself - Practise at up to 4 tables at once - Flashcards with spaced repetition system ## How the Flashcard System Works - Every training session turns the spots you got wrong into flashcards - Spaced repetition mixes 7 review cards with 3 new ones - Answer correctly (score above 6) to move on. A card needs 2 correct answers to count as mastered - Cards you find hard come back more often until you master them ## Plans that include it **Preflop GTO Trainer** - Warm-up Mode: Essential, Standard, Premium - Deep Study Mode: Essential, Standard, Premium **Full Hand Trainer** - Preflop to river in one hand: Essential, Standard, Premium - Training plans & drills: Essential, Standard, Premium - Hand review with replayer: Essential, Standard, Premium - Unlimited hands: Premium --- # Poker Academy Equity Calculator > Free, browser-based Texas Hold'em equity calculator. Up to 9 players, exact cards vs weighted ranges vs random, with street-by-street equity breakdown and made-hand distribution. No install. No signup. Runs on any OS (Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android) because it runs entirely in the browser. **URL:** https://poker.academy/equity-calculator **Available in 16 locales:** English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Bulgarian, Arabic, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi. (`LOCALES` in `lib/i18n.ts`; the Hindi locale currently renders English copy.) --- ## What it calculates - **Hand vs hand** — two players with exact hole cards (e.g. AhAc vs KhKs). - **Hand vs range** — exact cards against a weighted range (e.g. AKs vs UTG opening range). - **Range vs range** — two weighted ranges against each other (e.g. UTG open vs BB defend). - **Multiway pots** — up to 9 players simultaneously, any mix of exact / range / random. - **Equity across streets** — preflop, flop, turn, and river, with a graph showing how each runout card shifts who's ahead. - **Made-hand distribution** — for each player, the percentage of runouts that end as straight flush, quads, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, pair, or high card. ## How the math works - **Exact enumeration** when all players have specific cards: the engine iterates every remaining board (C(52-known, 5-dealt)) and counts wins / ties. Result is mathematically exact to the decimal. - **Monte Carlo simulation** when at least one player has a range: 200,000 iterations by default. Noise bound ≈ ±0.5% per player. - **Card-removal effects** are handled correctly: a player's selected combos are removed from the deck before the opponent's range is sampled, so blockers shift the weighted range as they should. - **Weighted ranges** — each of the 1,326 two-card combos can carry an independent weight from 0 to 1. The 13×13 matrix shows weights as cell shading. ## Key features - Up to 9 players per scenario. - Range editor with three input methods: - **13×13 hand matrix** — click and drag to select combos; long-press on mobile for weighted selection. - **Top X% slider** — selects the top X% of hands ordered by preflop equity strength. - **Position presets** — UTG open, CO open, BTN open, BB defend; Top 10/20/30/40/50% shortcuts. - Arbitrary board — set any flop, turn, and river; leave empty for preflop equity; mix partial boards (e.g. flop-only for flop equity). - Random flop / turn / river buttons — deal a legal random card from the remaining deck. - **Shareable URLs** — click Share and a link containing the complete board + player ranges + player modes is copied to the clipboard. Anyone who opens the link lands in the exact same spot. - Equity-over-streets graph — reveals runouts where a strong flop equity collapses on a brick turn. - Made-hand distribution bars — for studying flops where a draw-heavy range vs a made-hand range leads to equity realization differences. - Mobile-first UI — the card picker opens as a bottom-sheet; the 13×13 matrix scales to phone screens. ## Use cases ### Hand vs range on a specific board Example: "What's my equity with AKo on Q72r when villain defends BB?" Set Hero → Exact → AhKs. Set Opponent → Range → BB defend preset. Set flop → Qh 7d 2c. Calculator returns hero equity %, tie %, and the distribution of made hands across every possible turn-river runout. ### Range vs range equity Example: "UTG open vs BB defend on a K-high flop." Set both players to Range mode, pick presets, set the flop. Use the equity-over-streets graph to see how each turn card shifts the balance. ### Multiway equity Example: 4-way all-in preflop with AA vs KK vs QQ vs AKs. Set four players to Exact mode. Leave the board empty. Exact enumeration returns each player's win % across every possible 5-card board. ### Draws vs made hands on wet boards Example: "What's a flush draw's equity vs top set on Kh 8h 3c?" Set Hero → Exact → Ah 5h (nut flush draw). Set Opponent → Exact → Kc Ks (top set). Equity per street and the made-hand distribution show how often the draw gets there on the turn vs river. ### Quick pot-odds check Example: "I'm on the turn with a gutshot, opponent bets half pot. Do I have 25% equity?" Set the known cards, enumerate, compare the returned equity to the 25% breakeven. ## Comparison to alternatives | Tool | Install? | Platform | Free? | Multiway | Weighted ranges | Share URL | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | **Poker Academy Equity Calculator** | No — runs in browser | Any OS including Linux | Yes | Up to 9 players | Yes — 13×13 matrix + Top % + presets | Yes | | Equilab | Yes — Windows only | Windows (no native Linux/macOS) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | | Flopzilla | Yes — Windows only | Windows (no native Linux/macOS) | No (one-time license) | 2-way focused | Yes | No | | PioSolver | Yes — Windows/macOS | Windows, macOS | No (paid) | 2-way | Yes | No | | GTO Wizard | Browser-based | Any OS | Partial (free tier) | Limited | Yes | Yes | | GTO+ | Yes — Windows only | Windows | No (paid) | 2-way focused | Yes | No | **Why pick Poker Academy Equity Calculator specifically:** - You're on **Linux or Chromebook** and Equilab / Flopzilla / GTO+ don't run natively. - You want a **lightweight equity tool** on a low-spec laptop — no local process, just a browser tab. - You need **multiway equity** (3 to 9 players) which Flopzilla / GTO+ don't focus on. - You want to **share a scenario** with a coach or friend via a single URL instead of screenshots. - You're on **mobile** and need a real equity tool at the live table, not a desktop-only app. **What it does NOT do (use a solver instead):** - GTO strategy solving — use Poker Academy's [GTO Postflop Solver](https://poker.academy/gto-postflop-solver) or PioSolver for that. - Short-deck / 6+ Hold'em — No-Limit Hold'em only. - Omaha variants — Hold'em only. - HUD overlays on live tables — use PokerTracker / Hand2Note. ## Technical details - **Engine:** client-side WebAssembly-backed evaluator; all computation runs in the user's browser. - **Offline:** once the page is loaded, the calculator works with no network connection. - **Latency:** exact enumeration on a fully specified scenario typically < 500ms. Monte Carlo with two full ranges typically < 1s on mid-tier hardware. - **Privacy:** no hand histories, ranges, or scenarios are sent to any server. Everything stays in the browser. - **Precision:** exact mode is bit-exact; Monte Carlo mode is stable to ±0.5% at 200,000 iterations. ## FAQ **Q: Is it really free?** A: Yes. 100% free, no registration, no trial, no paywall. Open the URL and use it. **Q: Does it work on Linux?** A: Yes. It runs in any modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge) on any operating system including Linux and ChromeOS. Unlike Equilab, Flopzilla, and GTO+, which are Windows-only. **Q: Does it work on mobile?** A: Yes. The UI is mobile-first — the card picker opens as a bottom-sheet and the 13×13 matrix scales to the screen. Tested on iOS and Android. There is also a native app, Poker Equity & Odds, which runs the same math offline on iPhone and Android. **Q: How accurate are the results?** A: When all players have exact cards, the result is exact — every possible remaining board is enumerated. When ranges are involved, a 200,000-iteration Monte Carlo simulation keeps the noise under ±0.5%. **Q: Can I share a scenario with my coach or study group?** A: Yes. Click Share — a URL containing the entire board, ranges, and player modes is copied to the clipboard. Anyone who opens the link sees the exact same spot. **Q: Does it handle blockers and card removal?** A: Yes. When a player's exact cards or range are set, those combos are removed from the deck before other ranges are sampled, so blocker effects shift the weighted range correctly. **Q: Can I compute equity over multiple streets?** A: Yes. Set any subset of flop / turn / river to see equity at each street. The equity-over-streets graph shows how each runout card changes who's ahead. ## Related tools on Poker Academy - [GTO Postflop Solver](https://poker.academy/gto-postflop-solver) — full GTO strategy solver for arbitrary postflop situations. - [GTO Trainer](https://poker.academy/gto-trainer) — drill preflop decisions with instant GTO feedback (answers "a tool for equity drills and quizzes"). - [Preflop Charts](https://poker.academy/preflop-charts) — 1,500,000+ GTO preflop solutions for MTT, SNG, Cash, PKO, Spin & Go. - [Variance Calculator](https://poker.academy/variance-calculator) — Monte Carlo simulation for bankroll risk. - [Breakeven Calculator](https://poker.academy/breakeven-calculator) — required win rate to beat rake. ## Machine-readable documents - Product and pricing summary: https://poker.academy/llms.txt - Everything in one file: https://poker.academy/llms-full.txt - Pricing: https://poker.academy/pricing.md - Preflop charts: https://poker.academy/preflop-charts.md - GTO postflop solver: https://poker.academy/gto-postflop-solver.md - GTO trainer: https://poker.academy/gto-trainer.md ## Background: what is poker equity? Equity in poker is your mathematical share of the pot — the percentage of the time your hand wins if all remaining cards are dealt and no one folds. For example, pocket aces have roughly 82% equity against pocket kings preflop, meaning AA wins 82 times out of 100 on average (see [Poker probability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_probability) on Wikipedia). Equity shifts every street as community cards appear, and it is the foundation of pot-odds, expected-value, and GTO decision-making. **Relationship to pot odds:** if an opponent bets half the pot, you need 25% equity to call profitably. If you're drawing to a flush with 9 outs on the turn, you'll hit roughly 20% of the time on the river — so you need the right price to continue. Equity, pot odds, and outs form the three-legged stool of every postflop decision. --- *Last updated: 2026-04-19. For questions: hello@poker.academy.* --- # Poker Academy MTT Variance Calculator > Free, browser-based Monte Carlo simulator for multi-table tournament variance, bankroll sizing and risk of ruin. Model a portfolio of several tournament types at once, not just one. No install. No signup. **URL:** https://poker.academy/variance-calculator **Available in 16 locales:** English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Bulgarian, Arabic, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi. (`LOCALES` in `lib/i18n.ts`; the Hindi locale currently renders English copy.) --- ## What it calculates - **Expected swings for a tournament schedule** — the range of results a player with a given ROI can expect over a given number of tournaments. - **Risk of ruin** — the probability of losing a given bankroll while playing the configured schedule. - **Bankroll needed** — the bankroll size implied by the configured schedule and skill level. - **Probability of loss** — how often the simulated player finishes the sample below zero. - **Runs that never dip below zero** — how many simulated players never went underwater at any point, which is a different and stricter question than finishing profitable. - **Payout structure** — the prize ladder for the configured field size, paid places and buy-in. ## What makes it different from a single-tournament calculator Most variance calculators model **one** tournament type. This one models a **mix**. You add several tournament types with the "Add tournament" control, each with its own field size, buy-in, rake, ROI and number of times played, and the simulation runs the whole schedule together. That matters because a real tournament player does not play one field size. A schedule of 180-runner turbos and 2,000-runner majors has different variance from either format on its own, and the difference is driven mainly by field size. ## Inputs Per tournament type: - **Runners** — field size. - **Buy-in** — total buy-in in dollars. - **Rake** — rake in dollars, deducted from the buy-in. The tool shows the split, for example a $109 buy-in as $100 + $9. - **ROI** — expected return on investment in percent. This is the skill input. - **Played** — how many times this tournament type is played in the sample. Limit: 10,000 per player. - **Paid places (%)** — share of the field that gets paid. Global: - **Sample size** — how many simulated players to run. Limit: 1,000. - **Bankroll** — the bankroll to test risk of ruin against. - **Place probability** — `Equal` treats every paid place as equally likely; `Calculated` weights places by the model. The two settings produce different results, so the choice is part of the scenario. ## Outputs **Bankroll and risk of ruin section:** - Risk of ruin - Bankroll needed - Risk for a specific bankroll entered by the user - Probability of loss - Runs never below zero **Statistical data section:** results are shown twice, side by side — **mathematically** (closed-form expectation) and **simulated** (Monte Carlo outcome) — together with the number of tournament types, tournaments played, runs and sampled players. Showing both is deliberate: where they diverge, the divergence itself is information about how heavy the tails are for that schedule. **Payouts table:** place-by-place prize distribution for the configured field. ## Use cases ### Is this downswing normal, or do I have a leak? Configure the schedule actually played and the honest ROI, then compare the real result against the simulated distribution. This is the single most common reason players open a variance calculator, and it is a question about the distribution, not about a single number. ### How big does my bankroll need to be Enter the schedule and read `Bankroll needed`, or enter a specific bankroll and read the risk of ruin for it. ### Should I move up in stakes Run the current schedule and the target schedule as two scenarios and compare risk of ruin at the same bankroll. ### How much does field size cost me Hold buy-in and ROI constant, change runners, and compare. Field size is the dominant driver of tournament variance. ## Limits and honest caveats - **ROI is an input, not a measurement.** The simulation is only as good as the ROI supplied. A player who guesses their ROI gets a guess back, dressed as a distribution. - **Sample size caps at 1,000 simulated players** and **10,000 tournaments per player.** - **Monte Carlo output varies between runs.** The mathematical column is stable, the simulated column is not, and comparing them is part of reading the result. - **A model is not the game.** Real tournament results have heavier tails than any clean model, driven by field composition, running it up in one spot, and schedule changes the model does not see. ## Technical details - Runs in the browser; simulation is executed against the Poker Academy backend through `/api/variance`. - No account, no install, no download. - Works on Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS and Android. - Structured data: `SoftwareApplication` and `BreadcrumbList`. ## Related tools on Poker Academy - **Equity Calculator** — https://poker.academy/equity-calculator (full spec: https://poker.academy/equity-calculator.md) - **Breakeven Calculator** — https://poker.academy/breakeven-calculator - **Preflop Charts** — https://poker.academy/preflop-charts - **What variance is, in plain language** — https://poker.academy/blog/post/variance-in-tournament-poker ## Machine-readable documents - Product and pricing summary: https://poker.academy/llms.txt - Everything in one file: https://poker.academy/llms-full.txt - Pricing: https://poker.academy/pricing.md - Preflop charts: https://poker.academy/preflop-charts.md - GTO postflop solver: https://poker.academy/gto-postflop-solver.md - GTO trainer: https://poker.academy/gto-trainer.md ## Background: what is variance in poker Variance is the gap between expected results and actual results. A winning player still loses over stretches that feel long from the inside, and a losing player still wins over stretches long enough to be mistaken for skill. The practical question is never "does variance exist" but "how long is long enough for my results to mean something at my ROI and my schedule", and that is what a simulation answers that intuition does not. --- # Blog articles Every article, newest first. Each is also served at https://poker.academy/blog/post/.md. --- # Poker Equity & Odds: the app for calls your gut gets wrong Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-equity-odds-app Author: Maciej Dziadyk Published: 2026-10-11 Category: Theory ![Poker Equity & Odds: the app for calls your gut gets wrong](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/10/poker-equity-odds-app-hero.jpg) Quick test before you read on. You hold 9♠︎8♠︎ on K♠︎6♠︎2♦︎. You’re all in and they show K♦︎Q♣︎. How often do you win? Pick a number first. The answer is **38.9%**, counted over all 990 possible turn and river runouts. ![Poker Equity and Odds app, lesson 1.4: 9 8 of spades on King 6 of spades and 2 of diamonds against King Queen, guess the equity, then the answer 38.9%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/10/poker-equity-odds-app-lesson-guess-fig.jpg) *Lesson 1.4 in the app, ‘Made hand against a draw’. Drag to your guess, submit, and it shows the counted answer and why. (The ‘hand with the hearts’ it mentions is the twin spot below.)* If you said half, the flush draw felt stronger than it is. If you said 20%, you’re folding hands that are clear calls, and that’s the mistake this post is about. ## Why that number decides the call Equity is the share of the pot you’d win on average if the rest of the cards were dealt with no more betting. Pot odds tell you what share a call needs. When your equity is bigger than what the call needs, you call. The app teaches this spot in pairs. Here’s its twin with a bet in front of it: 5♥︎4♥︎ on K♥︎9♥︎2♣︎ against K♦︎Q♣︎. Same 9 outs, same 38.9%. That’s a bit more than the 35% you hit the flush by the river, because some runouts give you two pair, trips or a backdoor straight. The pot is 100 and they bet 50. You pay 50 to win a pot that will hold 200 after your call: What a half-pot call needs 50100+50+50=25%\frac{50}{100 + 50 + 50} = 25\% You have 38.9% and need 25%. **You lose this hand more often than you win it, and calling is still right.** Over many hands the call is worth 27.8 chips each time: Average result of the call 0.389×200−50=+27.80.389 \times 200 – 50 = +27.8 One catch. That 38.9% counts both the turn and the river, and it assumes no more chips go in. If they bet again on the turn, you’re paying for one card, and 9 outs hit on the turn only 19.1% of the time. With stacks behind, the extra chips you win when the flush comes in are what keep the call good. Now swap the flush draw for a gutshot. 9♣︎8♦︎ on J♥︎7♠︎2♣︎ against K♠︎J♦︎ has 4 outs and 20.3%. Same bet, same 25% needed. Average result of the call 0.203×200−50=−9.40.203 \times 200 – 50 = -9.4 To break even, the pot you win would need another 46.3 chips from later bets. That’s implied odds. With deep stacks and an opponent who pays off when the ten comes, that’s doable. With little behind, it’s a fold. ## Three more to guess Three more spots from the app’s engine. Guess each one before you read the answer. - **AK or 22, all in before the flop. Who’s ahead?** 22, by a hair: 52% to 48%. Even suited AK only has 49.9%. The smallest pair is a slight favourite over the best unpaired hands. - **15 outs on the flop. The rule of 4 says 60%. Is it?** 9♥︎8♥︎ on T♥︎7♥︎2♣︎ is a flush draw plus an open-ender. Counted, you get there by the river 54.1% of the time. The shortcut overshoots big draws. - **A♠︎Q♥︎ facing a shove of 100 into 150. Call?** You need 28.6%. Against QQ+ and AK you have 24.4%, so fold. Against a range that adds TT, JJ, AQ, AJs and KQs you have 38.6%, so call. Same hand, opposite answer. The range decides. You can’t count 990 runouts in your head while someone waits for you to act. You can learn roughly where the numbers sit, though, and then your gut gets them right at the table. That’s why Maciek from our team built this app. ## What the app is Poker Equity & Odds Calculator is our sister app for iPhone and Android. It’s built for beginners and intermediate players who want these numbers without a spreadsheet. The engine runs on your phone, so it works offline. When it can count every runout, it marks the result EXACT. When it has to sample, it puts ≈ and the margin of error next to the number. Every equity number in this post came out of that engine. ## Decide: call or fold, with the reason Enter your hand, the board, the pot and the bet you face. You get CALL or FOLD, your equity, the equity the call needs and the gap between them. Add the effective stack and it counts implied odds too. One thing to know: the pot you enter already includes their bet, so the flush draw spot above is Pot 150, To call 50. Outs & Odds is one tap away on Home: tap in the board and it shows how many outs you have and which cards they are. And when a hand is over, log it in a few seconds. Hand Review replays it street by street with an equity line and a call or fold verdict at every bet you faced. ![Poker Equity and Odds app: the Outs and Odds screen counting 12 outs for Queen Jack of hearts on King 9 of hearts and 2 of spades, and Hand Review with an equity timeline and a verdict for each street](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/10/poker-equity-odds-app-outs-review-fig.jpg) *Left: Outs & Odds with Q♥︎J♥︎ on K♥︎9♥︎2♠︎. 12 outs, 9 for the flush and 3 for the straight. Counted, 12 outs hit by the river 45% of the time; the rule of 4 says 48%. Right: Hand Review of a logged hand. The yellow mark on each bar is what the call needed.* ## Ranges: a 13×13 grid you paint with a finger At the table nobody shows you two cards. You play against a range, so the app lets you draw one: drag across the grid, start from a preset, or build the villain’s range from position, action and player type. Then run your hand against it or run range vs range. With Premium you can also see how a whole range hits the flop: made hands, draws and combo counts. Ranges you save are there next time. ![Poker Equity and Odds app: a range painted on the 13 by 13 grid, 566 combos or 42.7%, and a hand against a range on the flop](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/10/poker-equity-odds-app-ranges-fig.jpg) *Left: a range painted on the grid, 566 of the 1,326 starting combos (42.7%). Right: T♠︎9♠︎ on J♠︎8♠︎2♦︎ against a range. This one is sampled, so the screen shows ≈ and ±0.4 pp.* ## Train: guess first, then see the number The trainer works like the quiz at the top of this post. You guess the equity, then you see how close you were and why. The Train path has five levels (coin flips, draws, pot odds, outs, mixed spots), each with three rounds of ten spots. There are timed flash drills too, for when you’ve got two minutes. ## Learn: 28 short lessons, Unit 1 free The newest part is a short course: five units, 28 lessons and a checkpoint after each unit. The units are what equity is, outs and hitting odds, pot odds, equity against a range, and putting it together. Every number in a lesson comes from the same engine as the calculator, and questions you miss come back later in review. ![Poker Equity and Odds app: the Learn map for Unit 1, What equity is, and the Unit 1 checkpoint result with Unit 2 next](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/10/poker-equity-odds-app-learn-fig.jpg) *Left: the Unit 1 map, What equity is. Right: the Unit 1 checkpoint, pass mark 8 of 10, with Unit 2, Outs & hitting odds, up next.* ## What’s free, what’s Premium The range grid with presets, Decide, Outs & Odds, the daily trainer drills and Unit 1 of Learn with its checkpoint are free, and there are no ads. Premium opens the rest of the course, Units 2 to 5. It also removes the daily limits on equity checks, drills, range vs range and hand reviews, and adds the range vs board breakdown and unlimited saved ranges. Your hands and ranges stay on your device. ## Try it on the next hand that bugs you If the 38.9% surprised you, take the hand from your last session you keep thinking about, put it into Decide and see what it says. Get it on the [App Store](https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6778599458?ct=pa-blog-equity-app&mt=8) or [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.isolve.poker.equity&referrer=utm_source%3Dpoker-academy-blog%26utm_medium%3Dblog%26utm_campaign%3Dpa-blog-equity-app). There’s more about it, plus guides on draws and pot odds, at [pokerequityodds.com](https://pokerequityodds.com/?utm_source=poker-academy-blog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=pa-blog-equity-app). Cheers! 🙂 --- # Poker starting hands: 1,326 combos, 169 hands, and how to write them down Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-starting-hands-combos-notation Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2026-09-15 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Poker starting hands: 1,326 combos, 169 hands, and how to write them down](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/starting-hands-hero-v3.jpg) Before you can read a preflop chart, study a solver or talk about a hand with a friend, you need two things. You need to know how many different hands you can be dealt. And you need to be able to write any of them down in a few characters. This is lesson 2 of our poker basics series. The video below covers it in three minutes. The article goes a step further: it shows the math behind every number and adds a few things we use every day in the app. ## 1,326 ways to be dealt two cards A deck has 52 cards. Your first card can be any of 52, your second any of the remaining 51. That gives **52 × 51 = 2,652** ordered pairs. Order doesn’t matter in poker, though. A♠︎K♥︎ and K♥︎A♠︎ are the same hand, and each hand was counted twice. So we divide by two: **2,652 ÷ 2 = 1,326**. That’s every distinct two-card starting hand, and it’s the number every range in poker adds up to. 1,326 is too many to think about one by one. Luckily, poker makes it easier: no suit is worth more than another. A♠︎K♠︎ and A♥︎K♥︎ play exactly the same before the flop. That lets us group combos into far fewer hands. ![From 2,652 ordered deals to 1,326 combos to 169 hands](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/starting-hands-funnel-v2.jpg) ## Unpaired hands: suited and offsuit Take ace-king. There are four aces and four kings, so there are **4 × 4 = 16** ways to be dealt AK. They split into two groups that play differently: - **Suited** – both cards share a suit (A♠︎K♠︎, A♥︎K♥︎, A♦︎K♦︎, A♣︎K♣︎): **4 combos**. - **Offsuit** – different suits (A♠︎K♥︎, A♠︎K♦︎ and so on): **16 − 4 = 12 combos**. ![4 by 4 grid of every ace-king combo: the 4 suited combos on the diagonal, 12 offsuit elsewhere](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/starting-hands-ak16-v2.jpg) Suited hands are stronger because they make flushes more often. How much more often? Here’s the count for all five board cards: - **Suited:** 11 cards of your suit are left among the 50 unseen cards. You need at least 3 of them on the board: C(11,3)·C(39,2) + C(11,4)·39 + C(11,5) = 122,265 + 12,870 + 462 = 135,597 boards out of C(50,5) = 2,118,760. That’s **6.40%**. - **Offsuit:** each of your two suits has 12 cards left, and you need 4 of them on the board: 2 × (C(12,4)·38 + C(12,5)) = 2 × 19,602 = 39,204 boards. That’s **1.85%**. ![Bar chart: suited hands make a flush by the river 6.40% of the time, offsuit 1.85%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/starting-hands-flush-v2.jpg) The same 4 + 12 split works for every unpaired hand, from AK down to 32. ## Pairs: 6 combos A pair needs two cards of the same rank, so it can never be suited. There are four kings, and you choose two of them: C(4,2) = **6 combos** (K♠︎K♥︎, K♠︎K♦︎, K♠︎K♣︎, K♥︎K♦︎, K♥︎K♣︎, K♦︎K♣︎). ![The six combos of pocket kings shown as card pairs](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/starting-hands-kk6-v2.jpg) ## 169 starting hands Put it together and 1,326 combos collapse into **169 hands**: | Type | Hands | Combos each | Combos total | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Pairs | 13 | 6 | 78 | | Suited | 78 | 4 | 312 | | Offsuit | 78 | 12 | 936 | | **Total** | **169** | | **1,326** | Why 78? There are 13 ranks, and an unpaired hand is any two different ranks: C(13,2) = 78. Each of those 78 exists once as suited and once as offsuit. This is the 13×13 grid you see in every preflop chart, including ours. Pairs run down the diagonal, suited hands sit above it, offsuit hands below: ![13 by 13 grid of the 169 starting hands: pairs on the diagonal, suited hands above, offsuit hands below, with combo totals 78, 312 and 936](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/starting-hands-169-grid.jpg) One thing to keep in mind when you read a chart: every cell looks the same size, but they don’t hold the same number of combos. AKo is 12 combos, AKs is 4. A chart that’s “half suited hands” is a lot less than half of all combos. ![Share of the 169 hands versus share of the 1,326 combos: offsuit hands are 70.6% of all combos](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/starting-hands-share.jpg) ## How to write hands down ### Ranks Ace, king, queen and jack are written with their first letter. Ten is **T**, so every card is exactly one character. The rest use their number. | Card | Written as | | --- | --- | | Ace | A | | King | K | | Queen | Q | | Jack | J | | Ten | T | | Nine to two | 9 … 2 | Always write the higher card first: **KJ**, not JK. **96**, not 69. ### Suits To name exact cards, add a lowercase suit letter after each rank: **s** spades, **h** hearts, **d** diamonds, **c** clubs. Ace of hearts and king of spades is **AhKs**. Nine of clubs and six of diamonds is **9c6d**. ### Suited or offsuit When the exact suits don’t matter, add **s** or **o** at the end of the hand. Don’t confuse this **s** with spades: it comes after both cards, not after one card. | You write | It means | Combos | | --- | --- | --- | | AK | All ace-king | 16 | | AKs | Ace-king suited | 4 | | AKo | Ace-king offsuit | 12 | | AcKc | Ace of clubs, king of clubs | 1 | | KK | Pocket kings | 6 | ![How AK, AKo and AhKs are read: ranks, suit letters and the offsuit marker](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/starting-hands-notation.jpg) ## Two things to use right away ### Ranges in shorthand A plus sign means “this hand and everything stronger of the same kind”: - **QQ+** = QQ, KK, AA → 3 × 6 = **18 combos** - **ATs+** = ATs, AJs, AQs, AKs → 4 × 4 = **16 combos** - **22–66** = every pair from twos to sixes → 5 × 6 = 30 combos ![13 by 13 grid with QQ+ and ATs+ highlighted: 18 and 16 combos](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/starting-hands-ranges.jpg) ### Your cards change the count Combo counts assume you don’t know any cards. As soon as you look at your hand, some combos are gone. Say you hold A♠︎Q♦︎: - Your opponent can have **AA** only 3 ways instead of 6 – three aces are left, and C(3,2) = 3. - **AK** drops from 16 to **12** combos (3 aces × 4 kings). - If you held A♠︎K♦︎ instead, their AK would drop to **9** combos (3 × 3). ![Holding A♠Q♦: opponent AA drops from 6 to 3 combos, AK from 16 to 12, QQ from 6 to 3, KK stays at 6](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/starting-hands-blockers-v2.jpg) This is called card removal, or blockers, and it’s the reason solvers talk about combos rather than hands. We’ll come back to it later in the series. ## Quick recap - 52 × 51 ÷ 2 = **1,326** starting combos. - Unpaired hands: **4 suited + 12 offsuit = 16** combos. Pairs: **6**. - 13 pairs + 78 suited + 78 offsuit = **169 hands** in the 13×13 grid. - Ranks: A K Q J T 9…2, higher card first. Suits: s h d c. Suited/offsuit: s or o at the end. Next up in the series: how those 169 hands get turned into a strategy. If you want to see the grid in action now, open any spot in our [preflop charts](https://poker.academy/pricing) – each cell shows what the solver does with that hand. For the math side, see [Introduction to Basic Poker Math](https://poker.academy/blog/post/introduction-to-basic-poker-math). --- # Hard means hard now: the new hand difficulty selector Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/hand-difficulty-selector Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2026-09-12 Category: Update ![Hard means hard now: the new hand difficulty selector](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/hand-difficulty-hero-v12.png) A customer wrote to me last week: “Practice keeps dealing me easy hands. I want the hard ones.” He was right. So we built a selector. Preflop only: the two cards and the decision they put you in. Flop, turn and river are graded as before. Here is the arithmetic, because a button called “Hard” is not magic. ## Why the trainer dealt easy hands Practice takes hands from two places: a library of pre-solved spots and a live solver. The difficulty preset only ever reached the live solver. On the pre-solved path it did nothing: Beginner and Advanced got the same cards. Embarrassing, but true. Live was correct, on paper. Its Intermediate band, 30% to 98% on the top action, was nearly every hand in every matrix. ## The idea: do not filter, weight A preflop spot is one node with 169 hand classes. Some the solver plays one way: AA raises, 72o folds. Some it mixes, 70% call and 30% raise. Those are the close decisions. A hard filter, “only mixed hands”, empties the pool on most spots. You see the same three hands over and over. So every hand gets a weight, and the dealer draws in proportion. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/hand-difficulty-weight-curve-light-v5.png) *One number per hand decides its weight: how often the solver plays its second choice. Dashed: my first attempt.* ## The maths Two numbers per hand: m, how often the solver plays its top choice, and s, its second choice. s is also what the verdict reads. Pick the second choice and you are graded on how often the solver plays it: 40% or more is Perfect, 6% to 40% is Good, below 6% a Mistake, 0% a Blunder. A hand is in the pool if no action is played at 98% or more, plus the edge hands of a range. One weight per level: wB(i)=1w_{\mathrm B}(i)=1 wE(i)=0.02+m4w_{\mathrm E}(i)=0.02+m^4 wH(i)=max⁡ ⁣(0.05+max⁡(0, (s−0.05)(0.60−s))0.2752, 0.4⋅[ i on a boundary ])w_{\mathrm H}(i)=\max\!\Big(0.05+\frac{\max\big(0,\,(s-0.05)(0.60-s)\big)}{0.275^{2}},\ \ 0.4\cdot[\,i\ \text{on a boundary}\,]\Big) Balanced: every hand weighs the same, the old draw. Easy: certainty wins, a 97/3 hand weighs 0.90, a 50/50 hand 0.08. Hard: a bump that peaks at s = 32.5%, the middle of the Good band, where you feel the pull of the wrong side, take it and get Good. A 70/30 hand weighs 1.04, a 50/50 hand 0.65, a 97/3 hand 0.05. Two extras on Hard. A one-way hand on the edge of a range, K9o where K9s opens, weighs at least 0.4: that is where people blunder. And every hand keeps a floor, so none is unreachable. Why frequency and not EV? Every action the solver mixes has the same EV, so on a close hand only the frequency tells a good decision from a bad one. ## What it looks like on a real spot Cash NL50, six-max, 100 bb, big blind facing a button open. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/hand-difficulty-one-spot-three-dealers-v9.png) *Big blind vs button open on NL50. Left: the solver’s strategy. Right: tile opacity is the deal weight per level. Bare tiles are never dealt on Balanced or Hard.* On Balanced, 46% of deals are close calls with one clear answer and 5% are coin flips. On Hard, 71% and 9%, and 20% are hands the solver plays one way, nearly all on a range boundary. On Easy, 26% are close calls and seven deals in ten are one-way hands. ## Hard cannot invent difficulty ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/hand-difficulty-close-decisions-light-v9.png) *Five real spots. Solid: one Perfect answer and one Good one. Hatched: coin flips. The last spot is push/fold and every level deals it the same way.* A 20 bb button facing a shove has no close hands. Every decision there is call or fold at 100%, so Hard deals it like Balanced. And Hard keeps dealing folds. On the cutoff-vs-3-bet spot, 29% of Hard deals are hands the solver mostly folds, like A4s: fold 49%, raise 36%, call 15%. A fold with a Good alternative is a decision. ## Mostly hands you can play Before shipping I ran the dealer over 17,020 named spots of 19 simulations: MTT chipEV from 10 to 100 bb and five cash games. On the median spot, hands the solver mostly folds were 50% to 77% of Balanced deals in MTT and 61% to 69% in cash. That is not what a trainer is for. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/hand-difficulty-fold-share-v2.png) *Share of deals on hands the solver mostly folds, median spot per simulation, before and after the cap. Bars: Balanced. Dots: Hard.* You should mostly get cards you can take to a flop. The folds should be there because a range has an edge, not because folds are most of the matrix. So the fold-leaning hands, fold above 50%, are capped at one third of a spot’s deal mass. Under the cap nothing changes. A spot with nothing but folds keeps them. σ=min⁡ ⁣(1, c1−c⋅∑j∉Fw(j)∑j∈Fw(j)),c=13,w′(i)=σ w(i) for i∈F\sigma=\min\!\Big(1,\ \frac{c}{1-c}\cdot\frac{\sum_{j\notin\mathcal F}w(j)}{\sum_{j\in\mathcal F}w(j)}\Big),\qquad c=\tfrac13,\qquad w'(i)=\sigma\,w(i)\ \text{ for } i\in\mathcal F A second leak: on a spot you reach through your own earlier action, a hand you 3-bet 2% of the time was as likely a deal as one you always 3-bet. Rows under 5% reach are out now. ∑afa<0.05 ⟹ i∉P\textstyle\sum_a f_a<0.05\ \Longrightarrow\ i\notin\mathcal P After both, two deals in three on Easy and Balanced are hands the solver mostly plays on. Pure folds are 19% to 33% of the deals. Is Balanced softer than the old trainer now? No. The cap only takes folds out. Close decisions went from 9% to 13% at 25 to 50 bb, from 21% to 24% at 60 to 100 bb and from 33% to 34% in cash. Pure folds went from 67% to 30%, from 48% to 25% and from 37% to 20%. ## What a session actually dealt Numbers on a corpus are one thing. So I played three sessions the way you would: MTT chipEV, 25 to 60 bb, opens, defences and 3-bet spots, preflop only. 260 hands on Easy, 160 on Balanced, 90 on Hard. The first run found a bug no corpus could. Defences against an open came up in 1% of the deals. The server drew the right mix, 19 opens, 8 3-bet spots and 13 defences on a 40-hand answer. Then it sent them sorted by category, defences last. The client keeps the first half of what it asks for. It never got there. Fixed: the answer is shuffled on the server. On the rerun, defences were 50% to 54% of the deals on all three levels, against a weight of 46%. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/hand-difficulty-session-deal-v1.png) *Three sessions, one level each. Left: how often a defence against an open was dealt, before and after the fix. Right: what kind of hand each level dealt after it.* With them back: a close decision was 22% of Easy deals, 39% of Balanced and 56% of Hard. Coin flips 2%, 9% and 21%. Pure folds 25%, 18% and 11%. A wrong answer would have been a Blunder on 67% of Easy deals, 48% of Balanced and 21% of Hard. The app’s verdict matched the bands on 510 hands of 510. ## Where to find it ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/hand-difficulty-cockpit-row.png) *The new row in the Practice cockpit.* Practice, in the “How it plays” card. Beginner seeds Easy, Intermediate seeds Balanced, Advanced seeds Hard. Change the row by hand and you are on Custom. ## What it is not - It is preflop only. Postflop is dealt and graded the same way on every level. - It is not a “top 10% of hands” filter. That would be a claim about equity. - It does not use what we know about you yet. Your preflop mistakes are recorded and sorted between sessions, and the review queue is built from them. The dealer does not read that yet, so the same preflop hand can come back tomorrow. Soon it will: your mistakes and the leak finder will point the dealer at the spots where your frequencies are off. If you were the customer who wrote in: thank you. Set it to Hard and tell me if it bites. Cheers! 🙂 --- # Aggregated Reports: Stop studying one flop at a time Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/aggregated-reports-guide Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2026-09-10 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Update ![Aggregated Reports: Stop studying one flop at a time](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/reports-hero-map.png) For years I studied postflop one flop at a time. Solve, stare, write something down, next flop. Ten flops later: a page of numbers and no rule. An **aggregated report** solves one preflop spot across a whole set of flops and averages the [solver](https://poker.academy/gto-postflop-solver)’s strategy, weighted by how many real deals each flop stands for. This post is a tour of what you can do with one. > The rule does not live on one flop. It lives across all of them. ## One spot, every flop A report takes one preflop spot – positions, pot, stacks, ranges, sizes – and solves it on a whole set of flops. A subset of 25, 49, 95 or 184. All 1,755 distinct flops. Your own list. Or all 49 turn cards over a solved flop. ![The new report dialog: board scope chips 25, 49, 95, 184, All 1755, Custom; a dry run showing 1,755 boards, 17 reused, 1,738 left to solve, 12h 34m.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/reports-builder.png) *You see the board count, what is reused from your library and how long the rest takes – before anything is queued.* Each flop carries a **weight** – how many real deals it stands for – so every average on the page is weighted, never a plain mean. ## The table 50 bb, nine-handed, 1 bb ante. Small blind opens to 4, big blind calls. 9 bb in the middle, 46 behind, small blind acts first. ![Report table for the SB vs BB single-raised pot at 50 bb: the weighted subset row and one row per flop with Check, Bet 15%, Bet 30%, Bet 60%, Bet 120%, EV, EQ, EQR, Mix and Weight.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/reports-table-v2.png) *184 flops, one row each. The top row is the whole set, weighted.* The top row is the rule: check **37.9%**, bet 15% pot **20.2%**, bet 30% **30.8%**, bet 60% **6.6%**, overbet 120% **4.5%**. The rows show where it breaks: on 4♣4♦4♥ the 60% bet jumps to 81.3%. Click a row and the board panel deals that flop on a felt, with its own numbers next to the average and a button to drill it. ## Walk the tree The action line is clickable. Press **Bet 30%** and the whole report re-aggregates one node deeper: big blind facing that bet, on all 184 boards. ![The same report one node deeper: after SB bets 30%, the table shows BB's Fold, Call, Raise 84.6% and Raise 146.2% frequencies on every flop.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/reports-tree-walk-v3.png) *Big blind facing the 30% bet: folds 17.8%, calls 77.6%, raises about 4.6%.* ## Filters and groups Filters are texture tags, with a count on each one. Groups split the table by high card, pairing, suits or connectivity, one average row per group. ![The Filters menu: Suits (Monotone 11, Two-tone 68, Rainbow 105), Pairing, Connectivity, Highness and High card chips, each with how many of the 184 boards carry the tag.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/reports-filters-menu-v2.png) *Every texture tag says how many of the 184 boards carry it.* ![Monotone filter applied: 11 boards, coverage 5.2%; a comparison row shows the filtered averages next to the full set with the difference in percentage points.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/reports-filter-monotone.png) *Monotone: eleven boards against the full set, with the difference in percentage points.* On monotone flops the small blind checks **53.9%**, sixteen points more than average, and the 30% bet collapses from 30.8% to **4.9%**. Slow down, size down. The map at the top of this post is the same data as tiles – check frequency, lighter is more checking. ## The chart Chart view stacks every board’s first decision as one bar, in the order the boards appear in the table. The dashed line is the weighted average of the action you pick, so the boards above and below it jump out. ![Chart view: one stacked bar per flop showing the small blind's Check, Bet 15%, Bet 30%, Bet 60% and Bet 120% frequencies, a dashed line at the 20.23% weighted average of Bet 15%, and a bet-size distribution panel below.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/reports-chart-v2.png) *One bar per flop. Below it, how the betting mass splits across sizes: 30% pot takes half of it.* ## Lenses A lens reads the whole report through one hand class – made hands, draws, detailed classes, or an exact combo. ![The Class lens picker: Made hands (Straight Flush down to Under Pair), Draws (Combo Draw, Nuts Flush Draw, Flush Draw, OESD, Gutshot, No Draw) and Detailed classes such as Top Pair Top Kicker or Nut Flush.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/reports-lens-picker-v2.png) *Pick a class and every number on the page becomes that class only.* ![Class lens set to Top Pair: a banner says 150 of 184 boards contain it and 34 render as no data; the table shows top-pair-only frequencies with a Reach column.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/reports-lens-top-pair-v2.png) *Top pair only. The 34 boards without it render as no data – not as zero.* With top pair the check drops to **28.7%** and the overbet goes from 4.5% to **8.1%**. Zero is an answer from the solver; “no data” is not, and the app keeps them apart. ## What does one size cost? ![The Simplify drawer: a caveat that the loss is measured against a fixed GTO opponent and is a lower bound, then Always Check −0.00, Always Bet 30% −0.01, Always Bet 60% −0.06, Always Bet 120% −0.25, and the check loss broken down by texture.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/reports-simplify.png) *Force one action on all 184 boards and pay the bill in big blinds.* Always checking costs next to nothing here, always betting 30% about **0.01 bb**, always overbetting **0.25 bb**. Read the caveat: measured against a fixed solver opponent, so every number is a lower bound. A human who notices will make you pay more. ## Turn runouts Flop T♣T♦3♥, button versus big blind at 20 bb. Check, bet 22% pot (1.2 into 5.5), call. 7.9 bb on the turn. ![Turn runout report on T♣T♦3♥: one row per turn card with BB's Check, Bet 22%, Bet 75% and All-in frequencies; the All 49 turn cards row on top.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/reports-turn-runouts-v3.png) *All 49 turn cards, one row each.* Across all 49 the big blind checks **92.9%**. On a 3 the check falls to 37.7% and the small bet jumps to **58.8%**. On a blank it stays a check. ## Compare reports Any two reports on the same street can be diffed board by board. The picker sorts your reports and the community’s into same spot and compatible. ![The Compare with… dialog: a search box, a Same spot section with three BTN vs BB reports and a Compatible section listing other reports with their positions, pot, SPR, simulation and board count.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/reports-compare-picker.png) *Compare with… – same spot first, then everything compatible.* ![Diff of two BTN vs BB reports: both action lines locked side by side, a Top divergences strip of ten boards, and a table with A's and B's columns plus a delta column.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/reports-diff.png) *Two sizing menus for the same spot, side by side, biggest divergences on top – and a button that drills exactly those boards.* ## From reading to playing Every report has a Drill button. With the monotone filter on it reads **Drill 11 scenarios**: those eleven flops dealt in Practice at this node, fresh hand every time, every decision graded – see [the Practice post](https://poker.academy/blog/post/practice-full-hand-training-guide/). > Read the rule. Find where it breaks. Play the boards where it breaks. Reports are [Premium](https://poker.academy/pricing), one runs at a time, and every board they solve stays in your library. Go find your rule. Cheers! 🙂 --- # Practice: Know what your mistakes actually cost Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/practice-full-hand-training-guide Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2026-09-10 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Update ![Practice: Know what your mistakes actually cost](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-hero-flop-fit.png) Every player I know can tell you their worst hand of the year. Nobody can tell you what it cost them. Not “I got coolered” – an actual number. How many big blinds that call gave away. That is the thing I wanted for years and never had, and it is why Practice exists in the shape it does. ## You play the whole hand. Not a quiz question. Most trainers stop exactly where poker gets hard. Preflop spot, pick an action, tick or cross, next. > That is not poker. That is flashcards. In Practice you get dealt into a seat with a stack, blinds and antes. Players in front of you act. You make your preflop decision – and if the hand goes on, you see a flop, a turn, a river. The pot, the stacks and both ranges carry forward from what actually happened, and the opponent answers from solver strategy at every node. ![A hand in Practice - nine-handed table, hero in the big blind facing a small blind raise, no solver hints on screen.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-table-after-mode.png) *Nine-handed, 50 bb, big blind facing a raise. No hints – this is the mode you should be training in.* Every number on that felt checks out. Ante 1 bb, blinds 0.5 and 1 – that is 2.5 in the middle. Small blind raises to 4, so the pot is 6. You owe 3 more. Pot odds: 3 / (6 + 3) = **33.3%**. Exactly what the panel says. Do that arithmetic yourself – I want you to. Postflop, every bet size is named as a percentage of the pot with the big blinds worked out for you, so you always know what a size actually costs before you press it. ![Postflop action row - Check, Bet 15% (1.3 bb), Bet 30% (2.7 bb), Bet 60% (5.4 bb), Bet 120% (10.8 bb).](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-bet-sizings.png) *Every size as a percentage of the pot, converted to big blinds.* ## Then it tells you the price This is the part I care about most. ![Feedback card after a decision - Blunder verdict, 0.19 bb of EV loss, and the solver's full strategy at that node.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-verdict-detail.png) *Blunder – 0.19 bb of expected value given away, and the strategy that says so.* > You are not told you were wrong. You are told what it cost you: 0.19 bb. Best, correct, inaccuracy, mistake, blunder – and the grade comes from how much EV you gave up against the pot, not from a list of approved buttons. A call that costs a hundredth of a big blind and one that torches half the pot are not the same error, and any trainer that paints both red is teaching you nothing. ## Your range calls. Your hand folds. Both are true. If you take one thing from this post, take this one. I have got it wrong myself more times than I want to write down. ![The same hand with the Range Explorer open - the big blind's 169-hand matrix, continue 60.7% across 805 combos.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-hand-in-progress.png) *The range continues 60.7% of the time. That is the number people mistake for permission.* Facing that raise, the big blind range continues **60.7%** of the time across 805 combos. Calling looks fine. But the hand was J♥6♣, and for that combo, at that node, the solver folds **100%** of the time. Both are correct – they answer different questions, and swapping one for the other is how you talk yourself into calls a chart seems to bless. So we put them side by side in plain words: *Solver, with this hand* and *Solver, across the whole range*. --- ## You decide what gets dealt Random hands are a waste of your evening. So you tell it what to deal before you sit down. ![The session composition dialog - format, stack range, simulation type, ten preflop categories, hero and opponent seat, starting hands and nine board textures.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-session-composer.png) *One dialog: format, depth, ten preflop categories, both seats, 169 starting hands, nine board textures – and Save as drill.* Cash, MTT or Spin & Go. Any stack range. Ten preflop categories – opens, facing a raise, three-bets, squeezes, blind versus blind, limped pots. Pin your seat, your opponent’s, or neither. Narrow to board textures, or to specific starting hands if a class of holding keeps butchering you. Mine is offsuit broadways out of position. The other half of the cockpit is how it behaves. | How it plays | Your options | | --- | --- | | Hands | 5 · 10 · 20 · 50 · no limit | | Feedback | Study · After · Errors only · Cheat | | Clock | Off · 8s · 12s · 25s | | Opponent | Samples solver frequencies · always most frequent | | Villain cards | At start · at end · showdown only | | Tables at once | 1 · 2 · 4 | That last row is the one people miss. Practice can deal **four tables at once**, each running its own hand. ![Four tables at once in Practice - four independent hands, each with its own Fold / Call / Raise / All-In row.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-four-tables.png) *Four hands at once, four independent action rows. Every decision still graded.* Not a gimmick – the closest thing to the pressure of a real session. Multi-tabling costs you the same EV here as it does online, except here somebody counts it. ## Four ways to be told you are wrong - Only *After* and *Errors only* count towards your ranked stats. A decision made while staring at the answer measures nothing, and I am not going to let the app flatter you. ## Turn your leak into a machine Anything you can configure, you can save as a **drill** and start with one click. Blind versus blind at 20 bb. Facing a three-bet in position, 100 bb deep, paired boards. Every drill keeps its own record – runs, dates, accuracy – so the list stops being a menu and becomes a scoreboard. Mine says blind-versus-blind went 33% → 44% → 62%, and that the cold four-bet drill I built a month ago is still on 0% because I have been avoiding it. Uncomfortable in a useful way. There is a catalogue of ready-made drills next to your own, so you do not have to build them all yourself. **Plans** go further: multi-week structures, six sessions a week, each day with its own setup waiting. If you have ever opened the app thinking “no idea what to work on today” – that is what this is for. ## Mark the hands that bug you One key during a session flags a hand for later. They pile up in **Marked** – every hand you pressed M on, across every session you have played. ![The Marked screen - flagged hands grouped by day, with filters, a pattern panel and a grade breakdown.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-marked-hands.png) *Your cards, the action that led there, your decision beside the solver’s, and what the difference cost.* Two things there are smarter than I expected when we built them. It looks for a **pattern in what you flag**. If five of your marks are big blind facing an open, it says so – and offers to deal those five back to back. Your instinct about which hands were interesting turns into a drill without you noticing the theme yourself. And it splits them by grade. Plenty of marked hands are not errors: nine of my twenty-eight were correct plays I still wanted to see again. The screen says it plainly – *marks are yours, grades are the solver’s*. It also counts how many you actually went back to. Mine says 15 of 28. Opening one gives you the replayer: the hand street by street, your decision at every node, the verdict, and the solver strategy beside it – for your exact combo and for the whole range. ![The hand review screen - replayer on the left, the chosen decision with the solver matrix in the middle, and the full 15-hand history on the right.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-review-hands.png) *The replayer, the decision you made, and every hand of the session – sortable by what it cost.* > Playing 400 hands teaches you almost nothing by itself. Playing 400 hands, flagging the 11 that confused you, and then actually sitting with those 11 – that is a study session. The first is just clicking. --- ## And then the part that hurts Every graded decision goes into your record. Seven days, thirty, ninety. ![The Performance screen - accuracy and EV loss headline figures, weakest measured track with a drill button, and trends over thirty days.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-performance.png) *Accuracy, EV loss per decision, and the track you are worst at – with a button that drills it.* Two headline numbers: accuracy, and average EV loss per decision. Then the breakdowns that actually find the leak – by position and by street. That is how you learn your flop play is fine and your preflop is quietly bleeding. It also names your **weakest measured track**, tells you how far below your own average it sits, and puts a button right there that drills exactly that. When it stops being your weakest, the app tells you that too. ## One promise about the numbers Every frequency, every EV figure, every verdict comes from [solved solutions](https://poker.academy/gto-postflop-solver), read at the node you are standing on. No lookup table of “typical” frequencies. No heuristic wearing a solver costume. And when there is no solved data for a spot, the app says so instead of inventing a number. > A trainer that always has an answer is a trainer that is sometimes making it up – and you would never know which times. --- ## Start here Open Practice. Leave the defaults. Set feedback to *After*. Play 20 hands. Ten minutes. You will finish with a verdict on every decision and a number for what the session cost you. Then read the review, mark what surprised you, and turn the recurring one into a drill. Play, review, narrow, repeat. That loop is the entire product. Go find out what your calls actually cost. Cheers! 🙂 --- # A poker study routine that survives tilt: review your own hands, repeat the spots, set a stopping rule Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-study-routine-and-tilt Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2026-08-18 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![A poker study routine that survives tilt: review your own hands, repeat the spots, set a stopping rule](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-study-routine-and-tilt-hero.jpg) Your results tell you almost nothing for months at a time. I put numbers on that in the article on [variance in tournament poker](https://poker.academy/blog/post/variance-in-tournament-poker): in that model one winner in five is still losing after 1,000 tournaments. So if you want feedback this week instead of next year, it has to come from your decisions rather than your graph. This is the routine I would run, and the parts of it the app does for you. It is short on purpose: a study plan you keep for six months beats a better one you drop in a fortnight. ## First, find out what actually costs you money The trainer grades every decision against the solver’s strategy for your exact hand in that exact node. The grade is just the frequency the solver plays the action you picked: 40% or more is Perfect, from 6 to 40% is Good, anything above zero is a Mistake, and exactly zero is a Blunder. A blunder is an action the solver never takes with that hand there, which is a different thing from a hand that lost. This is every preflop decision my test account has had graded, split by that grade. 13,605 decisions, 5,116 big blinds of EV given away. ![Table: blunders are 25.6 percent of graded preflop decisions and 70.9 percent of the EV lost, timeouts 16.3 and 26.8 percent, while perfect, good and mistake decisions are 58 percent of decisions and 2.2 percent of the loss](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-study-routine-and-tilt-grade-cost.png) *Measured on one test account, all graded preflop decisions. The mix belongs to a test account; the cost of one blunder is real.* Blunders are 25.6% of the decisions and 70.9% of the damage, at 1.04 bb each. Timeouts, where the decision clock ran out and nobody acted, are another 26.8% at 0.62 bb a time. Everything else, Perfect and Good and Mistake together, is 58.2% of the decisions and 2.2% of the loss. A mistake averages 0.163 bb and a blunder 1.043, about 6 times more. That ratio is the whole argument for how to study. Trimming mistakes is polishing; removing blunders and timeouts is the money. So the routine below is built to find those two things and nothing else. One caveat on the table itself: this is a test account, driven partly by automated testing, so the share of blunders is far higher than a real player’s. The per-decision cost is the part that transfers, because it measures the solver rather than me. ## Mark the hand while you are still in it The worst moment to decide which hands deserve review is after the session, when you remember the pots you lost and not the spots you guessed. So mark while you play. In Practice that is one key, M, and everything you mark lands in one list. ![Poker Academy Practice Marked hands screen: 35 marked hands filtered by blunders, mistakes, preflop, postflop and not yet reviewed, with a panel showing what the player keeps marking](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-study-routine-and-tilt-marked-fig.jpg) *Practice → Marked (test account): 35 marked hands, filters for blunders and mistakes, and the spot you keep marking.* Two things on that screen matter more than the list itself. - The grade and the mark are different facts. 13 of those 35 marks were plays the solver agreed with. I marked them because I was not sure, which is exactly the right reason to mark a hand. Marks are yours, grades are the solver’s, and a hand can be both correct and worth a second look. - The repeats are the leak. 6 of the 35 are one spot, BB against a raise. That is one problem rather than six, and the panel offers to deal those six back to back. Filter by “Not yet reviewed” before you start. A mark you never open is not study, it is a to-do list you are lying to yourself about. ## Review the session, not the graph After the session, the debrief already knows where the money went. ![Poker Academy Practice session summary: GTO score 74, 23 decisions, 2.24 bb lost, 3 blunders, and a where the EV went table showing 6 turn decisions cost 1.26 of the 2.24 bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-study-routine-and-tilt-summary-fig.jpg) *Practice → Summary for one 10-hand session: 87% accuracy and 2.24 bb lost, 56% of it on six turn decisions.* That session also shows why accuracy alone is a bad target. 87% of 23 decisions were on the solver’s line, which sounds fine, and it still gave away 2.24 bb. The screen says where: 6 turn decisions cost 1.26 of the 2.24, 56.2% of the damage on 6 of 23 decisions. So the review has one question, not ten: which street and which hand carried the loss? Sort the hand list by worst, open the top two, done. Reviewing ten hands because you played ten hands is how study becomes a chore you quietly stop doing. ## In the hand, judge the size of the error Open one and the replayer stops at the decision the solver disagreed with, with that node’s full strategy next to it. ![Poker Academy hand review: Q9 offsuit from the hijack, all-in for 48bb graded as a blunder, 0.95 bb EV loss, solver says fold 100 percent, with the full 169-hand opening range shown](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-study-routine-and-tilt-review-fig.jpg) *Practice → Review: Q♣︎9♥︎ from the HJ, jammed 48 bb. The solver folds it 100% of the time in this node.* Here is that hand stated in full, because a frequency without its context is worth nothing. It comes from a PKO Final Table simulation, so bounties and pay jumps are already priced into those ranges. It is 8-handed, with a 0.96 bb table ante. Three players folded, so the hijack is first in, and the effective stack is 48 bb. In that node the solver opens 22.9% of its combos, 304 of 1,326, for 2 bb. It does not jam at all: the largest all-in frequency anywhere in the node is 0.01%, on AA. At 48 bb deep that is what you would expect. I moved all in for 48 bb with Q♣︎9♥︎. The useful part is by how much that was wrong: What the two wrong options cost, HJ first in, 48 bb effective jam=0−(−0.954)=0.954 bbopen 2bb=0−(−0.016)=0.016 bb\text{jam} = 0 – (-0.954) = 0.954\ \text{bb}\qquad \text{open } 2\text{bb} = 0 – (-0.016) = 0.016\ \text{bb} Folding is worth 0, so the cost of each alternative is just its EV with the sign flipped. Opening this hand would have been wrong by 0.016 bb, a rounding error, the kind of borderline hand it is pointless to argue about. Jamming was wrong by 0.95 bb, about 60 times more. Same hand, same seat, same street, and only one of the two errors is worth a minute of your time. This is the habit worth building: read the EV loss, not the verdict. “I was wrong” is not information. “I was wrong by 0.95 bb because I picked a sizing the solver never uses here” is a leak with a name. [pa-cta id=”study_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Play spots that get graded” body=”Every decision is scored against the solver’s strategy for your exact hand, with the EV loss attached. Mark what you want to look at and review it afterwards.” label=”Open the trainer”] [pa-cta id=”open_trainer” to=”/open/trainer” title=”The trainer, from the cockpit” body=”Pick the spots, the format and the timer, then play hands against the solver’s own strategy.” label=”Open the trainer”] ## Then find the leak, which is a spot and not a feeling One session is too small to name a leak. The Performance tab pools all of them and cuts the same accuracy by street and by seat. ![Poker Academy Practice Performance: accuracy by position from 66.5 in the cutoff out of position down to 40.8 in the small blind in position, accuracy by street preflop 48.5 flop 74.0 turn 76.4 river 75.0, and decision quality breakdown](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-study-routine-and-tilt-performance-fig.jpg) *Practice → Performance, 30 days (test account): the same decisions cut by seat, by street, and by grade.* On this account the split is blunt. Preflop accuracy is 48.5 against 74.0 on the flop, 76.4 on the turn and 75.0 on the river. By seat it runs from 66.5 in the cutoff out of position down to 40.8 in the small blind in position, nearly 26 points between the best and the worst chair at the same table. That is what a leak looks like when it is written down properly: a street, a seat, a stack depth and a spot type. “I play badly out of position” is not something you can drill. “In the small blind in position I am 14.5 points under my own average” is a session you can start this evening. If the spot is short-stacked, the ranges behind it are in [short stack poker strategy](https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-or-less); if the word “solver” in all this is still doing heavy lifting, [what GTO actually means](https://poker.academy/blog/post/what-is-gto-in-poker) is the piece to read first. ## Repeat the spot instead of rereading it Reading a chart once does not survive the week. Repetition does, and it only works if something else keeps the calendar. The app tracks each spot separately, a spot being one seat, street, spot type and stack bracket. There are 768 of them on this account, 500 with at least five decisions behind them, and it schedules them with SM-2, the spaced-repetition algorithm out of flashcard software. Your accuracy on a spot sets how long until it comes back. ![Table of spaced repetition intervals: at 85 percent accuracy and up a spot returns after 1, 3, 8, 22, 64 and 192 days, at 70 to 84 percent 1, 3, 8, 20, 50, 125 days, at 55 to 69 percent 1, 3, 7, 15, 29, 52 days, and under 55 percent every single day](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-study-routine-and-tilt-review-schedule.png) *The scheduler in the product, stepped out: days between reviews of one spot by the accuracy you keep scoring on it.* The two ends of that table are the whole idea. Score 85% or better and the gaps run 1, 3, 8, 22, 64, 192 days: six sessions cover most of a year. Score under 55% and the interval resets to one day every time, so the spot comes back tomorrow, and the day after, until you beat it. You do not get to decide that a spot is finished. Your accuracy on it decides. The same counters set the label on each spot: practised needs 30 decisions at 60% accuracy, mastered needs 50 at 72%. On this account 64 of 768 spots have cleared that second bar. That is a useful reminder of how much ground there is, and of why choosing tonight’s spot yourself wastes the one decision you make before training. ![Poker Academy Practice cockpit: streak, weekly GTO score, decisions and average EV loss, a training plan for the day, and suggested drills including the daily challenge and replay your mistakes](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-study-routine-and-tilt-cockpit-fig.jpg) *Practice cockpit: the plan for today, plus drills built from your weakest spots, your review-due spots and the hands you got wrong.* That is what the suggested drills are for. “Replay Your Mistakes” deals back hands you have already got wrong, and the daily challenge mixes weak spots with review-due ones. Twenty minutes of that beats an hour of scrolling charts, because the selection is made from your own record. ## Tilt is decision quality dropping, and you can see it Tilt gets talked about as a mood. Treat it as a measurement instead, because you have one: tilt is your EV loss per decision going up while nothing about the games changed. Three signals, all on screens you already have: - EV loss per decision, the single number on the Performance tab. If your bankroll is falling and this is flat, you are running bad. If it is climbing, you are playing worse, and that half is yours. - Timeouts. 2,212 of them on this account at 0.62 bb each. A timeout is the absence of a decision rather than a bad one, which makes it the cleanest evidence that attention has left the building. - Decision time, stored per decision: 26.1 seconds on that Q♣︎9♥︎ jam. Very fast decisions in spots that deserve thought, and very slow ones in spots that do not, are both worth noticing. None of that needs a mood journal. It needs you to read one number at the end of a session and compare it with the same number last week. ## Set the stopping rule before you sit down A stopping rule made at the table is not a rule, it is a negotiation, and you will lose it. Write it down while you are calm and make it about things you can check without arguing: - A time or a hand count, fixed in advance. “Two hours” beats “until I feel like stopping”, because you can read a clock while tilted. If the end condition is “back to even”, the length of your session is being set by variance rather than by you. - A loss limit in buy-ins. Protecting the bankroll is what bankroll management is for; this one is here because the session after a big loss is the one that produces blunders. - A blunder count. Three in quick succession in spots you normally get right is a better stop signal than any feeling, and at roughly a big blind each it is a cost you can say out loud. - One timeout is a warning. If the clock ran out on a decision you had an opinion about, the session is over. That rule is cheap to obey and expensive to ignore. And keep the strategy fixed while the stakes or the volume move. Tightening up because you are running badly is a results-based change: it lowers your edge and does nothing to the swings. Fewer tables, shorter sessions or a level down does the opposite. ## Results and decisions are two different questions The last piece is a habit rather than a technique: refusing to mix up two questions that feel like one. “Did I win?” is answered by the graph, and over any period you can stand to look at, the answer is mostly noise. “Did I decide well?” is answered per decision, in a second, and it does not move with the cards. You need both, but only one of them gives you feedback fast enough to learn from, and only one is worth reacting to on a Tuesday night. How wide the other one really is, with the model behind it, is in the [variance article](https://poker.academy/blog/post/variance-in-tournament-poker). [pa-cta id=”study_variance” to=”/variance-calculator” title=”See how noisy your results are” body=”Enter your field size, places paid, buy-in, rake and ROI. The calculator simulates the swings and the risk of ruin for the bankroll you have.” label=”Open the variance calculator”] So: mark while you play, read the debrief for where the EV went, open the two worst hands, let the scheduler pick tomorrow’s spots, stop on a rule you wrote when you were calm. That is the whole routine. It fits in twenty minutes, and it is the only feedback loop in poker faster than the variance. Cheers! 🙂 --- # Bet sizing and SPR: why the size belongs to the spot Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-bet-sizing-and-spr Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2026-07-14 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Bet sizing and SPR: why the size belongs to the spot](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-bet-sizing-and-spr-hero.jpg) Two solved reports in front of me, on the same flop, J♣︎J♦︎6♥︎, with the same 5.5bb pot and the same job: I raised preflop, my opponent called, the big blind checked, and it is my turn in position. In the first one I bet 19% of the pot with 93.7% of my range. In the second one I split: 40.9% of the range bets 25%, 50.1% bets 50%, and 7.6% checks. Same cards, same pot, and opposite answers. The only thing that changed is how many chips are left behind. That ratio has a name, and it decides more about bet size than the two cards in your hand do. ## SPR: the number that describes the spot **SPR** is the stack-to-pot ratio: the effective stack divided by the pot at the start of the street. Stack-to-pot ratio SPR=effective stackpot=185.5=3.27\mathrm{SPR}=\frac{\text{effective stack}}{\text{pot}}=\frac{18}{5.5}=3.27 Effective stack means the smaller of the two remaining stacks, because chips your opponent does not have cannot be won. You get SPR out of the preflop action, before the flop is dealt. - MTT, 20bb, 9-max, 1bb big-blind ante. BTN opens to 2bb, BB calls. Pot = 2 + 2 + 0.5 (dead small blind) + 1 (ante) = **5.5bb**. Behind: 20 − 2 = 18bb. SPR 18 / 5.5 = **3.3**. - Cash, NL200 6-max, 100bb, no ante. LJ opens to 2.5bb, BB calls. Pot = 2.5 + 2.5 + 0.5 = **5.5bb**. Behind: 100 − 2.5 = 97.5bb. SPR 97.5 / 5.5 = **17.7**. - MTT, 50bb, 9-max, 1bb ante. SB raises to 4bb, BB calls. Pot = 4 + 4 + 1 = **9bb**. Behind 46bb. SPR **5.1**. - MTT, heads-up, 30bb, 0.25bb ante. SB limps 1bb, BB checks. Pot = 1 + 1 + the 0.25bb ante, which the solve rounds to whole chips: **2.3bb**. Behind 29bb. SPR 29 / 2.3 = **12.6**. Identical pots in big blinds, wildly different SPRs. The pot on its own tells you nothing. ## Why SPR decides the size: count the bets to all-in Betting a fraction *f* of the pot and getting called multiplies the pot by (1 + 2*f*). Do that *n* times and the pot is multiplied by (1 + 2*f*)n. All the chips are in when that equals 1 + 2 × SPR, so the size that gets stacks in over *n* even bets is: Even sizing to get all in over n streets f=1+2 SPRn−12SPR 17.7, n=3: f=36.453−12=1.158f=\frac{\sqrt[n]{1+2\,\mathrm{SPR}}-1}{2}\qquad\text{SPR }17.7,\ n=3:\ f=\frac{\sqrt[3]{36.45}-1}{2}=1.158 ![Table: bet size needed on each street to get all in, by stack-to-pot ratio. SPR 3.3 needs 87% over two streets or 48% over three; SPR 17.7 needs 252% over two or 116% over three](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-bet-sizing-and-spr-streets-to-allin-1.png) *Pure arithmetic from the pot and stack of each of the four spots below. No solver involved.* At SPR 3.3 two ordinary bets of 87% of the pot put the stacks in, and three bets of 48% do the same. At SPR 17.7 you need three bets bigger than the pot. So **ordinary sizes already commit a short stack, while no single bet commits a deep one**. The short stack can bet small and still get all the chips in by the river. The deep stack cannot, and does not have to. ## The same 25 flops, two stack depths The two reports I opened at the top were solved on exactly the same 25 flops, with the same 5.5bb pot and the same structure: preflop raiser in position, big blind checks. Only the stack differs, 18bb behind against 97.5bb behind. ![Poker Academy flop reports: BTN vs BB at 20bb checks 10.54% and splits between 19% pot with 43.12% of range and 30% pot with 43.03%; LJ vs BB at 100bb checks 36.49%, bets 25% with 21.92% and 50% with 35.60%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-bet-sizing-and-spr-subset-pair-fig-1.jpg) *Top: report 3514, BTN 2bb open vs BB call, MTT 20bb 9-max, 1bb BB ante, pot 5.5bb, 18bb behind, sizing menu 19% / 30% / 60% / 120%. Bottom: report 3510, LJ 2.5bb open vs BB call, cash NL200 100bb, pot 5.5bb, 97.5bb behind, menu 25% / 50% / 100% / 200%. Both weighted over the same 25 flops.* - **SPR 3.3:** bets 89.5% of the time, and 86.1% of the whole range takes one of the two smallest sizes on the menu. The average bet, when it bets, is 25% of the pot, 1.38bb, which is 7.7% of the 18bb behind. - **SPR 17.7:** checks 36.5% and splits the rest between 25% (21.9%) and 50% (35.6%), with 6.0% going to 100% or 200%. Average bet 47% of the pot, 2.60bb, which is 2.7% of the 97.5bb behind. Flop by flop, the deep spot uses the bigger average size on **24 of the 25 flops**, and the short spot bets more often on **24 of the 25**. The short stack bets small in percent of the pot and big in percent of its own stack. The deep stack does it the other way round. One board shows it on its own. Here is J♣︎J♦︎6♥︎ in both reports. ![Poker Academy report panels for the flop J clubs J diamonds 6 hearts: at 20bb the button bets 19% pot 93.72% of the time; at 100bb the lowjack splits 25% for 40.89%, 50% for 50.05%, 100% for 0.94% and 200% for 0.50%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-bet-sizing-and-spr-jj6-pair-fig-1.jpg) *One board, J♣︎J♦︎6♥︎, pot 5.5bb in both. Left: BTN in position at 20bb (report 3514). Right: LJ in position at 100bb (report 3510). The percentages are the share of the whole range, not of one hand.* ## Careful: stack depth changes the ranges too SPR alone did not produce that difference, and neither report claims it did. Stack depth moves the ranges at the same time, and the preflop charts of the same two simulations show it. Against a 2bb button open at 20bb the big blind calls with **no pocket pair at all**, because every one of the 78 pair combos 3-bets or jams, so on an unpaired flop its range holds no sets and no overpairs. Against a 2.5bb lowjack open at 100bb, 63 of those 78 combos call. Over these 25 flops the button at 20bb has **59.7%** equity against the lowjack’s **53.5%** at 100bb. Geometry and ranges push the same way here, which is why you cannot read causation out of two spots. The arithmetic is the part that travels. You can work out SPR before the flop comes down; the ranges you have to learn spot by spot. ## What each size actually buys A bet does four things, and each of them has a price you can compute. Bet *b* into a pot of *P*: Break-even fold equity for a pure bluff bP+b=3.35.5+3.3=37.5%\frac{b}{P+b}=\frac{3.3}{5.5+3.3}=37.5\% Price the caller is getting (pot odds) bP+2b=3.35.5+6.6=27.3%\frac{b}{P+2b}=\frac{3.3}{5.5+6.6}=27.3\% ![Table of bet sizes for two spots: 19%, 30%, 60% and 120% of a 5.5bb pot at 18bb behind, and 25%, 50%, 100% and 200% at 97.5bb behind, with break-even fold equity, the price the caller gets, the SPR left after a call and the share of stack risked](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-bet-sizing-and-spr-what-a-bet-buys-1.png) *Arithmetic on the two sizing menus above. Break-even fold equity is b / (P + b); the caller’s price is b / (P + 2b), the call as a share of the final pot.* - Fold equity. A 19% bet needs to win the pot outright 15.4% of the time to break even as a pure bluff; a 120% overbet needs 54.5%. Bigger bets buy folds and pay for them. - Denying equity. The caller’s price rises with the size: 13.3% at 19% pot, 35.3% at 120%. A big bet makes cheap draws pay, a small bet lets everything continue. - Protection. That is the same fact from the other side. Charging a draw only matters when there are streets left to charge on, which brings SPR back in. - Polarisation. A big size is only credible if your range holds hands that want the whole stack in. The SPR-after-a-call column shows why: a 60% bet at SPR 3.3 leaves SPR 1.21, so the turn is a shove. If you would not shove the turn, do not bet 60% on the flop. None of those four numbers says whether the bet is good. They say what the bet needs to be good. A bluff with a flush draw behind it can be profitable well below its break-even line, because it still wins when it is called. ## The middle of the ladder, and one spot that just checks Two library-scale reports fill in the ladder between those extremes. Each is one preflop spot solved on 184 flops. [pa-cta id=”open_report_mtt_50bb_bb_vs_sb_by_size” to=”/open/report-mtt-50bb-bb-vs-sb-by-size” title=”Report: c-bet sizing across 184 flops” body=”The same 184 boards grouped by bet size: which size the solver actually reaches for, and where.” label=”Open the report”] ![Chart: four solved flop reports ordered by stack-to-pot ratio 3.3, 5.1, 12.6 and 17.7, with the check and bet-size mix over all flops and the average bet in percent of pot, big blinds and percent of stack](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-bet-sizing-and-spr-spr-ladder-1.png) *Production reports 3514, 3510 and 3634 (flop subsets, one sizing menu each) and the library report 1479. Each row is the first decision after the flop, weighted by how often each flop comes up.* - **SPR 5.1: SB c-bets vs BB, MTT 50bb.** Pot 9bb, 46bb behind, 184 flops. Bets 62.1%: 15% pot with 20.2% of the range, 30% with 30.8%, 60% with 6.6%, 120% with 4.5%. In chips: 1.3, 2.7, 5.4 and 10.8bb. - **SPR 12.6: BB into a limped pot, heads-up MTT 30bb.** Pot 2.3bb, 29bb behind, 184 flops. It **checks 96.9%** of the time. ![Poker Academy library report 1479, chart view: small blind first decision on 184 flops at 50bb grouped by high card, stacked check and four bet sizes per group](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-bet-sizing-and-spr-r1479-chart-fig.jpg) *Library report 1479, SB 4bb raise vs BB call, MTT 50bb 9-max, 1bb BB ante, pot 9bb. SB acts first; 100% stacked per high-card group.* ![Poker Academy report, chart view: big blind first decision into a limped pot on 184 flops at 30bb heads-up, check above 90% in every high-card group](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-bet-sizing-and-spr-r3634-chart-fig.jpg) *Report 3634, SB limp vs BB check, heads-up MTT 30bb, pot 2.3bb, 29bb behind, 184 flops. The teal block is the check.* Look at that last one for a moment. The big blind has 29bb behind and a 2.3bb pot, and it almost never bets. There is nothing here worth risking a stack that is 12.6 pots deep, the limping range is wide enough that nobody has a real edge at the top, and a bet that gets raised turns a 2.3bb pot into a decision for 29bb. When SPR is enormous and nobody has a range advantage, a check is the cheapest way to see the next card. [pa-cta id=”open_report_cash_100bb_lj_vs_bb” to=”/open/report-cash-100bb-lj-vs-bb” title=”Report: LJ vs BB, 100bb cash, 25 flops” body=”A deep single-raised pot after the big blind checks: 25 boards, one sizing menu.” label=”Open the report”] ## A small sizing menu is enough Look at what these solves actually use. At SPR 3.3 the button puts 86.1% of its range into the two small sizes and 0.2% into the 120% overbet, so the largest option on the menu is close to dead weight. At SPR 17.7 the lowjack puts 57.5% into two sizes and 6.0% into everything bigger. On J♣︎J♦︎6♥︎, 90.9% of the deep range is covered by 25% and 50%. What cutting a mix down actually costs is a separate measurement, and I made it in [is simplifying poker strategy the road to success](https://poker.academy/blog/post/is-simplifying-poker-strategy-the-road-to-success): forcing the solver’s whole range onto one action in these same reports costs a fraction of a big blind per hand. The size menu is not where your money is. So: one small size, one big size, and an overbet you use only when you know why. The pot and the stack decide which one you pick, not the strength of the two cards you happen to hold. ## At the table - Work out SPR before the flop is dealt. Effective stack over pot. It is one division and it frames every decision on three streets. - Low SPR means ordinary bets are commitment. At SPR 3.3 two bets of 87% get the stacks in. Bet small and often, and save the big size for when you actually want the stack in. - High SPR means no ordinary flop bet commits anybody. At SPR 17.7 even a pot-sized bet leaves SPR 5.6. You have three streets, so you can check the spots that do not want a pot and use the big size where you have the nutted hands. - Ask what the size needs to work. Break-even fold equity, the price you are laying, and the SPR left after a call are all arithmetic you can do in your seat. - Check the ranges as well as the geometry. The big blind’s calling range at 20bb and at 100bb are different animals, and that moves the answer as much as the SPR does. Frequencies and sizes above come from these four spots only: two MTT stack depths, one heads-up limped pot, one 100bb cash spot. Different positions, different antes or a different format, and the numbers move. The reports are in the app; open the one that matches your game before you copy anything from this page. [pa-cta id=”spr_cbet” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Play the spot, not the chart” body=”Drill these flops hand by hand and get the solver’s verdict on your size straight away.” label=”Open the trainer”] If you want the frequency side of the same decision, how often the preflop raiser bets at all by board texture, I wrote that up in [continuation bets: how often and how big](https://poker.academy/blog/post/continuation-bets-basic-mechanics-and-tips). Cheers! 🙂 --- # Board texture and range advantage: how to read a flop Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-board-texture-and-range-advantage Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2026-06-16 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Board texture and range advantage: how to read a flop](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-board-texture-and-range-advantage-hero.jpg) There are 22,100 ways to deal three cards off a 52-card deck. Strip out the flops that are the same board in different suits and 1,755 are left. Nobody memorises 1,755 strategies. What you can do is answer four questions about the board, then one question about the two ranges sitting on it. This is the first article of the postflop stage, and it is about reading the flop before you decide anything. The frequencies come from solved flop reports in Poker Academy; the combo counts come from the preflop charts of the same simulation. ## The spot - Cash, 6-max, NL200 fast-fold, 100bb, no ante. The lojack opens to 2.5bb, everybody folds, the big blind calls. Pot: 2.5 + 2.5 + 0.5 = **5.5bb**, 97.5bb behind, so SPR is 97.5 / 5.5 = 17.7. - Report 3510: 25 flops, all solved with one bet menu of 1.4bb, 2.7bb, 5.5bb and 11bb, which is 25%, 50%, 100% and 200% of the pot. Each flop carries a weight and the weights add up to 22,100, so each board stands for a cluster of boards. Before trusting any weighted average, check what the weights are. Here they reproduce the real counts of rainbow, two-tone, monotone, paired and unpaired flops *exactly*. But king- and queen-high boards carry 73% of the weight against 34% of the real flop space, and ace-high 1% against 22%. So I compare groups against each other and never read a total as a census. The heads-up report at the end is representative on every axis, and I say so where I use it. ## Four questions about the flop - 1. What is the high card? K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎ is king-high; 7♣︎4♦︎2♥︎ is seven-high. - 2. Is it paired? 6♣︎6♦︎4♣︎ is paired, 8♣︎8♦︎8♥︎ is trips, K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎ is unpaired. - 3. Is it connected? 9♣︎7♦︎5♥︎ makes straights and draws for a lot of hands. Q♣︎8♦︎3♥︎ makes almost none. - 4. What are the suits? Rainbow (Q♣︎8♦︎5♥︎), two-tone (Q♣︎8♣︎5♦︎), monotone (Q♣︎8♣︎5♣︎). The last one has a fixed answer, and it is worth knowing because people overrate how often a flush is on the way: Flops by suit pattern, out of 22,100 rainbow 4⋅133=8,788two-tone 12,168monotone 4(133)=1,144\text{rainbow } 4\cdot13^3=8{,}788 \quad \text{two-tone } 12{,}168 \quad \text{monotone } 4\binom{13}{3}=1{,}144 That is 39.8% rainbow, 55.1% two-tone, 5.2% monotone. Paired flops are 3,744 of 22,100 (16.9%) and trips another 52, so five flops in six are unpaired. ![Poker Academy aggregated flop report grouped by high card: the preflop raiser's strategy on ace-high through six-high flops, cash 6-max 100bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-board-texture-and-range-advantage-report-texture-fig-1.jpg) *Report 3510 (25 flops, one sizing menu), LJ 2.5bb open vs BB call, cash NL200 6-max 100bb, pot 5.5bb. Grouped by high card, 100% stacked per group.* ## Range advantage: whose flop is it? **Range advantage** means your whole range has more equity than the other player’s range on this board. It is a property of two ranges and one flop, not of your hand. It starts preflop. The lojack opens 244.9 combos, 18.5% of all 1,326 starting hands. The big blind calls 217.3 combos, 16.4%. Almost the same size, and not the same shape: - The big blind 3-bets **AA, KK and AKs 100% of the time** and QQ 31% of the time, so those hands are not in its calling range at all. The lojack keeps everything it opened. - The big blind defends hands the lojack never opens: 98s, 97s, 75s, 86s and 64s are all calls for the blind and 0% opens for the lojack. One range is the top 18.5% with its head still on; the other is wider and capped. Over the report’s 25 flops the lojack has 53.1% equity against 46.9%: real, but modest, and not spread evenly. ![Chart: preflop raiser's flop strategy by texture, cash 6-max 100bb, lojack against the big blind. Broadway boards 82% bet, eight-high or lower 49% bet with a full-pot size, paired, rainbow, two-tone and monotone compared](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-board-texture-and-range-advantage-lj-cbet-texture-1.png) *Report 3510, LJ 2.5bb open vs BB call, cash NL200 6-max 100bb, pot 5.5bb. The big blind checks; this is the raiser’s decision.* - Broadway (Q♣︎Q♦︎T♣︎ and Q♣︎Q♦︎J♥︎): 58.6% equity for the raiser against 41.4%. - Eight-high or lower (five flops): 49.2% against 50.8%. The raiser is *behind*. - Connected (two flops): 48.5% against 51.5%. Those are the two full ranges as they arrive on the flop. The report’s board panel shows a slightly different figure, because by then the big blind has checked and checking is itself a filter. The two equities do not add up to exactly 100% (off by up to 2.8 points on one flop of the 25), so I give each side as a share of the two added together. [pa-cta id=”open_report_cash_100bb_lj_vs_bb_by_texture” to=”/open/report-cash-100bb-lj-vs-bb-by-texture” title=”Report: c-betting by texture, 100bb cash” body=”The same 25 boards grouped by what the flop looks like, read from the raiser’s side.” label=”Open the report”] ## Nut advantage: count the combos **Nut advantage** is a different claim: you hold more of the hands at the very top. Equity is an average and an average hides the top, so you can have more equity and still be the one who cannot stack off. It is countable, and counting it is the most useful postflop habit I know. Take the two preflop ranges, delete the three flop cards from the deck, sort what is left by what it makes. Suited hands are 4 combos, offsuit 12, pairs 6, before card removal. ![Table: combos of straights, sets, two pair, overpairs and top pairs for the lojack opening range and the big blind calling range on four flops, cash 6-max 100bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-board-texture-and-range-advantage-nut-combos-cash-1.png) *Solver preflop charts, cash NL200 6-max 100bb (simulation 1). LJ opening range against the big blind’s calling range, combos weighted by the chart frequency and the three flop cards removed from the deck.* - K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎. The lojack has 6 overpair combos, the big blind **zero**, because AA and KK are always 3-bets. Sets 9.0 against 6.0, and the difference is exactly the missing KK. Top pair 40.9 against 20.7. Top pair or better: 32.8% of the raiser’s range, 17.0% of the caller’s. - 7♣︎4♦︎2♥︎. Now it flips. The big blind has 8.9 set combos to 3.3: it calls 22, 33 and 44 almost always while the lojack opens 22 never, 33 1% and 44 9% of the time. Two pair or better: 4.4% against 1.4%. The raiser does hold 42.0 overpair combos to 28.1, but overpairs are not the top of this board. - 6♣︎6♦︎4♣︎. Nobody can hold top pair or an overpair, because the board pair is the top pair. What is left is two pair or better, and the big blind has 34.0% of its range there against 25.7%. That last board is worth staring at. A paired flop takes the hand class everybody is used to off the table and the ranking starts again lower down. It is where “my top pair is good” stops being true. ## What the solver does with it Across the 25 flops the raiser bets 63.5% and checks 36.5%. The sizes are the four above. ![Poker Academy aggregated report, two flops side by side: king-jack-eight bet 98% mostly small, seven-four-deuce check 52% with a full-pot size in the mix](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-board-texture-and-range-advantage-report-kj8-742-fig-1.jpg) *Report 3510, LJ 2.5bb open vs BB call, cash 100bb, pot 5.5bb, big blind checks. One flop at a time: K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎ (weight 1,200 of 22,100) and 7♣︎4♦︎2♥︎ (weight 792). EV, EQ and EQR are the lojack’s, after the check.* - K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎: the raiser bets **98.4%**. 54.7% takes 1.4bb, 40.8% takes 2.7bb, and the full pot gets 1.7%. - 7♣︎4♦︎2♥︎: the raiser checks 52.0%, and 17.4% of the whole range picks the **full-pot** size, ten times the share it gets on the king-high board. - Broadway (the two queen-queen flops): 81.9% bet, 60.9% of the range in the 1.4bb size. - Eight-high or lower: 48.5% bet, full pot 13.8% against 2.9% on king- and queen-high flops. That shape is the rule of thumb everybody repeats, now with numbers under it. It is a heuristic, not something the solver announces: **range advantage lets you bet often; nut advantage lets you bet big.** On the king-high board the raiser’s edge is mostly top pairs, so it bets almost always and small. On the low board it has no edge in the top classes, so it bets rarely, and the part that does bet is the part that wants a big pot. Frequencies for the same decision at other stacks and positions: [continuation bets, how often and how big](https://poker.academy/blog/post/continuation-bets-basic-mechanics-and-tips). If 4 / 12 / 6 was new above: [starting hands, combos and notation](https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-starting-hands-combos-notation). ## The suits, on one set of ranks The report carries the same three ranks in all three suit patterns, so the suits are the only thing that changes. ![Poker Academy aggregated report, chart grouped by suits: rainbow, two-tone and monotone flops, preflop raiser's strategy, cash 100bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-board-texture-and-range-advantage-report-suits-fig-1.jpg) *Report 3510, same node, grouped by suitedness. Rainbow 14 flops, two-tone 10, monotone 1 board, so that row stands on a single flop.* - Q♣︎8♦︎5♥︎ (rainbow): check 42.4%, full pot 8.1%. - Q♣︎8♣︎5♦︎ (two-tone): check 45.3%, full pot 6.0%. - Q♣︎8♣︎5♣︎ (monotone): check 33.8%. It bets *more* often, not less, and the 1.4bb size jumps from 3.6% of the range to 31.8% while the full pot collapses to 0.7%. So “monotone, slow down” is half right, and the wrong half is the one people remember. Here the raiser bets more hands on the monotone board and takes it down cheaply; what disappears is the big bet. A flush is already possible, so nobody is building a big pot. One caveat: at the 50bb spot in the c-bet article the out-of-position raiser checks monotone flops 53.9% of the time. Different position, stack and bet menu, different answer. Textures do not carry a fixed instruction across spots. ## The other side: when the caller leads The big blind acts first, so it can bet before the raiser does. Across the 25 flops it checks 85.6% of its range, and 95.7% on king- and queen-high boards. Then the board changes and so does it. ![Poker Academy aggregated report: the big blind's first decision on the flop by high card, cash 6-max 100bb. It checks 97% on king-high boards and 21% on the nine-seven-five board](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-board-texture-and-range-advantage-report-bb-lead-fig-1.jpg) *Report 3510, the big blind’s own first decision on the flop, before anybody has bet. Grouped by high card. A bet here is a lead.* - 9♣︎7♦︎5♥︎: it bets **79.5%** of its range, 53.8% at 1.4bb and 23.2% at 2.7bb. Its equity share there is 53.0% against 47.0%. - 7♣︎4♦︎2♥︎: it bets 48.2%, almost all at 1.4bb. - K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎: it bets 2.2%. The 9♣︎7♦︎5♥︎ number looks wild until you check the charts. The lojack opens 98s, 97s, 75s, 86s and 95s exactly 0% of the time; the big blind calls 98s always, 97s 98% and 75s 99%. Count the combos and the lojack has **zero** straights and **zero** two pair there, against 3.5 and 3.9 for the big blind. It does hold more overpairs, 30.0 to 16.1: strong hands that do not want a big pot against a range holding every straight on the board. A caution, because this is easy to misuse: those are one solver’s frequencies in one spot with this bet menu. Leading is not a licence to donk every low board. ## The control case: a limped pot If range advantage comes from the preflop raise, what happens when nobody raises? Heads-up MTT, 30bb. The small blind limps 1bb (781.7 combos, 59% of hands), the big blind checks (845.5 combos, 63.8%; it raises 24.4% and jams 11.9%). Pot 2.3bb, 29bb behind. ![Table: combo counts for the small blind's limping range and the big blind's checking range, heads-up 30bb, showing almost identical distributions](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-board-texture-and-range-advantage-nut-combos-hu-1.png) *Solver preflop charts, HU MTT 30bb, 0.25bb ante (simulation 489). Limping range against checking range on the same two flops.* On K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎ the limper has top pair or better 10.9% of the time and the big blind 11.2%. Two pair or better: 1.9% each. On 7♣︎4♦︎2♥︎, 13.8% against 14.2%. Two wide, uncapped, nearly identical ranges. Equity over all 184 flops of report 3634: 51.8% against 48.2%, and that edge is position, not cards. This is the representative report: 22.2% of its weight sits on ace-high flops against 21.7% in the real flop space, so its totals can be read as totals. [pa-cta id=”open_report_hu_30bb_limped” to=”/open/report-hu-30bb-limped” title=”Report: a limped pot heads-up, 30bb” body=”Equity realisation where the pot is small and the stacks are deep, 184 flops, in-position view.” label=”Open the report”] One asymmetry survives, at the top: the big blind has **no sets at all** on either board, because it raises or jams every pocket pair against a limp. The limper keeps a few. The player with slightly less equity holds the only sets. ![Poker Academy aggregated report 3634, heads-up 30bb limped pot: small blind's strategy after the big blind checks on 184 flops, grouped by high card](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-board-texture-and-range-advantage-report-hu-fig-1.jpg) *Report 3634 (184 flops, one sizing menu), HU MTT 30bb, SB limp and BB check, pot 2.3bb. The small blind’s decision after the big blind checks.* The strategy follows from that. The big blind leads 3.1% of the time over all 184 flops: where neither range is ahead, the first player checks. The limper then bets 55.6%, and 82.5% on ace-high flops, which is position plus the fact that the big blind raised its aces. ## Four mistakes this fixes - “Wet board, slow down.” Wet for whom? The raiser bets 98.4% on K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎ and checks 52.0% on 7♣︎4♦︎2♥︎. Both rainbow, both unpaired, both with an open-ender available. The ranks belong to different ranges, and that is the whole difference. - Reading the high card and stopping. The smallest bet went from 3.5% of the range to 31.9% between the rainbow and the monotone version of the same three ranks. - Assuming the caller is always capped. It is capped because it 3-bet its best hands. In a limped pot nobody 3-bet anything and nobody is capped. - Treating top pair as the top of the range. On a paired board there is no top pair. On a low board the sets belong to the caller. The habit is short. Look at the flop, answer the four questions, then ask which hands each range can have that beat one pair. If you cannot answer that, the size you pick is a guess. [pa-cta id=”texture_charts” to=”/preflop-charts” title=”Start from the ranges” body=”Every combo count on this page came from a preflop chart. Find the one for your spot.” label=”Open the preflop charts”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # How to Maximize Your Vegas Poker Schedule Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-maximize-your-vegas-poker-schedule Author: Paweł Brzeski Published: 2026-05-28 · Updated: 2026-09-17 ![How to Maximize Your Vegas Poker Schedule](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/05/feature.png) ![How to Maximize Your Vegas Poker Schedule](images/feature.png) # How to Maximize Your Vegas Poker Schedule If you have ever tried to plan a Vegas summer from a stack of venue PDFs, you know the pain. WSOP drops a 100-page structure sheet. Wynn posts a flyer. The Orleans buries late reg in a spreadsheet. You end up with twelve browser tabs and still miss the one $600 Monster Stack you actually wanted to play. The [Vegas Poker Calendar](https://poker.academy/vegas-calendar) pulls all of it into one screen. Every major room, every series, real structures, real late-reg windows. Here is how to use it to maximize your trip – play more of the events that fit you, and miss none of them. ## The four views Top of the page you get four tabs: **Today**, **Calendar**, **Discover**, and **My Schedule**. Each one answers a different question. ### 1. Today – what is running right now Open **Today** when you are already in Vegas and want to know what to fire next. It is a one-screen briefing for a single date. ![Vegas Poker Calendar Today view showing late registration windows for May 28 with event times, buy-ins, and late-reg badges](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/05/today.png) Down the left you get the **Late Reg Windows** list – every event you can still buy into, sorted by start time. Each row shows the time, the event name, the venue, the buy-in, and a late-reg badge (more on those below). The right rail is your **Snapshot**: how many events run today, across how many venues, total buy-ins on the board, and total guarantees. Use the date picker or the arrows up top to jump to any day. ### 2. Calendar – plan the whole trip Switch to **Calendar** for the month grid. This is where you map out a two-week trip instead of a single session. ![Vegas Poker Calendar month grid for May 2026, color-coded by venue, with May 28 selected and its events listed in the side panel](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/05/calendar.png) Every day is color-coded by venue – the legend up top tells you which color is WSOP, which is Wynn, Aria, Orleans, and so on. Busy days show more bars. Click any day and the side panel fills with that date’s full card. Hit **Briefing** to drop straight into the Today view for that date. ### 3. Discover – turn the data into a decision This is the one most people sleep on. **Discover** takes the whole data set and filters it down to the events that fit how you actually want to play. ![Vegas Poker Calendar Discover view with decision filter chips, buy-in range slider, venue checkboxes, and a list of matching events](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/05/discover.png) Tap a **decision chip** across the top: - **Recommended** – value-weighted ranking (deep stacks, long levels, fat guarantees relative to buy-in) - **WSOP** – bracelet and Daily Deepstack events only - **Under $600** – keep it to the cheaper fields - **Big Guarantees** – the six-figure-plus prize pools - **One-Day** – no Day 2 commitment - **Starts After 2pm** – for the players who do not do mornings - **Mixed Games** – PLO, Stud, HORSE, the non-hold’em stuff - **Late Reg Info** – events with a usable late-reg window - **No WSOP** – skip the Rio/Horseshoe crowds entirely Then narrow it further with the **buy-in range** slider and the **venue checkboxes** on the left. Uncheck the rooms you are not visiting and the noise disappears. ### 4. My Schedule – your personal plan Everywhere you see an event, there is a **+** button. Tap it (double-click works too) and the event drops into **My Schedule**. ![Vegas Poker Calendar My Schedule view with selected events, overlap conflict warnings, total buy-in counter, and Copy Share Link and Export ICS buttons](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/05/schedule.png) Your schedule does the math for you: total buy-ins, how many venues you are bouncing between, and – the part that saves you – **conflict flags**. If two events you picked overlap, it tells you before you are stuck min-cashing one while you bag the other. ### Sharing your schedule Your plan lives in your browser (localStorage), so by default it is tied to the one device and browser you built it on. Sharing is how you get it anywhere else – and how you send it to the crew. - **Copy Share Link** packs your entire plan – every selected event and the plan name – into a single URL. The plan travels *in the link itself*, so there is no account and nothing to save server-side. - **Open it on your phone** by texting yourself the link. It rebuilds the exact same schedule on any device that opens it – the cleanest way around the one-device limit. - **Send it to your backer or travel group** so everyone is looking at the same card. They can open it, tweak their own copy, and share back. The **Public Share** panel shows the live link and a one-tap Copy button. Add or remove an event and the link updates – just copy it again to share the new version. ## Reading an event card Click any event to expand it. You get the full picture without leaving the page. ![Expanded event card showing starting stack, blind level length, tournament status, late registration window, and Source and Structure links](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/05/event.png) Starting stack, blind level length, tournament status (whether it has started and what level it is on), and the exact late-reg window. The **Source** link takes you to the room’s official schedule; **Structure** opens the full blind sheet. No guessing. ## What the late-reg badge is telling you The badge is the single most useful thing on the card. It answers one question: can I still get in? - **Before the event starts** – it shows how long the late-reg window stays open after the cards go in the air, e.g. “Late reg open for 6h after start.” - **While it is running** – it counts down: “Late reg: 2h 15m left.” It turns urgent in the final hour. - **Once it closes** – it tells you how long ago you missed it. The clock times come straight from each room’s published structure, so when WSOP says Flight A closes at 6 PM and Flights B–E close at 4 PM, that is exactly what you see – per flight, not a guess. ## Share it and export it Built your plan? Two buttons on **My Schedule**: - **Copy Share Link** – sends your whole plan as a URL. Text it to your backer, your travel crew, or yourself on another device. - **Export ICS** – drops every selected event into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook as a standard calendar file. One note: your schedule lives in your browser, so it is tied to that device. Want it on your phone too? Use the share link. ## Where the data comes from This is not a scrape of someone else’s app. The calendar is built from the rooms’ own published schedules and structure sheets, parsed into one normalized feed. Per-flight late-reg times match what the room actually printed. Here are the official sources – check any of them yourself: - **WSOP** – [2026 WSOP schedule](https://www.wsop.com/tournaments/2026-57th-annual-world-series-of-poker/) · [bracelet structures (PDF)](https://assets.wsopcdn.com/wsop/2e091e33-55fe-4811-bcc2-166a3f1dac6c.pdf) - **WSOP Daily Deepstacks** – [deepstacks all-in-one (PDF)](https://assets.wsopcdn.com/wsop/dbfba65b-4c31-414d-9d34-c45676db06c2.pdf) - **Wynn** – [Summer Classic schedule (PDF)](https://cdn.wynnresorts.com/image/upload/v1752010617/visitwynn_pdfs_files/Poker/Wynn%20Summer%20Classic/Wynn_Summer_Classic-Schedule.pdf) - **Venetian** – [DeepStack Championship schedule (PDF)](https://www.venetianlasvegas.com/content/dam/vlvweb/casino/poker/deepstack/2026/dscps-2026-schedule.pdf) - **Aria** – [Poker Classic schedule (PDF)](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZnecjAlCsiM2qO4Xn54KckDm3nbbu_d5/preview) - **MGM Grand** – [Summer Poker Festival schedule (PDF)](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1atM02CB7mZT0HN8-WI_-3V49h5NRvKcg/preview) - **Orleans** – [Summer Open flyer & structures (PDF)](https://mc-d7f7cc1f-1a7c-4fc5-b531-6087-cdn-endpoint.azureedge.net/-/media/project/boyd/property/lasvegas/orleans/pdf/2026_oso_flyer_and_structures.pdf?rev=8cc43a895dda4eb1b3ff77b2dcf4bddb) - **Golden Nugget** – [Grand Poker Series schedule](https://www.goldennugget.com/las-vegas/casino/poker-room/grand-poker-series-2026/grand-poker-series-schedule/) - **South Point** – [Summer Events schedule](https://southpointcasino.com/casino/poker-room/summer-events-may-26-july-12) It refreshes so late-reg, guarantees, and structures stay current through the summer. ## Spotted a bug? Send it our way This is built by players, for players – and Vegas schedules shift all summer. If you catch a wrong structure, a missing event, or a late-reg time that looks off, hit the **feedback button** in the bottom-right corner of the calendar and shoot us a message. Bugs, missing tournaments, or just an idea to make it better – we read every single one and fix fast. We genuinely appreciate it. ## Bottom line Open **Today** when you are heads-down in Vegas. Open **Calendar** to plan the trip. Live in **Discover** when you are deciding what is worth your buy-in. Build it out in **My Schedule** and share the link. It is free, no login, no app to install. [Open the Vegas Poker Calendar](https://poker.academy/vegas-calendar) and build your summer. ## Partner: Luxon Pay is now live in the US – and you can win a $10K WSOP Main Event seat Our partner **Luxon Pay** just opened in the United States. Bank deposits are live now (card deposits coming soon), and US-based players can finally buy in to WSOP Vegas events through the WSOP Live app and check out with Luxon Pay – with no fees. Here is the part worth your attention: **every WSOP buy-in you check out with Luxon Pay counts as one entry into a draw for a $10,000 WSOP Main Event seat.** Play more events, get more entries. If you are heading to Vegas anyway, it is basically free lottery tickets on buy-ins you were already going to make. [Create a Luxon Pay account through our link](https://web.luxon.com/register#a_aid=1001300) to get set up – the full WSOP seat-draw rules are on Luxon once you are in. **Bonus from us:** if you do not have an active Poker Academy subscription and you are new to Luxon, create your account through our link and we will give you **1 month of Poker Academy Premium free** ($119 value). After you register, reply to our welcome email with the address you used to create the Luxon account. *Disclosure: the Luxon registration link above is an affiliate link – if you register through it, we may receive a commission. The Premium bonus applies only to new Luxon Pay accounts created through our link by users without an active Poker Academy subscription. Check Luxon Pay and WSOP terms, eligibility, fees, and limits before using.* --- # Poker ranges and RFI: how to open from every position Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-ranges-and-rfi Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2026-05-19 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Poker ranges and RFI: how to open from every position](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-ranges-and-rfi-hero.jpg) This is the first lesson of stage 2 of the Poker Academy study path. Stage 0 covered [how a hand works and what the seats are called](https://poker.academy/blog/post/texas-holdem-rules-and-positions), and [how to write a starting hand down](https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-starting-hands-combos-notation). Here you stop deciding hand by hand and start deciding range by range, which changes more about how you think at the table than anything else in the path. Then we build the first range you actually need: the one for the most common spot in poker, where everybody before you has folded. ## A range is an answer for all 1,326 hands at once There are 1,326 ways to be dealt two cards, and they collapse into 169 classes: 13 pairs, 78 suited combinations and 78 offsuit ones. A pair is 6 combos, a suited hand 4, an offsuit hand 12. A **range** is what you do with every one of them in one specific spot. You decide the whole list in advance, for that seat, at that stack depth, in that format, instead of asking whether you would raise A♠︎K♦︎ here. A solver works the same way. It never asks whether a hand is good. It asks what to do with each of my 1,326 hands when my opponent also has 1,326 hands and plays them well, so what comes out is always a whole range. ![Poker Academy preflop chart: 9-handed tournament, 40bb, EP first in. 13x13 grid with 15.5% raise to 2.3bb and 84.5% fold](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-ranges-and-rfi-mtt40-ep-fig.jpg) *9-handed MTT, 40bb, 1bb big-blind ante. EP is first to act. The solver raises 15.5% of all combinations to 2.3bb and folds the other 84.5%, and it gives that answer for all 169 cells at once.* The tiles under the grid carry the count. 206 combos raise, 1,120 fold, and 206 + 1,120 = 1,326: How a range percentage is built, EP 40bb 9-handed MTT 206⏟combos opened÷1326⏟all starting combos=15.5%\underbrace{206}_{\text{combos opened}}\div\underbrace{1326}_{\text{all starting combos}}=15.5\% So “EP opens 15.5%” means 206 specific combinations out of 1,326. ## How to read the 13×13 grid The grid is the standard way to draw a range, and the app draws it like every other chart you will meet: - the diagonal from AA down to 22 is the pairs, 6 combos each, - above the diagonal are the suited hands, 4 combos each: AKs, T9s, 76s, - below it are the offsuit ones, 12 combos each: AKo, KJo, 98o. Colour shows the action. Orange is a raise, dark red an all-in, teal a call or a limp, grey a fold. The shape of the orange block is the range. A cell that is part orange and part grey is a **mixed** strategy: the solver plays that class one way some of the time and the other way the rest of the time. More on that below. ## RFI: the range for “everyone folded to me” **RFI** stands for *raise first in*. You use it when nobody has put money in voluntarily yet: the blinds are posted, the ante (if any) is posted, and every player before you has folded. Learn it first, because every other preflop spot starts from it. A 3-bet answers an open. A squeeze answers an open plus a call. A cold 4-bet answers a 3-bet against an open. If you don’t know what the opener had, you can’t even ask those questions properly. ![Poker Academy Browse: 9-handed tournament table, 40bb stacks, six players folded, button to act, pot 2.5bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-ranges-and-rfi-mtt40-btn-table-fig.jpg) *The RFI situation. 9-handed MTT, 40bb, 1bb big-blind ante: six players have folded, the button is to act, and the pot is 2.5bb (0.5 small blind + 1 big blind + 1 ante). The chart above answers this exact node.* Look at what is already in the middle: 2.5bb that nobody owns. Most of what follows comes back to that number. ## Position: the whole ladder in one picture Here is what happens to the RFI range as you move around the table. The middle column counts the players who still act behind you. The range depends on that count, whatever the seat is called. ![Solver opening ranges by seat: 9-handed MTT 40bb EP 15.5% rising to BTN 50.6%; 6-max cash 100bb LJ 18.5% rising to BTN 46.0%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-ranges-and-rfi-position-ladder.png) *Poker Academy preflop charts. Left: 9-handed MTT, 40bb, 1bb big-blind ante, opens 2.3bb. Right: 6-max cash, 100bb, no ante, opens 2.5bb. Don’t compare the two formats directly: stack depth, ante and cash versus tournament all differ at once.* In the 9-handed tournament the range goes from **15.5%** in EP to **50.6%** on the button. That is more than three times as many hands, with the same cards and the same stack. In the 6-max cash game it goes from **18.5%** in the lojack to **46.0%** on the button. ![Poker Academy preflop charts side by side: 6-max cash 100bb lojack opening 18.5% and button opening 46.0%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-ranges-and-rfi-cash-lj-btn-fig.jpg) *The same ladder in a 6-max cash game, 100bb, no ante. Left: the lojack, first to act, 245 combos. Right: the button, 610 combos, two and a half times as many hands from the same deck.* Two separate things cause it. With eight players behind you in EP, far more of them can wake up with a better hand than the two behind you on the button. And if the button gets called, it acts last on every later street; no other seat is guaranteed that. You can see it hand by hand. In that 9-handed 40bb tournament, 22 is a pure fold from EP and a pure open from the button. So is J♥︎8♥︎. So is A♠︎9♦︎. The cards didn’t change. ![Poker Academy preflop chart: 9-handed tournament, 40bb, button first in. 50.6% raise to 2.3bb, 49.4% fold](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-ranges-and-rfi-mtt40-btn-fig.jpg) *Same sim, same stack, seven seats later: 50.6% raise, 671 combos. Compare the shape with the EP chart at the top. The pairs and the suited aces were already there; everything added since sits at the bottom right.* ## Why the price, not the cards, sets the width Hand strength explains less here than arithmetic does. Take the button above. It risks 2bb to win the 2.5bb already in the middle. Assume, pessimistically, that the raise only makes money when everyone folds. Then it breaks even if they fold this often: Break-even fold frequency, 2bb open into a 2.5bb pot riskrisk+pot=22+2.5=24.5=44.4%\frac{\text{risk}}{\text{risk}+\text{pot}}=\frac{2}{2+2.5}=\frac{2}{4.5}=44.4\% Now take the ante away. The same 2bb raise is attacking 1.5bb: The same open with no ante: the pot is only 1.5bb riskrisk+pot=22+1.5=23.5=57.1%\frac{\text{risk}}{\text{risk}+\text{pot}}=\frac{2}{2+1.5}=\frac{2}{3.5}=57.1\% Same cards, same seat, same raise, and the break-even bar moves from 44.4% to 57.1%. That is why a tournament range is wider than a cash range at the same seat. Both numbers are a floor. They assume you lose your 2bb every time you get called, while in reality you still play the hand. The [break-even formula](https://poker.academy/blog/post/one-formula-that-changes-every-decision-you-make-at-the-table) and [basic poker math](https://poker.academy/blog/post/introduction-to-basic-poker-math) lessons cover this kind of calculation. ## What the ante does, measured I tested that with two solver runs: the same 9-handed table, the same 20bb stacks, the same 2bb open. The only difference is whether a 1bb big-blind ante is posted. ![9-handed tournament 20bb: opening ranges with a 1bb big-blind ante versus no ante, EP 15.6% vs 13.2% up to SB 84.6% vs 67.7%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-ranges-and-rfi-ante-effect.png) *Two Poker Academy sims that differ in one variable. Percentages include raises, jams and limps. Every seat opens wider with the ante, and the small blind moves most, +16.9 points.* Every seat opens wider. The button goes from 33.1% to 41.5%, the cutoff from 26.1% to 31.2%, EP from 13.2% to 15.6%. If you take one thing from a tournament chart, take this: **the ante format is part of what the chart is**. A no-ante range and a big-blind-ante range are different charts. The [BB ante lesson](https://poker.academy/blog/post/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-are-costing-you-money) covers the format itself. ## What stack depth does Stack depth changes the range, and below about 25bb it changes the *action* too. ![Button and EP opening ranges at 15, 20, 25, 30, 40 and 70bb in a 9-handed tournament with a 1bb ante](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-ranges-and-rfi-stack-ladder.png) *9-handed MTT, 1bb big-blind ante. The button’s range grows from 38.0% at 15bb to 52.5% at 70bb, and part of it turns from a raise into a jam as the stack shrinks. EP stays between 13.9% and 17.0% at every depth.* At 15bb the button opens 18.3% and jams another 19.7%. From 25bb up the jam disappears and it is a plain raise with 45 to 52% of hands. EP barely moves: 13.9% at 15bb, 15.5% at 40bb, 14.1% at 70bb. The eight players behind choose those hands, and the stack has little say. ![Poker Academy preflop chart: 9-handed tournament, 20bb, button first in. 36.1% raise to 2bb, 5.4% all-in for 20bb, 58.5% fold](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-ranges-and-rfi-mtt20-btn-fig.jpg) *9-handed MTT, 20bb, 1bb big-blind ante, button first in. The dark red cells are all-ins: A5s–A2s, JTs and 44–22, plus part of A9o–A7o, KJo, KQo and QTs.* Look at which hands the button jams at 20bb. The strongest ones raise small and keep the pot playable. The pure jams are A5s, A4s, A3s, A2s, JTs and 44, 33, 22, with A8o jamming 89% of the time and KQo 21.5%. Hands that flop badly but don’t want to be folded out go all in. The full short-stack picture gets its own lesson: [how to play 10, 15 and 20bb](https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-or-less). ## How big should the open be? The size is part of the chart. The solver picks it together with the range, and in the sims above it came out like this: - 9-handed MTT, 40bb: **2.3bb** from every seat except the small blind, which opens to 3.5bb. - 9-handed MTT, 15 to 30bb: **2bb**, the smallest raise the rules allow, from every seat but the small blind. The small blind opens 2.5 to 3.3bb depending on depth. - 6-max cash, 100bb: **2.5bb**, and 3.5bb from the small blind. Shorter stacks open smaller, and the small blind opens bigger because it will be out of position for the whole hand. Copy the size the chart is drawn for. A 15.5% EP range at 2.3bb and the same 15.5% at 3bb are two different strategies, and only one of them was solved. ## Mixed cells Most of a chart is a plain yes or no. In that 40bb EP range, 32 of the 169 classes are a pure raise, 125 a pure fold, and only **12** are mixed: 68 combos out of 1,326, about 5%. Those 12 are the border. 66 raises 84.5% of the time, A♦︎T♣︎ 69.5%, K♥︎J♠︎ 58.5%, 7♠︎6♠︎ 34.0%, 5♠︎4♠︎ 23.5%. In the 100bb 6-max cash game the lojack’s border sits on 66 at 45.1% and 55 at 42.2%, close enough to a coin flip that either decision costs almost nothing. Two practical notes. You can’t mix at the table by feel, so the usual advice is to pick the higher-frequency action, stay consistent, and use the border cells as the cheapest places to deviate against a specific opponent. And a solved range is a numerical approximation, so two neighbouring border cells can differ by a few percent for no reason worth reading into. For what mixing is actually for, see [what GTO means](https://poker.academy/blog/post/what-is-gto-in-poker). [pa-cta id=”rfi_charts” to=”/preflop-charts” title=”Open every RFI chart yourself” body=”Every position, stack depth and format, with the solver’s exact action for all 169 starting hands.” label=”Browse the charts”] ## Opening is half the decision An opening range is the set of hands still worth playing after somebody behind you answers, and somebody often does. ![6-max cash 100bb: after a 2.5bb button open the big blind folds 59.2%, calls 30.2% and 3-bets 10.6%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-ranges-and-rfi-after-open.png) *6-max cash, 100bb, no ante. The big blind’s answer to a 2.5bb button open, across all 1,326 combinations.* In that 6-max cash spot the button opens 46.0% and the big blind folds 59.2%, calls 30.2% and 3-bets 10.6%. A little over four times in ten your open gets played back at, and about one time in ten you face a raise. The next two lessons pick up from there: [what a 3-bet is and how to build a 3-betting range](https://poker.academy/blog/post/what-is-a-3-bet-in-poker-a-theoretical-and-strategic-guide), and [how to defend the big blind](https://poker.academy/blog/post/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-for-poker-players), the seat on the other side of every chart on this page. ## How to actually use this Four things, in this order. - Learn one chart at a time. Start with the button and the cutoff: you open from them most, so a mistake there repeats most often. - Always name the chart in full. “BTN 40bb, 9-handed, 1bb big-blind ante” is a chart. “Button range” isn’t. - Learn the borders. AA and 32o need no study; the 12 mixed cells and the hands just outside them are where the money is. - Then stop reading and play the spots. Recognising a spot on a clock is a different skill from recognising it on a chart. Everything on this page is a live screen in the app. Open the same sim, change the seat, change the stack, switch the ante on and off, and watch the orange block grow and shrink. It is the fastest way I know to stop memorising ranges and start predicting them. [pa-cta id=”rfi_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Drill the spots instead of reading the charts” body=”The trainer deals real hands from these positions and grades every decision against the same solver data.” label=”Start training”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # Texas Hold’em rules and positions: how a hand actually works Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/texas-holdem-rules-and-positions Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2026-04-14 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Texas Hold’em rules and positions: how a hand actually works](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/texas-holdem-rules-and-positions-hero.jpg) This is lesson 1 of the Poker Academy study path. It covers one thing: what actually happens in a hand of No-Limit Texas Hold’em, and why the seat you are sitting in changes what you should do with the same two cards. I’ll use the app’s own tables for the pictures, because the numbers on them are real: the pot, the stacks, the seat names and the solver’s answer are the same ones you’ll see when you open a spot yourself. ## The goal of a hand You get two private cards. Up to five shared cards go face up in the middle. At the end you make the best five-card hand out of your two cards and the five shared ones. You can use both of your cards, one of them, or neither. Which five-card hands beat which is a separate lesson: [poker hand rankings](https://poker.academy/blog/post/17-pazdziernik-poker-hands-ranking-explained). Everything below assumes you know that a flush beats a straight. Having the best hand is not what wins the money. You win what is in the middle, either by being called at the end with the best hand or by betting enough that everyone else folds. ## Before any cards: the button, the blinds and the ante One seat holds the **dealer button**. It moves one seat to the left after every hand, so everybody takes every seat in turn. The two seats immediately to the left of the button put money in before they see anything: - the **small blind (SB)** posts half a big blind in every structure in this article, - the **big blind (BB)** posts one big blind. Stacks in poker are counted in big blinds, not in chips. A 5,000-chip stack at 25/50 is 100bb. Every number in this article is in big blinds for that reason: it makes a $25 table and a $2,000 table the same problem. Tournaments usually add an **ante** on top of the blinds. Two formats exist and they are not the same thing: - **Standard ante:** every player at the table posts a small amount, and the dealer collects all of them. - **Big-blind ante:** only the player in the big blind posts, but they post the whole table’s ante in one go, usually one big blind. The total in the middle is the same; it just saves time. So a 9-handed tournament table with a 1bb big-blind ante starts every hand with this much already in the pot, before anyone has decided anything: Starting pot, 9-handed MTT with a 1bb big-blind ante pot=0.5⏟SB+1⏟BB+1⏟BB ante=2.5 bb\text{pot}=\underbrace{0.5}_{\text{SB}}+\underbrace{1}_{\text{BB}}+\underbrace{1}_{\text{BB ante}}=2.5\text{ bb} ![Poker Academy Browse table, 9-handed tournament, 40bb stacks: seats EP, EP2, MP, LJ, HJ, CO, BTN, SB, BB with the dealer button, blind chips and a 2.5bb pot](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/texas-holdem-rules-and-positions-t9-full-fig.jpg) *9-handed MTT, 40bb, 1bb big-blind ante. The blind chips (0.5 and 1.0) are on the felt and the ante is already counted in POT 2.5. The white ring marks the seat to act: EP, the first seat after the blinds.* Cash games are usually played without an ante, so the pot starts at 1.5bb instead. That single difference changes how many hands are worth playing, which is why the charts further down are labelled with the format. ## The four betting rounds A hand has four betting rounds, and cards arrive between them. ![The four betting rounds of No-Limit Hold'em: preflop with two hole cards, flop with three community cards, turn with four, river with five](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/texas-holdem-rules-and-positions-betting-rounds.png) *One hand, four rounds. Most hands never reach the river, because somebody folds first.* You will hear the rounds called *streets*. “Preflop” and “first street” mean the same thing. ## What you can actually do On your turn you have a small, fixed set of options. Which ones are available depends only on whether somebody has already bet in this round. **Nobody has bet yet:** - **Check**: put in nothing and pass the turn. It costs you nothing and you stay in the hand. - **Bet**: put chips in. Everyone after you now has to match them, raise, or fold. **Somebody has bet:** - **Fold**: throw the hand away. You lose whatever you already put in, and nothing more. - **Call**: match the largest bet. - **Raise**: put in more than the largest bet. - **All-in**: push your whole stack. “No-Limit” means you may do this at any point, on any street. Preflop is the one round where nobody can check to start: the big blind counts as a bet, so the first player to act is already facing 1bb. That is why the first voluntary action is called an *open* or a *raise first in*, and why the big blind is the only seat that gets to check preflop when everyone just calls. The round ends when every player still in the hand has either folded or put in the same amount. ## The min-raise rule You can bet or raise as much as you like, up to your stack. There is only a floor: **a raise has to be at least as big as the last bet or raise before it**. Take the spot below: 6-max cash, 100bb, the big blind is 1bb and the cutoff has raised to 2.5bb. The raise increment was 1.5bb, so the smallest legal re-raise is 4bb: Minimum re-raise over a 2.5bb open raise increment=2.5−1=1.5⇒min raise=2.5+1.5=4 bb\text{raise increment}=2.5-1=1.5\quad\Rightarrow\quad\text{min raise}=2.5+1.5=4\text{ bb} The app offers 7.5bb there, not 4bb. That is a strategy choice; the rule only says 4bb or more. One exception worth knowing: if a player goes all-in for less than a full raise, that is always allowed, but it may not reopen the betting for players who have already acted. ## How big is the pot? The pot is just the sum of everything put in so far. Same spot, 6-max cash, no ante, and the cutoff has opened to 2.5bb: Pot after a 2.5bb open, 6-max cash, no ante pot=0.5⏟SB+1⏟BB+2.5⏟CO raise=4 bb\text{pot}=\underbrace{0.5}_{\text{SB}}+\underbrace{1}_{\text{BB}}+\underbrace{2.5}_{\text{CO raise}}=4\text{ bb} The button is now deciding whether to put 2.5bb in. The price of that call is the call itself divided by what the pot will be after the call. The call is part of the denominator, and forgetting that is the most common beginner mistake here: Pot odds for the button callpot+call=2.54+2.5=2.56.5=38.5%\frac{\text{call}}{\text{pot}+\text{call}}=\frac{2.5}{4+2.5}=\frac{2.5}{6.5}=38.5\% ![Poker Academy Browse: 6-max cash 100bb, LJ and HJ fold, CO opens to 2.5bb, button to act. Pot 4.0, pot odds 38.5%, solver plays fold 85.1%, call 2.8%, raise to 7.5bb 12.1%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/texas-holdem-rules-and-positions-btn-vs-co-fig.jpg) *6-max cash, 100bb, no ante. LJ and HJ folded, CO raised to 2.5bb, the button is to act. The strip at the top is the action so far; the app shows POT 4.0 and POT ODDS 38.5% (2.5 / 6.5).* That 38.5% is not the equity you need to win at showdown, because there are still three streets to play. It is the break-even number for the immediate call, and it’s the starting point for everything in [basic poker math](https://poker.academy/blog/post/introduction-to-basic-poker-math). For the record, the solver folds the button 85.1% of the time here, calls 2.8% and raises to 7.5bb with 12.1%. Even with position and the best seat at the table, most hands are not worth 2.5bb. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_40bb_rfi_ladder” to=”/open/mtt-40bb-rfi-ladder” title=”Opening ranges by seat, 9-max 40bb” body=”The whole ladder from EP to the button in one tree, with position priced rather than described.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Showdown and split pots If two or more players are still in after the river betting round, the cards go face up and the best five-card hand wins. If everyone folds before that, the last player standing wins without showing anything. Pots get split when the best five-card hands are exactly equal. Suits never break a tie in Hold’em, so A♠︎K♦︎ and A♥︎K♣︎ on a board where no flush is possible are the same hand and split the pot. It can also happen that the five shared cards are the best hand for everyone. That is called playing the board, and everyone still in splits. ## The seats and their names Positions are named by how far you are from the button. Poker Academy uses these names, from the first seat to act preflop to the last: - **9-handed:** EP, EP2, MP, LJ, HJ, CO, BTN, SB, BB. - **6-max:** LJ, HJ, CO, BTN, SB, BB. The same list with the three earliest seats removed. LJ is the lojack, HJ the hijack, CO the cutoff, BTN the button. You will see “UTG” used elsewhere for the first seat; this product calls it EP, and EP2 for the one after it. ![Poker Academy Browse table, 6-max cash 100bb: LJ, HJ, CO, BTN, SB and BB with the dealer button, 0.5 and 1.0 blind chips and a 1.5bb pot](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/texas-holdem-rules-and-positions-t6-full-fig.jpg) *6-max cash, 100bb, no ante. Six seats, the same button and blinds, a 1.5bb starting pot. LJ is to act first.* Compare it with the 9-handed table above: the button, the blinds and the rules are identical. Only the number of players between you and the blinds changes, and that is what all the strategy below is about. ## Why acting last is worth so much The action moves clockwise. Preflop it starts to the left of the big blind, so the blinds speak last. From the flop onwards it restarts to the left of the button, so the button speaks last on every remaining street. ![Action order at a 6-max table: preflop LJ, HJ, CO, BTN, SB, BB; on the flop, turn and river SB, BB, LJ, HJ, CO, BTN](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/texas-holdem-rules-and-positions-action-order.png) *The blinds pay for the right to act last once. After the flop they act first for the rest of the hand.* Acting last means you make three of your four decisions already knowing what everyone else did. That is worth real money, and you can measure it: this is how many of the 1,326 possible starting hands the solver plays from each seat when the action folds to it. ![Solver opening ranges by position: 6-max cash 100bb LJ 18.5%, HJ 23.2%, CO 30.4%, BTN 46.0%, SB 41.7% raise plus 3.1% limp; 9-handed MTT 40bb EP 15.5% up to BTN 50.6%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/texas-holdem-rules-and-positions-position-ladder.png) *Poker Academy preflop charts. Left: 6-max cash, 100bb, no ante, opens to 2.5bb. Right: 9-handed MTT, 40bb, 1bb big-blind ante, opens to 2.3bb.* In the 6-max cash game the button opens **46.0%** of all hands and the lojack opens **18.5%**. That is two and a half times as many hands from the same cards, purely because of where the chips are sitting. The 9-handed tournament chart says the same thing over a longer ladder: 15.5% from EP, 50.6% from the button. Two reasons, and they are separate ones. Fewer players are left behind you, so your raise is less likely to run into a better hand. And if you do get called, you will be the one acting last for the rest of the hand. The small blind is the odd one out. Only one player is left behind it, so it plays a lot of hands, and it is still out of position on every later street. That is why so much of its range is a limp rather than a raise. [pa-cta id=”rules_charts” to=”/preflop-charts” title=”See every seat’s opening range” body=”The same charts as above, for each position, stack depth and format, with the exact action for all 169 starting hands.” label=”Browse the charts”] ## Heads-up: the one exception When only two players are left, the positions flip. The button posts the **small blind**, the other player posts the big blind, and the button acts **first** before the flop and **last** on the flop, turn and river. It looks like a contradiction, but it follows the same rule as a full table: preflop, action starts to the left of the big blind, and with two players that seat is the button. ## What to learn next Once the mechanics are automatic, the next question is which two cards you actually want to play. That is lesson 2: [starting hands, the 1,326 combinations and how to write them down](https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-starting-hands-combos-notation). After that comes [basic poker math](https://poker.academy/blog/post/introduction-to-basic-poker-math), where the 38.5% above turns into a decision rule you can use at the table. And whenever a rule here feels abstract, open the same spot in the app. Every table in this article is a live screen you can click through: change the seat, change the stack, and watch how many hands the solver is willing to play. [pa-cta id=”rules_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Play the spots instead of reading about them” body=”The trainer deals real hands from these positions and grades every decision against the solver.” label=”Start training”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # From Open Raise to River – The Biggest Update in Poker Academy’s History Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/from-open-raise-to-river-the-biggest-update-in-poker-academys-history Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2026-03-21 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Update ![From Open Raise to River – The Biggest Update in Poker Academy’s History](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/03/Blog_template-1.png) *Well – I kept my word. And then some.* What we’re shipping this March is by far the biggest update in the app’s history. The kind of update that changes what Poker Academy even is. 📱 **Important:** everything in this update is for the **iOS and Android** apps – available right now on the App Store and Google Play. The web version at **[www.poker.academy](https://www.poker.academy?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=march-2026-update)** will be getting all of these features in April. --- ## Full Hand Trainer – From Open to River Preflop is the foundation, but poker doesn’t end before the flop. From the very beginning I had this idea in the back of my mind – to go further, to let you train the entire hand, not just the opening decision. The problem was that it’s an incredibly complex challenge – connecting preflop matrices with a postflop solver, synchronizing game states across every street, and building a cohesive flow that doesn’t look like two different tools duct-taped together. And it finally came together. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/03/image1-2-1.png) Here’s how **Full Hand Trainer** works: 1. You face a preflop spot – BTN open, BB 3-bet, whatever the scenario 2. You make your decision, scored against the solver matrix 3. The board runs out – and you keep playing on the flop 4. Turn, river – every decision on every street compared against GTO 5. At the end you get a full hand record – every street, every action, every deviation from optimal strategy > Honestly – I’m in love with it, just like I was with Preflop Academy itself when it first launched 😉 It’s not a separate module bolted on as an afterthought. It’s one cohesive training flow that mirrors how hands actually play out at the table. You see how your preflop decisions shape postflop situations and – most importantly – where your leaks are actually costing you money. --- ## Study Hub – All Your Study Tools in One Place Not every session needs to be a test. Sometimes you just want to review ranges, look up a spot, or browse solver solutions at your own pace. The new **Study Hub** gives you a dedicated tab for exactly that – quick access to preflop charts for MTT and Cash, and your full postflop solver library, all in one place. No scoring, no timer – just your study tools organized and ready when you need them. --- ## Achievements & Leveling – Making the Grind Count In poker, just like in programming – consistent daily work beats the occasional marathon. I remember my own 37-day grind in Vegas, showing up practically every single day. That same consistency is what we want to reward in the app. - **30 achievements** – for session milestones, format exploration, spot specialization, streak maintenance, and more - **Hidden achievements** – rewarding discovery and depth - **XP for every perfectly played hand** – watch your level grow - **Timezone-aware streaks** – because your streak should count based on your local time, not UTC --- ## Under the Hood For the more technically minded (and I know some of you are 😉): - **AI Solver V2** – new solver backend with higher accuracy, faster result delivery, and binary solution support - **Redesigned UI** – new dashboard, library, flop card selection animations, design system refresh - **Accessibility (web)** – keyboard navigation, ARIA landmarks, focus indicators – already live on the web version - **Performance** – binary solution loading = faster postflop results Those of you who remember the server room power outage during the 50bb simulation that had been running for nearly two months – this time the infrastructure is significantly more solid 😃. --- ## Daily Free Usage – No Subscription Needed You don’t need to pay anything to try all of this. Every day you get: 🎴 10 free trainer hands · 📊 10 free chart views Limits reset every day. No credit card, no commitment, no catch. Enough to get a real feel for the tool and see how it fits into your study routine. ## Come Check It Out I’d love to hear your feedback – what works, what doesn’t, what you’d change. Nobody points the way forward better than the actual users 🙂. [![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2022/06/downloadontheappstore.png)](https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/poker-academy-learn-gto-poker/id1626050814?l=pl) [![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2022/06/getitongooglestore.png)](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.isolve.preflop.academy) The app is available at stores. Just sign up and start playing – 10 hands a day, completely free. And if you already have an account – log in and try the Full Hand Trainer. I genuinely recommend it. Cheers! 🙂 --- # Risk / (risk + reward): the breakeven formula behind every bluff, call and raise Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/one-formula-that-changes-every-decision-you-make-at-the-table Author: Paweł Brzeski Published: 2026-03-04 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Mindset, Theory ![Risk / (risk + reward): the breakeven formula behind every bluff, call and raise](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/one-formula-that-changes-every-decision-hero.jpg) Most players at the table are guessing. They bluff because it feels right, fold because he probably has it, and call because they are curious. One formula tells you how often a decision has to work to break even, whether that decision is a bluff, a call or a raise. It won’t tell you whether it *will* work; that part is still your estimate of your opponent. Once you know the threshold, though, you know exactly what you are estimating against. If pot odds, alpha and equity are new to you, start with [basic poker math](https://poker.academy/blog/post/introduction-to-basic-poker-math/). Here I take those formulas, show that they are one idea, and point at the places where the app prints the same numbers on screen. ## The formula Breakeven breakeven=riskrisk+reward\text{breakeven}=\frac{\text{risk}}{\text{risk}+\text{reward}} - Risk is the chips you put in with this decision. Money already in the pot stopped being risk; it is part of the reward. - Reward is what you win if it works, everything already in the middle included. - Breakeven is how often it has to work to come out at zero. Above that the decision makes money, below it loses. That covers all four buttons in the [Breakeven Calculator](https://poker.academy/breakeven-calculator). Here they are one at a time, all on the river with a pot of 100. ## Bet as a bluff You missed your draw. The pot is 100 and you bet 100. If you get called, you lose. Risk is your bet, reward is the pot. Pot-size bluff: opponent must fold 100100+100=100200=50%\frac{100}{100+100}=\frac{100}{200}=50\% Your opponent has to fold more than half the time. Whether they will is the read you still need. The formula only draws the line: fold 45% and the bluff loses, fold 55% and it wins. This is the same number as alpha, bet ÷ (pot + bet). It assumes the bluff has 0% equity when called, which is only really true on the river. With a turn semi-bluff that wins some of the time when called, you need fewer folds. Say you bet 100 into 100 on the turn with 20% equity, and to keep it simple nobody bets on the river: Turn semi-bluff with 20% equity (simplified) F⋅100+(1−F) (0.2⋅300−100)=0 ⇒ F=40140=28.6%F\cdot100+(1-F)\,(0.2\cdot300-100)=0\;\Rightarrow\;F=\frac{40}{140}=28.6\% 28.6% folds instead of 50%. Equity when called pays part of the bill. ## Call against a bet Now flip it. The pot is 100 and your opponent bets 100. You risk 100 to win the pot plus their bet. Call a pot-size bet: equity needed 100100+(100+100)=100300=33.3%\frac{100}{100+(100+100)}=\frac{100}{300}=33.3\% You need the best hand one time in three. This is pot odds, just written as risk and reward: 100 ÷ (100 + 100 + 100). ## Why the caller’s number is lower Same pot, same bet. The bluffer needs 50% folds, the caller needs 33.3% equity. Risk is 100 in both cases, but the reward is not. The bluffer wins the pot, 100. The caller wins the pot and the bet, 200, because the bet is already in the middle. Watch what those two numbers measure, though. One is how often the opponent must fold, the other how often your hand must win. Different kinds of number, so “calling is cheaper than bluffing” is a fair comparison only at the same bet size and only for a bluff that never wins when called. The caller’s number also tells you how often a player betting pot on the river should be bluffing. If your opponent’s bets are either the nuts or air, you break even calling when 1 bet in 3 is a bluff. So a bettor who wants to make your call indifferent bluffs 33.3% of the time and has value the other 66.7%. That is theory for a polarised river range, and it describes nobody in particular. Real players bluff more or less than that, which is where exploiting starts. ![Breakeven by bet size: folds a bluff needs (bet divided by pot plus bet) and equity a call needs (bet divided by pot plus two bets) for bets of 25% to 200% of the pot](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/one-formula-that-changes-every-decision-breakeven-by-size.png) *Pure arithmetic for bets of 25% to 200% of the pot. The call column is also the bluff share of a balanced polarised river range.* [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_bb_vs_btn_pot_odds” to=”/open/cash-100bb-bb-vs-btn-pot-odds” title=”BB facing a 2.5bb open, cash 100bb” body=”Pot odds 27.3% printed under the table: the exact screen the worked example uses.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Raise as a bluff Pot 100, your opponent bets 100, and you raise pot-size to 400. If they fold, you win the pot and their bet. If they call, you lose. Pot-size bluff-raise: opponent must fold 400400+200=400600=66.7%\frac{400}{400+200}=\frac{400}{600}=66.7\% Two folds in three, against 50% for a plain bet. The raise is more expensive because the first 100 of your 400 only matches their bet. That call part goes into your risk and adds nothing to your reward: What the 400 is made of 400⏟risk=100⏟call part+300⏟raise partreward=100+100=200\underbrace{400}_{\text{risk}}=\underbrace{100}_{\text{call part}}+\underbrace{300}_{\text{raise part}}\qquad\text{reward}=100+100=200 Your risk went up 4 times, from 100 to 400. Your reward only doubled, from 100 to 200. So a pure bluff-raise needs a lot more folds than a pure bluff-bet of the same pot fraction. ## Call against a raise Now you are the one who bet. Pot 100, you bet 100, your opponent raises pot-size to 400. You call 300 more. Your 100 is already in the pot, so it is reward now, not risk. Call a pot-size raise: equity needed 300300+(100+100+400)=300900=33.3%\frac{300}{300+(100+100+400)}=\frac{300}{900}=33.3\% 33.3% again, the same as calling a pot-size bet. A pot-size bet or raise always offers the caller 2 to 1, whatever happened before it. ## The pattern - Bet as a bluff: risk = your bet, reward = the pot. - Call a bet: risk = your call, reward = the pot plus the bet. - Raise as a bluff: risk = your whole raise, reward = the pot plus their bet. - Call a raise: risk = what you add, reward = everything in the middle, your own earlier chips included. The formula never changes. The only thing that moves is what counts as already being in the middle. [pa-cta id=”formula_calc” to=”/breakeven-calculator” title=”Run your own sizes” body=”Enter the pot and the bet and see the breakeven for a bluff, a call, a bluff-raise and a call against a raise.” label=”Open the calculator”] ## Where the app shows the price When you study you don’t have to do this in your head. In Browse, every spot where the player to act faces a bet has a POT ODDS badge under the table, and that badge is this formula: the call against everything already in the middle. Take a 6-max cash game, 100bb deep, no ante. The button opens to 2.5bb, the small blind folds, and the big blind has to decide. The pot is 0.5 + 1 + 2.5 = 4bb and the call is 1.5bb: BB vs a 2.5bb button open, cash 100bb 1.51.5+(0.5+1+2.5)=1.55.5=27.3%\frac{1.5}{1.5+(0.5+1+2.5)}=\frac{1.5}{5.5}=27.3\% ![Poker Academy Browse, cash 6-max 100bb, BB vs 2.5bb BTN open: pot 4.0, pot odds 27.3% (1.5 / 5.5), fold 55.9%, call 29.4%, raise to 11bb 14.7%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/one-formula-that-changes-every-decision-cash-bb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *Cash 6-max, 100bb, 5% rake capped at 0.6bb. BB against a 2.5bb button open: POT ODDS 27.3% (1.5 / 5.5).* The badge shows the chip price. This simulation is solved with 5% rake capped at 0.6bb, so the real price of seeing a flop is a bit worse than 27.3%. The solver defends the big blind with 44.1% of hands here: it calls 29.4% and 3-bets 14.7%. The number under each percentage is EV. Click a hand and the list shows it per combo, measured against folding. Take KTo. The solver says calling with it loses 0.47bb counted from the start of the hand. Folding loses 1bb, the big blind you already posted. So the call is worth it: KTo: call compared with fold (solver EV) −0.47−(−1.00)=+0.53 bb-0.47-(-1.00)=+0.53\text{ bb} ![Poker Academy Browse hands list for KTo, BB vs BTN 2.5bb open, cash 100bb: all 12 combos with EV avg 0.53](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/one-formula-that-changes-every-decision-cash-kto-fig.jpg) *Same spot, KTo pinned: 12 combos, EV avg +0.53bb compared with folding. The solver mixes call 80.2% and 3-bet 19.8% at the same EV.* That is what risk and reward means in practice. The 1bb you posted stopped being risk, so a call that loses money on average can still be the best option, because folding loses more. ## A 3-bet bluff costs more than a call From the same big blind, a 3-bet goes to 11bb. As a pure bluff your risk is the 10bb you add, and the reward is the 4bb in the middle: Pure 3-bet bluff to 11bb: button must fold 11−1(11−1)+(0.5+1+2.5)=1014=71.4%\frac{11-1}{(11-1)+(0.5+1+2.5)}=\frac{10}{14}=71.4\% Now look at what the button does. After the 3-bet the app shows the button’s response with its whole opening range: it folds 54.4%, calls 34.4% and 4-bets 11.2%. ![Poker Academy Browse, cash 100bb, BTN vs BB 3-bet to 11bb: pot 14.0, pot odds 37.8% (8.5 / 22.5), fold 54.4%, call 34.4%, raise to 24bb 11.2%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/one-formula-that-changes-every-decision-cash-btn-vs-3bet-fig.jpg) *Cash 100bb, button facing the 3-bet to 11bb: fold 54.4%, and its own price to call is 37.8% (8.5 / 22.5).* 54.4% is well below 71.4%. If the 3-bet never won after a call or a 4-bet, it would lose: Pure bluff 3-bet, never winning when the button continues 0.544⋅4−0.456⋅10=2.18−4.56=−2.38 bb0.544\cdot4-0.456\cdot10=2.18-4.56=-2.38\text{ bb} So the 3-bets in this chart all have something behind them. The range is value hands plus hands that keep equity and play well when called: AA to TT, AKo and AQo, most suited broadways, suited aces like A5s and A4s, suited connectors like 76s, 65s and 54s part of the time. The formula says a pure bluff is too expensive here, and equity when called pays for the rest of the range. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, cash 6-max 100bb, BB vs BTN 2.5bb open: orange 3-bet to 11bb, teal call, grey fold](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/one-formula-that-changes-every-decision-cash-bb-matrix-fig.jpg) *Cash 100bb, BB vs a 2.5bb button open. Orange = 3-bet to 11bb, teal = call, grey = fold.* The button’s own call checks the formula from the other side: it adds 8.5bb to a 14bb pot, 8.5 ÷ 22.5 = 37.8%, which is the number on its badge. BTN calls the 3-bet 11−2.58.5+(0.5+11+2.5)=8.522.5=37.8%\frac{11-2.5}{8.5+(0.5+11+2.5)}=\frac{8.5}{22.5}=37.8\% [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_20bb_bb_vs_btn” to=”/open/mtt-20bb-bb-vs-btn” title=”BB facing a button open, 20bb” body=”Pot odds 18.2% under the table, and the range that price buys.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Same seat, different price in a tournament Change the format and the price changes with it. A 9-handed tournament, 20bb deep, chipEV, with a 1bb big-blind ante. The button opens to 2bb. Now the middle holds 0.5 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 4.5bb and the call is 1bb: BB vs a 2bb button open, MTT 20bb with 1bb BB ante 11+(0.5+1+1+2)=15.5=18.2%\frac{1}{1+(0.5+1+1+2)}=\frac{1}{5.5}=18.2\% ![Poker Academy Browse, MTT 20bb 9-handed chipEV with big blind ante, BB vs 2bb BTN open: pot 4.5, pot odds 18.2% (1 / 5.5), fold 15.5%, call 65.0%, raise 5.5bb 4.4%, all-in 15.1%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/one-formula-that-changes-every-decision-mtt-bb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *MTT, 20bb, 9-handed, chipEV, 1bb BB ante. BB vs a 2bb button open: POT ODDS 18.2%. Fold 15.5%, call 65.0%, raise 4.4%, all-in 15.1%.* 18.2% instead of 27.3%, and the solver folds only 15.5% of hands instead of 55.9%. The price is a big part of that, though 20bb and 100bb are different games in other ways too. The ante is dead money: it adds to the reward and costs the big blind nothing to call. The tiles show EV against folding again. Fold is the baseline at −1.00bb, the posted blind. Calling is +0.56bb better on average for the hands that call, raising to 5.5bb +1.36bb, and the all-in +2.25bb. ## Beyond the table The same threshold works away from poker as long as risk and reward are in the same unit. If asking for a $50 monthly discount costs you nothing beyond an email, any chance above zero is worth it. Once the risk is time or pride and the reward is money, you have left this formula behind. You are estimating expected value with a guess about what your time is worth, which is fine, and it is a different calculation. The habit carries over either way: instead of “will this work?”, ask “how often does it need to work?” ## Try it yourself The [Breakeven Calculator](https://poker.academy/breakeven-calculator) runs these four cases for any pot and bet in a few seconds. Then open Browse, find a spot where you face a bet, and check the POT ODDS badge against your own maths. Next time someone fires a river bet at you, count the pot, count the bet, and compare the price with how often you think you are ahead. Cheers! 🙂 --- # BB Ante Explained: Why Your Preflop Sims Are Costing You Money Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-are-costing-you-money Author: Paweł Brzeski Published: 2026-02-19 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Live Game ![BB Ante Explained: Why Your Preflop Sims Are Costing You Money](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-hero.jpg) If you study ranges from a solver run with a classic ante and then sit down in a live tournament with a big blind ante, you are not looking at the same game. Most players know what the big blind ante is. Fewer have looked at what it does to the ranges, and the effect is not small. So here it is, measured. Everything below comes from the Poker Academy preflop catalogue, and every number says which simulation it came from: table size, stacks, ante, and whether it is chipEV, ICM or FGS. Where the catalogue cannot answer a question cleanly, I say so instead of guessing. ## What the big blind ante actually changes In a classic ante format every player posts a fraction of a big blind. Our tournament simulations use 0.125bb a head, so the total in the middle scales with the table: Classic ante, total in the pot Aclassic=0.125 bb×nA_{\text{classic}} = 0.125\,\text{bb} \times n Eight-handed that is 1bb. Four-handed it is 0.5bb. Three-handed, 0.375bb. With the big blind ante the whole thing is posted by one player and the amount does not care how many seats are filled: Big blind ante, total in the pot ABB=1 bbat every table sizeA_{\text{BB}} = 1\,\text{bb} \quad \text{at every table size} Those are the numbers the catalogue actually stores, straight from the formats as they are dealt. Its three-handed final tables carry an ante of 0.375bb or 1bb, its four-handed ones 0.5bb or 1bb, its nine-handed rings 1.125bb or 1bb. ![Chart: total ante in the pot by table size. Classic ante at 0.125bb per player gives 1.125bb nine-handed, 1bb eight-handed, 0.75bb six-handed, 0.5bb four-handed and 0.375bb three-handed; the big blind ante is 1bb at every size.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-ante-table.png) *Eight-handed the two formats are the same. Every seat you remove after that, the big blind ante leaves more dead money behind than the classic one.* Read the right-hand column. Four-handed the big blind ante puts **double** the ante in the middle. Three-handed it is **2.7 times** as much. Short-handed play is where tournaments get decided: the last two tables, the final table, heads-up, the spots with the steepest pay jumps behind them. ## What that extra dead money does The catalogue has no pair of tournament simulations that differ only in the ante format, so I will not pretend it does. It does have a clean experiment on the question underneath: does dead money in the middle widen ranges, and by how much. Two chipEV runs, nine-handed, 20bb for everyone, identical open sizes: **“20bb 9h”** with a 1bb ante and **“20bb – no ante”** with none. Same table, same stack, same payout model, and one big blind of difference in the middle. Every seat opens wider. ![Chart: first-in ranges by seat in two 9-handed 20bb chipEV solutions. With no ante EP plays 13.2%, CO 26.1%, BTN 33.1%, SB 67.7%; with a 1bb ante EP plays 15.6%, CO 31.2%, BTN 41.5%, SB 84.6%.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-by-seat.png) *Share of all 1,326 starting hands each seat plays when the action folds to it. The effect grows the closer you sit to the blinds, because the dead money is a bigger share of what you are risking to win it.* The button shows it most clearly. Without the ante it opens 33.1% of hands, 439 combos, and never jams. With 1bb in the middle it plays 41.5%: 479 combos raising to 2bb and **71 combos moving all-in for 20bb**, a line the no-ante solution never uses. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 9-handed 20bb chipEV with no ante, button first in: fold 66.9%, raise to 2bb 33.1%, no all-in option taken.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-noante-btn-fig.jpg) *Button, 20bb, folded to it, no ante. Orange is a raise to 2bb, grey a fold. 887 combos go in the bin.* ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 9-handed 20bb chipEV with a 1bb ante, button first in: fold 58.5%, raise to 2bb 36.1%, all-in 20bb 5.4%.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-ante-btn-fig.jpg) *The same button with 1bb of ante in the middle. 776 combos fold instead of 887, and a dark red 20bb jam appears on the small aces and small pairs.* The reason is arithmetic. The ante is money nobody has to win a showdown to claim, and it changes the price of everything downstream. Take the big blind facing that 2bb button open, small blind folded: Price to defend, no ante 1(2+0.5+1)+1=14.5=22.2%\frac{1}{(2 + 0.5 + 1) + 1} = \frac{1}{4.5} = 22.2\% Price to defend, 1bb ante 1(2+0.5+1+1)+1=15.5=18.2%\frac{1}{(2 + 0.5 + 1 + 1) + 1} = \frac{1}{5.5} = 18.2\% Four points cheaper, and the solver spends them. In the no-ante run the big blind folds **32.9%** of its hands to that open. In the ante run it folds **15.5%**. One caveat: the two trees are not identical at that node, because the ante run is offered a 2.8bb re-raise and the no-ante run is not. Read the fold number, which both trees can express, rather than the split above it. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_20bb_rfi_ladder” to=”/open/mtt-20bb-rfi-ladder” title=”Opening ranges by seat, 9-max 20bb” body=”EP through the button at 20bb, the depth where the ladder tightens fastest.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Short-handed, where the gap is biggest Put the two halves together. Three-handed, the big blind ante leaves 0.625bb more in the middle than a classic ante does, and from the chart above we know what extra dead money does to a range: it widens it, and it widens it most in the seats closest to the blinds. Three-handed, every seat is close to the blinds. I want to be careful here, because this is where the old version of this article overreached. The catalogue’s three-handed final tables come in both formats, but they do not share a stack layout, so I cannot hand you a like-for-like pair and call the difference the ante. I can show you what the big blind ante final tables look like, and some of those spots do not exist in the classic-ante world at all. ## The VPIP claim I got wrong The previous version of this article said that a short stack’s total VPIP goes *down* under the big blind ante, because hands move out of the limping range and into the shoving range. That cannot be right, and here is why. VPIP is one minus the fold: Voluntarily put money in the pot VPIP=100%−fold%\text{VPIP} = 100\% – \text{fold}\% A limp and a shove are both voluntary. Moving hands between them changes the *shape* of the range and leaves VPIP exactly where it was. The only way VPIP falls is if hands move into the fold. And in the one pair of runs where I can isolate the ante, they do not. The small blind in the no-ante solution folds 32.3% of its hands; with a 1bb ante it folds 15.4%. Its all-in range grows from 2.0% to 10.2% at the same time, so the shove does get wider, but the folds shrink with it and VPIP goes **up**, from 67.7% to 84.6%. More dead money means more hands played. The old claim about a 24bb small blind shoving 14% under one format and nothing under the other is gone, too. In the catalogue, how much a small blind jams is mostly a question of the effective stack it is playing against. Three-handed with the big blind ante, a 40bb small blind against a 40bb big blind never jams at all; the same 40bb against a 10bb big blind jams 68.4% of its hands. The classic-ante final tables behave the same way, so this is a stack question, not an ante question. ## Where the big stack sits changes your range This part of the original article holds up, and the big blind ante final tables let me show it properly. The catalogue has all six seat orders of the same three stacks: 10bb, 20bb and 40bb, three-handed, ICM, 1bb big blind ante. The stacks never change, only who sits where. Take the 10bb button both ways. With the 40bb stack in the big blind it plays 29.4% of hands, 303 combos of which are a jam. Move the big stack to the small blind, directly behind it, and the same 10bb button plays 23.1%, with the jam down to 217 combos. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, three-handed ICM final table with a big blind ante, stacks 10/20/40: the 10bb button folds 70.6%, raises to 2bb 6.5%, jams 22.8%.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-btn10-bigbb-fig.jpg) *10bb button, big stack (40bb) in the big blind. 22.8% of hands go all-in: every ace, every pair, the suited broadways.* ![Poker Academy preflop chart, same three stacks re-seated as 10/40/20: the 10bb button folds 76.9%, raises 6.7%, jams 16.4%.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-btn10-bigsb-fig.jpg) *The same three stacks, the 40bb now in the small blind. The button folds 1,020 combos instead of 937. 22 goes from a pure jam to a pure fold, A5o from a 98% jam to a 38.6% raise, K9o from a 38.6% raise to nothing at all.* Look at what that big stack does when the button folds. With 40bb in the small blind against a 20bb big blind it plays **every single hand**: 51.2% all-in, 48.7% raising, 0.0% folding. 72o and 32o are pure raises. That is as much pressure as a preflop node can carry, and the big blind is who it is aimed at. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, three-handed ICM final table with a big blind ante, 40bb small blind after the 10bb button folds: not a single grey cell in the grid, 51.2% all-in and 48.7% raise.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-bba-sb40-fig.jpg) *40bb small blind, button folded, 20bb big blind behind. There is no fold region: orange is a raise to 3bb, dark red a 40bb jam.* My reading, and I will flag it as reading rather than solver output: when the player behind you is going to force a stack-off with the third player most hands, the cheapest chips available to a short stack are the ones the other two pay each other. That is a heuristic about why the numbers look like this. The numbers themselves are the ranges above. ## Eight-handed: the pot is the same, the pressure is not Eight-handed, 0.125bb × 8 = 1bb, which is exactly what the big blind ante posts. The pot-size effect I spent the first half of this article on is gone. What is still there is who pays. Under the big blind ante the big blind posts the blind *and* the ante: What the big blind owes next hand 1 bb (blind)+1 bb (ante)=2 bb1\,\text{bb (blind)} + 1\,\text{bb (ante)} = 2\,\text{bb} For anyone with 2bb, that is the whole stack, gone before a card is dealt. The catalogue models this with FGS, Future Game Simulation, which prices what the next hand is going to cost you instead of treating this hand as if it stood alone the way plain ICM does. There are five such simulations, eight-handed, big blind ante, identical apart from the two shortest stacks moving together from 2bb to 6bb. ![Chart: first seat to act in five 8-handed FGS big blind ante final tables. With 2bb it jams 71.0% of hands, with 3bb 49.6%, 4bb 38.8%, 5bb 32.2%, 6bb 24.9%.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-ep-jam.png) *The six other seats hold 15 · 30 · 6 · 17 · 20 · 17 big blinds throughout. Only the first seat’s own stack moves.* With 2bb in the first seat, 942 of the 1,326 combos are an all-in. That includes hands nobody shoves under the gun in a normal tournament: Q8o, K3o and A2o are all a pure jam, and the range only stops at hands like J4o and 72o. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 8-handed FGS final table with a big blind ante, first seat to act with 2bb: 71.0% all-in, 29.0% fold, the whole top-left of the grid dark red.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/bb-ante-explained-why-your-preflop-sims-fgs-ep2bb-fig.jpg) *First seat, 2bb, seven players behind, 2.5bb already in the middle. Dark red is the 2bb jam; grey folds. This is what “you are posting your stack next orbit” looks like as a range.* One limit: this is one family of simulations, and I have no classic-ante FGS twin to sit beside it. So read 71% as what FGS says about *this* big blind ante final table, not as a measured gap between the two formats. The mechanism is plain arithmetic: the big blind ante bills the short stack 2bb next orbit instead of 1.125bb. ## What I would take to the table - Check the ante before the chart. Eight-handed the two formats agree. Every seat shorter than that, the big blind ante leaves more behind: +0.25bb six-handed, +0.5bb four-handed, +0.625bb three-handed. - Dead money is a licence to play. One extra big blind in the middle moved the button from 33.1% to 41.5% and the big blind’s fold from 32.9% to 15.5% in the one controlled pair I have. - VPIP only falls when hands move into the fold. A wider shoving range on its own tightens nobody. - Where the big stack sits matters as much as how big it is. The same 10bb button plays 29.4% with the big stack in the big blind and 23.1% with it in the small blind. - With 2bb under the big blind ante, waiting is the expensive option. Next orbit costs 2bb, which is all of it. None of this is worth memorising hand by hand. The ante format, the stacks and the payout model all move these numbers, so the habit that pays is to open the solution that matches the tournament you are actually in, and to look at the same seat twice: once with the ante the room is dealing, once with the one your charts were built on. [pa-cta id=”bba_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Practise the format you actually play” body=”Pick a big blind ante final table and the trainer deals the hands and grades each decision against that solution, seat by seat.” label=”Start training”] [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_20bb_btn_rfi_no_ante” to=”/open/mtt-20bb-btn-rfi-no-ante” title=”Button first in, 20bb, no ante” body=”The same seat and the same stack as the ante version. The only difference is the dead money.” label=”Open the matrix”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # GTO Trainer Update: Smart Trainings & Flashcards Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/new-gto-trainer-smart-trainings-flashcards Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2026-01-11 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Update ![GTO Trainer Update: Smart Trainings & Flashcards](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/01/Blog_template.png) Poker Academy’s **GTO Trainer** has been upgraded into a powerful learning system built around **filters, 100-hand training packs, and intelligent flashcards**. Instead of grinding random hands, you now train in a way that maximizes learning speed and long-term retention. --- ## 🎯 What Is the New Training System? Each training is now a **personalized learning program** built from: - Your selected filters - A set of **100 unique hands** - A **flashcard engine** that tracks how well you know every spot The trainer remembers your mistakes and automatically brings those hands back until they become automatic. --- ## 🧠 Step 1 – Configure Your Training In the Trainer Panel you select what kind of game you want to train. ### Game Type - **MTT** - **Cash** - **Spin & Go** You can also adjust positions, stack ranges, scenarios, and learning settings – then either start instantly or save the training for later. --- ## 📸 Trainer Panel ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/01/Zrzut-ekranu-2026-01-11-o-16.27.42.png) ## 🎲 Step 2 – Your 100-Hand Training Pack When you save a training, Poker Academy: 1. Finds all GTO solutions that match your filters 2. Builds a balanced mix of situations 3. Randomly selects **100 hands** This ensures that every session is diverse, realistic, and focused on what you actually want to learn. --- ## 🧠 Step 3 – Every Hand Becomes a Flashcard Each of those 100 hands is stored as a **flashcard** that remembers: - How often you played it - How often you got it right - When you last saw it The system uses this data to decide what you should see next. --- ## 🔁 Step 4 – Smart Repetition Your training queue always contains: - Mostly hands you still struggle with - Some new hands to expand your range Hands you play well appear less often. Hands you misplay come back sooner. This creates **real skill transfer**, not just short-term memorization. --- ## 🃏 In-Game Trainer ![trainer-4-tables](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/01/Zrzut-ekranu-2026-01-11-o-16.12.48.jpg) --- ## 📊 Step 5 – Real Progress Tracking Your progress is measured automatically based on how many flashcards you have mastered. You always know exactly how close you are to fully learning your selected training. --- ## 🚀 Why This Changes Everything The new update of GTO Trainer gives you: - **Personalized learning** - **No wasted hands** - **Built-in repetition** - **Clear progress** You are no longer just playing poker – you are **systematically building a GTO brain**. --- # Super System vs the solver: six pieces of Doyle Brunson’s 1979 advice, checked Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/doyle-brunsons-super-system-1979-vs-modern-poker-strategy-2025 Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2025-08-28 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: General ![Super System vs the solver: six pieces of Doyle Brunson’s 1979 advice, checked](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/doyle-brunsons-super-system-1979-vs-mode-hero.jpg) *Super System* came out in 1979 and taught a generation how to play no-limit hold’em. Doyle Brunson wrote the no-limit chapter himself. Almost fifty years later I can do something he could not: take each piece of advice and check it against a solved game tree. Six claims from the book, each one against real solver output, with the spot named every time. I paraphrase the book rather than quote it, and I don’t give page numbers I can’t verify. Everything preflop comes from one Poker Academy solution: **NL200 on GGPoker, 100bb deep, 6-max, no ante, 2.5bb opens**. EVs are in big blinds and measured against folding, so a fold is worth 0. The flop numbers come from a saved 25-flop report on **lojack against a big blind call**: 5.5bb pot, 97.5bb behind, in the fast-fold solution of the same format. Each flop is weighted by how often it actually comes. ![Table comparing six pieces of Super System advice with Poker Academy solver output: 3-bet only aces and kings vs 166 combos on the button, AK offsuit over AK suited vs 1.06bb against 0.46bb, the 90% c-bet vs 63.5% across 25 flops, leading into the raiser vs 14.3% on average, one hand played several ways, and the rush](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/doyle-brunsons-super-system-1979-vs-mode-verdict-table-1.png) *The six claims, and what the same solution says. Verdicts are mine; the numbers are the solver’s.* ## 1. Preflop: twelve combos against 166 The book’s preflop advice is famously tight on re-raises. Aces and kings go back in; queens and jacks come along without raising. Nothing in the chapter is built around re-raising as a bluff. Aces and kings are 12 combos. Out of the 1,326 starting hands you can be dealt, that is 0.9%. Aces and kings as a share of all hands 6+61326=121326=0.9%\frac{6 + 6}{1326} = \frac{12}{1326} = 0.9\% Here is the same decision in the solution. The cutoff opens to 2.5bb and the button is next. It 3-bets to 7.5bb with 12.5% of hands, 166 combos, calls 3.0% and folds the rest. ![Poker Academy Browse, 100bb 6-max NL200 GG cash, button facing a 2.5bb cutoff open: 3-bet to 7.5bb 12.5% (166 combos), call 3.0% (40 combos), fold 84.5% (1120 combos)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/doyle-brunsons-super-system-1979-vs-mode-btn-vs-co-fig-1.jpg) *100bb cash, button against a 2.5bb cutoff open. Orange = 3-bet to 7.5bb, teal = call, grey = fold.* Forty-five of the 169 hand classes 3-bet here at least 1% of the time. Only a third of those 166 combos are premiums: 55 combos come from TT+, AQ+. The other 111 combos, two thirds of the 3-betting range, come from hands nobody in 1979 would have re-raised. A3s 3-bets 99.1% of the time, T9s 86.7%, 65s 84.7%. A lot of places will tell you that modern strategy treats AQ+ and TT+ as the standard value 3-bets. That sentence leaves out the thing that decides it, which is **which seat** you are sitting in. ## 2. The same hands, one seat over Move the same hands to the big blind against a lojack open and the answer flips. The big blind 3-bets to 11bb with only 4.5% of hands, 60 combos, and calls 16.4%. ![Poker Academy Browse, 100bb 6-max NL200 GG cash, big blind facing a 2.5bb lojack open: 3-bet to 11bb 4.5% (60 combos), call 16.4% (217 combos), fold 79.1% (1049 combos); TT and JJ are pure calls](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/doyle-brunsons-super-system-1979-vs-mode-bb-vs-lj-fig-1.jpg) *100bb cash, big blind against a 2.5bb lojack open. TT and JJ are solid teal: they never 3-bet here.* In that seat TT and JJ are pure calls, 100% of the time. QQ 3-bets 30.9%. AQo 3-bets 15.2% and calls the rest. “TT+ is a standard 3-bet” is untrue against the tightest opening range at the table, from the seat that has to play every flop out of position. A third version, the hijack against that same lojack open: 3-bet 7.4%, call 1.5%, fold 91.1%. AQo there 3-bets 55.3% and *folds* 43.6%. One hand, three seats, three answers, and a hand-by-hand rule can only carry one of them. ## 3. AK suited, AK offsuit and the two flushes The book argues that AK offsuit is the better hand because it can make a flush in two different suits. It’s a nice thought and it’s wrong, and you can settle it with a deck of cards instead of a solver. With AK suited you need three more cards of your suit among the five board cards: AKs makes a flush by the river (113)(392)+(114)(391)+(115)(505)=135,5972,118,760=6.40%\frac{\binom{11}{3}\binom{39}{2} + \binom{11}{4}\binom{39}{1} + \binom{11}{5}}{\binom{50}{5}} = \frac{135{,}597}{2{,}118{,}760} = 6.40\% With AK offsuit you hold one card of each of two suits, so you need *four* of a suit on the board. Two suits to try it with, and the two cases cannot both happen in five cards: AKo makes a flush by the river 2×(124)(381)+(125)(505)=39,2042,118,760=1.85%2 \times \frac{\binom{12}{4}\binom{38}{1} + \binom{12}{5}}{\binom{50}{5}} = \frac{39{,}204}{2{,}118{,}760} = 1.85\% Twice as many suits to try with, and three and a half times fewer flushes. They are also not the same flush. When AKs gets there it holds the ace of its suit, so it has the nuts. When AKo gets there the board shows four to a suit, so everyone holding one card of it has a flush too, and the king only wins if nobody has the ace. The solver agrees, and it agrees in EV. From the lojack both hands open 100% of the time, and they are worth different money: ![Poker Academy combo panel, 100bb 6-max NL200 GG cash, lojack first to act: all four AKs combos raise 100% for 1.06bb, AKo combos raise 100% for 0.46bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/doyle-brunsons-super-system-1979-vs-mode-ak-fig-1.jpg) *100bb cash, lojack first in. Every AKs combo is worth 1.06bb, every AKo combo 0.46bb. Four of the first, twelve of the second; the panel shows four rows of each.* 0.60bb a hand is a real gap, and it is smaller than “far more profitable” makes it sound once you count combos. AKs is 4 combos, AKo is 12. Across one full deal of all 1,326 starting hands, the four AKs combos are worth 4.24bb between them and the twelve AKo combos 5.58bb. The suited one is the better hand. The offsuit one still pays more of your rent, because you are dealt it three times as often. [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_lj_rfi” to=”/open/cash-100bb-lj-rfi” title=”LJ first in, NL200 100bb” body=”The opening range the article’s figure comes from: 18.5% of hands, 245 combos, one raise size.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## 4. The 90% continuation bet The book’s flop rule is to bet almost every time you raised before it. Modern advice usually calls that a leak. Both are too blunt, and the report shows why. This is the lojack opening, the big blind calling, the big blind checking the flop, and the lojack deciding. Twenty-five flops, each weighted by how often it comes: ![Poker Academy aggregated report 3510, lojack against a big blind call, 5.5bb pot, 97.5bb behind: across 25 weighted flops the lojack checks 36.49%, bets 21.92% at a quarter pot, 35.60% at half pot and 6.00% at pot or more](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/doyle-brunsons-super-system-1979-vs-mode-rep-cbet-fig-1.jpg) *Report 3510, lojack in position after the big blind checks. Weighted across 25 flops it bets 63.5%: 21.9% small, 35.6% at half pot, 6.0% at pot or bigger.* Weighted over all 25 flops the lojack bets 63.5% of the time. Brunson’s 90% is not far off on the boards his range owns: 98.8% on K♣︎K♦︎4♥︎, 98.4% on K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎, 95.6% on Q♣︎Q♦︎J♥︎. It falls apart on the boards the caller likes: 44.8% on 8♣︎5♣︎3♦︎, 48.0% on 7♣︎4♦︎2♥︎, 49.5% on 9♣︎7♦︎5♥︎. The sizes changed more than the frequency did. Of that 63.5%, 21.9 points are a quarter-pot bet and 35.6 points are about half pot. Only 6.0 points are a pot-sized bet or an overbet. In 1979 nobody was betting a quarter of the pot with a fifth of their range. There was no reason then to treat the flop bet as a size you pick. This heavy betting *is* the early-position raiser, which often gets said backwards. A lojack opener against the big blind is in position, and in position it bets most flops. The range that checks nearly everything is the one out of position, so when the lojack opens and the button calls instead, the lojack ends up checking a lot. What drives it is position, whatever the seat is called. That last sentence is my reasoning; the report only covers lojack against the big blind. [pa-cta id=”ss_solver” to=”/gto-postflop-solver” title=”Solve the flop you keep getting wrong” body=”Set the pot, the stacks and the two ranges, and read the frequency and the size for every hand you can hold.” label=”Open the solver”] ## 5. Leading into the raiser Super System tells you to bet into the preflop raiser when you flop something big. For decades the standard answer was that you should never do it: check to the raiser, always. The solver says both sides overshot. ![Poker Academy aggregated report 3510, big blind first to act on the flop against a lojack open: across 25 weighted flops it checks 85.62%, bets 10.55% at a quarter pot, 2.40% at half pot and 1.43% at pot or more; on 9c7d5h it checks only 20.50%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/doyle-brunsons-super-system-1979-vs-mode-rep-root-fig-1.jpg) *Report 3510, big blind first to act. It checks 85.6% of flops overall, and 20.5% on 9♣7♦5♥, where it leads four times out of five.* On average the big blind checks 85.7% of flops and bets 14.3%. That looks like the old rule. Then look at 9♣︎7♦︎5♥︎: it checks 20.8% and leads 79.2%, most of it for a quarter pot. On 8♣︎5♣︎3♦︎ it leads 42.2%, on 7♣︎4♦︎2♥︎ 47.7%, on 6♣︎6♦︎4♣︎ 55.1%. Those are the flops a big blind calling range hits and a lojack opening range misses. So leading is real, it is rare, and the board decides which. Brunson’s instinct was right and the rule he wrote around it was too narrow. When the solver leads, it leads with a whole range on the boards that suit it, and big hands are only part of that range. ## 6. One hand, more than one right answer This is the part of the book that aged best. Brunson makes the point that the same hand can be played several different ways and none of them is wrong. In 1979 that was an instinct about disguise. It turned out to be a description of equilibrium. TT on the button against a cutoff open 3-bets 68.0% of the time and calls 32.0%. Both actions are worth 0.96bb. That is indifference: the two branches pay the same, and the solver needs the split so the cutoff cannot exploit either one. TT on the button: 3-bet against call EV3-bet−EVcall=0.963−0.962=0.001 bb\mathrm{EV}_{3\text{-bet}} – \mathrm{EV}_{\text{call}} = 0.963 – 0.962 = 0.001\ \text{bb} Forty years before anyone could compute that, he wrote down the observation, which is the most impressive thing in the chapter. [pa-cta id=”open_report_cash_100bb_lj_vs_bb” to=”/open/report-cash-100bb-lj-vs-bb” title=”Report: LJ vs BB, 100bb cash, 25 flops” body=”A deep single-raised pot after the big blind checks: 25 boards, one sizing menu.” label=”Open the report”] ## What does not survive at all Super System also tells you that when you are running good you should keep playing every pot until you lose one, to stay on the rush. There is nothing to check here: no solved tree contains the pot before it. Each hand is dealt from a full deck and the last one has no say in it. The honest version of the idea is about the player, not the deck. If winning makes you sharper, playing more is fine. If it makes you looser, it costs money. That is a note about tilt, and it belongs in a different chapter. The other line that gets quoted is the book’s claim that no computer will ever play world-class poker. Libratus took 120,000 hands off four top heads-up professionals in 2017, and Pluribus beat professionals six-handed in 2019. Libratus played heads-up only, which is the two-player zero-sum version of poker, the one where a single strategy can guarantee it will not lose in the long run. ## How I’d read it today - Keep the instincts. Aggression, position, disguise, the same hand played more than one way. All of that is in the solver’s output. - Drop the fixed numbers. 90% of flops, only aces and kings, always lead with a big hand. Every one of those is a frequency that depends on the board and the seat. - Check the spot before the hand. TT is a 68% 3-bet on the button and a 100% call in the big blind, in the same solution, on the same day. - Read it as history. It is a book about how to think at a table full of people who had never read one. That part has not dated at all. Cheers! 🙂 --- # How poker solvers evolved: from Los Alamos to CFR, Libratus and today’s solvers Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-poker-solvers-evolved-from-thermonuclear-physics-to-the-virtual-felt Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2025-07-24 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: General ![How poker solvers evolved: from Los Alamos to CFR, Libratus and today’s solvers](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-poker-solvers-evolved-from-thermonuc-hero.jpg) The ideas behind poker solvers are almost a hundred years old, and two of the people who shaped them worked on the atomic bomb. The popular version of that story gets a few things wrong, and one of the mistakes matters for how you use a solver today: modern solvers do not work the way Ulam’s Monte Carlo method does. So this is the history with only the parts I can point to a paper or a documented match for. At the end I show what all of it produces in the app: a preflop chart, a postflop solve and a report across 184 flops. ![Timeline: 1928 minimax theorem, 1944 Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, 1946-49 Monte Carlo method, 1950 Nash equilibrium, 2007 counterfactual regret minimization, 2014 CFR+, 2015 Cepheus solves heads-up limit hold'em, 2017 Libratus, 2019 Pluribus](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-poker-solvers-evolved-from-thermonuc-timeline-1.png) *Nine milestones from game theory to poker AI.* ## 1928 and 1944: game theory, with poker in it In 1928 John von Neumann proved the minimax theorem. In a two-player zero-sum game, if both players are allowed to mix their strategies, there is a value of the game: a strategy that guarantees you at least that value, whatever the opponent does. That guarantee is the same idea we call GTO today. It says you cannot be beaten, and it says nothing about how to beat any particular player. In 1944 von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern published *Theory of Games and Economic Behavior*. Poker was one of their examples, in a very simplified version: each player gets a random number instead of cards, and there is a single round of betting. The model did not prove that mixed-strategy equilibria exist, because the minimax theorem had already done that. What it did show is that bluffing belongs in optimal play, which every poker player still has to accept. In 1950 John Nash extended the equilibrium idea to games with any number of players. The guarantees stay strongest for two players though, and poker at a 6-max table has six. ## Los Alamos: Ulam, solitaire and Monte Carlo Stanisław Ulam grew up in Lwów, then in Poland, and spent the war on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, where von Neumann also worked. He wrote about the poker games there in his autobiography, *Adventures of a Mathematician*. The Monte Carlo method came from a card game too, but not poker. Around 1946, recovering from an illness, Ulam wondered how likely a game of Canfield solitaire was to come out. The combinatorics were hopeless, while dealing it many times and counting was easy. With the first electronic computers that became practical, and together with von Neumann he turned it into a way to study neutron transport for the weapons programme. Nicholas Metropolis suggested the name, after the casino. Metropolis and Ulam published *The Monte Carlo Method* in 1949. If you can’t calculate a probability, sample it. The error shrinks with the square root of the number of samples. If the true answer is around 50% and you run 10,000 random trials: Monte Carlo error after 10,000 samples standard error=p(1−p)N=0.5×0.510,000=0.005=0.5%\text{standard error} = \sqrt{\frac{p(1-p)}{N}} = \sqrt{\frac{0.5 \times 0.5}{10{,}000}} = 0.005 = 0.5\% That is how many equity calculators work. They deal thousands of random boards for two hands or two ranges and count who wins. Four times more boards halves the error. That is where Monte Carlo lives in poker software today: in equity estimates, and in sampled versions of solver algorithms. It is not how a solver finds a strategy. Los Alamos also ran one of the first chess programs, in 1956, on the MANIAC I computer. It played on a 6×6 board without bishops because the machine was too small for the full game. Chess, not poker, was the target for computers for the next forty years. ## 2007: counterfactual regret minimization The algorithm behind modern poker solvers is counterfactual regret minimization, CFR. Martin Zinkevich, Michael Johanson, Michael Bowling and Carmelo Piccione from the University of Alberta published it in 2007. The program plays the game against itself over and over. At every decision point it asks how much better it would have done with each of the other actions, and that difference is the regret. On the next iteration it plays actions in proportion to their positive regret: Regret matching: probability of action a σ(a)=R+(a)∑bR+(b)\sigma(a) = \frac{R^{+}(a)}{\sum_{b} R^{+}(b)} Actions that would have won more get played more. Actions with no positive regret are not played, unless no action has any. In a two-player zero-sum game the *average* strategy over all iterations converges to a Nash equilibrium. That is why a solver shows you mixed strategies. A hand split between two actions is not an undecided solver; it is the average of millions of adjustments settling down. Then came faster variants. In 2014 Oskari Tammelin introduced CFR+, which converges much faster in practice. Monte Carlo CFR (Marc Lanctot and co-authors, 2009) samples parts of the game tree each iteration instead of walking all of it. So sampling does appear inside solvers, where it speeds CFR up instead of replacing it. Commercial desktop solvers such as PioSOLVER, GTO+ and Simple Postflop appeared in the mid-2010s. Their exact algorithms are not always public, but the family is CFR. [pa-cta id=”open_report_mtt_50bb_bb_vs_sb_by_high_card” to=”/open/report-mtt-50bb-bb-vs-sb-by-high-card” title=”Report: c-betting by high card, 184 flops” body=”The chart the article’s claim is read off: c-bet frequency against the top card on the board.” label=”Open the report”] ## 2015 to 2019: poker AI beats humans - In 2015, the Alberta group published in *Science* that heads-up limit hold’em is essentially weakly solved. Their program, Cepheus, plays so close to equilibrium that a human could not show it is beatable over a lifetime of play. It used CFR+. - In 2017, Libratus, written by Noam Brown and Tuomas Sandholm at Carnegie Mellon, played four professionals in heads-up no-limit hold’em: Jason Les, Dong Kim, Daniel McAulay and Jimmy Chou. About 120,000 hands over 20 days in Pittsburgh, and Libratus won clearly. The same year the Alberta program DeepStack also published wins against professionals in heads-up no-limit. - In 2019, Brown and Sandholm did it again with Pluribus, this time in six-player no-limit hold’em, published in *Science*. Six players means the equilibrium guarantees from the two-player case no longer apply, which is why that result mattered. Two corrections to the old version of this article. It said the Libratus match was “tens of thousands of hands”; it was about 120,000. And it named a privately built 2013 program as “the first modern poker solver”. I can’t find a source for that, and CFR itself is from 2007, so it is gone. ## What the output looks like today You don’t need to run CFR yourself to use it. This is what comes out of it in the app, from the simplest spot to a whole report. **A preflop chart.** Normal NL200 GG cash, 100bb, 6-max, no ante. Everyone folds to the button, who opens to 2.5bb or folds. The solver raises 46.5% of hands, 617 of the 1,326 combos, and folds 53.5%, 709 combos. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, Normal NL200 GG cash 100bb 6-max, button first in: raise 2.5bb 46.5% (617 combos), fold 53.5% (709 combos)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-poker-solvers-evolved-from-thermonuc-cash-btn-rfi-fig-1.jpg) *Cash 100bb 6-max, BTN first in after LJ, HJ and CO fold: raise 2.5bb 46.5%, fold 53.5%. Orange = raise.* 617 + 709 = 1,326, every starting hand. Hands like J3s, Q8o and A2o are split between raising and folding: that is the mixing CFR produces when two actions are worth about the same. **A postflop solve.** Same cash game. HJ opens to 2.5bb, CO calls, the blinds fold. The pot on the 8♣︎ 8♥︎ 6♦︎ flop is: Pot on the flop 2.5+2.5+0.5+1=6.5bb2.5 + 2.5 + 0.5 + 1 = 6.5\text{bb} ![Poker Academy postflop solver, Normal NL200 GG 100bb 6-max cash, HJ opens CO calls, flop 8c8h6d, HJ first to act: check 72.6% (210 combos), bet 25% 2.1% (6), bet 75% 2.3% (7), bet 150% 23.0% (67), all-in 0%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-poker-solvers-evolved-from-thermonuc-flop-886-hj-fig-1.jpg) *HJ first to act on 8♣︎8♥︎6♦︎ after opening and getting called by CO: check 72.6%, bet 150% of pot 23.0%, the two smaller sizes about 2% each. Numbers under each action are combos.* The HJ checks 72.6% of its range, and when it bets it mostly goes big: 23.0% at 150% of pot against 2.1% and 2.3% for the smaller sizes. Look at AA in the matrix, which mixes checking and the big bet. That is the 1944 lesson in modern form, with strong hands and bluffs sharing the same actions so the opponent can’t read the size. [pa-cta id=”solver_history_solver” to=”/gto-postflop-solver” title=”Open a flop in the postflop solver” body=”Pick a preflop spot, deal a flop and see the whole range split by action and bet size.” label=”Open the solver”] **A report across flops.** One flop is one example. An aggregated report solves the same preflop spot on a whole set of flops and puts them side by side. This one comes from our library: CE-Symmetric tournament, 50bb, 9-max, 1bb big-blind ante. The small blind raises to 4bb, the big blind calls, a 9bb pot with 46bb behind. Every board in it was solved with the same bet menu, 15%, 30%, 60% and 120% of pot, and that is what makes the columns comparable at all. The chart shows the small blind’s first decision, out of position after its own raise, on all 184 flops, grouped by the highest card. ![Poker Academy library report 1479, CE-Symmetric tournament 50bb 9-max 1bb ante, SB raises to 4bb and BB calls, SB first decision on 184 flops grouped by high card, one bet menu of 15/30/60/120% of pot: check 34.64% on A-high, 37.34% on 7-high, bet 15% 30.80% on A-high](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-poker-solvers-evolved-from-thermonuc-report-1479-fig.jpg) *Library report 1479, CE-Symmetric 50bb 9-max, SB raises to 4bb and BB calls, pot 9bb: the small blind’s first decision on 184 flops, one menu (15/30/60/120% of pot).* How *often* the small blind bets barely moves with the high card: 65.4% of the time on ace-high flops, 62.7% on 7-high. The *size* moves a lot. On ace-high it takes the cheapest bet, 15% of pot, 30.80% of the time, and the 60% size only 4.55%. On 7-high the small bet almost disappears, 2.85%, and the 60% size takes over at 23.70%. High cards let the raiser bet cheap with its whole range; low connected boards need real money behind the bet. No single flop teaches you that, because the pattern only shows up across many solves. Seventy years ago it would have needed a Los Alamos computer and a Monte Carlo estimate. Now it is a click. ## How to use this history - Monte Carlo answers “how often does this win?” It is behind equity calculators. - CFR answers “how should I play so I can’t be exploited?” It is behind solvers, and the mixes you see are averages that converged. - The equilibrium guarantees are clean heads-up. Multiway, treat a solver strategy as a very strong baseline and not a proof. - GTO is a baseline, the same way it was in 1928: the strategy that can’t be beaten. Which is a different strategy from the one that beats a specific player most. The longer version, with more of the Los Alamos story, is in our video: Cheers! 🙂 --- # Why Sleep Is the Most Underrated Poker Strategy Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/why-sleep-is-the-most-underrated-poker-strategy Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2025-07-17 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Performance ![Why Sleep Is the Most Underrated Poker Strategy](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2025/06/Sleep-Protocool-for-Poker-Players.png) **Sleep isn’t just rest-it’s recovery, performance, and decision-making fuel.** Inspired by the bestselling book *Why We Sleep* by neuroscientist Matthew Walker, this article explores why quality sleep is essential for anyone who wants to sharpen their edge, reduce mistakes, and maintain long-term consistency in high-pressure environments. Whether you’re an athlete, a founder, a creative, or someone grinding out long hours at the tables, this article is especially written with poker players in mind-but the science applies to everyone who values high performance. ### Sleep: Not Just a Nightly Ritual Most people see sleep as a passive state. But behind closed eyes, the brain enters a dynamic cycle of processes that impact memory, learning, emotional regulation, and physical repair. Sleep isn’t just a break-it’s one of the most important factors in mental sharpness and health. When you’re under pressure to perform-whether it’s during a live poker tournament, a business pitch, or a strategic decision-lack of sleep can tank your results. On the flip side, quality sleep boosts clarity, reaction time, memory, and emotional control. --- ### Lessons From Evolution Even ancient tribes understood the value of rest. A study of the Hadza people in Tanzania-hunter-gatherers with no exposure to electricity-revealed that at any given time, someone in the group was awake, watching over the rest. Sleep patterns evolved with a purpose: to restore the body, optimize the brain, and protect the tribe. Even thousands of years ago, Greek philosophers recognized the power of sleep. One wrote, *“If sleep is doing well, the disease is not deadly.”* --- ### What Happens When We Sleep? In recent years, sleep optimization protocols from experts like Dr. Andrew Huberman have exploded in popularity. These protocols translate complex neuroscience into simple, actionable habits-like morning sunlight exposure, caffene timing, and cld exposure-which resonate with high performers across fields. For poker players, this trend reflects a growing awareness: mastering your body’s rhythms is just as important as mastering your preflop ranges. When you understand how sleep drives recovery and sharpness, it becomes a non-negotiable part of your edge. Sleep is divided into several stages: - **Light Sleep (N1 & N2):** Easier to wake from, essential for basic restoration. N2 is especially important for learning motor skills. - **Deep Sleep (N3 / Delta):** Physical regeneration, immune recovery, and the release of human growth hormone occur here. It dominates the first half of the night. - **REM Sleep (Rapid Eye Movement):** Vital for memory consolidation, emotional regulation, and creative problem-solving. Dominant in the second half of the night. If you’re training, studying, or working toward mastery-you need all of them. --- ### Real Talk: What Sleep Deprivation Looks Like at the Table I remember playing a live €100 MTT that went ridiculously deep-final table started around 2:30 AM. By hour 10, I couldn’t even remember whether I had three-bet the previous orbit or not. I misread my stack, bluffed into a calling station, and busted in 6th. The next day I looked back at the hand and thought, *what the hell was I thinking?* That’s when it hit me: **lack of sleep turns a thinking player into a reacting player**. I wasn’t calculating-I was just surviving. Ever since then, I’ve prioritized sleep before big sessions. I study better, stay calmer, and most importantly-I remember what I’ve learned. --- ### How Sleep Affects Decision-Making Sleep deprivation reduces learning ability by up to **40%** (according to science). In short: - You become more impulsive. - Your memory worsens. - You overreact. - Your edge evaporates. Roger Federer reportedly sleept 11–12 hours a night during his peak career. A top chess grandmaster? Around 10. If they treat sleep as fuel, shouldn’t we? --- ### How to Sleep Smarter (Even on a Grind Schedule) #### 1. Regulate Light and Rhythm - Get **morning sunlight** within the first hour of waking. - Avoid **blue light** from screens 1–2 hours before bed. Use night mode or blue light–blocking glasses. - Keep a **consistent sleep schedule**. Try not to shift bedtime/wake time by more than 1–2 hours-even on grind-heavy Sundays. #### 2. Optimize Your Environment - **Ideal room temperature:** 16–20°C (60–68°F) - Use **blackout curtains** - Set **phones to airplane mode** - Consider **earplugs** or white noise if you’re sensitive to sound #### 3. Use Nutrition Wisely - Avoid large meals within 2 hours of bedtime. - Reduce sugar and alcohol intake, which disrupt deep sleep. - Include foods high in **tryptophan** (e.g., bananas, pumpkin seeds, oats), which helps produce serotonin and melatonin. #### 4. Train at the Right Time - Exercise improves sleep depth, but intense workouts should end at least 3 hours before bed. - Light stretching, yoga, or progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) can improve sleep onset. #### 5. Use Caffeine Strategically - Avoid caffeine within **8 hours of bedtime** - **Delay caffeine** by 90–120 minutes after waking to support natural cortisol flow - Try a **“nappuccino”**: drink coffee, nap 15–20 minutes, and wake as caffeine kicks in --- ### What Happens If You Don’t Sleep? Chronic sleep deprivation can: - Increase cancer risk (via gene dysregulation) - Suppress immune function by up to 70% - Impair memory and problem-solving by 40% - Increase inflammation and cardiovascular disease risk - Amplify emotional swings (hello, tilt) --- ### Why Poker Players Should Care About Sleep At Poker Academy, we talk a lot about ranges, GTO, and exploitative play. But none of it works when your brain is running on fumes. Sleep isn’t a luxury-it’s your **mental poker bankroll**. You can study solvers all day, but if you’re showing up to a session sleep-deprived, you’re sabotaging your own ROI. Great sleep is like having the nuts-you don’t always need it, but when you do, it wins you the pot. So before your next deep run, ask yourself: *Did I actually recover last night?* Poker is hard enough when you’re fresh. Don’t make it harder by showing up half-asleep. ## Want to Learn More? In this poker webinar, performance coach Simon Welsch explores the fundamental role of sleep in overall health and poker performance. He breaks down the different phases of sleep, including deep sleep and REM, and explains how quality sleep impacts cognitive function, decision-making, and focus at the poker table. Throughout the webinar, Simon highlights the critical effects that lack of sleep can have on your game, while also offering practical tips for optimizing sleep. With insights into how sleep influences your body’s internal clock and poker performance, this webinar is a must-watch for anyone looking to gain a competitive edge in their game. --- # Mobile App Update: Faster, Smarter Preflop Training Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/mobile-app-update-faster-smarter-preflop-training Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2025-07-02 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Update ![Mobile App Update: Faster, Smarter Preflop Training](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2025/06/Mobile-App-Update-New-UI-Drills.png) We’re excited to share the newest updates to **Poker Academy’s Preflop Trainer!** These improvements are all about giving you more control, more flexibility – and more time to focus on studying poker. Until now, if you wanted to train a specific preflop spot – like BB defending against a Button open at 20bb – you had to manually configure the parameters every time. With the new update, you can now select Hero and Opponent positions directly within Preflop Trainer and save your setup for future sessions. 👇 ![Training BB vs BU at 20bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2025/06/Blog-post-1.png) *Training BB vs BU at 20bb* No more resetting stacks, positions, and filters every time you train a spot. Just tap, save, and pick up right where you left off. ## ✨ Say Hello to the New Navigation We’ve also given the app a full UI refresh! The old hamburger menu and top tabs are gone – replaced by a streamlined **bottom navigation bar**. ![New Navigation Interface](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2025/06/Blog-post-2-2.png) *New Navigation Interfac* One major addition is the new **Account section**, where you can manage your subscription, log out, and adjust settings – all in one place. ## 🧠 Designed for Poker Study Sessions This update is perfect if you’re: - Training a specific position matchup (e.g. CO vs BB, BU vs SB) and want to repeat it across sessions - Practicing ICM-sensitive ranges at 15–25bb without restarting setups - Juggling multiple spots as a coach, streamer, or grinder who wants to stay organized Preflop Trainer is now faster to use, easier to revisit, and better for structured improvement. ## 🃏 Try the Update Now! Already a subscriber? Launch the app and try out the new training features and navigation today. Not a member yet? Download App in App Store Download app in GoogLe Play --- # WPT Global Poker Bot Controversy: 130+ Accounts, New Allegation Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/wpt-global-poker-bot-controversy-130-accounts-new-allegation Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2025-06-19 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Lifestyle ![WPT Global Poker Bot Controversy: 130+ Accounts, New Allegation](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2025/06/WPT-Global-Bot-Controversy.png) In June 2025, Two Plus Two forum user “bob19123” revealed details of a massive bot ring on WPT Global. Over four months, he identified **130+ suspected poker bot accounts** and shared repeated evidence with the platform’s security team. Many of the accounts were eventually banned and funds were confiscated. WPT Global acknowledged the reports and issued Bob a small “integrity reward” (~$3.85 per bot), but did not reimburse his losses. After months of delays and unanswered questions-including how many accounts were banned and when refunds would be issued-Bob went public with his full account. In a response posted on the forum, a WPT Global rep named Jack confirmed poker bot bans and stated that refunds typically take 3+ months to process. He also accused tracking software **Hand2Note** of integrating with a known bot farm (Deeplay), further fueling the controversy. > …we have evidence that H2N integrated with Deeplay/Botfarm to data mine, improve training, and run BOTs in online poker. > > WPTGlobal Jack ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-16.32.03.png) *Hand2Note accused* The post highlights concerns over platform transparency, player reimbursement, and the ongoing challenge of maintaining integrity in online poker. ➡️ Full post with timeline, evidence, and replies: [Read the original thread on Two Plus Two](https://twoplustwo.com/thread?id=1848711) --- # Fuel Your Game: Essential Nutrition Tips for Poker Grinders Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/fuel-your-game-essential-nutrition-tips-for-poker-grinders Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2025-06-09 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Performance ![Fuel Your Game: Essential Nutrition Tips for Poker Grinders](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2025/06/Nutrition-Tips-for-Poker-Grinders.png) Grinding for 12 to 16 hours in a high-pressure MTT session pushes your mental limits. Your decisions matter-every edge counts. But if your focus crashes, your emotions tilt, or your energy slumps mid-session, it doesn’t matter how sharp your strategy is. **Nutrition is your hidden weapon.** What you eat affects how long you stay sharp, how well you regulate stress, and how consistently you make optimal decisions. Here’s how to fuel your body and brain to last through marathon sessions without burning out. --- ## **Why Nutrition is a Game-Changer for Poker Players** Long poker sessions demand high cognitive performance: focus, memory, calculation, and emotional control. Poor nutrition sabotages this, leading to: - Mental fatigue - Brain fog - Sugar crashes - Impaired decision-making - Increased tilt - Low stamina and willpower Optimal nutrition keeps your energy steady, your mood stable, and your mental processing crisp-even after 12 hours at the virtual or live felt. ## **The 5 Rules of High-Performance Poker Nutrition** ### **1. Eat Real Food, Not Processed Garbage** Real food is anything that doesn’t come from a factory. It’s single-ingredient, whole, and recognizable. The majority of players eat for convenience, not performance-so they end up with: - Empty calories - Processed oils - Artificial additives - Blood sugar crashes - Low nutrient density **Real food fuels your edge.** Think: - Grilled meats, fatty fish, eggs - Colorful vegetables, leafy greens - Avocados, berries, nuts (in moderation) - Greek yogurt, cottage cheese - Whole grains like quinoa or brown rice Avoid greasy takeout, frozen meals, chips, and soda during sessions. You wouldn’t enter a final table drunk-don’t show up under-fueled either. ### **2. Prioritize Protein Like It’s Your Stack Size** Protein is the most satiating macronutrient. It keeps cravings at bay and supports brain and muscle function-key when you’re sedentary for hours but need peak alertness. You want **1.5–2.2g of protein per kg of body weight**-especially if you’re active or managing weight. **Smart protein sources for grinders:** - Eggs, fish, lean meats - Protein shakes (whey or plant-based) - Low-fat cottage cheese or Greek yogurt - Lentils and beans (for plant-based diets) **Pro tip:** Start your grind with a protein-rich meal. It sets the tone for stable blood sugar and sustained energy. ### **3. Control Snacking-Only Eat When It’s Strategic** MTT sessions stretch 12+ hours. It’s tempting to snack every break. But most snacks spike blood sugar, kill focus, and worsen fatigue. **Ideal snacking rules for poker:** - Only snack if you’re *truly* hungry or hitting a low-energy point - Time snacks for longer breaks (every 4–6 hours, not every break) - Choose protein + fat combos for stable energy: boiled eggs, beef jerky, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese with berries Avoid candy, chips, energy drinks, and carb-heavy snacks mid-session-they’ll crash your energy just when you need it most. ### **4. Omega-3s: Fuel for Brain, Mood, and Endurance** Omega-3 fatty acids support: - Cognitive performance - Emotional regulation - Inflammation reduction - Memory and learning The modern diet is overloaded with omega-6s (from processed oils) and deficient in omega-3s. That imbalance increases brain fog, anxiety, and fatigue. **Where to get omega-3s:** - Salmon, sardines, mackerel - Chia seeds, flaxseeds, walnuts - Algae oil (great for vegetarians/vegans) - Fish oil supplements (if food isn’t enough) Aim for **1–2 grams daily**. If you’re grinding long hours indoors, omega-3s become even more critical for mental clarity. ### **5. Hydration: Cut the Myths, Drink Smarter** Hydration is one of the simplest performance boosters-yet also the most misunderstood. Here’s what you *actually* need to know: #### **✅ Tap water is fine** If you’re on a municipal water supply, odds are it’s safe and well-regulated. Unless your building’s pipes are ancient, drink freely. Bottled water is also okay-but don’t let microplastics paranoia keep you up at night. It’s a much broader issue than just your water bottle. #### **✅ Sparkling water is fine too** Worried that carbonation is “bad”? Unless you have acid reflux or specific digestive issues, carbonated water is just as hydrating. #### **✅ You don’t need to drink 2 liters daily** Forget rigid water goals. Your body has a built-in hydration gauge: thirst. Listen to it. A helpful backup? Monitor your urine. If it’s darker than apple juice, you’re probably dehydrated. #### **❌ Don’t add salt to your water** Some influencers push adding salt to drinking water. For most people, this is unnecessary-and potentially harmful. We already consume too much sodium. Unless you’re sweating heavily (e.g., workouts in the heat), skip the salt. Your blood pressure will thank you. #### **✅ Coffee and tea*****do*****hydrate** Contrary to myth, moderate amounts of coffee and tea are not dehydrating. They contain water. You don’t need to “cancel them out” by drinking extra. #### **✅ Drinking with meals is good** No, water doesn’t dilute stomach acid or hurt digestion. In fact, staying hydrated helps enzymes break down food more effectively. Bonus: drinking water before meals can help with appetite control. #### **⚠️ Filter pitchers aren’t magic** Some filters reduce water hardness, but also strip out beneficial minerals like calcium and magnesium. And poorly maintained filters can harbor bacteria. If you like the taste-great. Just don’t assume it’s *healthier*. #### **❌ Don’t overthink sip size or temperature** No need to “chew your water” or drink it warm or cold. Just drink the way that feels natural. Hydration shouldn’t be complicated. **Bottom line:** Drink when you’re thirsty, drink what you like, and don’t let pseudoscience complicate a basic human need. --- ## **Advanced Strategies for 12–16 Hour Grinds** ### **🕐 Plan Your Meal Timing** For marathon sessions, aim for **3 well-spaced meals**, plus **1–2 light snacks** max. Eating too frequently wrecks blood sugar and can reduce mental clarity. **Example Poker Day Nutrition Plan:** - **Pre-session meal (60–90 mins before):** High-protein, moderate-carb, low-fat *Example: Salmon, sweet potato, steamed greens* - **Mid-session snack (4–6 hours in):** High-protein, easy-to-digest *Example: Greek yogurt + berries or hard-boiled eggs* - **Dinner (post-session):** Lighter meal for recovery *Example: Chicken, quinoa, roasted vegetables* --- ## **Final Word: Play Like a Pro, Eat Like One Too** Winning poker isn’t just about what you study. It’s about how you **perform** when it matters. Real food, enough protein, controlled meals, hydration, and essential fats form the foundation of long-term, high-stakes focus. These aren’t hacks. They’re fundamentals. And like poker fundamentals, if you ignore them, they’ll cost you-slowly, then all at once. ## Want to Learn More? In this poker webinar, performance coach Simon Welsch shares essential nutrition tips tailored specifically for poker grinders who want to stay sharp and energized throughout poker sessions. From the benefits of whole foods and protein to the impact of omega-3s, hydration, and meal timing, you’ll get a complete guide to optimizing your physical and mental performance. Whether you play live or online, these nutrition principles can help enhance your brain function-leading to sharper decisions and better results at the poker table. *Our nutrition webinar by Simon Welsch* --- # Introducing Strategy Grid: See the Bigger Picture of Preflop Strategy! Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introducing-strategy-grid-see-the-bigger-picture-of-preflop-strategy Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2025-06-04 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Update ![Introducing Strategy Grid: See the Bigger Picture of Preflop Strategy!](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2025/06/strategy-grid-thumbnail.png) **Poker Academy’s newest feature – the Strategy Grid – is a brand-new way** to explore preflop strategy from a broader perspective. With the Strategy Grid, you can view all preflop charts for a specific action across every position on one screen. It helps you better understand the overall framework of preflop strategy and compare how ranges change by position. 👉 [**Watch this video**](https://www.loom.com/share/fe01d02e1487485494548ac74e25ffd9) to see how Pawel, Co-founder of Poker Academy, uses it in action! Strategy Grid is activated when you select RFI (Raise First In), vs RFI, or Multiway charts in the Preflop Charts tool. You’ll find a new button at the top right of the Tournament section. Let’s say you open the RFI chart for the Hijack and turn on Strategy Grid – you’ll instantly see all relevant charts for the Hijack and later positions side by side, just like in the view below: ![Obraz](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2025/06/image.png) ## When You’ll Benefit Most from Using Strategy Grid Strategy Grid shines when you want to see how **preflop strategies shift by position** – especially in common but nuanced spots like **RFI, defending vs opens, or multiway** situations. It’s particularly useful when: - You’re looking for an efficient way to learn fundamental strategies for all positions - You’re studying how open-raising ranges change across positions - You want to compare flatting or 3-betting ranges from different seats - You’re analyzing how ranges shift in ICM spots depending on stack sizes - You’re coaching and want to explain position-based differences at a glance Instead of clicking through each chart individually, Strategy Grid gives you **the full picture in one place.** ## Who Gets the Most Out of Strategy Grid **Strategy Grid** helps players at every level, but certain groups may get even more value: - **Beginner Players** – It simplifies the complexity of position-based strategy, helping you develop strong preflop fundamentals faster. Start learning GTO strategy in a clear and accessible way! - **Coaches and Content Creators** – Perfect for presentations or screen sharing during lessons. Strategy Grid makes it easy to walk through positional differences clearly. - **Advanced Players**– Great for comparing population tendencies to optimal strategy, making it easier to spot where the field deviates – and where exploits can be found. Strategy Grid helps you quickly scan for patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed when reviewing one chart at a time. ## See the Bigger Picture with Strategy Grid Now! Ready to take your preflop game to the next level with Poker Academy? Try out Strategy Grid today and see the bigger picture of preflop strategy like never before. If you’re not subscribed yet, you can get full access by choosing one of our[**pricing plans**](https://poker.academy/pricing). We’d love to hear what you think! Join our Discord community and share your feedback, questions, or ideas about Strategy Grid. Your input helps us make Poker Academy even better for everyone. Good luck at the tables! --- # What is a 3-bet in poker: real 3-bet ranges for cash and tournaments Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/what-is-a-3-bet-in-poker-a-theoretical-and-strategic-guide Author: Paweł Brzeski Published: 2025-04-02 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![What is a 3-bet in poker: real 3-bet ranges for cash and tournaments](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-a-3-bet-in-poker-a-theoretical-a-hero.jpg) The 3-bet is one of the first plays you learn and one of the last you really understand. Below are the 3-bet ranges the solver plays in one cash game and one tournament, because the same seat against the same open plays a very different range at 100bb and at 40bb. All ranges below come from the preflop solutions in Poker Academy. Cash: **Normal NL200 GG, 6-max cash, 100bb, no ante**, 2.5bb opens. Tournament: **CE-Symmetric, 9-handed MTT, 40bb, 1bb big-blind ante, chipEV**, 2.3bb opens. Percentages are shares of all 1,326 starting hands unless I say otherwise. ## What is a 3-bet, and why is it called that? Preflop, the big blind counts as the first bet. The small blind doesn’t count, because it’s less than a full bet. The first raise is the second bet, and the re-raise over it is the third bet: the **3-bet**. A re-raise over the 3-bet is a 4-bet, and so on. - Blinds 0.5bb and 1bb: bet number one. - CO opens to 2.5bb: bet number two, the open raise. - BTN raises to 7.5bb: bet number three, the 3-bet. Technically any third bet on a later street is also a 3-bet (bet, raise, re-raise on the flop), but in everyday poker talk the word means the preflop re-raise. The minimum 3-bet is set by the last raise. If the CO opens to 2.5bb, that is a raise of 1.5bb over the big blind, so the minimum 3-bet is 2.5 + 1.5 = **4bb**. In no-limit the maximum is your stack. ## A 3-bet builds the pot. Calling keeps it small A 3-bet often gets described as pot control, and an earlier version of this post described it that way too. It isn’t. It makes the pot three times bigger before the flop, and flatting is the pot-control option. What a 3-bet does buy you: - Value: strong hands get more money in while the opener’s range still contains worse hands. - Fold equity: the opener folds part of its range and you win the pot now. - Initiative in a heads-up pot: a raise pushes the players behind you out, where a flat invites them to squeeze or come along. - Equity denial: hands that would have seen a cheap flop have to fold. [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_btn_vs_co” to=”/open/cash-100bb-btn-vs-co” title=”Button facing a CO open, NL200″ body=”The 3-betting range itself: which hands raise, which call, and where the polarised half sits.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Linear vs polarised: count the calls You’ll read about three kinds of 3-bet ranges. A **linear** (or merged) range 3-bets the top of your playable hands and folds the rest, with very few calls. A **polarised** range 3-bets the strongest hands plus some weaker hands and calls with the middle. A pure **value** range 3-bets only premiums and no bluffs, which is an exploitative choice against players who call 3-bets too wide and never what a solver does. The easiest way to tell the shape of a solver range is to count the calls. Here are five spots side by side: ![Chart: 3-bet, call and fold shares in five solver spots, cash 100bb and MTT 40bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-a-3-bet-in-poker-a-theoretical-a-shape.png) *Share of all 1,326 hands. Right column: how much of the played range (3-bet + call) is a 3-bet.* ## Cash, 100bb: the button 3-bets or folds On the button against a 2.5bb CO open, the solver 3-bets 12.5% of hands to 7.5bb and calls only 3.0%. That’s 81% of the played range going in as a 3-bet, the clearest linear range in this article. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, Normal NL200 GG 100bb 6-max, BTN vs CO 2.5bb open: fold 84.5%, call 3.0%, raise 7.5bb 12.5%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-a-3-bet-in-poker-a-theoretical-a-cash-btn-vs-co-fig.jpg) *Cash 100bb, 6-max, BTN vs a 2.5bb CO open. Orange = 3-bet to 7.5bb, teal = call.* - Always 3-bet: AA, KK, QQ, AKs, AQs, AKo. - Mostly 3-bet: AJo 95%, KQo 84%, KJs 86%, T9s 87%, 65s 85%, and the suited aces A8s to A3s at 77 to 99%. - The few calls: ATs (74% call), AJs (54%), and part of 99–77. - Fold: almost everything below, including 55–22 most of the time. AJo and KQo are not bluffs here. They sit in the middle of a merged range and 3-bet as thin value. The call price is poor: the button needs 2.5 / (4 + 2.5) = 38.5% equity to flat, with both blinds still to act behind. ## Tournament, 40bb: the same seat plays polarised Same seat, same open, different game. At 40bb with a big-blind ante the button 3-bets 9.8% to 6.8bb and calls 15.1%. Only 39% of the played range is a 3-bet. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, CE-Symmetric 40bb 9-handed with BB ante, BTN vs CO 2.3bb open: fold 75.1%, call 15.1%, raise 6.8bb 9.8%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-a-3-bet-in-poker-a-theoretical-a-mtt-btn-vs-co-fig.jpg) *MTT 40bb, 9-handed, 1bb BB ante, BTN vs a 2.3bb CO open. Orange = 3-bet to 6.8bb, teal = call.* - Top: AA, KK, QQ and AKs, AKo always 3-bet; AQs 98%, TT 96%, JJ 86%. - Middle, called 100%: AJs to A7s, A5s, KQs, KTs, K9s, QJs, QTs, JTs, T9s and every pair from 66 to 22. - Bottom, 3-bet: Q8s 84%, A9o 76%, A2s 66%, J8s 66%, K7s 63%, A3s 57%. That’s the polarised shape: strong hands and weaker hands 3-bet, the good-but-not-great hands flat. The ante makes the pot 2.3 + 0.5 + 1 + 1 = 4.8bb before the button acts, so a flat costs 2.3 / (4.8 + 2.3) = 32.4% instead of 38.5% in the cash spot, and the opener fights back harder over a 3-bet at 40bb (below). Read that as an explanation of the solver output, not a proof. ## Which hands make good 3-bet bluffs The low 3-bets in these spots are mostly **suited**: A2s, A3s, K7s, Q8s and J8s on the tournament button; A5s at 74%, K2s at 70% and J7s at 58% in the cash big blind below. They block a part of the opener’s strongest hands (an ace blocks AA and AK) and still have equity when called. Some offsuit aces show up too, like A9o at 76% on the MTT button, where the alternative is folding. These spots don’t support the old advice that offsuit broadways like KJo or QJo are the typical bluff class. On the cash button AJo and KQo are part of the value region, and in the big blind below KJo and QJo mostly call. Pick bluffs from the chart for your stack and seat instead of from a rule. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_40bb_btn_vs_co” to=”/open/mtt-40bb-btn-vs-co” title=”Button facing a CO open, 40bb MTT” body=”The same 3-bet decision as the cash example, at tournament depth.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Out of position: the big blind The big blind closes the action and already has 1bb in, so it defends wide by calling and 3-bets a polarised range. In the cash game against a button open it 3-bets 11.5% to 11bb and calls 29.0%. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, Normal NL200 GG 100bb, BB vs BTN 2.5bb open: fold 59.5%, call 29.0%, raise 11bb 11.5%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-a-3-bet-in-poker-a-theoretical-a-cash-bb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *Cash 100bb, BB vs a 2.5bb BTN open. Orange = 3-bet to 11bb.* AA–JJ, AKs, AQs and AKo 3-bet every time. ATs through A6s, KJs through K7s, AJo are pure calls, and 88 through 22 call almost every time. Then 3-bets come back at the bottom: K2s, A5s, J7s, T6s. At 40bb in the tournament the big blind even has a jam: 4.6% of hands go all-in, mostly pairs like 77 and 33 and AJo 75% of the time, next to a 13.3% raise to 9.1bb and a 61.4% call. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, CE-Symmetric 40bb BB vs BTN 2.3bb open: fold 20.8%, call 61.4%, raise 9.1bb 13.3%, all-in 4.6%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-a-3-bet-in-poker-a-theoretical-a-mtt-bb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *MTT 40bb, BB ante, BB vs a 2.3bb BTN open. Dark red = all-in 40bb.* ## The squeeze A **squeeze** is a 3-bet against an open *and at least one caller*. A re-raise over a lone open is just a 3-bet. The caller has usually capped their range by flatting, and there is more dead money. Now the small blind calls the button’s open before the big blind acts. The price to call improves to 1.5 / 7.5 = 20.0% (it was 1.5 / 5.5 = 27.3% heads-up), and yet the solver calls much less: 16.1% instead of 29.0%. It squeezes 12.7% to 12.2bb. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, Normal NL200 GG 100bb, BB vs BTN 2.5bb open and SB call: squeeze to 12.2bb 12.7%, call 16.1%, fold 71.2%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-a-3-bet-in-poker-a-theoretical-a-cash-bb-squeeze-fig.jpg) *Cash 100bb, BB facing a BTN open and an SB call. Squeeze to 12.2bb: 12.7%, call 16.1%, fold 71.2%.* AA–TT, AKs, AQs, KQs, AKo and AQo squeeze every time. The calls are the hands that play well multiway: AJs–A7s, K9s, K8s and all pairs from 99 down. The low squeezes are again suited: Q8s 80%, T7s 77%, A2s 69%, K3s 64%. ## 3-bet sizing: one size for the whole range These are the sizes the solutions use. They are inputs to the simulations (each spot gets one 3-bet size), so they show workable sizes, not the only correct ones: - In position, cash 100bb: BTN 3-bets a 2.5bb CO open to 7.5bb, 3x the open. - Out of position, cash: SB to 9.4bb, BB to 11bb against the same kind of open. - Squeeze, cash: 12.2bb against an open and one caller. - Tournament 40bb: BTN to 6.8bb against a 2.3bb open, BB to 9.1bb, and all-in as a second option in the blinds. The usual reasoning: out of position you size up because you’ll play the flop without position, so you want the opener to continue less often. Against more players, as in the squeeze, the size grows with the dead money. Don’t pick the size by your hand: big with AA, small with a bluff. That tells a thinking opponent what you have. The solutions above give each spot a single 3-bet size and the solver still builds a full range into it, so on the cash button AA and A5s both use the same 7.5bb. The 40bb blinds add the all-in as a second option, and that is a separate part of the range, not a bigger size for monsters. Choose the size per spot: position, stack depth, ante, number of players. Live games often use bigger sizes than online; that part is a heuristic, not solver output. ## Fold equity: why 3-bet bluffs need equity A 3-bet bluff risks the raise to win what’s in the pot. If the bluff never won when called, it would need the opener to fold this often: Cash 100bb: BTN 3-bets to 7.5bb, pot 4bb fold needed=7.57.5+4=65.2%\text{fold needed} = \frac{7.5}{7.5 + 4} = 65.2\% The CO folds 63.7% of its opening range to that 3-bet. That’s below 65.2%, and the formula even ignores the two blinds who can still wake up. So a pure bluff doesn’t quite work, and the solver picks bluffs that win when called: suited aces, suited connectors. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, Normal NL200 GG 100bb, CO vs BTN 3-bet to 7.5bb: fold 63.7%, call 17.2%, 4-bet to 17.2bb 19.1%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-a-3-bet-in-poker-a-theoretical-a-cash-co-vs-3bet-fig.jpg) *Cash 100bb, CO facing a 7.5bb button 3-bet, share of CO’s opening range. 4-bet to 17.2bb: 19.1%, call 17.2%, fold 63.7%.* In the tournament the gap is much bigger: MTT 40bb: BTN 3-bets to 6.8bb, pot 4.8bb fold needed=6.86.8+4.8=58.6%\text{fold needed} = \frac{6.8}{6.8 + 4.8} = 58.6\% At 40bb the CO folds only 40.2% of its opening range, calls 40.2% and jams 19.6%. A 6.8bb 3-bet is 17% of a 40bb stack, so the opener can shove over it, and a bluff that has to fold to the jam loses the whole 6.8bb. That’s one reason the tournament button 3-bets less and flats more. The CO even calls with AA here (100% of the time) and jams KK, because the jam range needs strong hands too. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, CE-Symmetric 40bb, CO vs BTN 3-bet to 6.8bb: fold 40.2%, call 40.2%, all-in 19.6%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-a-3-bet-in-poker-a-theoretical-a-mtt-co-vs-3bet-fig.jpg) *MTT 40bb, BB ante, CO facing a 6.8bb button 3-bet. Dark red = all-in 40bb.* [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_co_vs_3bet” to=”/open/cash-100bb-co-vs-3bet” title=”CO facing a button 3-bet, NL200″ body=”The other side of the same decision: what the opener continues with once the button raises.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Why you lose in 3-bet pots Most of the money in 3-bet pots goes to three ordinary leaks. Leak 1. The wrong hands in the pot. Flatting AJo or KQo on the cash button, where the solver 3-bets them 95% and 84% of the time, puts you in a multiway pot with a dominated hand. Folding too much to 3-bets is the mirror leak: at 100bb the CO continues with 36.3% of its opening range (19.1% 4-bet + 17.2% call). Leak 2. Forgetting who has the range advantage. After the BTN 3-bets to 7.5bb and the CO calls, the pot is 7.5 + 7.5 + 0.5 + 1 = 16.5bb with 92.5bb behind. You can work out who that pot favours from the preflop charts alone, without solving a flop. The button’s range is the 12.5% it chose to re-raise. The CO’s range is the part of its open that only called, and that part is capped: the solver 4-bets AA, KK and AKs 100% of the time and QQ 98.6%, so the very top of the range is almost never in it. Cash 100bb: BTN 3-bets to 7.5bb, CO calls SPR=92.57.5+7.5+0.5+1=92.516.5=5.6\text{SPR} = \frac{92.5}{7.5 + 7.5 + 0.5 + 1} = \frac{92.5}{16.5} = 5.6 A capped range out of position tends to check a lot, and the stronger range tends to do the betting. That much is a heuristic. The section after next puts solver frequencies on it, from a 3-bet pot solved across 184 flops at a stack depth where the numbers are worth quoting. At 40bb the same line leaves a very different pot. The arithmetic is the whole point: MTT 40bb: BTN 3-bets to 6.8bb, CO calls (1bb BB ante) SPR=40−6.86.8+6.8+0.5+1+1=33.216.1=2.1\text{SPR} = \frac{40 – 6.8}{6.8 + 6.8 + 0.5 + 1 + 1} = \frac{33.2}{16.1} = 2.1 Two pots behind instead of five and a half. With that little left, stacks go in over one or two streets, so as a rule of thumb top pair is usually strong enough to play for them. Play the SPR you have, not the one from your cash-game habits. Leak 3. Adjusting in the wrong direction. This part is exploitative and heuristic, not solver output. If an opponent 4-bets a lot, cut the 3-bet bluffs that have to fold to a 4-bet and keep the value. Against someone who folds too much to 3-bets, add bluffs. And when a player is aggressive *after* the flop, tightening up is the wrong answer: they bluff more, so you catch bluffs wider and give up less. ## What the 3-bettor actually does on the flop The app has a solved 3-bet pot at almost exactly that depth, and it is worth reading before you build habits out of rules of thumb. Spot: **Library report, CE-Symmetric 50bb, 9-handed, 1bb big-blind ante**. The button opens, the big blind 3-bets to 8.8bb, the button calls. Pot **19.1bb**, **41.2bb** behind, **SPR 2.16**. The 3-bettor holds 17.1% of hands, the caller 33.9%. Note who is where: the 3-bettor here is the one *out* of position, which is the big blind case from earlier in this article, not the button case. The report solves 184 flops with the same sizing menu on every board, so the frequencies below are comparable across all of them; the flop node offers four of those sizes. Across those 184 flops the 3-bettor bets **67.6%** of the time. Two flops in three, which is a long way from the “check and give up out of position” picture. The bet is also nearly always small: - 15% of the pot: 24.6% of the time - 30% of the pot: 33.7% - 60% of the pot: 9.1% - 120% of the pot: 0.2% Everything over half pot adds up to **9.3%**. A 3-bet pot at SPR 2 does not need a big bet to set up the stacks: 30% of 19.1bb is 5.7bb into 41.2bb behind, and two of those plus a shove is the whole stack. The board moves the frequency more than anything else does. By the top card: - Ace high: bets **78.9%** (52 flops) - King high: 72.6% (29) - Queen high: 59.7% (29) - Jack high: 57.8% (17) - Ten high: **47.5%** (18) Thirty-one points between an ace and a ten, in the same spot, at the same stack. The frequencies are the solver’s; the reading is mine, and it is the ordinary one: a 17.1% 3-betting range is built around the top of the deck, while a 33.9% calling range is not, so an ace-high flop favours the 3-bettor and a ten-high flop is much closer to shared. Either way it is a statement about ranges, not about your hand. AK on T74 is still AK. Two more cuts from the same 184 flops: paired boards get bet **80.6%** of the time (63 flops), monotone boards **57.8%** (11). Those two frequencies are measured. The usual explanation for them is a heuristic: a paired flop misses both ranges and the stronger one collects, and a monotone flop gives the wider range more of the suit. One warning about carrying these numbers around: they come from *this* spot, 50bb, big blind against a button open, one ante, SPR 2.16. The cash example earlier in this article has SPR 5.6, more than twice as deep, and nothing above transfers to it. Open the report at the depth you actually play. ## How to study it Open the seat you play most against each opener and count the calls. Lots of flats: polarised, bluffs from the bottom. Barely any: 3-bet the top, fold the rest. Then check your real stack depth, because 100bb and 40bb are not the same game. [pa-cta id=”open_report_mtt_50bb_btn_vs_3bet” to=”/open/report-mtt-50bb-btn-vs-3bet” title=”Report: button vs a 3-bet, 50bb, 184 flops” body=”What happens after the 3-bet: the postflop half of the decision, across every flop texture.” label=”Open the report”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # GTO vs exploitative poker: MDF, node locking and when to deviate Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/gto-poker-vs-exploitative-poker Author: Paweł Brzeski Published: 2025-03-26 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![GTO vs exploitative poker: MDF, node locking and when to deviate](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/gto-poker-vs-exploitative-poker-hero.jpg) You don’t have to pick between GTO and exploitative poker. They answer two different questions. GTO asks what you should do if you know nothing about your opponent. Exploitative play asks what you should do once you know something real. Below I put both on the same flop in the Poker Academy postflop solver: first the equilibrium answer, then the answer against an opponent locked as a calling station. The gap between the two is large, and so is the risk of taking the second one to the table. ## What GTO means GTO (game theory optimal) is a strategy at Nash equilibrium: neither player can change their strategy alone and win more. A solver finds it by letting two strategies play against each other until neither can improve. That gives GTO one property nothing else has: in a two-player spot, no opponent can gain anything against it by playing differently. It still does not win the most. It wins when the opponent takes actions the equilibrium never takes because they lose EV, like calling with hands that should fold. Against other mistakes, such as mixing two equally good actions at the wrong frequencies, GTO wins nothing extra, and that is the gap exploitative play fills. One caveat: solver strategies are for heads-up pots. Multiway pots and tournament payouts (ICM) break the clean guarantee, so treat GTO there as the best available baseline, not a proof. ## What exploitative poker means Exploitative poker changes the baseline to punish a specific leak. If a player never bluffs the river, you fold more. If a player never folds, you stop bluffing and bet your value bigger. Every deviation that wins more against the leak opens a leak of your own. If your read is wrong, or the opponent adjusts, the player you tried to exploit is now exploiting you. | | GTO | Exploitative | | --- | --- | --- | | Assumes about the opponent | Nothing | A specific, repeated leak | | Against a player with a real leak | Wins from some mistakes, but not the maximum | Wins more | | If your read is wrong | Nothing to lose | Loses EV, sometimes a lot | | If the opponent adjusts | Can’t be punished | You have to adjust back | | Where it fits | Unknown or strong opponents, your default | Known pools and players, with enough hands to trust the read | Exploiting a stable leak correctly earns more than equilibrium play over the long run, not only over a session. You pay for it in exposure rather than in variance. ## Minimum defense frequency (MDF) MDF is where most players meet game theory for the first time, and where they misuse it most. It answers one question: how much of your range has to continue against a bet so that a bluff with no equity can’t profit automatically? MDF and bluff break-even MDF=potpot+betα=betpot+bet=1−MDF\text{MDF}=\frac{\text{pot}}{\text{pot}+\text{bet}}\qquad\alpha=\frac{\text{bet}}{\text{pot}+\text{bet}}=1-\text{MDF} A bluff that gives up when called risks the bet to win the pot, so it breaks even when you fold α of the time. Fold more often than α and any two cards bluff at a profit, before counting your raises. Against a half-pot bet, say 5bb into 10bb: Half-pot bet: 5bb into 10bb MDF=1010+5=66.7%α=515=33.3%\text{MDF}=\frac{10}{10+5}=66.7\%\qquad\alpha=\frac{5}{15}=33.3\% ![Chart of minimum defense frequency by bet size: 80% against a quarter pot, 75% against a third, 66.7% against half pot, 60% against two thirds, 57.1% against three quarters, 50% against pot, 40% against 1.5 pot, 33.3% against 2x pot](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/gto-poker-vs-exploitative-poker-mdf-by-size.png) *MDF and α by bet size. Pure maths, the same in cash games and tournaments.* Three limits of MDF: - It doesn’t pick hands. It’s a share of your whole range, and which hands make up that share depends on showdown value, blockers and what beats what. The solver decides that, the formula doesn’t. - It assumes the bettor’s range at that size can hold any hand. If the bettor’s range for that size is strong, folding more than MDF is correct. - It ignores rake and the bettor’s equity. A bluff with a draw needs fewer folds than α. ## A hand-level example, fixed The old version of this article used this spot: river K♠︎Q♠︎5♥︎3♣︎2♠︎, your opponent bets half pot, and you hold A♦︎5♦︎. It called A♦︎5♦︎ “middle pair” and said you must call it to meet MDF. Both parts were wrong. Count the cards first. The board ranks are K, Q, 5, 3, 2, so a pair of fives is **third pair** with an ace kicker. It’s not a straight: A-2-3-5 needs a 4. It’s not a flush either: A♦︎5♦︎ has no spade, and the board has only three spades. Then the range part. MDF says 66.7% of your range continues against a half-pot bet. It says nothing about whether this hand belongs in that 66.7%. Whether third pair calls depends on what else you arrive with, and on what the bettor’s range holds on a board where three spades got there. I don’t have a solver run for this exact river, so any answer for this one hand is a heuristic, not GTO. [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_co_vs_hj” to=”/open/cash-100bb-co-vs-hj” title=”CO facing an LJ open, NL200″ body=”The preflop node the exploit examples start from, before anyone deviates.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## A real node: the solver folds more than MDF Here is a spot I do have solved. Cash game, 6-max, 100bb, Normal NL200 GG preflop simulation. HJ opens to 2.5bb and CO calls. The flat is rare: in this simulation CO 3-bets 9.3% of hands against the HJ open and calls only 1.8%. The pot is 2.5 + 2.5 + 0.5 + 1 = 6.5bb and both players have 97.5bb behind. The flop is 8♣︎8♥︎6♦︎. HJ checks 72.6% of its range. First, what does CO do after the check? ![Poker Academy postflop solver, GTO view, Normal NL200 GG 100bb 6-max cash, HJ opens CO calls, flop 8c8h6d, HJ checks, CO strategy: check 32.6%, bet 25% 65.0%, bet 75% 1.8%, bet 150% 0.6%, all-in 0%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/gto-poker-vs-exploitative-poker-gto-r-0-c-fig.jpg) *GTO, CO after HJ checks on 8♣︎8♥︎6♦︎: bet 25% of pot with 65.0% of the range, check 32.6%, bet 75% only 1.8%.* CO bets small with most of its range. The 75% bet is almost never used. Now look at HJ facing that rare 75% bet, 4.9bb into 6.5bb: HJ facing a 4.9bb bet into 6.5bb MDF=6.56.5+4.9=6.511.4=57.0%pot odds=4.96.5+4.9+4.9=4.916.3=30.1%\text{MDF}=\frac{6.5}{6.5+4.9}=\frac{6.5}{11.4}=57.0\%\qquad\text{pot odds}=\frac{4.9}{6.5+4.9+4.9}=\frac{4.9}{16.3}=30.1\% ![Poker Academy postflop solver, GTO view, HJ facing a 4.9bb bet into 6.5bb on 8c8h6d: fold 65.7% (138 combos), call 10.4% (22), raise 50% 20.6% (43), raise 100% 3.4% (7), all-in 0%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/gto-poker-vs-exploitative-poker-gto-r-0-c-b49-fig.jpg) *GTO, HJ facing CO’s 75% bet: fold 65.7%, call 10.4%, raise 20.6% and 3.4%. Numbers under each action are combos.* How much of HJ’s range continues continue=22+43+7138+22+43+7=72210=34.3%\text{continue}=\frac{22+43+7}{138+22+43+7}=\frac{72}{210}=34.3\% MDF says 57.0%. The solver continues with 34.3% and folds 65.7%, well over α = 43.0%, and that is not a hole in the solver. My reading, which is a heuristic: CO bets this size with only 1.8% of its range, so what arrives here is a narrow range, and HJ’s side is the part that already checked. Read MDF as a warning sign that you might be over-folding, rather than as a rule the equilibrium follows. [pa-cta id=”gto_exploit_solver” to=”/gto-postflop-solver” title=”Open any flop in the postflop solver” body=”See the range split behind every bet size, then lock a node and compare.” label=”Open the solver”] ## Locking a calling station Now the exploitative side. Poker Academy’s postflop solver has node locking: you fix how one player plays at chosen nodes, and the solver re-solves the rest of the tree against that fixed strategy. You can lock a node by hand or pick a profile: Nit, Bully or Calling Station, each in S, M or L strength. The original GTO solution stays untouched, and the app shows both side by side with the change per action. This is the same flop, with HJ locked by the Calling Station L profile. First, HJ facing the same 4.9bb bet: ![Poker Academy postflop solver, exploit view vs Calling Station L, HJ facing a 4.9bb bet on 8c8h6d: fold 46.9% (-18.8pp), call 20.7% (+10.3pp), raise 50% 28.2% (+7.6pp), raise 100% 4.2% (+0.8pp)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/gto-poker-vs-exploitative-poker-exploit-r-0-c-b49-fig.jpg) *Exploit view, HJ locked as Calling Station L: fold drops from 65.7% to 46.9%, call rises from 10.4% to 20.7%. Padlocks mark locked hands.* The locked HJ folds 18.8 percentage points less. Here’s how CO’s best response changes one node earlier, after HJ checks: ![Poker Academy postflop solver, exploit view vs Calling Station L, CO after HJ checks on 8c8h6d: check 17.6% (-15.0pp), bet 25% 10.7% (-54.3pp), bet 75% 0.2%, bet 150% 0.4%, all-in 71.1% (+71.1pp)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/gto-poker-vs-exploitative-poker-exploit-r-0-c-fig.jpg) *Exploit view, CO against the locked station: all-in 71.1% (GTO 0%), bet 25% down from 65.0% to 10.7%. The thin strip under each hand is the GTO mix.* - Small bets disappear. Bet 25% goes from 65.0% to 10.7%. A small bet exists to get folds from weak hands cheaply, and this player doesn’t fold enough for that. - The value goes all-in. CO jams 97.5bb into 6.5bb with 71.1% of its range, where GTO jams 0%. If HJ calls with worse, the biggest bet wins the most. - EV moves. The app’s lock-impact line at this node shows CO +3.31bb and HJ −3.47bb against GTO. Don’t copy the 71% jam into your game. The Calling Station L lock is an extreme model, and the solver answers an extreme model with an extreme strategy. My guess, not a solver result: a real player folds his worst hands to a 15-times-pot shove, and against that player most of those jams burn money. What carries over is the direction: against a player who calls too much, bluff less, bet value bigger, and stop using sizes designed to get folds. ## How to exploit without getting exploited - Start from the baseline. Know what GTO does in the spot, because you can’t see a deviation without knowing what it deviates from. - Name the leak as a frequency. “He calls too much” is vague. “He folds 30% to flop bets where the solver folds 60%” is something you can lock. - Get enough hands. One showdown isn’t a read; a tendency seen over hundreds of spots is. - Lock only what you know, then check the EV. Lock the nodes you have evidence for and let the solver work out the rest. If your EV barely moves against the lock, the leak isn’t worth the risk of deviating. - Deviate in proportion to your confidence. A mild lock (S) is a smaller bet on your read than an extreme one (L). Mass data analysis (MDA) is how serious players get those frequencies: large hand databases of a player pool, compared with solver baselines. The pool’s average leak becomes the lock. It is the same workflow as above, with real numbers in place of a profile. ## Two misconceptions **“GTO only works against GTO players.”** It is the other way round. No opponent can gain against GTO in a heads-up spot, and it wins against every player who takes the EV-losing actions the equilibrium avoids. What it misses is the maximum against a specific leak. **“Exploitative play doesn’t need theory.”** Reads without a baseline are guesses. If you don’t know that the solver folds 65.7% facing a 75% bet in the spot above, you can’t tell whether a player who folds 50% there is a station or a nit. ## Cash games and tournaments The example above is a 100bb cash game, and exploitation is most common there: pools are big, players repeat, and hand databases are large. The same logic works in tournaments, where chips aren’t money. Near the bubble and at final tables, ICM makes calling off your stack more expensive, so both a “station” and a GTO player should call off their stack less often. Lock against what a player does at that stage, not against what he does at a cash table. ## Wrapping up Use GTO as the default and exploitative play as a deliberate bet on a read. The solver shows you both: open the spot, look at the equilibrium, lock what you know, and compare the EV before you change your game. [pa-cta id=”gto_exploit_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Train the baseline first” body=”Play the spots you face against solver strategies and get every decision graded.” label=”Start training”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # Short stack poker strategy: how to play 10, 15 and 20bb in tournaments Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-or-less Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2025-03-20 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Short stack poker strategy: how to play 10, 15 and 20bb in tournaments](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-o-hero.jpg) Most tournament players spend a big part of every event with 20 big blinds or less. It is a different game with fewer options, and those options are easier to learn than deep-stacked poker. The numbers here are solver ranges, not rules of thumb. They all come from the preflop charts in Poker Academy: **chipEV, 9-handed, 1bb big-blind ante, 2bb opens**. I show the charts as they look in the app, so you can open the same spots yourself. ## What counts as a short stack? In a tournament, count your stack in big blinds, not chips. A 2,000-chip stack at 100/200 is 10bb. This article covers **10 to 20bb**, where one preflop decision often decides the whole hand. Cash games work differently. Stacks there are usually 100bb, and a player sitting with 40bb or less is already short. The ranges below are for tournaments with antes. Without an ante, or under ICM pressure near the money, they get tighter. ## The big picture: what each stack plays Here is what the solver does when the action folds to you, at every position and three stack depths. Read a row from left to right: as the stack gets shorter the raises turn into all-ins, and that starts in late position. ![Solver open ranges by position at 20bb, 15bb and 10bb: raise, all-in and small blind limp percentages, chipEV 9-handed with big blind ante](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-o-open-table.png) *Share of all 1,326 hands. Each row adds up to what the position plays; the rest folds.* - At 20bb every position from EP to CO only min-raises. Nobody open-jams except a few hands on the button and in the small blind. - At 15bb the first two positions still only raise. All-ins show up from MP on and grow to 19.7% of hands on the button. - At 10bb all-in is the main play everywhere, from 10.8% of hands in EP to 33.5% on the button. Notice what barely moves: how many hands you play from each seat. EP plays 13.9% of hands at 15bb and 15.6% at 20bb. The stack mostly changes *how* you enter the pot, and barely changes how often. ## 20bb: min-raise and fold At 20bb the solver plays a normal, tight opening range and raises to 2bb. From EP that is 15.6% of hands: every pair down to 77, all suited aces from A4s up, suited kings to K8s, AJo, ATo, KQo and suited broadways and connectors like JTs and T9s, with 98s part of the time. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 20bb EP RFI, 9-handed chipEV: raise 2bb 15.6%, fold 84.4%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-o-s20-ep-fig.jpg) *20bb, EP first in. Orange = raise 2bb. Nothing jams.* A 20bb all-in risks your whole stack to win 2.5bb of blinds and ante, and the calls come mostly from hands that beat you or flip with you. A 2bb raise wins the same 2.5bb when everyone folds, and it lets you fold when someone jams over the top. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_20bb_rfi_ladder” to=”/open/mtt-20bb-rfi-ladder” title=”Opening ranges by seat, 9-max 20bb” body=”EP through the button at 20bb: the depth where the ladder tightens fastest.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## 15bb: where the all-ins start 15bb is the depth where most players go wrong, in both directions. From early position the solver still doesn’t jam at all: the EP range is 13.9% of hands and every one of them is a 2bb raise. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 15bb EP RFI: raise 2bb 13.9% with AA-77, A5s+, K9s+, Q9s+, JTs, T9s, ATo+, KQo, fold 86.1%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-o-s15-ep-fig.jpg) *15bb, EP first in: raise 13.9%, fold 86.1%.* 15bb jam from early position risk=15 bbreward=0.5+1+1=2.5 bb\text{risk}=15\text{ bb}\qquad\text{reward}=0.5+1+1=2.5\text{ bb} Eight players still act behind you. Risking 15bb to win 2.5bb only works if they fold very often, and from EP they don’t fold often enough. So the early seats keep raising small. The button is a different picture: 18.3% raise and 19.7% jam. Look at *which* hands jam. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 15bb BTN RFI: raise 2bb 18.3%, all-in 19.7%, fold 62%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-o-s15-btn-fig.jpg) *15bb, button first in. Dark red = all-in, orange = raise 2bb.* - Raise 2bb: the best hands (AA, KK, QQ, AKs, AKo) and hands that play well after the flop, such as suited kings, suited queens and connectors. - All-in: the middle of the range. Small pairs 22 to 66, every offsuit ace from A2o to AQo, A2s to A5s, KQo, KJo and QJo. - Fold: the bottom. This surprises a lot of players. The jamming range is the part of your range that hates facing a jam after a small raise. With 55 or A7o you want the pot now, while the blinds still fold. With AA you are happy to let them jam. ## 10bb: jam or fold, almost At 10bb a 2bb raise is a fifth of your stack. If someone jams, you are usually getting the price to call. So the solver mostly skips the small raise and moves all-in. On the button it jams 33.5% of hands. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 10bb BTN RFI: all-in 33.5%, raise 2bb 5.6%, fold 61%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-o-s10-btn-fig.jpg) *10bb, button first in: jam 33.5%, raise 5.6%, fold 61%.* The small raise that is left has a job. From EP the solver still min-raises 4.7% of hands, and that part holds AA, KK and QQ with a few suited aces. Jamming every hand you play would make your strongest hands easy to fold against. ## The small blind: limp a lot The small blind is the one seat where the solver limps, and it limps more than half of all hands. At 15bb the split is 52.3% limp, 21.1% all-in, 10.4% raise to 2.5bb and only 16.3% fold. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 15bb SB RFI: limp 52.3%, all-in 21.1%, raise 2.5bb 10.4%, fold 16.3%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-o-s15-sb-fig.jpg) *15bb, small blind first in. Teal = limp.* The price explains why it folds so little. With the big-blind ante in the middle, completing costs half a big blind for a 3bb pot: Small blind limp price price=0.51+1+1=0.53=16.7%\text{price}=\frac{0.5}{1+1+1}=\frac{0.5}{3}=16.7\% That price is not the equity you need to win at showdown, because the big blind can still raise, but it is why almost any two cards are worth a look. The limp range also holds strong hands: AKs, AQs, JJ, 88 and 77 limp too, so the big blind cannot raise every limp for free. Small pairs and offsuit aces again go all-in. ## Defending the big blind Short stacks in the big blind have to defend wide. Against a 2bb button raise at 15bb the solver folds only 23.9% of hands. It calls 59.6% and jams 16.5%. The app shows the price right on the table: Pot odds: BB vs a 2bb button raise 12+0.5+1+1+1=15.5=18.2%\frac{1}{2+0.5+1+1+1}=\frac{1}{5.5}=18.2\% ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 15bb BB vs RFI from BTN: call 59.6%, all-in 16.5%, fold 23.9%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-o-s15-bb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *15bb, big blind against a 2bb button open. Teal = call, dark red = all-in.* A button jam is a different price. You call 14bb more, and the solver calls with 24.5% of hands: every pair, every suited ace, most offsuit aces, and the best broadways. Pot odds: BB vs a 15bb button jam 1415+0.5+1+1+14=1431.5=44.4%\frac{14}{15+0.5+1+1+14}=\frac{14}{31.5}=44.4\% You need 44.4% equity against the jamming range. Hands like KTo and QJo make it. Suited connectors like 87s mostly don’t. ## Why the opens are 2bb All the charts above use 2bb opens, so they don’t prove that a bigger open is worse. The pot odds show why short stacks prefer small raises anyway. Say you open at 15bb and the big blind jams 15bb: Open to 2bb, then call the jam 1315+2+0.5+1+13=1331.5=41.3%\frac{13}{15+2+0.5+1+13}=\frac{13}{31.5}=41.3\% Open to 4.5bb, then call the jam 10.515+4.5+0.5+1+10.5=10.531.5=33.3%\frac{10.5}{15+4.5+0.5+1+10.5}=\frac{10.5}{31.5}=33.3\% After a 4.5bb open you need only 33.3% equity to call, so you end up calling with hands you did not want to play for your stack. After a 2bb open you need 41.3% and can fold the weak part of your range for 2bb instead of 4.5bb. Treat this as maths, not solver output. [pa-cta id=”short_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Drill these spots until they’re automatic” body=”Pick 15bb and the positions you struggle with. The trainer deals the hands and grades every decision against the solver.” label=”Start training”] ## Common short-stack mistakes - Open-jamming from early position at 15bb. The solver raises small there, and jams start from middle position. - Jamming only premium hands. At 15bb the all-in range is the middle of your range, and AA and KK are better as raises. - Folding the small blind too much. With a big-blind ante, the solver plays more than 80% of hands from the small blind at 15bb. - Over-folding the big blind. Against a 2bb button open at 15bb, the solver defends 76% of hands. - Waiting too long. Below 10bb, your all-in wins less fold equity every orbit. Don’t fold the hands the chart jams just to wait for a better one. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_15bb_rfi_ladder” to=”/open/mtt-15bb-rfi-ladder” title=”Opening ranges by seat, 9-max 15bb” body=”Short-stack depth: where opening turns into shoving, seat by seat.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Study it the way you’ll play it The ranges change with stack depth, ante format and table size, so look up the spot you actually play instead of learning one chart by heart. In the app you can switch the stack from 20bb to 15bb to 10bb on the same position and watch the orange raises turn red. Then play the spots in the trainer, where every decision gets a grade. Cheers! 🙂 --- # Heads-up poker strategy in tournaments: solver ranges from 10bb to 100bb Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-play-heads-up-poker-in-tournaments Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2025-03-13 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Heads-up poker strategy in tournaments: solver ranges from 10bb to 100bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-heads-up-poker-in-tournament-hero.jpg) Heads-up is where a tournament pays the most. The gap between first and second is usually one of the biggest jumps on the payout table, and you play it against one opponent, every hand, from both blinds. It also gets less study time than it deserves. So every range and frequency in this guide comes from the heads-up MTT charts in Poker Academy: **chipEV, 2 players, 0.25bb total ante, stacks from 8bb to 100bb**. The screenshots are the same spots in the app. ## The setup: who posts what Heads-up the blinds flip around the button. The button posts the small blind, so it acts first before the flop and last on the flop, turn and river. The big blind acts second preflop and first on every later street. That leaves the button with a small blind invested and position after the flop. The big blind has more money in and plays every postflop street out of position, which is why the button plays so many hands. In these simulations there is a small ante on top of the blinds, so the pot before anyone acts is: Starting pot, heads-up pot=0.5⏟SB+1⏟BB+0.25⏟ante=1.75 bb\text{pot}=\underbrace{0.5}_{\text{SB}}+\underbrace{1}_{\text{BB}}+\underbrace{0.25}_{\text{ante}}=1.75\text{ bb} Heads-up is also simpler than any other tournament spot. With two players left there are only two prizes, so under ICM your prize equity is: ICM with two players left $EQ=P2+(P1−P2)⋅your chipsall chips\$\text{EQ}=P_2+(P_1-P_2)\cdot\frac{\text{your chips}}{\text{all chips}} That is a straight line in your chip count. Every chip is worth the same amount of money, so the chipEV charts are also the $EV charts here, and the ICM pressure you feel at a final table is gone. That comes from the arithmetic rather than from the solver, and it ignores skill edges and the blind levels still to come. ## The button: strategy changes with every stack Here is what the button does first in, for all fourteen stack depths in the charts. ![Heads-up MTT solver strategy for the button (small blind) first in by stack depth from 8bb to 100bb: all-in, raise, limp and fold percentages, chipEV, 0.25bb ante](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-heads-up-poker-in-tournament-button-by-stack.png) *Button first in, share of all 1,326 hands. Rows add up to 100% (rounding).* - The button almost never folds. From 12.5bb up it folds 4.1% of hands or less, and only at 8bb (21.2%) and 10bb (10.1%) does the fold range get real. - Limping is the default at short stacks. At 15bb the button limps 82.7% of hands, and the share falls as stacks get deeper, to 35 to 41% from 50bb on. - All-ins disappear and raises take over. The button jams 48.7% at 8bb and 28.8% at 10bb, 1.1% at 20bb, and never from 25bb up. The raise starts at 15bb and is the main play from 40bb on (53.1%). It folds so little because of the price. Completing the small blind costs half a big blind into a 1.75bb pot: Button limp price 0.51.75+0.5=0.52.25=22.2%\frac{0.5}{1.75+0.5}=\frac{0.5}{2.25}=22.2\% That is not the equity you need at showdown, because the big blind can still raise, but it explains why almost any two cards get a look. ## 10bb: limp or jam At 10bb the button has no small raise in this tree. It either limps, jams or folds, and it does all three: 61.1% limp, 28.8% all-in, 10.1% fold. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, heads-up MTT 10bb, button (SB) first in: limp 61.1%, all-in 28.8%, fold 10.1%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-heads-up-poker-in-tournament-s10-sb-fig.jpg) *Heads-up MTT, 10bb, button first in. Teal = limp (the app calls it Call), dark red = all-in, grey = fold.* Look which hands jam. AA and KK limp 100% of the time, and so do AKs and AKo. The jam range is the middle: every offsuit ace from A2o to AJo, most offsuit kings from K3o to KTo, the small pairs 22 to 44, and suited hands like A2s, K2s to K4s, 96s and 65s. My reading of it, not the solver’s: a strong hand is happy to limp because the big blind attacks limps a lot (more on that below), and it wants to be called. A hand like A7o does badly after a limp and a raise, so it takes the 1.75bb pot now. The fold range is small and obvious: eleven offsuit hands like 72o, 83o, 43o and 32o. ## 20bb: the small raise shows up At 20bb the jam is almost gone (1.1%: 22, plus a quarter of the time 33, A5o and A6o). The button limps 73.0% and raises to 2bb with 24.9%. It folds 0.9%, basically just 32o. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, heads-up MTT 20bb, button first in: limp 73.0%, raise 2bb 24.9%, all-in 1.1%, fold 0.9%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-heads-up-poker-in-tournament-s20-sb-fig.jpg) *Heads-up MTT, 20bb, button first in. Orange = raise to 2bb, teal = limp.* The raising range is split in two. At the top, AA, KK, AKs, AQs, AJs and A9s raise every time and AKo about 57% of the time. At the bottom, a group of weak suited hands that would rather not see a cheap flop raises 100%: 94s, 84s, 73s and 42s. Most offsuit hands and the middle of the suited hands limp. [pa-cta id=”open_hu_20bb_btn_rfi” to=”/open/hu-20bb-btn-rfi” title=”Button first in, heads-up 20bb” body=”The heads-up opening range at 20bb, the depth where limping starts to matter.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## 40bb and deeper: raise first At 40bb the picture flips. The button raises to 2.2bb with 53.1% of hands, limps 43.7% and folds 3.2%. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, heads-up MTT 40bb, button first in: raise 2.2bb 53.1%, limp 43.7%, fold 3.2%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-heads-up-poker-in-tournament-s40-sb-fig.jpg) *Heads-up MTT, 40bb, button first in: raise to 2.2bb 53.1%, limp 43.7%, fold 3.2%.* The limps are now mostly the weak end, like J3o, T2o and 93o. Hands like KQs, AJo and ATo limp most of the time too, so the big blind can’t raise every limp for free. The strong part raises: AA 100%, AKo almost always, KK 92%. You may have seen the claim that heads-up you should raise about 61.5% of buttons. That number matches the 60bb chart, but it is only part of the strategy: at 60bb the button raises to 2.3bb with 61.5%, limps 34.6% and folds 4.0%. Leave out the limp and more than a third of the range goes missing. ## The big blind after a limp When the button limps, the big blind can check for free, so it never folds. What changes with the stack is how often it attacks. ![Heads-up MTT solver strategy for the big blind after a button limp, 8bb to 100bb: all-in, raise and check percentages](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-heads-up-poker-in-tournament-bb-vs-limp-by-stack.png) *Big blind after a limp, share of all 1,326 hands.* At 10bb the big blind jams 35.2% of hands, raises to 2.5bb with 15.2% and checks 49.5%. From 60bb on it never jams and raises 34 to 37% of hands. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, heads-up MTT 10bb, big blind after a button limp: check 49.5%, raise 2.5bb 15.2%, all-in 35.2%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-heads-up-poker-in-tournament-s10-bb-vs-limp-fig.jpg) *Heads-up MTT, 10bb, big blind after a limp. Teal = check, orange = raise to 2.5bb, dark red = all-in.* Same pattern as the button. The top raises small (AA, KK, QQ, AKs, JJ, TT), and the middle jams: most offsuit aces and kings, and 22 to 66. This is the jam that the button’s trapping limps are waiting for. ## The big blind against a raise Against a raise the big blind defends between 70% and 81% of hands at every depth in the charts. It folds 19.0% against a 2bb open at 20bb, 19.9% against a 2.2bb open at 40bb and 29.7% at 100bb. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, heads-up MTT 40bb, big blind against a 2.2bb button raise: call 56.5%, 3-bet to 6.9bb 17.6%, all-in 6.0%, fold 19.9%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-heads-up-poker-in-tournament-s40-bb-vs-raise-fig.jpg) *Heads-up MTT, 40bb, big blind against a 2.2bb button open: call 56.5%, 3-bet to 6.9bb 17.6%, all-in 6.0%, fold 19.9%.* The price explains it. The big blind already has 1bb in and calls 1.2bb more: Pot odds: BB vs a 2.2bb open at 40bb 1.22.2+1+0.25+1.2=1.24.65=25.8%\frac{1.2}{2.2+1+0.25+1.2}=\frac{1.2}{4.65}=25.8\% It needs 25.8% equity against the raising range, and almost every hand has that. The fold range at 40bb is 22 offsuit hands, from T5o and 95o down to 32o. The 3-bets to 6.9bb are mostly strong aces, broadways and pairs from 66 up, plus a few small suited connectors like 76s and 65s. The all-ins are a small group led by AQo, AJo and the small pairs. So the old advice of “3-bet 20%, call 55%” is not far off at 40bb. But it needs a stack depth to mean anything: at 20bb the big blind jams 18.5% against the same kind of open and 3-bets small only 9.4%. ## The big blind against a jam At 10bb the button jams 28.8% of hands, and the big blind calls 40.5% and folds 59.5%. The call costs 9bb more: Pot odds: BB vs a 10bb jam 910+1+0.25+9=920.25=44.4%\frac{9}{10+1+0.25+9}=\frac{9}{20.25}=44.4\% ![Poker Academy preflop chart, heads-up MTT 10bb, big blind against a button all-in: call 40.5%, fold 59.5%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-heads-up-poker-in-tournament-s10-bb-vs-jam-fig.jpg) *Heads-up MTT, 10bb, big blind against a button jam: call 40.5%, fold 59.5%.* You need 44.4% against the jamming range. Every pair calls, every ace calls, and so do hands like K9o, Q9o and T9s. J8o and 76s fold. Don’t copy this range to 20bb. There the button jams only 1.1% of hands, so the big blind calls just 24.6%. The calling range always depends on what jams. [pa-cta id=”hu_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Play heads-up spots against the solver” body=”Pick a heads-up simulation and a stack depth. The trainer deals the hands and grades each decision.” label=”Start training”] ## After the flop The solver data in this article is preflop only, so everything in this section is a **heuristic**, not solver output. Check these spots in the postflop solver before you build a strategy on them. - Position never changes: the button acts last on the flop, turn and river, in limped and raised pots alike. - A pair on the board is not your pair. On T♠︎T♦︎3♣︎, A9 and K9 have no pair at all. If they bet, it is a thin bet to deny equity rather than a value bet. - Monotone flops. On K♠︎Q♠︎3♠︎ both players can already hold a flush, and many more hands hold one spade for a flush draw. - Count your draws. 7♠︎4♠︎ on K♠︎Q♥︎5♦︎ has no flush draw and no gutshot. A straight needs two more cards (6 and 3, or 6 and 8), so it only has backdoor draws. - Ranges are wide on both sides. Heads-up the big blind defends about 80% of hands against a raise, so assume it hits the flop often; its range is far from blind junk. One number from the old version of this article needs fixing too. Stealing the blinds does not grow a 40bb stack by 10%. The pot is 1.75bb: What one steal is worth at 40bb 1.7540=4.4%\frac{1.75}{40}=4.4\% [pa-cta id=”open_hu_10bb_bb_vs_limp” to=”/open/hu-10bb-bb-vs-limp” title=”BB facing a limp, heads-up 10bb” body=”Where the limp is a real strategy rather than a leak, and what the big blind does about it.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Common heads-up mistakes - **Folding the button.** From 12.5bb up the solver folds 4.1% of hands or less. - **Never limping.** Limping is the most common button play from 10bb to 35bb in these charts, and AA limps at 10bb. - **Jamming only premium hands.** At 10bb the jam range is offsuit aces, offsuit kings and small pairs. AA and KK limp. - **Open-jamming deep.** From 25bb up the button never open-jams in these charts. - **Over-folding the big blind.** Against a small raise the big blind defends about 80% at 20bb and at 40bb. - **Using one chart for every depth.** The big blind calls a 10bb jam with 40.5% of hands and a 20bb jam with 24.6%. ## Study the depth you actually play Heads-up stacks move fast. You can start the match with 40bb and be at 15bb twenty hands later, and the strategy changes at each step. So open the chart for the stack you have, button and big blind, and play those spots in the trainer until the limps and jams feel normal. Cheers! 🙂 --- # How to exploit calling stations: thinner value, fewer bluffs, bigger bets Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/crush-calling-stations-your-guide-to-success Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-12-26 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![How to exploit calling stations: thinner value, fewer bluffs, bigger bets](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/crush-calling-stations-your-guide-to-suc-hero.jpg) A calling station is the player who doesn’t fold. He calls the flop with anything, calls the turn with a draw or a weak pair, and looks you up on the river with ace-high. Everybody knows you should “value bet him”. Fewer people know how much the maths changes, or in which direction. In this article I use one solved flop in the Poker Academy postflop solver, once at equilibrium and once with the opponent locked as a calling station. Then I put the numbers next to two formulas: what a bluff needs, and what a value bet earns. Everything that doesn’t come from the solver or from arithmetic is marked as my heuristic. ## What a calling station is, and what he isn’t The leak is one thing: **he folds less often than he should**. He is not aggressive with it either, since he rarely bets or raises without a strong hand and doesn’t bluff much. That’s why he’s also called passive-loose. You’ll usually spot him by a big gap between how often he puts money in preflop (VPIP) and how often he raises (PFR), and by how often he goes to showdown. I’m not giving threshold numbers here. They depend on the game (6-max or full ring, cash or tournament), the stakes and the sample size, and I don’t have a source I’d trust for one set of cut-offs. Treat any HUD rule of thumb as a heuristic and check it against the hands you’ve actually seen. This article used to say that against a station you can keep barreling the turn, because “most of his strong hands would have bet the flop”. That’s backwards. A passive player calls with his strong hands instead of betting them, so his calling range is wide *and* uncapped, and more bluffs on the turn is the wrong adjustment. ## Preflop: what calling too much looks like Start with the baseline. This is the cash simulation I use for the whole article: Normal NL200 GG, 6-max, 100bb, no ante. HJ opens to 2.5bb and CO has to decide. ![Poker Academy V2 Browse, Normal NL200 GG 100bb 6-way cash, HJ opens 2.5bb, CO to act: fold 88.9% (1179 combos), call 1.8% (23), raise to 7.5bb 9.3% (124)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/crush-calling-stations-your-guide-to-suc-pf-co-vs-hj-fig.jpg) *Normal NL200 GG, 100bb 6-max cash. CO against a 2.5bb HJ open: 3-bet to 7.5bb 9.3% (124 combos), call 1.8% (23), fold 88.9% (1179).* The solver flats 23 of 1326 combos here and 3-bets 124. A calling station flats far more. What follows is my heuristic, not a solver result: the extra flats are mostly the hands a regular folds (weak offsuit broadways, weak aces, small suited hands), and because he 3-bets less, his flatting range also keeps strong hands a regular would 3-bet. So open your value hands as usual, don’t widen your opening range with hands that only win by folding him out later, and expect a lot of single-raised pots against a wide, uncapped range. ## Rule one: a bluff needs folds A pure bluff (a hand with no equity that gives up when it doesn’t get a fold) risks the bet to win the pot. It breaks even when the opponent folds this often: Bluff break-even fold needed=betpot+bet\text{fold needed}=\frac{\text{bet}}{\text{pot}+\text{bet}} That number goes up fast with size. Here it is for the four bet sizes on the flop I use below, where the pot is 6.5bb (the app labels 1.6bb as 25%; exactly it is 24.6%): Pot 6.5bb: bet 25%, 75%, 150%, all-in 97.5bb 1.66.5+1.6=19.8%4.911.4=43.0%9.716.2=59.9%97.5104=93.8%\frac{1.6}{6.5+1.6}=19.8\%\qquad\frac{4.9}{11.4}=43.0\%\qquad\frac{9.7}{16.2}=59.9\%\qquad\frac{97.5}{104}=93.8\% Against a normal opponent you compare that with how often he folds. Against a station you compare it with how often he folds *after* he stops folding, which is a thing you can measure. ## The spot: a calling station locked in the solver Same simulation. HJ opens 2.5bb, CO calls, button and blinds fold. The pot is 2.5 + 2.5 + 0.5 + 1 = 6.5bb, both players have 97.5bb behind. The flop is 8♣︎8♥︎6♦︎ and HJ checks to CO, who is in position. The Poker Academy postflop solver has node locking. You fix how one player plays at chosen nodes and the solver re-solves the rest of the tree against that fixed strategy. Instead of locking by hand, you can pick a profile. The Calling Station profile does one thing: it takes the hands a player folds that are closest to continuing (by the solver’s own EV) and turns most of them into calls. It works on the player’s first two decisions of a line and comes in three strengths: Share of folds that continue instead L: 0.20⋅95%+0.10⋅85%+0.05⋅33%=29.2%S: 0.06⋅90%+0.06⋅75%+0.04⋅20%=10.7%\text{L: }0.20\cdot95\%+0.10\cdot85\%+0.05\cdot33\%=29.2\%\qquad\text{S: }0.06\cdot90\%+0.06\cdot75\%+0.04\cdot20\%=10.7\% M sits in between at 23.0%. In the L version, the 20% of the folding range that is closest to a call continues 95% of the time, the next 10% calls 85% of the time and the next 5% calls 33% of the time. The rest of that decision stays at the GTO strategy. I locked HJ as Calling Station L. Here is HJ facing CO’s 150% pot bet, 9.7bb into 6.5bb, first at GTO and then as the station: ![Poker Academy postflop solver, Normal NL200 GG 100bb 6-max cash, HJ opens CO calls, flop 8c8h6d, HJ checks, CO bets 150% 9.7bb. GTO HJ: fold 73.8%, call 8.2%, raise 50% 11.6%, raise 100% 6.3%, all-in 0.1%. HJ locked as Calling Station L: fold 52.6%, call 19.4%, raise 50% 15.6%, raise 100% 9.6%, all-in 2.8%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/crush-calling-stations-your-guide-to-suc-b97-compare-fig.jpg) *HJ facing a 9.7bb bet on 8♣︎8♥︎6♦︎ after checking. Top row GTO: fold 73.8%. Bottom row, locked as Calling Station L: fold 52.6%, call 19.4% (was 8.2%).* The station folds 21.3 percentage points less. A 150% bluff needs 59.9% folds. Compare: Fold % minus what the bluff needs GTO: 73.8%−59.9%=+13.9 ppStation L: 52.6%−59.9%=−7.3 pp\text{GTO: }73.8\%-59.9\%=+13.9\text{ pp}\qquad\text{Station L: }52.6\%-59.9\%=-7.3\text{ pp} At equilibrium that bluff clears its break-even by 13.9 points. Against the station it’s 7.3 points short. In big blinds, for a bluff with zero equity that gives up to any call or raise: 150% bluff vs Calling Station L EVbluff=0.526×6.5−0.474×9.7=3.42−4.60=−1.18 bb\text{EV}_{\text{bluff}}=0.526\times 6.5-0.474\times 9.7=3.42-4.60=-1.18\text{ bb} The same bluff against the GTO HJ earns 0.738 × 6.5 − 0.262 × 9.7 = +2.26bb. A profitable bluff became a losing one, with nothing changing except how often the opponent folds. ![Chart of HJ fold frequency after checking 8c8h6d, by CO bet size, GTO vs Calling Station L, against the bluff break-even: bet 25% GTO 42.0% station 30.1% needs 19.8%; bet 75% GTO 65.7% station 46.9% needs 43.0%; bet 150% GTO 73.8% station 52.6% needs 59.9%; all-in GTO 89.4% station 63.7% needs 93.8%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/crush-calling-stations-your-guide-to-suc-fold-vs-breakeven.png) *Every bet size on the same node. The station folds about 29% less of his GTO folding range at each size: 11.9 of 42.0, 18.8 of 65.7, 21.3 of 73.8, 25.7 of 89.4 points.* Two things in that chart are worth more than any single number in it: - The bigger the bet, the less the bluff survives. The station takes away roughly the same share of folds at every size, but big bets needed more folds in the first place. The 25% bluff still clears its line (30.1% vs 19.8%), the 75% bluff barely does (46.9% vs 43.0%), the 150% bluff doesn’t. - This is one flop and one lock. Whether a 25% stab still works against your real opponent depends on his real folding, which you only know from hands. The direction is what carries over: fewer bluffs, and the bluffs you keep should be small. For more on how the lock works and the minimum defence frequency behind these numbers, see [GTO vs exploitative poker](https://poker.academy/blog/post/gto-poker-vs-exploitative-poker/). [pa-cta id=”stations_solver” to=”/gto-postflop-solver” title=”Lock a calling station on your own flop” body=”Solve a spot, pick the Calling Station profile and compare every node with GTO.” label=”Open the solver”] ## Rule two: value bets get paid by worse The other side of the same leak. Take the simplest case: river, you are last to act, and he only calls or folds (a station rarely raises). When you bet B and get called, you win B more than checking when you’re ahead and lose B more when you’re behind. If w is how often you win against the hands that call: Value bet vs check, river, when called extra from betting (when called)=w⋅B−(1−w)⋅B=B (2w−1)\text{extra from betting (when called)}=w\cdot B-(1-w)\cdot B=B\,(2w-1) So a value bet only needs to win more than half the time *against the calling range*, not against his whole range. A constructed example, pure maths with assumed win rates: pot 20bb on the river, you bet 15bb (75% pot). Against a regular’s tight calling range you win 55% of the time when called. Against a station, the same hand wins 65% when called, because his calling range is full of worse hands. Pot 20bb: bet 15bb (75%) or 20bb (100%) B=15: 15(2⋅0.55−1)=+1.515(2⋅0.65−1)=+4.5B=20: 20(2⋅0.65−1)=+6.0B=15:\;15(2\cdot0.55-1)=+1.5\qquad15(2\cdot0.65-1)=+4.5\qquad B=20:\;20(2\cdot0.65-1)=+6.0 Three adjustments come straight out of that formula: - Thinner value. Hands that win less than 50% against a regular’s calls can win more than 50% against a station’s calls. Those hands change from checks to bets. How thin depends on his actual calling range, which is a read, not a solver number. - Bigger value. The extra is B(2w − 1), so it grows with B. If he calls a pot-size bet about as often as a half-pot bet, the bigger bet earns more: in the example 6.0bb instead of 4.5bb per call. A player who calls anything is the one opponent where “bet bigger with value” doesn’t cost you calls. - No sizes built to get folds. A small bet exists partly to fold out weak hands cheaply. He doesn’t fold them. [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_co_vs_hj” to=”/open/cash-100bb-co-vs-hj” title=”CO facing an LJ open, NL200″ body=”The preflop node the exploit examples start from, before anyone deviates.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## What the solver does against him Here is CO’s best response one node earlier, after HJ checks, with HJ still locked as Calling Station L: ![Poker Academy postflop solver, exploit view vs Calling Station L, Normal NL200 GG 100bb 6-max cash, flop 8c8h6d, CO after HJ checks: check 17.6% (-15.0pp), bet 25% 10.7% (-54.3pp), bet 75% 0.2%, bet 150% 0.4%, all-in 71.1% (+71.1pp). Lock impact: EV IP +3.31bb, OOP -3.47bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/crush-calling-stations-your-guide-to-suc-r0c-station-fig.jpg) *CO after HJ checks on 8♣︎8♥︎6♦︎, against the locked station: all-in 71.1% (GTO 0%), bet 25% 10.7% (GTO 65.0%), check 17.6% (GTO 32.6%). Lock impact: CO +3.31bb, HJ −3.47bb.* At equilibrium CO bets 25% pot with 65.0% of its range and checks 32.6%. Against the station the small bet almost disappears and 71.1% of the range goes all-in for 97.5bb into 6.5bb. The app’s lock-impact line puts CO 3.31bb ahead of its GTO EV at this node and HJ 3.47bb behind. This is what the station does when the jam comes: ![Poker Academy postflop solver, exploit view, HJ locked as Calling Station L facing CO's 97.5bb all-in on 8c8h6d: fold 63.7% (-25.7pp), call 36.3% (+25.7pp), pot odds 48.4% (97.5 / 201.5), lock impact OOP -5.68bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/crush-calling-stations-your-guide-to-suc-b975-station-fig.jpg) *HJ as Calling Station L facing a 97.5bb shove into 6.5bb: call 36.3%, where the GTO HJ calls 10.6%. The pot odds tile shows the price: 48.4%.* HJ’s price to call the shove pot odds=97.56.5+97.5+97.5=97.5201.5=48.4%\text{pot odds}=\frac{97.5}{6.5+97.5+97.5}=\frac{97.5}{201.5}=48.4\% HJ needs 48.4% equity to call. The GTO HJ calls 10.6% of its range; the station calls 36.3%. Those extra calls are hands the solver folds because they don’t have the price, and the lock-impact line shows what they cost HJ at this node: −5.68bb. Please don’t take the 71% jam to the table. Calling Station L is the extreme profile, and the solver answers an extreme model with an extreme strategy. My guess, not a solver result: a real station still folds his worst hands to a shove 15 times the pot (97.5 / 6.5 = 15.0), and against him most of those jams just get folds from hands you wanted to get paid by. Only the direction carries over: value gets bigger, the small bets that only work through folds shrink, and pure bluffs lose their reason to exist. ## Street by street, as heuristics None of this is solver output for your spot. It’s how I apply the two rules above against a player I’ve seen call too much. - Flop. Bet your value and strong draws. Check more of the hands that would be c-bet bluffs against a regular, especially on boards that hit his wide flatting range. If you do stab with air, use a small size, because big bluffs need folds he won’t give. - Turn. Keep betting for value, and size up. Don’t fire a second barrel as a bluff just because he’s weak on average: his calling range still contains all his strong hands, because he doesn’t raise them. - River. Bet thinner for value and bigger with your strong hands. Give up more of your missed draws. The river is where B(2w − 1) matters most, because there is no more equity to realise. - When he bets or raises. A passive player’s aggression is information. Fold more of your marginal bluff-catchers than you would against a balanced player. That’s an exploit too, and it’s the one people forget. ## Out of position against a station Out of position you can’t rely on him to bet for you, so you build the pot yourself: lead or check-raise your strong hands instead of checking and hoping. With medium hands you can check and call more lightly only when he actually bets, which a passive player does less often. Heuristic, again: the solver result above is for the in-position player, and I don’t have a locked solve for the out-of-position side of this spot. ## Cash games and tournaments The whole example is a 100bb cash game without antes. In cash games stations are common, sessions are long and you get enough hands to trust the read. In tournaments the same two formulas hold in chips, but chips aren’t money. Near the bubble and at final tables ICM makes calling off a stack more expensive for everybody, so even a station calls off less, and your big value bets and shoves lose some of their edge. Lock against what a player does at that stage, not at a cash table. ## Wrapping up - A calling station folds too little, and that is the whole leak. - Bluffs need bet / (pot + bet) folds. The locked station on 8♣8♥6♦ folds 52.6% to a 150% bet that needs 59.9%. - Value bets earn B(2w − 1) when called. Against a wide calling range w goes up, so bet thinner and bigger. - Check your read in the solver: lock the profile, compare the node with GTO and look at the EV before you change your game. [pa-cta id=”stations_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Know the baseline you’re deviating from” body=”Practise the spots against solver strategies and get every decision graded.” label=”Start training”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # Continuation bets: how often and how big, by board texture Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/continuation-bets-basic-mechanics-and-tips Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-12-19 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Continuation bets: how often and how big, by board texture](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/continuation-bets-basic-mechanics-and-ti-hero-1.jpg) The preflop raiser gets to the flop with two decisions: bet or check, and if bet, how big. The old rule says small on dry boards, big on wet ones. That gets you part of the way, and it skips the question that settles most of these spots: who has more good hands on this particular flop. In this article I use two aggregated flop reports from Poker Academy. Each one is a single preflop spot solved on a set of flops with **one sizing menu on every board**, so the columns compare from flop to flop and add up. That matters more than the number of flops, because a report that mixes menus gives you averages that don’t mean anything. ## What a continuation bet is A **continuation bet (c-bet)** is a bet on the flop by the player who made the last raise preflop. In position, you c-bet after your opponent checks to you. Out of position, you act first, so the c-bet is your first bet. Two numbers describe a c-bet strategy on a flop: the **frequency** (how much of your range bets) and the **size** (as a share of the pot). The solver picks both at the same time, for the whole range. ## The two spots - Spot 1, in position. MTT, 20bb, 9-handed, 1bb big-blind ante. The button opens to 2bb, the big blind calls. Pot on the flop: 2 + 2 + 0.5 + 1 = **5.5bb**, 18bb behind (SPR 18 / 5.5 = 3.3). The big blind checks; I look at the button’s decision. Report 3514: 25 flops, sizes 19%, 30%, 60% and 120% of the pot. - Spot 2, out of position. MTT, 50bb, 9-handed, 1bb big-blind ante. Everyone folds to the small blind, who raises to 4bb; the big blind calls. Pot: 4 + 4 + 1 = **9bb**, 46bb behind (SPR 46 / 9 = 5.1). The small blind acts first. Report 1479: 184 flops, sizes 15%, 30%, 60% and 120% of the pot. Every flop in a report carries a weight: the share of all 22,100 flops it stands for. The 184-flop set of spot 2 tracks the real board space closely, with 22.2% of its weight on ace-high flops against 21.7% in reality. The 25-flop set of spot 1 is a texture sample, and it holds exactly **one** ace-high flop, so I read that line as one board rather than an average. [pa-cta id=”open_report_mtt_50bb_bb_vs_sb_by_high_card” to=”/open/report-mtt-50bb-bb-vs-sb-by-high-card” title=”Report: c-betting by high card, 184 flops” body=”The chart the article’s claim is read off: c-bet frequency against the top card on the board.” label=”Open the report”] ## Spot 1: the button bets almost always, and almost always tiny After the big blind checks, the button bets **89.5%** of its range across the 25 flops of the report, weighted, and checks 10.5%. The size is where it gets interesting. **86.1% of the range bets one of the two small sizes**, 43.1% at 19% of the pot and 43.0% at 30%. Another 3.1% bets 60%, and 0.2% uses the 120% option. Small here is 1.0bb or 1.7bb into 5.5bb; the two big ones are 3.3bb and 6.6bb. ![Chart: button c-bet after big blind check by flop high card, report 3514, MTT 20bb: ace-high flop 99.5% bet with 63.3% at 60% pot, king to ten high 93.9% bet almost all at the two small sizes, nine-high or lower 74.8% bet and 25.2% check](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/continuation-bets-basic-mechanics-and-ti-btn-cbet-highcard-2.png) *Report 3514 (production, Official, one sizing menu: 19 / 30 / 60 / 120% of pot). BTN 2bb open vs BB call, MTT 20bb 9-max, 1bb BB ante, pot 5.5bb. Button’s first decision after the BB checks, flops grouped by high card.* - The one ace-high flop (A♣5♦3♥): bet 99.5%, and 63.3% of the range picks the 60% size. It is the only flop in the report where a big size is the main size. - King- to ten-high (18 flops): bet 93.9%, and 91.1% of the range takes one of the two small sizes. Anything bigger, 2.8%. - Nine-high or lower (6 flops): bet 74.8%, check 25.2%. Small sizes 72.8%, big ones 2.0%. - Paired flops (10): bet 81.0%, and the big sizes all but disappear (0.5%). Single boards say it plainly. On K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎ the button bets 98.7%, and 93.7% of the range picks one of the two small sizes. On 7♣︎4♦︎2♥︎ it checks 30.5%. The board it checks most is a paired one, Q♣︎5♦︎5♥︎, at 38.4%. ![Poker Academy aggregated report 3514, button strategy after big blind check on three flops: A♣5♦3♥ bet 60% 63.3%, K♣J♦8♥ bet 19% 56.7%, 7♣4♦2♥ check 30.5%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/continuation-bets-basic-mechanics-and-ti-report-boards-fig-2.jpg) *Report 3514, one sizing menu (19 / 30 / 60 / 120% of pot). BTN 2bb open vs BB call, MTT 20bb, pot 5.5bb, BB checks. One flop selected at a time: A♣︎5♦︎3♥︎, K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎, 7♣︎4♦︎2♥︎. EV, EQ and EQR are the button’s.* ## Why: range advantage and nut advantage Two terms explain these numbers. Neither is a solver output; they are the usual way to read one. - **Range advantage:** your whole range has more equity than the other player’s range. The report shows it directly. Across its 25 flops the button has 59.7% equity against 40.4%. - **Nut advantage:** you have more of the very strong hands (sets, two pair, straights, and on an ace-high board the strong top pairs). This one lives at the top of the range, where an average hides it. This report separates the two unusually cleanly, because equity does **not** track the sizes. The button’s equity is 60.0% on A♣︎5♦︎3♥︎ and higher, 63.3%, on K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎, and it still bets 60% of the pot on the first board and 19 to 30% on the second. Equity says how *often* you can bet. What sits at the top of each range says how *big*. You can check the top of the range in the preflop charts of the same simulation. Against a 2bb button open at 20bb the big blind never calls with a pocket pair. It raises or jams every pair from 22 to AA, so on an unpaired flop it has no sets and no overpairs at all. The button’s 44, 33 and 22 jam preflop rather than open, so it doesn’t hold those either. Counting the combos on four flops from the report: ![Table: combos of straights, sets, two pair, overpairs and top pairs for the button opening range and the big blind calling range on A♣5♦3♥, K♣J♦8♥, 8♣5♣3♦ and 7♣4♦2♥, MTT 20bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/continuation-bets-basic-mechanics-and-ti-nut-combos-2.png) *Solver preflop charts, CE-Symmetric 20bb 9-max, 1bb BB ante, sim 357. Combos weighted by the chart frequency, cards on the flop removed. Strategy line from report 3514 (one sizing menu).* - A♣︎5♦︎3♥︎: the button has 91 top-pair combos and 6 sets, the big blind 34 top pairs and no sets. Top pair or better: 25.9% of the button’s range against 7.0%. The reason is preflop: the big blind raises or jams AKs–ATs and AKo–A9o, so the aces it brings to the flop are the small suited ones, while the button opens every ace down to A2o. The big blind’s only nutted hands here are 4 combos of 42 suited, for the wheel. Biggest edge at the top in the report, and the only board where a big c-bet is the main size. - K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎: the button has 9 sets and 6 overpairs against none, and 23.5% top pair or better against 15.7%. But the big blind has *more* kings than the button (93 combos against 61), because it flats K2o–K9o. The edge at the very top is real but thin, so: bet almost always, and small. - 8♣︎5♣︎3♦︎ and 7♣︎4♦︎2♥︎: here the two pairs belong to the big blind, 20 combos and 13 combos against *none* for the button, which opens neither 85, 83, 53, 74, 72 nor 42. Its counterweight is overpairs: 36 combos on one board, 42 on the other. Top pair or better 19.4% against 14.3%, and 16.2% against 14.7%. It checks 25.2% and 30.5%. Overpairs are strong hands short of the nuts, and they don’t want to build a big pot against a range full of two pair. Hence the rule of thumb, a heuristic rather than something the solver states: range advantage lets you bet often, nut advantage lets you bet big. With a big range advantage and no edge at the top, you bet often and small, which is what this report does on 24 of its 25 boards. ## Spot 2: out of position, the small blind bets less The small blind at 50bb has a different job. It acts first, and the big blind calls a 4bb raise with a range that still has pocket pairs: it 3-bets AA, KK, QQ, AK and AQo every time and JJ 93% of the time, but calls 99 down to 22 almost always and TT 60% of the time (chart, same simulation). This caller can flop sets. At 50bb the small blind also limps most of its range (939.6 of 1,326 combos limp, 222.8 raise), so the raising range here is only 16.8% of hands. Across 184 flops the small blind bets **62.1%** and checks 37.9%. By size: 15% pot 20.2%, 30% pot 30.8%, 60% pot 6.6%, 120% pot 4.5%. In bb that’s 1.3bb, 2.7bb, 5.4bb and 10.8bb into 9bb. [pa-cta id=”open_report_mtt_20bb_bb_vs_btn_a53″ to=”/open/report-mtt-20bb-bb-vs-btn-a53″ title=”Report: the A-5-3 flop, BB vs button” body=”One board out of the 184, opened at the row the figure shows.” label=”Open the report”] ![Poker Academy library report 1479, chart view grouped by high card: small blind c-bet strategy on 184 flops, MTT 50bb, check and four bet sizes per group](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/continuation-bets-basic-mechanics-and-ti-report-sb-highcard-fig-1.jpg) *Report 1479 (production library, one sizing menu: 15 / 30 / 60 / 120% of pot). SB 4bb raise vs BB call, MTT 50bb 9-max, 1bb BB ante, pot 9bb. SB’s first decision, 100% stacked per high-card group.* Spot 1’s pattern shows up again. On ace-high flops the small size (15%) is the biggest bet slice, 30.8%. On seven-high and lower the 60% size takes 25.9% of the range, against 3.8% on ace- and king-high flops. My reading, not solver output: low boards hit the big blind’s pairs, the small blind keeps its overpairs, so it bets bigger with the part of the range that bets. ![Chart: small blind c-bet by texture, report 1479, MTT 50bb: paired 73.3% bet, unpaired 59.7%, rainbow 66.6%, two-tone 60.3%, monotone 46.1% mostly 15% pot, seven-high or lower 63.0%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/continuation-bets-basic-mechanics-and-ti-sb-cbet-texture-2.png) *Report 1479 (production library, one sizing menu: 15 / 30 / 60 / 120% of pot), flops grouped by pairing, suits and high card. Sizes in % of the 9bb pot.* - Paired flops (63): bet 73.3%, mostly 30% (43.0%). The report doesn’t say why; my reading is that a paired board gives the caller fewer new strong hands. - Monotone flops (11): check 53.9%. Almost every bet is 15% (39.7%); all larger sizes together are 6.3%. - Rainbow (105) vs two-tone (68): bet 66.6% and 60.3%. ![Poker Academy library report 1479, chart view grouped by pairing: small blind c-bet on paired and unpaired flops, MTT 50bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/continuation-bets-basic-mechanics-and-ti-report-sb-pairing-fig-1.jpg) *Report 1479 (production library), chart view grouped by pairing, SB vs BB 50bb, pot 9bb, menu 15 / 30 / 60 / 120%. On the 3 trips boards the 60% size takes 58.8%.* ![Poker Academy library report 1479, chart view grouped by suits: small blind c-bet on rainbow, two-tone and monotone flops, MTT 50bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/continuation-bets-basic-mechanics-and-ti-report-sb-suits-fig-1.jpg) *Report 1479 (production library), chart view grouped by suitedness, same SB vs BB 50bb spot, same menu.* One board, three suit patterns, and it is the same K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎ the button bet 98.7% of the time in spot 1. Same cards, different seat and deeper stacks, and the answer changes. K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎ (rainbow): check 46.5%, and the bets split between 15% (23.7%), 30% (18.3%) and 120% (9.7%). K♣︎J♣︎8♦︎ (two-tone): check 51.1%, 15% 28.9%, 120% 16.2%. K♣︎J♣︎8♣︎ (monotone): check 64.0%, 15% 32.9%, and nothing larger above 1.5%. On the two-tone board the strategy gets more polar: more checks, more small bets and more 120% bets, less of the middle. My reading (not solver output): there are many draws to charge, and the hands that want a big pot bet big, the rest check or bet tiny. On the monotone board a flush is already possible, nobody wants a big pot, and the bets shrink. ## Common mistakes, and what the reports say - “Dry board, bet small.” Not always. A♣︎5♦︎3♥︎ is rainbow and unpaired, and the button puts 63.3% of its range in for 60% of the pot, because its range has the aces and the other one doesn’t. - “Wet board, bet big.” Same problem. On nine-high or lower the button checks a quarter of the time and its big sizes together are 2.0%; on monotone flops the small blind bets 15% or checks. - Treating top pair as the nuts. On K♣︎J♦︎8♥︎ the big blind holds more kings than the button. Top pair is a strong hand, not the top of the range. - Copying in-position frequencies out of position. The button bets 89.5% of its range at 20bb; the small blind at 50bb bets 62.1%. The seat differs, the stacks differ and so do the ranges. All numbers above are for these two spots: MTT, BB ante, one stack depth each, and each from one report solved with one sizing menu. At 100bb cash, or against a cutoff open, the ranges change and so do the frequencies. Open the report for your spot before you copy a number. ## How to use this at the table - Ask who has the strong hands first. Think about which pairs, two pairs and straights the caller’s range can have. Sets are the easiest to count: does the caller flat pocket pairs in this spot? - High card favours the raiser. In spot 1 the button bets 93.9% on king- to ten-high flops and 74.8% on nine-high or lower. In spot 2 the gap is smaller: the small blind checks 36.9% on ace- and king-high flops and 41.8% on nine-high or lower. - Low and connected, check more. That is where the caller’s range connects, and where it holds the two pairs you can’t have. - Small is the default size. In spot 1 the two small sizes take 86.1% of the range between them; a big size is the main size on one flop out of 25. Save it for boards where your range owns the top. - Paired, bet small and often. Monotone, bet small or check. These are rules of thumb built from two reports. The reports themselves are the better tool: in the app you can group any report by high card, pairing or suits, and click a single flop to see the strategy. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_20bb_bb_vs_btn” to=”/open/mtt-20bb-bb-vs-btn” title=”BB facing a button open, 20bb” body=”Pot odds 18.2% under the table, and the range that price buys.” label=”Open the matrix”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # How to play against poker maniacs: bluff-catching, 3-bet defense and a solver lock Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/learn-how-to-play-against-poker-maniacs Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-12-12 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Online Game ![How to play against poker maniacs: bluff-catching, 3-bet defense and a solver lock](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/learn-how-to-play-against-poker-maniacs-hero.jpg) Every table has one. He raises your open, bets every time you check, and shows seven-high the one time you call him down. Most players fold to him until they get angry, then call everything. Both halves of that lose money. Here I look at a maniac through the Poker Academy solver. The preflop part uses real chart data. The postflop part uses a flop I solved earlier and then re-solved against a locked “Bully” opponent, and the answer surprised me: calling more turns out to be the small half of it. Everything below is a **tournament spot: 50bb, 9-handed, 1bb big-blind ante, chipEV**. The button opens to 2.2bb and the big blind plays against him. ## What a maniac is (and isn’t) A maniac bets and raises far more often than the equilibrium does, and folds less when you play back. That is a statement about frequencies, and it is my working definition; the solver has no such term. A maniac is not the same as a good loose-aggressive player. A strong LAG plays many hands but picks his spots. A maniac adds aggression where it loses EV. The difference matters, because the right counter depends on *which hands* the extra aggression comes with. If he bluffs too much, you call more. If he bets thin value too much, you don’t. Most of this article is about telling those apart. ## The maths of bluff-catching Start with the numbers that don’t depend on anybody’s strategy. On the flop below the pot is 5.9bb and the maniac bets 4.4bb, which is 74.6% of the pot. You call 4.4bb to win 5.9 + 4.4: Pot odds against a 4.4bb bet into 5.9bb Pot odds=callpot+bet+call=4.45.9+4.4+4.4=4.414.7=29.9%\text{Pot odds} = \frac{\text{call}}{\text{pot} + \text{bet} + \text{call}} = \frac{4.4}{5.9 + 4.4 + 4.4} = \frac{4.4}{14.7} = 29.9\% A hand that only beats bluffs breaks even when bluffs make up exactly that share of his betting range: How many bluffs make a bluff-catcher break even Break-even bluff share of the betting range=BP+2B=4.45.9+8.8=29.9%\text{Break-even bluff share of the betting range} = \frac{B}{P + 2B} = \frac{4.4}{5.9 + 8.8} = 29.9\% So if more than 29.9% of the hands that bet 4.4bb here are bluffs, a pure bluff-catcher profits by calling. If fewer, it loses. MDF is the range version of the same number: how much of your range has to continue so that his bluffs with no equity can’t profit automatically. Minimum defense frequency, same bet MDF=PP+B=5.95.9+4.4=5.910.3=57.3%\text{MDF} = \frac{P}{P + B} = \frac{5.9}{5.9 + 4.4} = \frac{5.9}{10.3} = 57.3\% Maniacs love overbets. An overbet makes each call more expensive, but it also means he needs you to fold less often. Against a 150% bet (8.8bb into 5.9bb): Pot odds and MDF against an 8.8bb overbet 8.85.9+8.8+8.8=8.823.5=37.4%MDF=5.914.7=40.1%\frac{8.8}{5.9 + 8.8 + 8.8} = \frac{8.8}{23.5} = 37.4\% \qquad \text{MDF} = \frac{5.9}{14.7} = 40.1\% None of this tells you what he actually bets with, and that is the problem. “He’s a maniac, so call” assumes his extra bets are bluffs. Keep that assumption in mind for the solver section. ## Preflop: defending against wide 3-bets Before the flop, a maniac shows up as a player who 3-bets and 4-bets too often. Here is the baseline you deviate from. The button opens 2.2bb, the big blind 3-bets to 8.8bb, and the button has to decide. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, MTT 50bb 9-handed BB ante chipEV, BTN opens 2.2bb and faces a BB 3-bet to 8.8bb: fold 47.1% (327 combos), call 45.1% (312), all-in 7.8% (54), pot odds 34.6%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/learn-how-to-play-against-poker-maniacs-btn-vs-3bet-fig.jpg) *50bb, button vs a big-blind 3-bet to 8.8bb. Teal = call, red = all-in 50bb. The shares are of the button’s opening range.* The solver folds 47.1% of the opening range, calls 45.1% and jams 7.8%. The jams are AKs, AKo, AQo, JJ and TT, plus some KJo, QJo, ATo, A9o and 33. AA, KK and QQ just call. The call price: Button calling the 3-bet Pot=2.2+8.8+0.5+1=12.56.612.5+6.6=6.619.1=34.6%\text{Pot} = 2.2 + 8.8 + 0.5 + 1 = 12.5 \qquad \frac{6.6}{12.5 + 6.6} = \frac{6.6}{19.1} = 34.6\% Now look at it from the 3-bettor’s side. A pure bluff 3-bet risks 7.8bb more to win the 4.7bb already in the pot: Folds a zero-equity 3-bet bluff needs riskrisk+pot=8.8−17.8+(2.2+1+0.5+1)=7.87.8+4.7=62.4%\frac{\text{risk}}{\text{risk} + \text{pot}} = \frac{8.8 – 1}{7.8 + (2.2 + 1 + 0.5 + 1)} = \frac{7.8}{7.8 + 4.7} = 62.4\% The button folds 47.1%, well under 62.4%. So even at equilibrium, a 3-bet with no equity doesn’t print money. It relies on the hands that get called having some equity and playability. The exploit is a heuristic. If a player 3-bets much wider than the big blind’s 13.7% raise range in this spot, his 3-bets are weaker and the 34.6% price is easier to beat. Continue with the edge of the chart: the hands the solver mixes between call and fold, like A8o, JTo, T7s and 86s, become calls. And move your value up. A 50bb jam with JJ, TT, AQo and AK gets called by more worse hands when his range is wide. I don’t have a solver run against a locked wide 3-bettor, so I can’t give you the new percentages. The same logic works when the maniac is the one jamming. The big blind 3-bet to 8.8bb, the button shoves 50bb, and the big blind calls 41.2bb more: Big blind calling a 50bb 4-bet jam Pot=50+8.8+0.5+1=60.341.260.3+41.2=41.2101.5=40.6%\text{Pot} = 50 + 8.8 + 0.5 + 1 = 60.3 \qquad \frac{41.2}{60.3 + 41.2} = \frac{41.2}{101.5} = 40.6\% ![Poker Academy preflop chart, MTT 50bb 9-handed BB ante chipEV, BB 3-bet to 8.8bb and faces a BTN all-in: call 41.0% (74 combos), fold 59.0% (107), pot odds 40.6%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/learn-how-to-play-against-poker-maniacs-bb-vs-4bet-fig.jpg) *50bb, big blind facing a button 4-bet jam after 3-betting to 8.8bb. Tile height = how often the hand 3-bet. Teal = call.* The solver calls 41.0% of its 3-bet range: AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, 99, AK, AQs, AJs, KQs, KJs, AQo and the part of 77, 66 and 55 that 3-bets. Everything else folds, including AJo, KQo and the suited-connector 3-bets. (88 isn’t in this range at all: the solver jams it instead of 3-betting small.) You need 40.6% equity against his jamming range. Against a player who jams more hands than the solver does, the same 40.6% is easier to reach, so hands like AJo and KQo move closer to a call. That direction is maths. Where exactly the line lands depends on his real range. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_50bb_bb_vs_4bet_jam” to=”/open/mtt-50bb-bb-vs-4bet-jam” title=”BB facing a 4-bet jam, 50bb MTT” body=”The node after BB 3-bets to 8.8bb and the raiser shoves: every hand BB can continue with, and what each one is worth.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## A real flop against a locked Bully Now postflop. Same simulation: the button opens 2.2bb, the big blind calls. The pot is 2.2 + 2.2 + 0.5 + 1 = 5.9bb, both players have 47.8bb behind, so the stack-to-pot ratio is 47.8 / 5.9 = 8.1. The flop is 8♣︎7♦︎6♥︎. At equilibrium the big blind checks 98.5% of its range. When the big blind checks, the button bets 75% of the pot with 52.1% of its range and checks back 42.9%. Poker Academy’s postflop solver has node locking with ready opponent profiles: Nit, Bully and Calling Station, each in S, M or L strength. The Bully turns checks that were close in EV into bets. When he faces a bet, the L version turns calls into raises. I used an existing lock of the button as **Bully L**, the extreme version, and let the solver re-solve the big blind’s side. ![Poker Academy postflop solver, exploit view vs Bully L, MTT 50bb 9-handed, BTN opens 2.2bb BB calls, flop 8♣︎7♦︎6♥︎, BB checks, locked BTN: check 19.9% (-23.0pp), bet 25% 7.7% (+3.3pp), bet 75% 71.3% (+19.2pp), bet 150% 1.2% (+0.5pp)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/learn-how-to-play-against-poker-maniacs-exploit-r-0-c-fig.jpg) *The locked button after the big blind checks on 8♣︎7♦︎6♥︎: bet 75% with 71.3% of the range (GTO 52.1%), check only 19.9% (GTO 42.9%). Padlocks mark locked hands.* ![Poker Academy postflop solver, exploit view vs Bully L, locked BTN facing a 4.4bb BB lead on 8c7d6h: fold 31.5% (+0.0pp), call 13.2% (-41.9pp), raise 50% 47.0% (+33.7pp), raise 100% 8.3% (+8.1pp)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/learn-how-to-play-against-poker-maniacs-exploit-r-0-b44-fig.jpg) *The locked button facing a 75% lead: raise 55.3% (GTO 13.5%), call 13.2% (GTO 55.0%), fold 31.5%, the same as GTO.* So this Bully does two things: he bets 19.2 percentage points more when checked to, and he raises a lead 55.3% of the time instead of 13.5%. His fold rate against a lead stays where GTO put it; the calls are what turn into raises. ## What the solver does against him Here is the part that surprised me. Instead of checking and calling more often, the big blind starts leading. ![Poker Academy postflop solver, exploit view vs Bully L, BB first to act on 8c7d6h: check 66.1% (-32.4pp), bet 25% 0.3% (-0.6pp), bet 75% 33.5% (+33.1pp), bet 150% 0.0%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/learn-how-to-play-against-poker-maniacs-exploit-r-0-fig.jpg) *The big blind against the locked Bully: bet 75% with 33.5% of the range (GTO 0.5%), check 66.1% (GTO 98.5%). Orange = bet 75%.* The leads are mostly two pair, straights and pairs with straight draws: 8♣︎7♦︎6♥︎ gives 87, 86 and 76 two pair, T9 and 54 make a straight, and 98, 97 and 65 have a pair plus an open-ended draw. The app’s lock-impact line at the lead node shows the big blind +3.01bb and the button −2.96bb against GTO at that node. My reading, which is a heuristic: a player who raises too often is best trapped by giving him something to raise. At equilibrium the big blind keeps these hands in its checking range. Against a player who turns calls into raises, a 4.4bb lead with a strong hand gets raised to 11.7bb or 19.1bb by hands that would otherwise just call. That is the trap against a maniac here: you bet the hands that want to be raised, instead of checking and hoping. Then the checking range. What’s left after the leads is weaker, and the solver defends it less: ![Chart: share of the big blind's checking range that continues against button bets on 8c7d6h, 50bb MTT. Bet 25% (1.5 into 5.9bb): MDF 79.7%, GTO 77.6%, vs Bully L 59.5%. Bet 75% (4.4bb): MDF 57.3%, GTO 51.1%, vs Bully L 23.8%. Bet 150% (8.8bb): MDF 40.1%, GTO 37.6%, vs Bully L 11.1%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/learn-how-to-play-against-poker-maniacs-bb-continue.png) *Continue = call + raise. Different checking ranges: GTO checks 98.5%, the exploit checks 66.1%.* ![Poker Academy postflop solver, exploit view vs Bully L, BB checked and faces a 4.4bb BTN bet on 8c7d6h: fold 76.2% (+27.3pp), call 23.6% (-17.3pp), raise 50% 0.1% (-9.9pp), raise 100% 0.1%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/learn-how-to-play-against-poker-maniacs-exploit-r-0-c-b44-fig.jpg) *The big blind after checking, facing the Bully’s 75% bet: fold 76.2%, call 23.6%. At GTO: fold 48.9%, call 40.9%, raise 10.1%.* Against the 4.4bb bet, the exploit folds 76.2% of its checking range while MDF says 57.3%. Two things explain it. The strong hands already left as leads, so the checks are mostly overcards, gutshots and air. And this Bully’s extra bets are hands that were close between checking and betting, which is a long way from air. So “he bets a lot, call him down” is wrong against this model. Two warnings. First, the percentages at a node are shares of different ranges, so 76.2% and 48.9% don’t describe the same hands. Second, L is the extreme profile. The solver answers an extreme model with an extreme strategy. Don’t copy 33.5% leads into your game. Copy the direction: bet your strong hands into the player who raises too much, and don’t assume his bets are bluffs. ## When calling more is right Widening your calls can still be right, and it depends on his bluff share. If you have hands where he shows up with air, and he bets more than 29.9% bluffs into a 5.9bb pot with a 4.4bb bet, bluff-catchers make money. That’s a real exploit, and the Bully L lock just doesn’t model it, because it adds close hands, not air. The practical test, a heuristic: look at what he shows down. If the extra aggression turns up as missed draws and random high cards, call more with bluff-catchers. If it turns up as second pair and weak top pair, raise your value and fold your weakest bluff-catchers. If you don’t know yet, stay close to the baseline. ## Stop bluffing him thin The easiest money you lose against a maniac is your own bluffs. A pure bluff of 4.4bb into 5.9bb needs this many folds: Folds a 4.4bb bluff needs Folds a pure bluff needs=BP+B=4.45.9+4.4=4.410.3=42.7%\text{Folds a pure bluff needs} = \frac{B}{P + B} = \frac{4.4}{5.9 + 4.4} = \frac{4.4}{10.3} = 42.7\% A player who folds less than that turns every zero-equity bluff into a loss. Keep the bluffs that have equity when called, like strong draws, and give up the ones that don’t. Bet your value bigger instead. He is the one who calls and raises, so let him. [pa-cta id=”open_report_mtt_50bb_btn_vs_3bet” to=”/open/report-mtt-50bb-btn-vs-3bet” title=”Report: button vs a 3-bet, 50bb, 184 flops” body=”What happens after the 3-bet: the postflop half of the decision, across every flop texture.” label=”Open the report”] ## The cost: variance Playing back at a maniac means bigger pots. The 3-bet pot above is already 12.5bb before the call, and a jam puts 101.5bb in the middle. Standard deviation grows with the money at risk: if every amount in a hand doubles, the swing doubles and the variance quadruples. In a cash game that’s a bankroll question. In a tournament it’s more than that. My data is chipEV, and chips aren’t money near the bubble or at a final table. There, ICM makes calling off 41.2bb with a marginal hand more expensive, so you should tighten the calls above, even against a maniac. [pa-cta id=”maniacs_variance” to=”/variance-calculator” title=”See how big the swings get” body=”Enter your win rate and standard deviation and see the range of results over a sample.” label=”Open the variance calculator”] ## Checklist against a maniac - Start from the chart. At 50bb the button folds 47.1% to a 3-bet to 8.8bb, and the big blind calls a jam with 41.0% of its 3-bet range. - Widen by the price, not by how annoyed you are. 34.6% equity to call the 3-bet, 40.6% to call the jam. A wider 3-bettor or jammer makes those easier to reach. - Find out what his aggression is made of. Air: bluff-catch more. Thin value: bet your strong hands and fold more. - Trap by betting into a raiser. Against the Bully L lock the solver leads 33.5% on 8♣7♦6♥ instead of checking 98.5%. - Cut the thin bluffs. A 75% pot bluff needs 42.7% folds. - Respect the variance and ICM. Bigger pots mean bigger swings, and tighter calls when chips aren’t money. Cheers! 🙂 --- # EPT Prague 2024: High-Stakes Poker Meets Festive Magic Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/ept-prague-2024-high-stakes-poker-meets-festive-magic Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2024-12-05 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Live Game ![EPT Prague 2024: High-Stakes Poker Meets Festive Magic](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/11/EPT-Prague-2025.jpg) Poker fans, get ready! The European Poker Tour (EPT) is returning to Prague, one of its most iconic stops, for an unforgettable poker festival. From December 6 to 17, 2024, the Hilton Prague Hotel will transform into the epicenter of high-stakes poker. With its mix of festive ambiance, historic charm, and intense competition, EPT Prague promises an experience like no other. ## 🎄 Christmas Vibes Meet Poker Thrills! December in Prague is pure magic. EPT participants can step away from the tables to explore the city’s enchanting Christmas Markets, just a short stroll from the venue. Sip on mulled wine, pick up handcrafted gifts, and soak in the holiday spirit. Will the season of giving bring some luck to your cards too? ## 🏆 A Showdown for the Ages PT Prague has a history of delivering thrilling finales, and 2022 was no exception. Canada’s Jordan Saccucci claimed the Main Event title, triumphing over a fiercely competitive field. Antoine Saout from France battled his way to an impressive second place, adding to his growing list of achievements in Prague, while fellow Canadian Parker “tonkaaaa” Talbot finished fifth. ## ✨ Antoine Saout’s Prague Magic Speaking of Antoine Saout, he’s no stranger to success at EPT Prague: 📍 **2022**: 2nd in the Main Event, winning €800,000 📍 **2023**: 2nd in the €10,300 High Roller, taking home €383,000 Could 2024 be his year to finally capture the top spot? The stage is set for another epic performance from the French pro. ## 🔥 Double the Glory! EPT Prague 2022 was also a showcase of red-hot runs. Players like Ben Heath, Rodrigo Seiji Sirichuk, and Sander Østlyngen didn’t settle for one trophy-they each conquered two tournaments during the festival. Can someone replicate their heater in 2024? ## 🍀 From Ireland With Victory The 2023 EPT Prague Main Event saw Padraig O’Neill from Ireland rise to the occasion, pocketing an incredible €1,030,000. Facing stiff competition, Norway’s talented runner-up gave him a run for his money. Will this year’s Main Event feature another cross-border showdown? ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/11/Padraig_ONeil_EPT_Prague_champion.jpg) *Padraig O’Neill and his EPT Main Event Trophy* ## **Join the Action** EPT Prague 2024 is more than a poker festival-it’s a celebration of the game, the season, and the players who make it unforgettable. With events for everyone from high rollers to casual players, and the magical ambiance of Prague in December, this stop on the European Poker Tour is not to be missed. Whether you’re chasing glory at the tables or simply soaking in the holiday atmosphere, Prague is calling. Will you answer? --- # Is simplifying poker strategy the road to success? I measured the cost Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/is-simplifying-poker-strategy-the-road-to-success Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-11-14 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Is simplifying poker strategy the road to success? I measured the cost](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/is-simplifying-poker-strategy-the-road-t-hero.jpg) “Simplify your strategy” is advice everyone gives and almost nobody prices. Solver charts are full of hands that raise 45% of the time and call 55% of the time, and nobody plays that at the table. So what does it actually cost to round it off? I pulled the solutions out of Poker Academy and measured it. Two different things get called simplifying, and only one of them is expensive. - Collapsing a mix, meaning you play one action where the solver splits, costs **under 0.001bb a hand**. - Carrying one chart into a spot it wasn’t built for costs **0.007 to 0.044bb a hand**, up to 1.06bb on a single hand. - Forcing one bet size on every flop costs up to **0.79bb a flop** if you keep the wrong one. Every number below is measured against an opponent who keeps playing the solver strategy, so all of them are lower bounds: someone who notices your simplification exploits it further than this. I’ll come back to that at the end. ## The solver only mixes between actions it prices the same Here is the spot I’ll use for the preflop half: **NL200 fast fold cash, 100bb, 6-max, no ante**. Everyone folds to the button, the button opens to 2.5bb, and the big blind has to decide. ![Poker Academy Browse, big blind strategy against a 2.5bb button open, NL200 fast fold cash 100bb 6-max: fold 59.5%, call 29.0%, 3-bet to 11bb 11.5%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/is-simplifying-poker-strategy-the-road-t-cash-bb-vs-btn-fig-1.jpg) *Browse, BTN opens 2.5bb and folds to the BB. NL200 fast fold cash, 100bb, 6-max, no ante. Orange = 3-bet to 11bb, teal = call, grey = fold. Partial cells are mixes.* Over all 1,326 combos the big blind folds 59.5% (789 combos), calls 29.0% (384) and 3-bets to 11bb 11.5% (153). Look at the matrix and most of the interesting cells are split in two. JTs is one of them. Click it and the app shows all four combos: ![Poker Academy Browse combos panel: all four JTs combos against a button open, raise 44.9% EV 0.70 and call 55.1% EV 0.70](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/is-simplifying-poker-strategy-the-road-t-cash-bb-vs-btn-jts-fig-1.jpg) *Same node, JTs pinned. Every combo: 3-bet 44.9% of the time, call 55.1%, and both actions are worth +0.70bb. EV is measured against folding, so fold = 0.00.* That is the whole answer. The 3-bet is worth **+0.69781bb**, the call **+0.69862bb**. They differ by **0.00081bb**, less than a thousandth of a big blind. That holds for every mixed hand, because it is what a mixed strategy is. The solver splits a hand between two actions only when it values them equally; if one were better it would take that one every time. The split exists to keep the opponent from reading your range, and the hand is worth the same either way. What the mix is worth, per combo EVmix=∑afa EVa = 0.449×0.698+0.551×0.699 = 0.698 bbEV_{\text{mix}}=\sum_a f_a\,EV_a \;=\; 0.449\times 0.698 + 0.551\times 0.699 \;=\; 0.698\ \text{bb} Replace the mix with either of its actions and you keep 0.698bb. There was no gap to begin with, so there is nothing to lose. ## Collapsing the mix: measured, and it really is free Poker Academy has a switch for this. In Browse, under **Display**, turn on **Simplify** and the same node redraws with the splits collapsed. ![The same big blind range with Simplify on: most cells are a single colour, a handful stay as exact 50/50 splits](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/is-simplifying-poker-strategy-the-road-t-cash-bb-vs-btn-simplified-fig-1.jpg) *Same node, Simplify on. Most cells are now one action; the cells still split (JTs, KJo, KTo, T6s, 87s, 65s, 54s…) are the exact 50/50 pattern the algorithm keeps.* I ran the collapse over every hand in the node and weighted it by combos: 6 for a pair, 4 suited, 12 offsuit. Three spots from the same simulation: - LJ opening, first in: 6.6% of combos are split. Range EV changes by less than 0.001bb a hand; the worst single hand loses 0.0003bb. - BB against the button open above: 33.5% split. Under 0.001bb a hand, worst hand 0.0010bb. - BB after a small blind limp, where the big blind can check or raise to 4bb: 80.1% split, four combos in five. Still under 0.001bb a hand, worst hand 0.0094bb. One detail worth being honest about: in every one of those spots the collapsed chart scores a hair *higher* than the mix, by at most 0.0004bb a hand. That is the residual left in the solution, because the solver stopped at a small but non-zero distance from equilibrium. A simplification that beats the solver by a thousandth of a big blind is convergence noise. An old claim from the previous version of this post, that the big blind plays 100% of hands after a small blind limp, holds exactly in the solution I pulled: fold is 0.0% of all 1,326 combos, raise 41.8%, check 58.2%. [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_bb_vs_btn_simplify” to=”/open/cash-100bb-bb-vs-btn-simplify” title=”BB vs button with Simplify on” body=”The same range with the sizing menu collapsed: what simplifying actually costs, in EV.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## What the Simplify button actually does The old description of this feature, and the tooltip in the legacy tournament charts, says it “rounds mixed % actions: 0-33% → 0, 34-66% → 50%, 67-100% → 100%”, and that string is still in the app today. It is not the algorithm. I read the source (`src/shared/strategy/simplify.ts`, the single implementation both the legacy charts and Browse call). It is a pattern match over the whole four-action distribution, not per-action rounding: - Exactly two actions each above 34%, with the other two each below 10% → those two split 50/50. - Otherwise the strictly largest action takes 100% and the rest go to zero. - If neither fits (an exact tie, or a three-way mix like 35/35/30) the strategy is left unchanged. - Frequencies are rounded to two decimals before any of that, and the comparisons are strict. Most of the time the two descriptions agree. Across every named node of three simulations, 1,498,760 combo-instances, they differ on **0.55%** of them. On those hands the difference matters. 66 opening from LJ in this cash game raises 65.7% and folds 34.3%. Round each action on its own and you get “open half the time”. The app shows a pure open, because 34.3% rounds to 0.34 and the 50/50 rule needs strictly more than that. I’d rather have the pure open: “open 66 from LJ” is a rule you can follow, while “open it two times in three” is a rule you will misapply. Either way it is worth knowing which one the button gives you. ## The expensive simplification: one chart, more spots Now the part that costs money. What people actually simplify is the number of charts they carry: one big blind defence chart, used against everybody. So I took the simplified big blind chart built against a **button** open and used it against an **LJ** open, with the same simulation, the same 100bb stack and the same menu of call, 3-bet or fold. Then I priced every hand with the EV table of the spot it is actually being played in. ![Chart: EV lost per hand by collapsing a solver mix (under 0.001bb) versus carrying one big blind chart to another opener (0.007 to 0.044bb), NL200 cash 100bb 6-max](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/is-simplifying-poker-strategy-the-road-t-preflop-cost-1.png) *EV lost in big blinds per hand dealt, weighted over all 1,326 combos. Top: collapse the mix in its own spot. Bottom: the same simplified chart used one or two seats away.* 25.5% of combos get a different action from the two charts, and it costs **0.024bb a hand** in that direction, **0.044bb** in the other. Two hands show where it comes from: - J9o: the button chart 3-bets it. Against an LJ open the solver folds it 100%, and 3-betting is worth **−0.281bb** against 0.00 for folding. - QQ: the LJ chart calls it, because against an early open the solver calls QQ 69.1% of the time. Against a button open, 3-betting is worth **+4.742bb** and calling +3.678bb. Flatting costs **1.064bb**, every time you do it. One more measurement settles it. Carrying the *unsimplified* chart, with the full 25/75 mixes, into the wrong spot costs 0.0243bb a hand instead of 0.0236bb, and rounding the mix off changes the bill by 0.0007bb in favour of the simplified chart. **What costs money is the wrong spot, not the mix.** That also tells you what to simplify first. Collapsing mixes buys a memorisable chart for free; using one chart in five spots buys 25% wrong actions. [pa-cta id=”open_report_mtt_50bb_bb_vs_sb” to=”/open/report-mtt-50bb-bb-vs-sb” title=”Report: BB vs SB, 50bb, 184 flops” body=”One preflop spot solved across 184 boards, with the Simplify drawer ranking what each shortcut costs.” label=”Open the report”] ## Postflop: one size on every board The spot: **MTT, 20bb, 9-handed, 1bb big-blind ante**. The button opens to 2bb, the big blind calls. Pot 5.5bb (2 + 2 + 0.5 + 1), 18bb effective. The big blind is out of position, so it acts first on the flop. The old post said the solver “advises some raising” here about 2.3% of the time. It can’t. The big blind is first to act and nobody has bet, so there is nothing to raise. The action is a **lead**, or donk bet, and the frequency for it is small but real. On K♣︎K♦︎4♥︎ the big blind checks **92.3%** of the time, and leads 7.7%: 5.3% at 19% pot, 2.1% at 29% pot, 0.2% at 60% and 0.1% at 120%. Across the whole weighted flop set it checks 95.7%. ![Poker Academy aggregated flop report, BB vs BTN 20bb MTT single-raised pot: check 95.71%, lead ~19% pot 1.36%, ~29% pot 1.25%, ~60% pot 1.63%, ~120% pot 0.05%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/is-simplifying-poker-strategy-the-road-t-report-3514-fig.jpg) *Aggregated flop report, viewed as BB (out of position). BTN opens 2bb, BB calls, MTT 20bb 9-max, 1bb BB ante, pot 5.5bb, 18bb effective. Column headings are the app’s snapped size buckets; the solved sizes are 18.2%, 29.1%, 60% and 120% of pot. Top row: 25 flops, weighted to cover all 22,100.* Now the cost question. Every one of these reports has a **Simplify** drawer that asks exactly what this article asks: force one action on every board, and see what it costs against the solver’s mix. ![Poker Academy report Simplify drawer ranking forced actions by weighted EV lost: always check 0.00, always bet 30% 0.01, 14.4% 0.03, 60% 0.06, 120% 0.25](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/is-simplifying-poker-strategy-the-road-t-report-1479-simplify-fig.jpg) *The Simplify drawer of a 184-flop report. Blind vs blind, MTT 50bb 9-max, 1bb ante: SB raises to 4bb, BB calls, pot 9bb, 46bb behind, SB first to act. Every candidate is priced against a fixed solver opponent.* Read the caveat at the top of that drawer, because it applies to every number in this article: the loss is measured against an opponent who does not adapt, so it is a floor on the real price. ![Chart: EV lost per flop by forcing one action on the whole range in two solved spots, from under 0.01bb for always checking to 0.79bb for always betting 200% pot](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/is-simplifying-poker-strategy-the-road-t-postflop-cost-1.png) *EV lost in big blinds per flop, weighted over all 22,100 flops. The frequency next to each row is how often the solver actually plays that action.* The pattern is the same as preflop, one level up. Picking a single size is nearly free *if you pick one the solver uses a lot* and expensive if you don’t: - Blind vs blind, 50bb: always check costs under 0.01bb a flop, always bet 30% pot 0.01, always 14.4% pot 0.03, always 60% pot 0.06 and always 120% pot **0.25bb**. - 100bb cash, big blind against an LJ open: always check is again under 0.01bb, always bet 25.5% pot costs 0.10, and always overbetting 200% pot costs **0.78bb a flop**. Notice which action is cheapest in both spots. Out of position, checking the whole range sits inside the solver’s own noise: the leads are worth so little that giving them up costs nothing measurable against a fixed opponent. They exist to make the other player’s life harder, and that is what a fixed-opponent measurement cannot see. [pa-cta id=”simplify_solver” to=”/gto-postflop-solver” title=”Price your own simplification” body=”Solve a spot with the sizes you actually use, then force one of them on the whole range and read the difference.” label=”Open the postflop solver”] ## Where simplification really costs you Everything above is measured against a solver opponent. That is the honest way to report it and it is also its limit. Three costs the numbers cannot show: - Your opponent adapts. If you always check the flop out of position, a decent player bets more and folds less, and the 0.00bb in the drawer becomes a real number as soon as anyone notices. - The simplification travels. A range you always check has a different composition on the turn than a range you sometimes lead, and the flop number does not carry the turn cost. - You apply it too widely. This is the one the data does show, and the expensive one: 0.044bb a hand for one seat’s worth of wrong chart. A few rules of thumb, which are my reading of the numbers above and not solver output: - Collapse every mix you like. It is free within a spot, and a chart you can recall beats a chart you half-remember. - Never reuse a chart across openers, stack depths or ante formats. That is where the measurable money goes. - If you must keep one bet size, keep the one the solver plays most, and never the biggest one. In these two spots the biggest size costs 8 to 22 times what the smallest one does. - Keep mixing where it is cheap to mix, if you can: the frequencies are what stop a thinking opponent from reading you. Is simplifying the road to success? Simplifying *how you remember* the strategy: yes, and it is cheaper than almost anyone assumes. Simplifying *how many situations you cover*: that one is a leak wearing a friendly name. Cheers! 🙂 --- # How to exploit nits: steal their blinds, fold to their raises, stop value-betting thin Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/exploiting-nits-poker-strategy-you-need-to-know Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-11-11 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![How to exploit nits: steal their blinds, fold to their raises, stop value-betting thin](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/exploiting-nits-poker-strategy-you-need-hero.jpg) A nit is the easiest regular to beat and the easiest to pay off. He plays few hands, folds a lot, and when he finally puts money in, he has it. Every one of those habits has a counter, and each counter belongs to a different spot. In this article I use real solver ranges from Poker Academy as the baseline: preflop spots from a **30bb tournament, 9-handed, 1bb big-blind ante, chipEV**, and one flop from a **100bb 6-max cash game**. The solver shows what a balanced player does. What you change against a nit is exploitation, and I label it that way. ## What a nit is By nit I mean a **tight-passive** player. He enters few pots, rarely 3-bets, rarely bluffs and rarely raises after the flop without a strong hand. That is different from a tight-aggressive regular, who plays a narrow range but still attacks with it. Mixing the two up is costly: the adjustments below work against the first and backfire against the second. How to spot one in a HUD, without pretending there are fixed thresholds: - Low VPIP and low PFR compared with your pool at the same table size and stack depth. - Low 3-bet, and a high fold to steal from the blinds. - Low bet vs missed c-bet: when you check, he checks back hands that should take a stab. - Low went to showdown with high won at showdown: he reaches showdown rarely, and with strong hands when he does. Tournaments need one warning. Near the bubble, ICM makes folding correct far more often. A player who folds his big blind a lot with 12bb one spot from the money isn’t necessarily a nit. Read the stage before you read the player. ## 1. Steal more from his blinds Start with the baseline. At 30bb, when the action folds to the button, the solver raises to 2bb with **48.3%** of hands. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 30bb MTT 9-handed chipEV with 1bb big blind ante, button first in: raise 2bb 48.3%, fold 51.7%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/exploiting-nits-poker-strategy-you-need-btn-rfi-fig.jpg) *30bb, button first in: raise 2bb 48.3% (640 combos), fold 51.7%. Orange = raise.* The players who have to defend against that open are the blinds. The pot before the raise is 0.5 + 1 + 1 ante = 2.5bb. A 2bb steal with a hand that never wins when called needs this many folds: Button steal, 2bb into 2.5bb break-even folds=riskrisk+pot=22+2.5=24.5=44.4%\text{break-even folds}=\frac{\text{risk}}{\text{risk}+\text{pot}}=\frac{2}{2+2.5}=\frac{2}{4.5}=44.4\% Now look at how the solver’s big blind defends when the small blind has folded. It gets 18.2% pot odds and folds only **12.3%** of hands: call 69.1%, raise to 7bb 9.4%, all-in 9.1%. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 30bb MTT big blind vs a 2bb button open: fold 12.3%, call 69.1%, raise to 7bb 9.4%, all-in 9.1%, pot odds 18.2%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/exploiting-nits-poker-strategy-you-need-bb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *30bb, big blind vs a 2bb button open: fold 12.3%. The pot is 4.5bb and the call costs 1bb, 18.2% pot odds.* The small blind folds much more, 69.9% against the same open. So against two solver blinds the steal takes the pot right away only rarely: Both solver blinds fold both blinds fold=69.9%×12.3%=0.699×0.123=8.6%\text{both blinds fold}=69.9\%\times12.3\%=0.699\times0.123=8.6\% That’s far below 44.4%, and the button still opens 48.3%. The steal is profitable because of the equity and position it keeps when called, not because of folds. Every extra fold a nit gives you is money on top. The chart shows what happens if the big blind folds more than the solver. The 30% and 50% rows are examples, not measured players. ![Chart: how often a 2bb button steal wins at once at 30bb. Solver blinds 8.6%, a big blind folding 30% gives 21.0%, folding 50% gives 35.0%; break-even for a zero-equity hand is 44.4%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/exploiting-nits-poker-strategy-you-need-steal-folds.png) *Both blinds fold = 69.9% (solver small blind) × big blind folds. Examples for 30% and 50% are hypothetical.* How I widen, as a heuristic: add the hands that just miss the solver’s range, such as weak offsuit kings and queens, suited gappers and small offsuit connectors. Two conditions. The nit has to be the player who closes the action, usually the big blind. And the small blind must not be the one who punishes you: the solver’s small blind 3-bets or jams 18.9% against this open (9.0% + 9.9%). ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 30bb MTT small blind vs a 2bb button open: fold 69.9%, call 11.2%, 3-bet to 6.5bb 9.0%, all-in 9.9%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/exploiting-nits-poker-strategy-you-need-sb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *30bb, small blind vs a 2bb button open: fold 69.9%, 3-bet 9.0%, all-in 9.9%. This player sits between you and the nit.* The same idea works from the small blind. The solver’s small blind raises to 3.3bb with 29.2% of hands (and limps 53.7%), and its big blind folds 32.0% against the raise. A nit in the big blind folds more, so you can raise wider from the small blind too. [pa-cta id=”nits_charts” to=”/preflop-charts” title=”Open the steal spots in the charts” body=”Button, cutoff and small blind first in at every stack, plus how each blind defends.” label=”Browse the charts”] ## 2. Fold more when he fights back The other side of the same habit: if a nit folds most of his range, the part he continues with is strong. Your defence against his aggression should shrink with it. The old version of this article said you should fold around 60% against a 3-bet. There is no single number. It depends on position, stack and 3-bet size. One named spot: 30bb, the button opens 2bb, the big blind 3-bets to 7bb. The solver’s button folds **42.3%**, calls 47.2% and jams 10.5% of its opening range. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 30bb MTT button vs a big blind 3-bet to 7bb: fold 42.3%, call 47.2%, all-in 10.5%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/exploiting-nits-poker-strategy-you-need-btn-vs-3bet-fig.jpg) *30bb, button facing a 7bb 3-bet from the big blind: fold 42.3%, call 47.2%, all-in 10.5% (67 combos).* Look at the jam range. It isn’t the strongest hands: AA, KK and QQ call. AK and AQo go all-in, together with A5s and part of A2s, 44 and 33. A balanced 4-bet jam has bluffs in it, and a nit’s does not. Suppose (an assumption about the player, not solver output) he jams only QQ+ and AK: 6 + 6 + 6 + 16 = 34 combos. Now flip the roles: the nit opens the button, you 3-bet to 7bb from the big blind, and he jams 30bb. The app shows the price: Big blind calls a 30bb jam after a 7bb 3-bet pot odds=2330+7+0.5+1+23=2361.5=37.4%\text{pot odds}=\frac{23}{30+7+0.5+1+23}=\frac{23}{61.5}=37.4\% ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 30bb MTT big blind facing an all-in after 3-betting to 7bb: call 53.5%, fold 46.5%, pot 38.5bb, pot odds 37.4%. JJ, TT, AQs, AJs and ATs call](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/exploiting-nits-poker-strategy-you-need-bb-vs-4bet-fig.jpg) *30bb, big blind 3-bet to 7bb, button jams: pot 38.5bb, pot odds 37.4% (23 / 61.5). Against the solver’s jam range, JJ, TT and AQs call.* Against the solver’s jamming range, the big blind calls with JJ, TT and AQs. Against a range of QQ+ and AK, none of them has the price. I enumerated every board for each matchup: ![Chart: exact all-in equity against QQ+ and AK: JJ 36.2%, TT 36.4%, AQs 28.6%, AQo 24.4%, all below the 37.4% needed to call a 30bb jam after a 7bb 3-bet](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/exploiting-nits-poker-strategy-you-need-jam-equity.png) *Exact equity against QQ+, AK. Everything is below the 37.4% line.* Calling the jam with JJ EV(call JJ)=0.362×61.5−23=22.26−23=−0.74 bb\text{EV(call JJ)}=0.362\times61.5-23=22.26-23=-0.74\text{ bb} JJ loses 0.74bb per call in chipEV. It’s close, so if your read is only a guess, don’t fold JJ for that reason alone. AQo at 24.4% is not close at all. The cleaner fix is to not 3-bet those hands for value against a nit in the first place. A nit’s continuing range beats them, and his folding range doesn’t pay you. Call his open instead, or 3-bet hands that are happy to fold or to get it in. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_30bb_btn_rfi” to=”/open/mtt-30bb-btn-rfi” title=”Button first in, 30bb with ante” body=”The stealing range the nit article is measured against.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## 3. Postflop: bluff more, value-bet less thin After the flop the nit’s leak looks the same: he folds the marginal part of his range. Take a real node. Cash game, 6-max, 100bb, Normal NL200 GG simulation. HJ opens to 2.5bb, CO calls, the pot is 6.5bb. The flop is 8♣︎8♥︎6♦︎. HJ checks, CO bets 75% of the pot, 4.9bb. At equilibrium HJ folds 65.7%, calls 10.4% and raises 24.0% (20.6% + 3.4%). The numbers MDF gives for this bet: HJ facing 4.9bb into 6.5bb MDF=6.56.5+4.9=57.0%α=4.96.5+4.9=43.0%\text{MDF}=\frac{6.5}{6.5+4.9}=57.0\%\qquad\alpha=\frac{4.9}{6.5+4.9}=43.0\% In the postflop solver I opened this existing solve, turned on node locking and applied the **Nit L** profile to HJ. The app is honest about what that is: a heuristic preset of your assumption about the player, not solver output. It locked 14 decision nodes and 346 of 1,326 combos. I did not re-solve; the tiles show what the locks add up to at this node. ![Poker Academy postflop solver, node locking with the Nit L profile on HJ, NL200 GG 100bb 6-max cash, HJ opens CO calls, flop 8c8h6d, HJ checks and faces a 4.9bb bet: fold 73.6% (+7.9pp), call 7.9% (-2.4pp), raise 50% 15.7% (-4.9pp), raise 100% 2.8% (-0.6pp); locks not solved](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/exploiting-nits-poker-strategy-you-need-nit-l-locked-fig.jpg) *Nit L locks on HJ facing CO’s 75% bet: fold 65.7% → 73.6%, raises 24.0% → 18.5%. Locks only, not a re-solve.* Three adjustments follow from that picture. All three are exploitation, so they are only as good as your read. - C-bet and stab more. A bluff needs folds equal to bet ÷ (pot + bet). If the nit folds more than that, weak hands bet at a profit. The Nit L lock folds 73.6% against a bet that needs 43.0%. When he checks to you, take the pot. When you are the preflop raiser and he calls, bet more often, and prefer small sizes that make him fold his marginal hands cheaply. - Fold more to his raises. The lock cuts HJ’s raises from 24.0% to 18.5%, and what’s left is the value. Against a nit, hands you would defend against a balanced raise become folds. He won’t punish you for it. - Don’t value-bet thin. A value bet only gains when you’re ahead of the hands that call more than half of the time. A nit folds the worse hands you want to get paid by and calls with the better ones. Bet your strong hands, check the medium ones, and take the showdown. Bluff break-even bluff needs=betpot+bet13 pot:11+3=25%34 pot:33+4=42.9%\text{bluff needs}=\frac{\text{bet}}{\text{pot}+\text{bet}}\qquad\tfrac13\text{ pot}: \frac{1}{1+3}=25\%\qquad\tfrac34\text{ pot}: \frac{3}{3+4}=42.9\% Value bet, counting only the times it gets called EV(value bet, when called)=w⋅b−(1−w)⋅b>0 ⟺ w>50%\text{EV(value bet, when called)}=w\cdot b-(1-w)\cdot b>0\iff w>50\% His low bet vs missed c-bet stat points to one more spot, as a heuristic. When you check the flop and he checks back, his range is capped with weak and medium hands, because he bets his strong ones. Turn and river stabs work well there. Be careful with board texture, though: a nit’s preflop range is tight and full of big cards and pairs, so boards that hit that range are where your stabs fail. [pa-cta id=”nits_solver” to=”/gto-postflop-solver” title=”Lock a nit in the postflop solver” body=”Open a flop, apply the Nit profile to your opponent and compare the exploit with GTO before you change your game.” label=”Open the solver”] ## When not to exploit - Small samples. A player who folded three blinds in a row isn’t a nit yet. Stay close to the solver ranges until the stats have enough hands behind them. - Tight-aggressive players. They also play few hands, but they 3-bet and bluff. Against them the extra steals and folds lose. - ICM spots. Near the bubble or at a final table, tight folding can be correct. Adjust to the pressure first, the player second. - When he adjusts. If the nit starts 3-betting your wide button opens, go back to the baseline. ## Summary Against a nit, take the pots he gives up and give up the pots he fights for. Open wider when he’s in the big blind, fold to his 3-bets and 4-bets, bet when he checks, and stop value-betting hands he only calls when he beats you. Check the baseline in the charts first, then lock your read in the solver and see whether the numbers move. Cheers! 🙂 --- # Poker Academy Heads to Polish Poker Series in Bratislava Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-academy-heads-to-polish-poker-series-in-bratislava Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2024-10-31 Category: Lifestyle ![Poker Academy Heads to Polish Poker Series in Bratislava](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/10/Poker-Academy-in-Bratislava2.jpg) Exciting news for our Poker Academy community! From November 7th to November 10th, our team will be in Bratislava, Slovakia for an unforgettable poker event, and we’re thrilled to announce our partnership with [Polish Poker Championship](https://polishpokerseries.com/pl). As a partner of the festival, we’re adding extra subscriptions to the prizepool for the Final Tables participants. And that’s not all. One more surprise is incoming from our side! ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/10/PPC-bratislava-2.png) *Polish Poker Series banner* Throughout the event, we’ll have a stand set up in the tournament area, offering a fantastic chance for poker enthusiasts to connect with our team, explore new strategies, and learn more about what Poker Academy has to offer. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/10/Bratislava_Hrad_Slovensko-333.png) *Castle in Bratislava, Slovakia* If you’re attending, don’t hesitate to stop by and say hello! We look forward to meeting you, answering questions, and sharing in the excitement of the event. See you in Bratislava! --- # How to play pocket pairs from the big blind at 25bb Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-play-your-pocket-pairs Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-10-24 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Online Game ![How to play pocket pairs from the big blind at 25bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-your-pocket-pairs-hero.jpg) Pocket pairs look simple. You have a made hand, so you play it. In the big blind at 25bb the same 22 is a call against one opener, an all-in against another and a fold against a third. Pairs from JJ down cause most of the confusion. This article goes through every pocket pair in the big blind at 25 big blinds, against four openers: early position, the hijack, the button and the small blind. All numbers come from the Poker Academy preflop solver, in one spot family: **MTT, chipEV, 9-handed, 1bb big-blind ante, 25bb stacks**. The early and late seats open to 2bb, the small blind opens to 3bb. I show the spots the way they look in the app, so you can open them yourself. chipEV means every chip is worth the same. Near the money bubble or at a final table that stops being true, and ICM makes calling off your stack more expensive, so the calling ranges get tighter. I don’t have ICM numbers for these spots, so treat everything below as the chipEV baseline. ## The whole picture in one table This is the solver’s action for every pair against every opener. A cell with one word is a pure action (90% or more); a split cell shows the two biggest parts. ![Table of solver actions for every pocket pair in the big blind at 25bb, MTT chipEV 9-handed with a 1bb big-blind ante, against EP, HJ, button and small blind opens, a small blind limp and a small blind all-in](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-your-pocket-pairs-pairs-table.png) *25bb, big blind, chipEV, 9-handed, 1bb BB ante. 3-bets are to 6bb against a 2bb open and to 6.2bb against the SB’s 3bb open.* - AA–QQ almost never jam. They 3-bet small against the early and late opens and mostly call against the small blind. - JJ–TT are the main all-ins against 2bb opens, with a small 3-bet part. - 99–55 change the most. Against EP 88–55 mostly call and 99 mixes; against the HJ and the button they jam. - 44–22 call EP, jam the button, jam the small blind open. 22 is the only pair that calls the HJ. The pattern behind it is the opener’s width: the wider the range you are facing, the more your middle and small pairs want the chips in now. EP opens 17.0% of hands, the HJ 27.8%, the button 45.0%. ## Against early position: call the small pairs EP opens a tight 17.0% and has every pair from 66 up in it. The big blind closes the action and gets a good price, so it calls a lot: 64.5% of all hands. The table in the app shows the price directly: Pot odds: BB vs a 2bb EP open callpot after call=12+0.5+1+1+1=15.5=18.2%\frac{\text{call}}{\text{pot after call}} = \frac{1}{2 + 0.5 + 1 + 1 + 1} = \frac{1}{5.5} = 18.2\% The pot before your call is the 2bb raise, the 0.5bb small blind, your 1bb blind and the 1bb ante. You add 1bb more. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 25bb BB vs RFI from EP, 9-handed chipEV with BB ante: call 64.5%, raise to 6bb 4.5%, all-in 2.4%, fold 28.7%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-your-pocket-pairs-bb-vs-ep-fig.jpg) *25bb, big blind against a 2bb EP open. Teal = call, orange = 3-bet to 6bb, dark red = all-in.* - AA, KK, QQ: 3-bet to 6bb, 100%. - JJ: jam 72%, 3-bet 28%. TT: jam 92%. - 99: 3-bet 65%, call 35%. 88: call 81%, 3-bet 19%. - 77–22: call. 55 mixes in some jams and 3-bets. Why not jam 77 here? A 25bb jam risks your whole stack against a tight 17% range that holds every pair from 66 up, while a call costs 1bb and keeps the pot small. The solver’s EV for 22 shows the same thing: call −0.15bb, 3-bet −0.41bb, fold −1.00bb (chipEV, counted from the start of the hand, so folding loses your big blind). Calling is worth 0.85bb more than folding. ## Against the hijack: most pairs jam Move the opener three seats closer to the button and the picture flips. The HJ opens 27.8%, and the big blind jams 25bb with 99, 88, 77, 44 and 33 between 94 and 100% of the time. 66 and 55 jam 75% and 65%, and 3-bet the rest of the time. 22 is the one pair left calling. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 25bb BB vs RFI from HJ, 9-handed chipEV: call 66.5%, all-in 7.6%, raise to 6bb 4.8%, fold 21.1%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-your-pocket-pairs-bb-vs-hj-fig.jpg) *25bb, big blind against a 2bb HJ open: all-in 7.6% of hands, most pairs among them.* The top of the range is almost the same as against EP: AA and KK 3-bet small, QQ 3-bets 79% and jams 21%, JJ and TT jam about 75 to 86% of the time. ## Against the button: every pair from TT down jams The button opens 45.0% of hands. Against that range the big blind jams 13.8% of all hands, and it includes every pair from TT to 22, pure. JJ jams 76% and 3-bets 24%. AA, KK and QQ 3-bet to 6bb. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 25bb BB vs RFI from BTN, 9-handed chipEV: call 66.6%, all-in 13.8%, raise to 6bb 5.6%, fold 13.9%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-your-pocket-pairs-bb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *25bb, big blind against a 2bb button open. Dark red = all-in: TT–22 are all in it.* My reading of it: a wide opener has to fold most of its range to a jam, and when it calls with two overcards your pair is still roughly a coin flip. A small pair needs both of those, the fold equity and the showdown value. By the way, the button itself folds 33 and 22 at this depth: in the solver, opening them is worth less than folding (33 −0.02bb, 22 −0.09bb). [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_25bb_bb_vs_btn” to=”/open/mtt-25bb-bb-vs-btn” title=”BB facing a button open, 25bb” body=”Every pocket pair side by side, with the call/3-bet/fold split the article walks through.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Blind versus blind The small blind plays three different ways at this depth: it limps 50.5% of hands, raises to 3bb with 29.0% and jams 3.9%. Each one needs a different answer. ### The SB opens to 3bb Now you are in position for the rest of the hand, and the price is worse than against a 2bb open: Pot odds: BB vs a 3bb SB open 23+1+1+2=27=28.6%\frac{2}{3 + 1 + 1 + 2} = \frac{2}{7} = 28.6\% The big pairs mostly call: AA 80%, KK 82%, 88 94%, with the rest 3-bet to 6.2bb. The small pairs go the other way. 55, 44, 33 and 22 jam 100%, 66 jams 46% and 77 14%. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 25bb BB vs a 3bb SB open, 9-handed chipEV: call 58.8%, all-in 9.3%, raise to 6.2bb 2.5%, fold 29.4%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-your-pocket-pairs-bb-vs-sbopen-fig.jpg) *25bb, big blind against a 3bb small blind open: 55–22 jam, the big pairs mostly call.* With 22 the gap is clear in the solver’s EV: jam +0.13bb, call −0.19bb. The next section shows why a call is so poor for small pairs here. ### The SB limps Against a limp there is nothing to call. You check or raise. The solver raises to 3bb with 77 and every pair above it, jams 66 81% of the time and jams 55–22 100%. It never just checks a pair. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 25bb BB vs SB limp, 9-handed chipEV: check 57.2%, raise to 3bb 37.2%, all-in 5.5%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-play-your-pocket-pairs-bb-vs-sblimp-fig.jpg) *25bb, big blind against a small blind limp. Orange = raise to 3bb, dark red = all-in.* ### The SB jams 25bb You call 24bb more into a 27bb pot (25bb jam, your 1bb blind, 1bb ante), so you need 24 ÷ 51 = 47.1% equity against the jam. The SB jams only 3.9% of its hands, and 33 and 22 are part of that range. The big blind calls with every pair from AA to 33 and folds 22. ## Set mining: the maths The classic reason to call with a small pair is to flop a set, so here is how often that lands. You hold two of the four cards of your rank, so two are left among the 50 unseen cards (ignoring the opponent’s cards): Flopping a set or better with a pocket pair 1−(483)(503)=1−17,29619,600=11.8%1 – \frac{\binom{48}{3}}{\binom{50}{3}} = 1 – \frac{17{,}296}{19{,}600} = 11.8\% That is 11.5% for a set plus 0.24% for quads. The other 88.2% of the time you see a flop with a small pair and usually overcards on the board. Pure set mining breaks even when the sets win enough to pay for all the misses: Set mining break-even (fold every miss) 0.118×(pot+W)=0.882×call ⇒ pot+W=7.5×call0.118 \times (\text{pot} + W) = 0.882 \times \text{call} \;\Rightarrow\; \text{pot} + W = 7.5 \times \text{call} *W* is what you win from the opponent after the flop when you hit. Plug in the two spots: - Against the 2bb EP open: call 1bb, pot 4.5bb. You need 7.5 − 4.5 = 3.0bb extra. EP has 23bb behind, so that is easy. - Against the 3bb SB open: call 2bb, pot 5bb. You need 15.0 − 5 = 10.0bb extra, from a player with 22bb behind. That is 45% of their stack, every time you hit. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_25bb_bb_vs_sb” to=”/open/mtt-25bb-bb-vs-sb” title=”BB facing an SB open, 25bb” body=”The other spot in the pocket-pairs table: same stack, different opener, different answer.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Why implied odds are thin at 25bb Implied odds are the chips you expect to win later on top of the pot now. They are large when stacks are deep and the call is small: in a 100bb cash game you can call a raise and still have a whole stack to win. At 25bb there are two limits. - The ceiling is low. The most you can win after the flop is what the opponent has left, 22 to 23bb here. As soon as the call gets bigger, the share of that stack you need grows fast, from 3bb to 10bb in the two spots above. - You don’t collect it every time. The opponent doesn’t always have a hand that pays off, and sometimes your set loses. The break-even above assumes you win *W* every time you hit, so the real number you need is higher. This part is a heuristic, not solver output. So at 25bb small pairs rarely live on sets alone. They call when the price is very cheap (1bb against a tight EP range, where they also have some showdown value) and they jam when the opener is wide enough to fold. The solver’s move from call to jam as the opener gets wider is that trade. [pa-cta id=”pp_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Play your pairs against every opener” body=”Pick 25bb and the big blind. The trainer deals the spots and grades each call, 3-bet and jam against the solver.” label=”Start training”] ## Mistakes I see most with pocket pairs - Jamming AA–QQ. The solver 3-bets them small against every 2bb open and mostly flats the SB’s 3bb open. - Calling 99–33 against a late open. Against the HJ and the button they are mostly all-ins at 25bb. - Set mining against the small blind. The call needs 10bb back from 22bb every time you hit; 55–22 jam instead. - Calling a SB jam with 22. The SB’s jam range is tiny and includes 33. - Using chipEV charts on the bubble. ICM makes calling off 25bb more costly, so the calling ranges get tighter. If you want to go further, open the same spots at 20bb and 30bb in the app and watch where the pairs switch from call to jam. That switch point moves with the stack, and it is the thing worth remembering. Cheers! 🙂 --- # Poker hand rankings explained: every hand, how rare it is and why Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/17-pazdziernik-poker-hands-ranking-explained Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-10-17 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Poker hand rankings explained: every hand, how rare it is and why](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/17-pazdziernik-poker-hands-ranking-expla-hero.jpg) Before ranges, pot odds or solvers, you need to know which hand wins. This guide covers the ten hand rankings used in Texas Hold’em and Omaha, with an example of each in real cards and a count of how rare each one is. I also fixed a few things the older version of this post got wrong: the name of a full house, the odds of flopping a set, and whether A♠︎K♠︎ really beats a pair of tens. ## The basics: best five cards win Hold’em uses a standard 52-card deck. You get two private cards, the hole cards. Five community cards go on the board. At showdown every player makes the best five-card hand out of those seven cards, and the best hand wins the pot. You can use both hole cards, one, or none. If the board is better than anything you can make with your cards, you “play the board”. Omaha uses the same rankings with one rule change: you get four hole cards and must use **exactly two** of them plus exactly three board cards. Four hearts on the board and one heart in your hand is not a flush in Omaha. ## Poker hand rankings, best to worst ![Poker hand rankings ladder with example cards: royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, high card](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/17-pazdziernik-poker-hands-ranking-expla-ladder.png) *The ten hand rankings with an example five-card hand for each.* - **Royal flush:** A♠︎ K♠︎ Q♠︎ J♠︎ T♠︎. The ace-high straight flush. There are only four, one per suit. - **Straight flush:** five cards in a row of one suit, like 9♥︎ 8♥︎ 7♥︎ 6♥︎ 5♥︎. Between two straight flushes, the higher top card wins. - **Four of a kind (quads):** Q♣︎ Q♦︎ Q♥︎ Q♠︎ 7♦︎. Higher quads win; if both players share quads on the board, the fifth card decides. - **Full house:** three of a kind plus a pair. A♠︎ A♥︎ A♦︎ K♣︎ K♠︎ is *aces full of kings*: the three cards name the hand, the pair comes after “full of”. - **Flush:** five cards of one suit, like A♦︎ J♦︎ 8♦︎ 6♦︎ 2♦︎. - **Straight:** five cards in a row, any suits, like 9♣︎ 8♦︎ 7♠︎ 6♥︎ 5♣︎. - **Three of a kind:** 7♠︎ 7♥︎ 7♦︎ K♣︎ 2♦︎. With a pocket pair plus one card on the board it’s called a *set*; with one card in your hand and two on the board, *trips*. - **Two pair:** J♥︎ J♣︎ 4♠︎ 4♦︎ A♣︎. Compare the higher pair first, then the lower pair, then the fifth card. - **One pair:** T♠︎ T♦︎ A♥︎ 8♣︎ 3♦︎. Higher pair wins; with the same pair, the kickers decide. - **High card:** A♣︎ Q♦︎ 9♠︎ 6♥︎ 3♣︎. No pair, no straight, no flush. Compare the highest card, then the next, down to the fifth. ## Why this order? Rarer hands rank higher Deal five cards from a shuffled deck and count every possible hand: there are C(52,5) = 2,598,960 of them. The fewer ways a hand can be made, the higher it ranks. ![Table of poker hand frequencies: royal flush 4, straight flush 36, four of a kind 624, full house 3,744, flush 5,108, straight 10,200, three of a kind 54,912, two pair 123,552, one pair 1,098,240, high card 1,302,540 out of 2,598,960](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/17-pazdziernik-poker-hands-ranking-expla-odds.png) *Every five-card hand counted, plus the best five of seven cards (Hold’em by the river). Exhaustive count, no simulation.* Two rows are worth checking by hand, because they explain the most common beginner question: why does a full house beat a flush? Full houses: rank of the three × suits × rank of the pair × suits 13⋅(43)⋅12⋅(42)=13⋅4⋅12⋅6=3,74413 \cdot \binom{4}{3} \cdot 12 \cdot \binom{4}{2} = 13 \cdot 4 \cdot 12 \cdot 6 = 3{,}744 Flushes: 5 ranks of one suit, minus the 40 straight flushes (135)⋅4−40=1,287⋅4−40=5,108\binom{13}{5} \cdot 4 – 40 = 1{,}287 \cdot 4 – 40 = 5{,}108 There are fewer full houses (3,744, or 1 in 694) than flushes (5,108, or 1 in 509), so the full house ranks higher. The last column breaks that pattern. When you choose the best five of seven cards, high card (17.4%) is rarer than two pair (23.5%). The ranking stays the same anyway, because it is defined on five-card hands. ## Ties, kickers and split pots When two players have the same kind of hand, the cards inside it decide. These are the cases that cause most of the arguments at the table. **Full house against full house.** Compare the three of a kind first. On a board of K♠︎ K♦︎ A♣︎ 7♥︎ 2♠︎, a player with A♥︎ A♦︎ has aces full of kings (A-A-A-K-K). A player with K♥︎ A♠︎ has kings full of aces (K-K-K-A-A). Aces full wins, even though the other player holds the case king. **Kickers.** On K♣︎ 8♦︎ 5♥︎ 3♠︎ 2♣︎, K♥︎ Q♦︎ and K♠︎ J♥︎ both have a pair of kings. The next card decides: queen beats jack, so K♥︎ Q♦︎ wins. Only the best five cards play, so a sixth or seventh card never breaks a tie. **Flush against flush.** Compare the five flush cards from the top, one by one. On A♥︎ 9♥︎ 6♥︎ 2♣︎ J♦︎, K♥︎ 3♥︎ makes A-K-9-6-3 and Q♥︎ T♥︎ makes A-Q-T-9-6. The ace is shared, the king beats the queen, and that settles it. The lower cards only matter when the higher ones match. **Split pots.** If the best five-card hands are exactly equal, the pot is split. That is true in every standard variant. In Hold’em it usually happens when the board plays: on 5♥︎ 6♦︎ 7♣︎ 8♠︎ 9♥︎, both A♣︎ A♦︎ and K♠︎ 2♦︎ play the nine-high straight on the board and chop. A player with T♦︎ 3♣︎ would win alone with a ten-high straight. Two players can only split a royal flush if all five cards are on the board, like A♠︎ K♠︎ Q♠︎ J♠︎ T♠︎. Nobody’s hole cards can improve that hand, so every player still in the hand shares the pot. Suits never break a tie. A spade flush is not better than a heart flush. ## The ace plays high and low In Hold’em and Omaha the ace is both the highest and the lowest card in a straight. A-2-3-4-5 (the *wheel*) is the lowest straight, five-high. T-J-Q-K-A is the highest. On A♣︎ 2♦︎ 3♥︎ K♠︎ 9♣︎, 4♠︎ 5♦︎ makes the wheel. A straight can’t wrap around the ace. Q-K-A-2-3 is not a straight; on Q♣︎ K♦︎ A♥︎ 2♠︎ 3♣︎, 9♥︎ 8♥︎ has only ace-high. ## Other variants rank hands differently These rankings are the same in Texas Hold’em and Omaha, which is what most people play. They are not the same everywhere: - **Lowball games** such as Razz and 2-7 Triple Draw reward the *worst* hand. In 2-7 straights and flushes count against you; in Razz they don’t count at all. - **Short Deck** (six-plus Hold’em) removes the 2s to 5s. With fewer cards a flush is harder to make, so a flush beats a full house there. - **Hi-lo games** like Omaha Hi-Lo split the pot between the best high hand and the best qualifying low hand. If you sit down in anything other than Hold’em or Omaha, check the house rules first. [pa-cta id=”ranking_equity” to=”/equity-calculator” title=”Check any matchup yourself” body=”Put in two hands and a board and see the exact equity, like TT against AKs.” label=”Open the equity calculator”] ## How often do you flop a set? A pocket pair flops a set or better about **11.8%** of the time, roughly 1 in 8.5 flops. The old version of this article said 10%. You hold 7♠︎ 7♥︎, so 50 cards are left and two of them are sevens. Count the flops without a seven: Flop a set or better with a pocket pair 1−(483)(503)=1−17,29619,600=11.76%1 – \frac{\binom{48}{3}}{\binom{50}{3}} = 1 – \frac{17{,}296}{19{,}600} = 11.76\% That includes the rare flops with both remaining sevens: 48 of 19,600, or 0.24%, where you flop quads. The set alone (including sets that are already a full house) is 2,256 flops, 11.5%. ## Starting hands: what the ranking means before the flop Hand rankings tell you who wins at showdown. Before the flop you only have two cards, so starting hands are ranked by how much money they make, and that depends on the spot. Take a real one: a 6-max cash game, 100bb deep, no ante, action folds to the lojack (LJ), the first player to act. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, Normal NL200 GG 6-max cash 100bb, LJ first in: raise 2.5bb 18.5% (245 combos), fold 81.5%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/17-pazdziernik-poker-hands-ranking-expla-lj-rfi-fig.jpg) *100bb 6-max cash (NL200 GG), LJ first in. Orange = open to 2.5bb, grey = fold. The solver opens 18.5% of hands.* Each square of the 13×13 grid is one starting hand: pairs on the diagonal, suited hands above it, offsuit hands below. The solver opens 18.5% of hands from the lojack. The same chart shows how much each open is worth, so the ranking below comes from data instead of memory. [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_lj_rfi” to=”/open/cash-100bb-lj-rfi” title=”LJ first in, NL200 100bb” body=”The opening range the article’s figure comes from: 18.5% of hands, 245 combos, one raise size.” label=”Open the matrix”] ![Top 10 starting hands by open-raise EV from the lojack in a 100bb 6-max cash game: AA, KK, QQ, AKs, JJ, AQs, AKo, TT, AJs, KQs](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/17-pazdziernik-poker-hands-ranking-expla-top-ev.png) *Solver EV of a 2.5bb open, in big blinds, fold = 0. LJ and BTN, 100bb 6-max cash, no ante.* AA is the best starting hand by a mile: +7.81bb for an open from the lojack. After KK and QQ comes AKs at +1.06bb, ahead of JJ (+0.60bb) and TT (+0.27bb). On the button AKs (+2.28bb) is still ahead of JJ (+2.16bb) and TT (+1.34bb). That does not mean A♠︎K♠︎ beats T♥︎T♦︎ when the money goes in. All-in preflop, the tens are a small favourite. I counted all 1,712,304 boards: Tens vs ace-king suited (hearts-diamonds vs spades), all-in preflop 919,710+6,24421,712,304=53.9% for TT, 46.1% for AKs\frac{919{,}710 + \tfrac{6{,}244}{2}}{1{,}712{,}304} = 53.9\% \text{ for TT, } 46.1\% \text{ for AKs} So why does AKs rank higher by EV? EV measures everything that follows the open, not one all-in against one hand. The rest of this paragraph is my reading rather than solver output: AKs makes top pair with the best kicker and nut flushes, and it blocks AA and KK. TT is often unsure what to do on flops with an overcard. The worst hand depends on how you measure it too. In both spots above, 72o (for example 7♣︎ 2♦︎) has the lowest open-raise EV of all 169 hands: −0.21bb from the lojack and −0.20bb on the button. Both numbers are below zero, so the solver folds it. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, Normal NL200 GG 6-max cash 100bb, BTN first in: raise 2.5bb 46.5% (617 combos), fold 53.5%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/17-pazdziernik-poker-hands-ranking-expla-btn-rfi-fig.jpg) *Same game, button first in: the solver opens 46.5% of hands. Position changes which starting hands are playable.* Compare the two charts. From the lojack 18.5% of hands open; from the button, 46.5%. A starting hand has no fixed rank: it depends on your position, stack depth and the game you play, which is why a top ten list is only a starting point. [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_btn_rfi” to=”/open/cash-100bb-btn-rfi” title=”Button first in, NL200 100bb” body=”46.5% of hands, 617 combos, the widest opening range at the table next to LJ’s 18.5%.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Quick recap - The best five cards win. In Omaha you must use exactly two hole cards. - Order: royal flush, straight flush, quads, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, high card. - Rarer hands rank higher: 3,744 full houses against 5,108 flushes out of 2,598,960 five-card hands. - A-A-A-K-K is aces full of kings. The three of a kind names the hand and decides between full houses. - Ties go to the kickers, then the pot is split. Suits never break ties. - The ace plays high or low in a straight, but a straight never wraps around. - A pocket pair flops a set or better 11.8% of the time. - Starting hands rank by EV in a given spot. TT is a 53.9% favourite against AKs all-in, but AKs opens for more EV. When you’re comfortable with the rankings, open the preflop charts and click through a few positions. It’s the fastest way to see how your two cards turn into a range. Cheers! 🙂 --- # EPT Cyprus 2024: High Stakes, Mediterranean Vibes, and What to Expect Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/10-paz-priorytet-ept-cyprus-2024-high-stakes-mediterranean-vibes-and-what-to-expect Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2024-10-10 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Lifestyle ![EPT Cyprus 2024: High Stakes, Mediterranean Vibes, and What to Expect](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/10/EPT-Cyprus-2025.jpg) Poker enthusiasts, get ready! The European Poker Tour (EPT) is gearing up for its next exciting stop, and this time it’s headed to the stunning Mediterranean island of Cyprus. From October 9 to 20, 2024, the EPT Cyprus promises a thrilling poker festival at the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel & Casino. As the EPT unfolds in this sun-soaked paradise, players and fans alike can expect world-class poker, glamorous surroundings, and plenty of high-stakes action. ![cyprus-landscape](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/10/cypruslandscape.jpg) *Beach landscape in Cyprus* ## **A Mediterranean Poker Paradise** Set against the backdrop of the crystal-clear waters of the Mediterranean, the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel & Casino is the perfect venue for this prestigious event. With luxurious accommodations, an expansive casino, and breathtaking views, Cyprus offers the ideal mix of relaxation and adrenaline-pumping poker. Whether you’re competing at the tables or enjoying the vibrant nightlife, EPT Cyprus 2024 is sure to be an unforgettable experience. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/10/merit-royal-diamond-6.jpg) *Merit Royal Diamond Hotel* ## **The EPT Main Event and High Roller Thrills** As with every EPT stop, the Main Event is the crown jewel of the festival. With a significant buy-in and life-changing prize pool, the EPT Cyprus Main Event is expected to attract some of the biggest names in poker. Alongside it, the High Roller and Super High Roller events will showcase elite-level poker, featuring players with nerves of steel battling for massive payouts. In the inaugural edition of EPT Cyprus, Gilles Simon from the Netherlands claimed the trophy along with a cool $1,024,000. Here’s the kicker: just two weeks later, Simon entered a €100 poker tournament in Valkenburg, finishing 6th for a humble €333. Talk about passion for poker-it’s not always about the money! ![gilles-simon-wins-ept-cyprus-main-event](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/10/gilles-simon-wins-ept-cyprus-main-event.jpeg) *Gilles Simon wins first EPT Cyprus main event in 2023* ## **A Festival for All Poker Lovers** Whether you’re a seasoned professional or a passionate amateur, EPT Cyprus has something for everyone. From the high-stakes drama of the Main Event to more accessible side events, there are plenty of opportunities to get involved. The popular EPT Mystery Bounty event adds an extra layer of intrigue, where luck and strategy combine for a unique poker experience. Imagine pulling a mystery envelope and suddenly boosting your winnings-it’s these kinds of twists that make the EPT experience truly unique. ## **Join the Action** There’s no doubt that EPT Cyprus 2024 will be one of the highlights of the poker calendar. With beautiful weather, stunning scenery, and some of the best poker players in the world all in one place, it’s an event you won’t want to miss. Whether you’re playing or watching, the excitement and energy of the European Poker Tour is something every poker fan should experience at least once. So, are you ready to take your seat at the table, feel the rush of the cards, and perhaps even create your own unforgettable poker moment? EPT Cyprus is calling-don’t miss your chance to be a part of this incredible poker journey. --- # Unlock the Power of This Poker Tool Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/unlock-the-power-of-this-poker-tool Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-10-04 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: General ![Unlock the Power of This Poker Tool](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/Free-Poker-Tools.jpg) Solvers (such as Poker Academy’s Postflop Solver) are crucial for efficient study and faster skill development. However, there are other poker tools that are just as helpful, not only after but also during your live and online poker sessions. One of the most important resources is the HUD. If you’re unfamiliar with this term, we encourage you to read Poker Academy’s article titled “[Poker HUD for You: Take the Advantage](https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-hud-for-you-take-the-advantage/).” Now, let’s talk about simpler, yet equally important tools that poker players can use during their poker sessions. check our free tools ## **The Importance of a Timer and Clock** During poker sessions, there’s a lot going on-many tables, tons of action, and very little time to keep track of everything. Managing your time effectively can lead to better poker decisions. That’s why you should use a timer or clock to help make more informed decisions during your sessions. Simply enter the tournament title, select a poker room, and set the time. You can choose between a timer that counts down the hours or a clock that sets an alarm at a specific time. These totally free poker tools will make sure you never miss out on your favorite tournaments. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/timer-and-clock-1.png) *Timer & Clock – never miss a late reg.* ## Poker Randomizer: Stay Unpredictable The randomizer is a tool designed to enhance your poker decision-making by introducing an element of unpredictability, helping you stay balanced in your strategy. Click to generate a random number between 1 and 100. How does it work? Suppose you’re in a situation where GTO strategy suggests calling 50% of the time and raising 50%. You can use the randomizer to decide your action: if the result is between 1 and 50, you call; if it’s between 51 and 100, you raise. Alternatively, you can use the second hand of a watch as a randomizer by applying a similar range to the seconds displayed. ## Basic Math If you want to play according to GTO, you need to understand basic math and expected value, which you can review on Poker Academy’s [Resources-Tools](https://poker.academy/tools) page. There, you’ll find cheat sheets with poker fundamentals, including the percentage of certain moves relative to expected results. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/matma-1.png) *Basic poker math: Must to know.* ## Poker Strategy: Tips & Tricks before, during and after session Last but not least, having a routine is part of a solid poker strategy that helps you concentrate and play your A-game. Check out Poker Academy’s Tools section, where you can find the resources mentioned earlier, as well as Tips & Tricks that you can implement into your game habits. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/resources-tools-1.png) *Poker Academy’s Dashboard. You can access Tools from the top navigation.* These tips and tricks can lead to more winning sessions. You should use this list as a friendly reminder and recipe for a healthy approach to poker sessions. There are also Break Workouts that improve blood circulation and activate your brain during short 5-minute breaks. Remember – taking care of your body is one of the best poker strategies of all time. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/tips-and-tricks-1.png) *Poker Tips & Tricks* --- # Update: New Table View in Preflop Charts Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/update-new-table-view-in-preflop-charts Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2024-09-22 Category: Update ![Update: New Table View in Preflop Charts](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/New-Table-View.jpg) At Poker Academy, we’re thrilled to show our latest update: the improved Table View in Preflop Charts! 🚀 This feature allows you to browse preflop charts in a different way than our default user-interface 📈 Whether you’re analyzing hand ranges or refining your strategy, our Preflop Charts tool ensures a smooth and intuitive experience. 🎯 Our Preflop Charts tool is here to enhance your poker decision-making process by providing precise, data-driven insights. 🌟 You can access the Table View directly in the Preflop Charts panel by selecting a checkbox. The interface will change immediately 🃏👑 ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-26-at-13.58.51.png) *To turn on Table View, select a checkbox* ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-26-at-13.59.14.png) *New, improved table view* You can recreate the preflop scenario by clicking the action as in a real-table scenario. --- # Postflop Solver Now Available on iOS! Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/postflop-solver-now-available-on-ios Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2024-09-11 Category: General ![Postflop Solver Now Available on iOS!](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/Postflop-Solver-Now-Available-on-Mobile.jpg) At Poker Academy, we’re constantly striving to enhance your poker experience, and today, we’re thrilled to announce a game-changing update: **the Postflop Solver is now available on our mobile app (iOS)** 🚀 **Android** Release will be very soon. **Download app from [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.isolve.preflop.academy) or [App Store](https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/poker-academy-learn-gto-poker/id1626050814).** This powerful tool, previously only accessible through our web app, allows you to calculate postflop GTO (Game Theory Optimal) simulations directly from your smartphone or tablet. Whether you’re analyzing complex hands on the go or refining your strategy during downtime, the Postflop Solver brings cutting-edge technology right to your fingertips. 🧠💻 ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/09/main-screen123.png) *Main analysis window* **Why the Postflop Solver is a Must-Have** The Postflop Solver is designed to give you an edge by providing precise, data-driven insights into postflop scenarios. Now, with mobile access, you can simulate hands and make informed decisions no matter where you are. This tool is perfect for players who want to dive deeper into their postflop play and enhance their overall strategy. 🌟 Accessing the Postflop Solver on mobile is seamless. Simply log in to the Poker Academy app, and you’ll find the Solver ready to use in your dashboard. Whether you’re in a tournament, a cash game, or just practicing, the Postflop Solver will help you stay ahead of the competition. 🏆 - ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/09/dashboard123.png) - ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/09/library123.png) *App’s Dashboard & Solutions Library* ## **For who?** ### For Current Customers If you are a Premium or Standard or Essential subscriber, app is available for you for free. ### New customers Join Poker Academy’s Mobile App plan subscription now for just €29 monthly to dive deep into the realm of GTO strategies, AI-driven insights, and beyond. 🚀 For our new customers, we’re thrilled to offer a 3-day free trial, allowing you to experience the wealth of resources and community support at no initial cost. 🎉 Whether you’re looking to master the basics or refine your advanced strategies, the Postflop Solver on mobile is designed to support your growth as a player. 🎯 ## What Makes the Postflop Solver Special? **Mobility:** Analyze complex poker hands on-the-go. Whether you’re in a live game or just brushing up on your skills at home. **Simplification:** We adapt the app to give simple answers. The engine will give you answer if you play check or bet, of if you should call vs raise. **Ease of Use:** With a user-friendly design, the Postflop Solver is easy to navigate, making complex decisions simpler and more accessible. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/09/solve-postflop123.png) *Easy go from Preflop Charts to Postflop Solver* ## Integrating User Feedback In developing the Postflop Solver, we’ve taken community feedback seriously. Your input has been crucial. We understand the need for a tool that is both powerful. We invite all our users to try out. Enhance your gameplay, deepen your understanding, and gain the competitive edge you need to succeed at the table. - ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/09/configuration123.png) - ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/09/select-flop-drawer123.png) *Configuration at Postflop Solver is easy and simple* ## **Get Started Today!** To start using the Postflop Solver on your mobile device, simply update or download the latest version of the Poker Academy app from the App Store or Google Play. This update marks a significant step forward in making professional-level tools accessible anytime, anywhere. 🃏📊 Join us in celebrating this exciting release, and take your poker game to the next level with the Postflop Solver on mobile! **Poker Academy – Where Champions Are Made.** --- # Introduction to Basic Poker Math Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introduction-to-basic-poker-math Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-08-29 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Introduction to Basic Poker Math](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-math-hero.jpg) Most poker decisions come down to one question: does this call, bet or bluff make money over time? You do not need to be good at maths to answer it. You need four short formulas and a feel for what each one is actually telling you. This guide covers **equity**, **pot odds**, **alpha**, **minimum defense frequency (MDF)**, **expected value (EV)** and **outs**. Every number below is calculated in full, so you can check it yourself. ## What is equity? Every formula in this guide compares a price with one number: your **equity**. Equity is the share of the pot that belongs to your hand on average: how often it would win if all the remaining cards were dealt and nobody bet again. A tie counts as half a win. The cleanest way to see it is to count. You hold 9♥︎8♥︎ on a K♥︎7♥︎2♣︎4♠︎ turn, and for this example we know your opponent has K♠︎Q♦︎. Eight cards are visible, so 44 can come on the river. Any of the 9 remaining hearts gives you a flush and the pot. The other 35 leave your opponent’s pair of kings ahead. Equity equity=cards that wincards that can come\text{equity}=\frac{\text{cards that win}}{\text{cards that can come}} This spot 944=20.5%\frac{9}{44}=20.5\% ![Equity counted card by card: 9♥8♥ against K♠Q♦ on K♥7♥2♣4♠ wins on 9 of 44 rivers, 20.5% equity](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-math-equity.jpg) - **Equity** = 9 ÷ 44 = **20.5%**. - In a 20 bb pot, that is 20.5% × 20 = **4.1 bb** of the pot on average. It is not what you win in any single hand: you either win all 20 bb or nothing. - At the table you do not know your opponent’s exact cards, so real equity is measured against their **range**, the average over every hand they could have. That is what a solver or an equity calculator does for you. Equity says how much of the pot your hand owns right now. Pot odds, below, say how much equity you need for a call to be worth its price. ## Pot odds: how often your call has to win Pot odds tell you the minimum share of the time your hand has to win for a call to break even. The formula: Pot odds required equity=callpot after your call\text{required equity}=\frac{\text{call}}{\text{pot after your call}} The pot after your call includes everything: the pot before the bet, your opponent’s bet and your own call. Leaving the call out of the denominator is the most common mistake in poker maths, and it makes every call look worse than it is. ### Worked example You are in the big blind on the river. The pot is 6.5 bb and the button bets 3.2 bb (about half the pot). The app shows the pot as 9.7 bb, because the bet is already in it. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/poprawionyobrazek.png) *Screenshot from the Postflop Solver app* ![Pot odds example: 6.5 bb pot, 3.2 bb bet, 3.2 bb call, final pot 12.9 bb, required equity 24.8%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-math-potodds.jpg) You risk 3.2 bb to win 9.7 bb. Required equity = 3.2 ÷ (9.7 + 3.2) = 3.2 ÷ 12.9 = **24.8%**. If your hand wins more often than that, calling makes money. If it wins less, folding is better. The example 3.29.7+3.2=3.212.9=24.8%\frac{3.2}{9.7+3.2}=\frac{3.2}{12.9}=24.8\% One thing this number does *not* tell you is how many hands you should call with. That is a different question, answered by MDF below. ### Required equity for common bet sizes The same formula for any bet size, with the bet written as a fraction of the pot: Any bet size required equity=b1+2bb=betpot\text{required equity}=\frac{b}{1+2b}\qquad b=\frac{\text{bet}}{\text{pot}} | Villain bets (% of pot) | Your call must win | | --- | --- | | 10% | 8% | | 20% | 14% | | 33% | 20% | | 50% | 25% | | 66% | 28% | | 75% | 30% | | 100% | 33% | | 125% | 36% | | 150% | 38% | | 200% | 40% | ## Alpha: how often a bluff has to work Alpha is the same idea from the bettor’s side. When you bluff with a hand that cannot win at showdown, alpha is how often your opponent has to fold for the bluff to break even. Alpha α=betpot+bet\alpha=\frac{\text{bet}}{\text{pot}+\text{bet}} ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/alphaexample.png) *Screenshot from the Postflop Solver app* In this spot you bet 6.5 bb into 6.5 bb, a pot-size bet. Alpha = 6.5 ÷ (6.5 + 6.5) = **50%**. If your opponent folds more than half the time, the bluff makes money. If they fold less, it loses. The example 6.56.5+6.5=50%\frac{6.5}{6.5+6.5}=50\% | You bluff (% of pot) | Opponent must fold | | --- | --- | | 10% | 9% | | 20% | 17% | | 33% | 25% | | 50% | 33% | | 66% | 40% | | 75% | 43% | | 100% | 50% | | 125% | 56% | | 150% | 60% | | 200% | 67% | ## Minimum defense frequency (MDF) MDF flips alpha around. It is the share of your range you need to continue with, by calling or raising, so that a bluff with no equity does not automatically make money against you. Minimum defense frequency MDF=1−α=potpot+bet\text{MDF}=1-\alpha=\frac{\text{pot}}{\text{pot}+\text{bet}} Facing the pot-size bet above, MDF = 1 − 50% = **50%**. In the pot odds example (3.2 bb into 6.5 bb), alpha is 3.2 ÷ 9.7 = 33.0%, so MDF is **67.0%**. Notice that this is a very different number from the 24.8% required equity for the same bet. The pot odds example: 3.2 bb into 6.5 bb 1−3.26.5+3.2=1−33.0%=67.0%1-\frac{3.2}{6.5+3.2}=1-33.0\%=67.0\% ![A half-pot bet seen three ways: the caller needs 25% equity, the bluffer needs 33% folds, the defender continues with 67% of their range](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-math-perspectives.jpg) The difference is hand versus range. Required equity is about **one hand**: can this specific hand call? MDF is about your **whole range**: how many of your hands should keep going? Both come from the same bet, and it is worth seeing how they move as the bet gets bigger: ![Line chart: as the bet grows from 10% to 200% of the pot, required equity and alpha rise while MDF falls](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-math-betsize.jpg) ### Where MDF stops being the answer - It assumes your opponent’s bluffs have **no equity**. That is close to true on the river. On the flop and turn their bluffs still have outs, so the simple formula does not hold. - It ignores raises and what happens on later streets. - It is a **reference point, not a solver strategy**. Solver outputs often defend less or more than MDF depending on ranges, board and position, so treat MDF as a starting point. - If you know your opponent bluffs far less than balanced, folding more than MDF suggests is an **exploitative** adjustment, not a GTO one. Our article [GTO poker vs. exploitative poker](https://poker.academy/blog/post/gto-poker-vs-exploitative-poker) explains the difference. ## Expected value (EV) EV is the average result of a decision if you made it many times. For a call: Expected value · p = how often you win EV=p⋅reward−(1−p)⋅risk\text{EV}=p\cdot\text{reward}-(1-p)\cdot\text{risk} Back to the river call: reward 9.7 bb, risk 3.2 bb. At exactly 25% equity, EV = 0.25 × 9.7 − 0.75 × 3.2 = 2.425 − 2.4 = **+0.025 bb**. That is almost exactly zero, which makes sense: 25% is right next to the 24.8% break-even point. The example at 25% 0.25⋅9.7−0.75⋅3.2=+0.025 bb0.25\cdot 9.7-0.75\cdot 3.2=+0.025\text{ bb} ![EV of the example call against how often the hand wins: negative below 24.8%, positive above; -1.27 bb at 15% and +1.96 bb at 40%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-math-ev.jpg) - A hand that wins 15% of the time: 0.15 × 9.7 − 0.85 × 3.2 = **−1.27 bb**. Fold it. - A hand that wins 40% of the time: 0.40 × 9.7 − 0.60 × 3.2 = **+1.96 bb**. Call it. This formula uses win% directly, which works on the river where nothing is left to come. On earlier streets your hand does not always get to showdown, so it realises only part of its equity. Our guide to [equity realisation (EQR)](https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-understand-equity-realisation-eqr) covers that step. ## Outs: your odds of improving With a draw, the question is how often you will hit. An **out** is any unseen card that improves you to what is likely the best hand. A flush draw has 9 outs: 13 cards of the suit minus the 4 you can see. On the flop you can see 5 cards (your 2 and the board’s 3), so 47 are unseen, since your opponent’s hand is not known. Your chance to hit on the turn, and to hit by the river if you see both cards: Hit on the turn P(turn)=outs47P(\text{turn})=\frac{\text{outs}}{47} Hit by the river, both cards P(river)=1−(47−outs)(46−outs)47⋅46P(\text{river})=1-\frac{(47-\text{outs})(46-\text{outs})}{47\cdot 46} | Draw | Outs | Turn only | By the river | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Gutshot | 4 | 8.5% | 16.5% | | Open-ended straight draw | 8 | 17.0% | 31.5% | | Flush draw | 9 | 19.1% | 35.0% | | Flush draw + gutshot | 12 | 25.5% | 45.0% | | Flush draw + open-ended draw | 15 | 31.9% | 54.1% | At the table there is a shortcut, the **rule of 2 and 4**: multiply your outs by 2 for one card to come, or by 4 for two cards. It is close with few outs and drifts with many: ![Exact chance to hit by the river compared with the rule of 4, for 4, 8, 9, 12 and 15 outs](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-math-outs.jpg) ### Putting outs and pot odds together You hold a flush draw on the flop and your opponent bets the size of the pot. Required equity is 33.3%. By the river you would hit 35.0% of the time, which looks like enough. But that 35.0% assumes you see **both** cards for this one price. You only see the turn for this call, and that hits 19.1% of the time. If there is more betting to come, you are not getting 35.0% for your money. The call only works if you win enough extra on the times you hit, which is what **implied odds** are about. If you are all-in, there is nothing left to bet, and 35.0% is the right number. ## Quick recap - **Equity:** how often your hand wins the pot. Count the cards that win, divide by the cards that can come. - **Pot odds:** call ÷ (pot after your call). Half-pot bet → your call needs 25%. - **Alpha:** bet ÷ (pot + bet). Half-pot bluff → needs 33% folds. - **MDF:** 1 − alpha. Half-pot bet → defend about 67% of your range. A reference point, not a solver strategy. - **EV:** win% × reward − lose% × risk. Above the break-even equity, calls make money. - **Outs:** outs ÷ 47 for the turn, 1 − (47 − outs)/47 × (46 − outs)/46 for both cards. Rule of 2 and 4 at the table. New to counting combos? Start with [Poker starting hands: 1,326 combos, 169 hands](https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-starting-hands-combos-notation). When you want to check a real spot, the solver gives you the exact answer for every hand in your range. --- # EPT 2024: Exciting Facts, Iconic Wins, and What’s Next Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/ept-2024-exciting-facts-iconic-wins-and-whats-next Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2024-08-22 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Live Game ![EPT 2024: Exciting Facts, Iconic Wins, and What’s Next](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/06/EPT-2024.png) ## **Next Up: EPT Barcelona 2024 at Casino Barcelona** Ladies and gentlemen, poker enthusiasts and thrill-seekers, brace yourselves-the European Poker Tour (EPT) is back, and it’s bigger and bolder than ever! The next EPT festival takes place from August 26 to September 8, 2024, in the vibrant city of Barcelona. Known for its beautiful beaches, rich history, and electric nightlife, Barcelona is the perfect backdrop for the high-stakes drama of the EPT at Casino Barcelona. Whether you’re competing for the title or just soaking in the atmosphere, this event promises to be an unforgettable experience. The EPT Main Event and EPT High Roller are key highlights of the tournament schedule, drawing top players from around the globe. ![](https://www.theolivepress.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/casino.jpg) *Casino Barcelona, with a stunning sea-view* If you’ve been itching to shuffle up and deal, or simply want to witness some of the most exciting hands in poker history, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. The EPT is not just any poker series; it’s a celebration of skill, strategy, and sheer nerve, bringing together the crème de la crème of the poker world. Let’s dive into some fascinating facts and stories about this legendary series that you simply cannot miss! ## **History and Significance of the European Poker Tour** The European Poker Tour was founded in 2004 by **John Duthie**, a visionary in the poker industry who saw the potential for a premier poker event across Europe. Since then, the EPT has grown into one of the most prestigious poker tours in the world, boasting stops in glamorous locations such as Monte Carlo, Barcelona, and Prague. The increasing buy-in amounts over the years reflect the growing popularity and significance of these tournaments. But it’s not just about the money; it’s about the prestige, the glory, and the chance to etch your name in poker history. A significant part of the EPT’s evolution has been the introduction of Super High Roller events, which feature substantial buy-ins and attract elite players from around the globe. ## **Legendary Wins** Over the years, the EPT has been the stage for some of the most unforgettable moments in poker. Remember the 2014 EPT Barcelona where **Sebastian Malec**, a young Polish student, turned a modest satellite entry into a whopping €1,122,800? His emotional victory speech, thanking his mother and his friends, still resonates with fans today. The EPT Super High Roller event, with its significant €100,000 buy-in, has also seen legendary wins that add to the tour’s prestige. ![](https://pnimg.net/w/articles/0/57c/38c199433e.jpg) *Polish prodigy, Sebastian Malec after 7 hours heads-up* Or how about the legendary **Steve O’Dwyer**? His remarkable run at the 2013 EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo solidified his status as one of the game’s greats. O’Dwyer clinched the title and €1,224,000, showcasing not only his skill but his calm demeanor under pressure. The EPT Mystery Bounty event has also created memorable moments, further enriching the EPT’s history. These stories are what make the EPT not just a tournament, but a tapestry of human triumph and perseverance. ## **EPT Heroes** Let’s talk about some of the EPT’s biggest stars. You’ve got **Liv Boeree**, who not only won the EPT Sanremo in 2010 but also became a role model for aspiring female players worldwide. Then there’s **Viktor Blom**, the enigmatic “Isildur1,” whose aggressive style and fearless play have made him a fan favorite. Isn’t it incredible how these players bring their unique flair and strategy to the table, proving that there are many paths to poker greatness? The ESPT Main Event has also played a significant role in the careers of many notable players, further highlighting the competitive structure of the European Poker Tour. Consider **Jason Mercier**, another prominent name in the EPT legacy. Mercier’s triumphs in the EPT include winning the EPT Sanremo in 2008, which marked the start of his illustrious career. Known for his analytical approach and consistent performance, Mercier’s success story is both inspiring and instructional for any poker enthusiast. The Estrellas High Roller event is another key tournament that showcases top talent, attracting serious poker players with its competitive prize structures. We can’t overlook **Fedor Holz**, the German wunderkind who stormed the poker world with his exceptional talent and strategic acumen. Holz’s impressive run at the EPT has made him one of the most respected players of his generation. His ability to read opponents and make bold moves under pressure sets him apart as a true poker maestro. Then there’s the charismatic **Davidi Kitai**, one of the few players to have achieved the coveted Triple Crown of poker-winning a World Series of Poker bracelet, a World Poker Tour title, and an EPT title. Kitai’s prowess and unpredictable style make him a fascinating player to watch and learn from. We also have **Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier**, who has been a dominant force in the EPT circuit. His memorable win at the 2008 EPT PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and subsequent victories have cemented his place among the poker elite. ElkY’s background as a professional gamer adds a unique edge to his poker strategy, blending technical skill with psychological insight. ## The Largest Did you know that EPT Barcelona holds the record for the largest field in EPT history? In 2019, the Main Event attracted an astounding 1,988 entries, creating a prize pool of over €9.6 million. This incredible turnout not only highlighted the growing popularity of poker in Europe but also set a new benchmark for future tournaments. The Estrellas Cup, held at Casino Barcelona, was one of the key events contributing to this large tournaments. Another highlight of the tournament series was the EPT Mystery Bounty event, which drew significant interest from participants due to its unique format and attractive entry fees. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/simon-brandstrom-ept-barcelona-2019.jpg) *Simon Brandstrom outlasted the field of nearly 2000 entries to take home €1.29 million.* ## **Join the Action!** Now, what about you? Are you ready to take your seat at the table and create your own unforgettable poker story? Whether you’re an experienced pro or a passionate amateur, the EPT offers a stage for every player to shine. And if you’re looking to sharpen your skills, check out Poker Academy’s advanced tools, like the [Postflop Tool](https://poker.academy/postflop-solver) and [Tournament Charts](https://poker.academy/preflop-charts), designed to elevate your game to the next level. One of the exciting events participants can look forward to is the EPT Mystery Bounty, which adds an extra layer of thrill to the European Poker Tour schedule. The European Poker Tour is more than just a series of poker tournaments; it’s a journey filled with drama, excitement, and the potential for life-changing victories. Whether you’re participating in the action or following the coverage, the EPT captures the essence of what makes poker so captivating. So, gear up, stay focused, and who knows? Maybe you’ll be the next name etched in the annals of poker history. The EPT is calling-are you ready to answer? --- # Poker HUD stats explained: VPIP, PFR, 3-bet, and how many hands you need to trust them Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-hud-for-you-take-the-advantage Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-08-15 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Online Game ![Poker HUD stats explained: VPIP, PFR, 3-bet, and how many hands you need to trust them](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-hud-for-you-take-the-advantage-hero.jpg) A HUD (heads-up display) is a small box of numbers next to each opponent at an online table. A tracking program reads your hand histories, counts what every player did, and shows the percentages while you play. All it reports is how often somebody did something, in the hands you happened to see. That last part is where most HUD advice goes wrong. A number is only worth something if you know two more things: what the number *should* be for a player who plays well in that spot, and how many hands it rests on. Below I go through the common stats, give solver baselines for the preflop ones from a real simulation, and work through the maths of sample size, so you can tell a read from noise. ## First: check the site’s rules Not every site lets you run a HUD. GGPoker, for example, doesn’t allow third-party tracking software and shows its own built-in player stats instead. Other sites allow trackers but ban specific tools, and tables with anonymous players make a HUD useless because you can’t follow one person. Real-time assistance, meaning anything that tells you what to play during a hand (a solver, a chart lookup, a coach), is banned on every major site I know of. The rules change, so read your site’s list of permitted software before you install anything. Poker Academy is a study tool for between sessions. Keep it closed while you play. ## The preflop stats Preflop stats fill up fastest, because every hand you’re dealt is a preflop hand. These are the ones worth having: - **VPIP** (voluntarily put money in pot): how often a player calls or raises preflop. Posting a blind doesn’t count; checking the big blind doesn’t count. - **PFR** (preflop raise): how often he raises preflop. PFR is always less than or equal to VPIP. The gap between them is the hands he only calls or limps. - **RFI by position** (raise first in): how often he opens when it’s folded to him, split by seat. This is PFR broken into the spots that actually differ, and it’s the one you can compare with a solver. - **3-bet**: how often he re-raises when he faces an open. - **Fold to 3-bet**: how often he folds after opening and getting re-raised. Every one of these is a count of *actions* divided by a count of *opportunities*. VPIP gets an opportunity almost every hand. Fold to 3-bet only gets one when he opens and somebody 3-bets him, which is a small share of hands. That difference comes back in the sample-size part. ## The postflop stats - **C-bet**: how often the preflop raiser bets the flop when checked to (or when first to act). - **Fold to c-bet**: how often a player folds to that bet. - **WTSD** (went to showdown): of the hands where he saw the flop, how often he reached showdown. **W$SD** is how often he won when he got there. I don’t give solver baselines for these. A c-bet frequency depends on the board, on who is in position, on the bet sizes and on the preflop line, so there is no single right number to hold a HUD stat against. To check a postflop tendency, solve the spot where you saw it. As a heuristic, a high WTSD together with a low fold to c-bet describes a player who doesn’t let go of hands; [the calling stations article](https://poker.academy/blog/post/crush-calling-stations-your-guide-to-success/) covers what to do against him. [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_btn_rfi” to=”/open/cash-100bb-btn-rfi” title=”Button first in, NL200 100bb” body=”46.5% of hands, 617 combos. The widest opening range at the table, next to LJ’s 18.5%.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Solver baselines: how often each seat opens For the preflop numbers I use one simulation from the Poker Academy preflop charts: **Normal NL200 GG, 6-max cash, 100bb, no ante**, 2.5bb opens. These are the solver’s strategies for a table where everyone plays well. They are not averages of real players, and I don’t have population data to give you. ![Chart of solver open-raise frequency by position, Normal NL200 GG 6-max cash 100bb: LJ 18.5%, HJ 23.3%, CO 30.6%, BTN 46.5%, SB 45.0% (raise 42.1% + limp 2.9%)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-hud-for-you-take-the-advantage-rfi-by-position.png) *Normal NL200 GG, 6-max cash, 100bb, no ante. When it’s folded to each seat: LJ 18.5%, HJ 23.3%, CO 30.6%, BTN 46.5%, SB 45.0%.* A player who opens 30% from every seat is too loose in the lojack and too tight on the button at the same time. His overall PFR can look perfectly normal and hide both leaks. That’s why I compare opens position by position, which PokerTracker 4, Holdem Manager 3 and Hand2Note all let you do. ![Poker Academy V2 Browse, Normal NL200 GG 100bb 6-way cash, LJ first to act: raise 2.5bb 18.5% (245 combos), fold 81.5% (1081)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-hud-for-you-take-the-advantage-rfi-lj-fig.jpg) *LJ first in, 100bb 6-max cash: raise to 2.5bb 18.5% (245 combos), fold 81.5%.* ![Poker Academy V2 Browse, Normal NL200 GG 100bb 6-way cash, folded to BTN: raise 2.5bb 46.5% (617 combos), fold 53.5% (709)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-hud-for-you-take-the-advantage-rfi-btn-fig.jpg) *Folded to the button, same simulation: raise to 2.5bb 46.5% (617 combos), fold 53.5%.* The old version of this article called 15 to 20% VPIP “average” without saying for which game. Here the lojack alone opens 18.5% of hands in a 6-max cash game, and the button 46.5%. The right number depends on the seat, the table size and the format, so one threshold for all of them doesn’t mean much. ## Solver baselines: defending and 3-betting Against an open, the numbers move even more with position. In the same simulation: - **BB vs a BTN open:** calls 29.0%, 3-bets to 11bb 11.5%, folds 59.5%. - **BB vs a CO open:** calls 21.7%, 3-bets 8.1%, folds 70.2%. - **BB vs a LJ open:** calls 16.4%, 3-bets 4.5%, folds 79.1%. - **BTN vs a CO open:** 3-bets to 7.5bb 12.5%, calls only 3.0%, folds 84.5%. ![Poker Academy V2 Browse, Normal NL200 GG 100bb 6-way cash, BB vs BTN 2.5bb open: call 29.0% (384 combos), raise to 11bb 11.5% (153), fold 59.5% (789)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-hud-for-you-take-the-advantage-bb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *BB against a 2.5bb button open: call 29.0%, 3-bet to 11bb 11.5%, fold 59.5%.* So a 3-bet of 4.5% isn’t automatically a nit. From the big blind against a lojack open it is exactly what the solver does. The same 4.5% against button opens would be far too tight. If your tracker shows one 3-bet number for all spots, it mixes these together. The old article also said GTO “favours a polarized 3-bet range”. It depends on the spot. On the button against a CO open the solver almost never flats, so nearly every hand it plays goes in as a 3-bet: pairs from AA down to 66 (99 to 66 partly as calls), suited aces, suited broadways, AKo to ATo, KQo, and some suited connectors like 76s, 65s and 54s. That’s much closer to a linear 3-bet-or-fold range. The big blind against the button keeps a lot of medium hands as calls instead. Position, stack depth and how often the opener folds all change the shape. ![Poker Academy V2 Browse, Normal NL200 GG 100bb 6-way cash, BTN vs CO 2.5bb open: raise to 7.5bb 12.5% (166 combos), call 3.0% (40), fold 84.5% (1120)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-hud-for-you-take-the-advantage-btn-vs-co-fig.jpg) *Button against a CO open: 3-bet to 7.5bb 12.5% (166 combos), call 3.0% (40), fold 84.5%.* ## Solver baselines: fold to 3-bet Now the other side. The CO opens to 2.5bb, the button 3-bets to 7.5bb, the blinds fold. Out of the 401 combos the CO opened with, the solver folds 63.7% (255 combos), calls 17.2% and 4-bets to 17.2bb 19.1%. ![Poker Academy V2 Browse, Normal NL200 GG 100bb 6-way cash, CO opens 2.5bb, BTN 3-bets 7.5bb, blinds fold, CO to act: fold 63.7% (255 combos), call 17.2% (69), raise to 17.2bb 19.1% (77)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-hud-for-you-take-the-advantage-co-vs-3bet-fig.jpg) *CO facing a 7.5bb button 3-bet: fold 63.7%, call 17.2%, 4-bet to 17.2bb 19.1%. Dark hatched cells are hands CO didn’t open.* Two more spots from the same simulation, read from the app: the button facing an 11bb 3-bet from the big blind folds 68.7%, and the lojack facing a 7.5bb 3-bet from the CO folds 61.2%. So in this simulation a sound opener folds to a 3-bet somewhere around 60 to 70% of the time, depending on the seats. That number sets the price of a bluff. A 3-bet with no equity at all breaks even when: BTN 3-bets to 7.5bb vs a 2.5bb CO open fold needed=riskrisk+pot=7.57.5+(2.5+0.5+1)=7.511.5=65.2%\text{fold needed}=\frac{\text{risk}}{\text{risk}+\text{pot}}=\frac{7.5}{7.5+(2.5+0.5+1)}=\frac{7.5}{11.5}=65.2\% The solver CO folds 63.7%, a little less than 65.2%. That is why the solver’s 3-bet bluffs are hands like suited aces and suited connectors, which win some pots when called. The simplification here: I ignore that the blinds also have to fold and that a called 3-bet still has equity. Against an opener who folds to 3-bets clearly less than that, the pure bluffs lose more, and the hands that do well against his calling range gain. My heuristic, not a solver result: 3-bet fewer bluffs and keep 3-betting value against him. The old article said to *always* switch to a linear range below 40% fold to 3-bet. I don’t know where that cut-off came from, and the next section shows why you’d rarely have enough hands to apply it anyway. ## How many hands a stat needs A HUD stat is an estimate of a percentage. Its uncertainty follows the standard formula for a proportion, where p is the stat and n counts *opportunities*, not hands played: Standard error and 95% range of a percentage stat SE=p (1−p)n95% range≈p±1.96⋅SE\text{SE}=\sqrt{\frac{p\,(1-p)}{n}}\qquad\text{95\% range}\approx p\pm1.96\cdot\text{SE} Take a player whose fold to 3-bet reads 63.7%, the same as the solver CO above. This is what that reading is worth: Fold to 3-bet 63.7% after 20 opportunities n=20: 1.960.637⋅0.36320=1.96⋅0.1075=±21.1 pp ⇒ 42.6% to 84.8%n=20:\;1.96\sqrt{\frac{0.637\cdot0.363}{20}}=1.96\cdot0.1075=\pm21.1\text{ pp}\;\Rightarrow\;42.6\%\text{ to }84.8\% Same stat after 100 opportunities n=100: 1.960.637⋅0.363100=1.96⋅0.0481=±9.4 pp ⇒ 54.3% to 73.1%n=100:\;1.96\sqrt{\frac{0.637\cdot0.363}{100}}=1.96\cdot0.0481=\pm9.4\text{ pp}\;\Rightarrow\;54.3\%\text{ to }73.1\% After 20 times facing a 3-bet, the true number could be anything from 42.6% to 84.8%. That’s a player who folds too little and a player who folds far too much, in one range. After 100 it’s 54.3% to 73.1%. And 100 times facing a 3-bet takes a lot of hands against one opponent. ![Chart of the 95% margin of error of a percentage stat by number of opportunities: at 50% plus or minus 21.9 points after 20, 9.8 after 100, 4.4 after 500; at 25% 19.0, 8.5, 3.8; at 10% 13.1, 5.9, 2.6](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/poker-hud-for-you-take-the-advantage-margin-of-error.png) *Margin of error in percentage points. The width shrinks with the square root of n: four times the sample halves it.* You can turn the formula around and ask how many opportunities you need before a difference from the baseline is real. Say a regular’s button open reads 35% against the solver’s 46.5%, a gap of 11.5 points: Opportunities needed to see an 11.5-point gap (95%) n≥1.962 p (1−p)d2=3.8416⋅0.465⋅0.5350.1152=0.9560.0132=72.3 ⇒ 73n\ge\frac{1.96^2\,p\,(1-p)}{d^2}=\frac{3.8416\cdot0.465\cdot0.535}{0.115^2}=\frac{0.956}{0.0132}=72.3\;\Rightarrow\;73 That’s 73 times folded to him on the button. At a full 6-max table he’s on the button about 1 hand in 6, and only part of those are folded to him, so this takes well over 438 hands against him (73 × 6). A 3-bet or fold-to-3-bet read takes many more. Two caveats on the maths. The normal approximation gets rough when the count of either outcome is small; a common rule of thumb is to want at least about 10 of each. And the formula assumes his play doesn’t change, while real players tilt, move up and adjust to you. ## Picking HUD software The trackers most regulars use are PokerTracker 4, Holdem Manager 3 and Hand2Note, with DriveHUD as another option. They differ in price, in which sites and game types they support and in operating system: not all of them run on macOS. Check two things before you buy: that your site allows it, and that it imports that site’s hand histories. Use the same tracker on yourself. Your own RFI by position and fold to 3-bet, compared with the baselines above, is a cleaner signal than any opponent’s stat, because you’ll have tens of thousands of your own hands. [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_co_vs_3bet” to=”/open/cash-100bb-co-vs-3bet” title=”CO facing a button 3-bet, NL200″ body=”The other side of the same decision: what the opener continues with once the button raises.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Wrapping up - A HUD stat is actions divided by opportunities. Know which one you’re looking at. - Compare preflop stats seat by seat. In Normal NL200 GG, 6-max cash, 100bb, no ante, opens go from 18.5% in the lojack to 46.5% on the button. - A 3-bet % only means something against a named opener: the big blind 3-bets 4.5% against a lojack and 11.5% against a button. - After 20 opportunities a 64% stat is really 43 to 85%. Don’t build an exploit on it. - Postflop stats have no single baseline. Solve the spot where you saw the tendency. [pa-cta id=”hud_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Learn the baseline before you exploit it” body=”Practise the same positions against solver strategies and get every decision graded.” label=”Start training”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # New Feature – Upload HRC simulations Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/new-feature-upload-hrc-simulations Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2024-08-12 Category: General ![New Feature – Upload HRC simulations](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/Upload-HRC-Simulation.png) At Poker Academy, we’re absolutely thrilled to introduce our latest feature: the HRC Library! 🚀 This exciting new addition lets you upload your own HRC simulations and easily browse preflop charts with our user-friendly interface. 📈 Whether you’re analyzing hand ranges or refining your strategy, our Preflop Charts tool ensures a smooth and intuitive experience. 🎯 Our Preflop Charts tool is here to enhance your poker decision-making process by providing precise, data-driven insights. 🌟 You can access the Preflop Simulations Library directly from your dashboard, dive into your personalized preflop analysis, and stay ahead in the competitive world of poker. 🃏👑 If you’re new to poker, this tool is a game-changer for mastering the basics. Looking to learn poker fundamentals or need an introduction to poker rules? Our platform has you covered with comprehensive support. Our Preflop Charts tool is particularly handy for beginners wanting to understand poker hand rankings and combinations, making it easier to grasp how to play poker effectively. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-08-at-10.01.37.png) *Screenshot how our library looks like* With Poker Academy’s Preflop Charts tool, you’ll gain the knowledge and resources needed to excel in poker. Whether you’re interested in learning poker rules for beginners or seeking advanced poker tactics, our platform is designed to support your journey. Start your poker education today and make the most of our innovative tools and expert guidance. Join us at Poker Academy and master your preflop game! 🎓 With our comprehensive resources and cutting-edge tools, you’ll be well-equipped to succeed in the world of poker. Explore our Preflop Charts tool and discover how it can transform your approach to the game. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-08-at-10.01.45.png) *Modal to upload HRC Simulation* --- # What keeps you stuck at low stakes in poker: five leaks, measured in the app Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/what-keeps-you-stuck-at-low-stakes-in-poker Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-08-08 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Online Game ![What keeps you stuck at low stakes in poker: five leaks, measured in the app](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-keeps-you-stuck-at-low-stakes-in-po-hero.jpg) If you have played NL25 or NL50 for a year and your graph looks the same as when you started, the cause is usually a handful of small mistakes in the spots you play every orbit. Each one costs a little, and together they cost the win rate you need to move up. I won’t give you a win rate you should have. I don’t have honest data for that, and neither does anyone who quotes one without a sample. I can show you where the common leaks sit, what the solver does in those spots, and which screen in the app checks your own game against it. Every chart below is **6-max cash, 100bb deep, no ante**, solved with rake. The main sim is **Normal NL50 GG**: 5% rake with an 8bb cap. Tournaments are a different game, with antes and short stacks. For those, start with [the short-stack guide](https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-or-less/). ## Leak 1: opening the wrong number of hands You make more decisions before the flop than anywhere else, so a small leak there adds up fastest. Players go wrong in both directions. Some open too many hands from early position because the hand “looks nice”. Others open the button like it is early position and hand over the blinds. From the lojack, the first seat in 6-max, the solver opens 18.5% of hands to 2.5bb at NL50 GG. That is every pair from 77 up, every suited ace, most suited kings, QTs, Q9s, JTs, AQo, AJo, ATo, KQo, KJo, and KTo most of the time. 66 and 55 are raised only part of the time, and 44, 33, 22, A9o and 98s fold. ![Poker Academy Browse, Normal NL50 GG 6-max cash 100bb, LJ first in: raise 2.5bb 18.5 percent, fold 81.5 percent](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-keeps-you-stuck-at-low-stakes-in-po-nl50-lj-rfi-fig.jpg) *NL50 GG, 6-max cash, 100bb, lojack first in: raise to 2.5bb 18.5%, fold 81.5%.* On the button the same chart opens 46.0%. K8o, Q9o, 96s and every suited ace raise. Q8o and T4s fold. The spread between the lojack and the button runs from 18.5% to 46.0% of hands, so a player who opens 25% everywhere is too loose in one seat and much too tight in the other. ![Poker Academy Browse, Normal NL50 GG 6-max cash 100bb, BTN first in: raise 2.5bb 46.0 percent, fold 54.0 percent](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-keeps-you-stuck-at-low-stakes-in-po-nl50-btn-rfi-fig.jpg) *NL50 GG, 100bb, button first in: raise 46.0%, fold 54.0%.* The chart also depends on the rake and the blinds. Here are the same opens in three sims. NL50 GG and NL500 GG differ only in the rake cap, and the charts are almost the same. NL25 PS has a 0.4bb small blind instead of 0.5bb and a different rake rule, and it opens tighter in every seat: 40.9% on the button. I can’t tell you which of the two changes does most of that, because both change at once. So study the sim that matches your site and your stake. ![Solver first-in open percentages by position for Normal NL50 GG, Normal NL500 GG and Normal NL25 PS, 6-max cash 100bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-keeps-you-stuck-at-low-stakes-in-po-opens-by-stake.png) *Share of all 1,326 combos that open first in, by seat. SB counts raise plus limp.* ## Leak 2: the big blind, and the maths behind “open any two” The big blind loses money for everyone. The question is how to lose the least. Against a 2.5bb button open with the small blind folding, the app shows the price right under the table: BB vs a 2.5bb button open: pot odds 1.51.5+(0.5+1+2.5)=1.55.5=27.3%\frac{1.5}{1.5+(0.5+1+2.5)}=\frac{1.5}{5.5}=27.3\% 27.3% is the equity you need to call if you won every pot you have equity in. You don’t: you are out of position and the rake takes a slice of the pots you play. So the solver defends much less than the pot odds suggest. At NL50 GG it folds 59.2%, calls 30.2% and 3-bets to 11bb with 10.6%, which is 40.8% defended. K9o, T9o, A5o and every suited ace, king and queen continue. K8o, Q8o, A2o and 87o fold. ![Poker Academy Browse, Normal NL50 GG 6-max cash 100bb, BB vs 2.5bb BTN open: pot 4.0, pot odds 27.3 percent, fold 59.2, call 30.2, raise to 11bb 10.6](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-keeps-you-stuck-at-low-stakes-in-po-nl50-bb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *NL50 GG, 100bb, big blind against a 2.5bb button open: fold 59.2%, call 30.2%, 3-bet to 11bb 10.6%.* So the number to compare yourself with is 40.8%, in this format. If you learned from tournament charts, where the big blind with an ante defends far wider, you may be calling too much here. If you fold everything that isn’t a pair or an ace, you are folding too much. An earlier version of this article said that if the big blind defends only 50%, you can open 100% of hands from the button. That was wrong. A button open that never wins after a call has to win the blinds often enough to pay for itself: A 2.5bb open as a pure bluff: folds needed 2.52.5+(0.5+1)=2.54=62.5%\frac{2.5}{2.5+(0.5+1)}=\frac{2.5}{4}=62.5\% Both blinds have to fold for that to happen. The small blind folds 83.8% against the open, and the big blind folds 59.2% of the time after that: How often both blinds fold (solver) 0.838⏟SB folds×0.592⏟BB folds=0.496=49.6%\underbrace{0.838}_{\text{SB folds}}\times\underbrace{0.592}_{\text{BB folds}}=0.496=49.6\% EV of a 0-equity open at that fold rate 0.496⋅1.5−0.504⋅2.5=0.744−1.260=−0.52 bb0.496\cdot1.5-0.504\cdot2.5=0.744-1.260=-0.52\text{ bb} 49.6% is well short of 62.5%. The button’s 46% range works because those hands have equity and position after a call; the fold rate alone never pays for it. Even against a big blind who over-folds, the small blind still has to fold as well. With the small blind at 83.8%, the big blind would need to fold this much for a pure bluff to break even: BB fold rate that makes a 0-equity open break even 0.6250.838=74.6%\frac{0.625}{0.838}=74.6\% That is a simplification: it ignores rake and every hand that gets played postflop. The exploit it supports is modest. Against a big blind who folds more than the chart, add hands at the edge of your button range. Don’t jump to any two cards. [pa-cta id=”open_cash_nl50_bb_vs_btn” to=”/open/cash-nl50-bb-vs-btn” title=”BB facing a button open, NL50″ body=”The same spot one stake down: the ranges a low-stakes regular actually faces.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Leak 3: bluffing players who don’t fold At low stakes you will meet players who call too much. The mistake is to keep bluffing them the way you would bluff a regular. The breakeven is the same formula as before: your bet divided by the pot plus your bet. River bet of 75% pot as a pure bluff: folds needed 7575+100=75175=42.9%\frac{75}{75+100}=\frac{75}{175}=42.9\% Now say you have a read that a player folds only 25% on the river against this size. That 25% is an assumption for the example, not a stat I measured: EV of the bluff if they fold 25% (pot 100, bet 75) 0.25⋅100−0.75⋅75=25−56.25=−31.25 bb0.25\cdot100-0.75\cdot75=25-56.25=-31.25\text{ bb} Each bluff loses almost a third of the pot. The fix runs the other way: bluff less, and bet more of your medium-strength hands for value, because this player calls with worse. I go through that with a solver lock in [the calling-stations article](https://poker.academy/blog/post/crush-calling-stations-your-guide-to-success/), and the opposite player type in [the one on nits](https://poker.academy/blog/post/exploiting-nits-poker-strategy-you-need-to-know/). If you use a HUD, a rule of thumb many players use is that a low went-to-showdown (below about 26%) together with a high won-at-showdown (above about 53%) points to someone who only goes to showdown with strong hands. Those thresholds are heuristics; no solver produced them, and they mean little on a small sample. ## Leak 4: not knowing what the rake costs At micro stakes the rake matters more than most players think, because the cap almost never comes into play. At NL50 GG the sim uses 5% of the pot with an 8bb cap. At NL500 GG it is 5% with a 1.6bb cap. The percentage is the same in both, and only the cap changes. Single-raised pot on the flop: BTN opens 2.5bb, BB calls 0.05×5.5=0.275 bb0.05\times5.5=0.275\text{ bb} 100bb all-in, BTN vs BB (pot 200.5bb), before the cap 0.05×200.5=10.0 bb0.05\times200.5=10.0\text{ bb} After the cap min⁡(10.0, 8)=8 bb (NL50)min⁡(10.0, 1.6)=1.6 bb (NL500)\min(10.0,\,8)=8\text{ bb (NL50)}\qquad\min(10.0,\,1.6)=1.6\text{ bb (NL500)} In a small pot both stakes pay the same 0.275bb. The cap only starts to help above 160bb at NL50, and above 32bb at NL500. So at NL50 you pay the full 5% in almost every pot, including most 3-bet pots: a 3-bet to 11bb that gets called makes 22.5bb, and 5% of that is 1.125bb. At NL500 the same pot pays 1.125bb as well, but a called 4-bet pot of 50bb hits the 1.6bb cap there and pays the full 2.5bb at NL50. ![Rake in big blinds by pot size at 5 percent with an 8bb cap (NL50 GG) and a 1.6bb cap (NL500 GG), with a single-raised pot, a 3-bet pot and a 100bb all-in pot](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-keeps-you-stuck-at-low-stakes-in-po-rake-by-pot.png) *Rake settings of the two app sims. Dashed lines: 5.5bb, 22.5bb and a 200.5bb all-in pot.* In dollars the cap is still bigger at NL500: 1.6bb of $5 is $8, and 8bb of $0.50 is $4. But in big blinds, the unit your win rate is measured in, the micro-stakes player pays more. It is also one reason the big blind folds so much in these charts: every flop you see pays its slice. Two practical things. Check what your site actually charges, because rake rules change and differ between cash, fast-fold and different regions. And count rakeback as part of your result when you compare stakes, because at low stakes it can be the difference between a small winner and a small loser. ## Leak 5: tilt, volume and bankroll None of the leaks above matter if you play your worst poker for the last hour of every session. At low stakes the pots are small, so it is easy to think a bad call “only cost 20bb”. Five of those is a buy-in. You can’t measure tilt from results, because results are mostly variance. You can measure decisions. Practice in the app grades every decision against the solver, and the Performance screen shows where you lose the most: accuracy and EV loss per decision, the weakest track, and accuracy by position and street. ![Poker Academy Practice Performance screen for a test account: accuracy 55.3 percent, EV loss 0.43bb per decision, weakest track preflop, accuracy by position and by street, decision quality](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-keeps-you-stuck-at-low-stakes-in-po-perf-leaks-fig.jpg) *Practice → Performance, 30 days, a test account. Warm bars are positions below the account’s own average.* This is a test account, so ignore its numbers. Look at the layout. The warm bars are the seats where it plays below its own average, and the “weakest measured track” card tells you what to drill next. If your own profile shows the big blind or the small blind in warm colours, you know which chart to study before your next session. That beats watching another hour of content about rare river spots. Volume and bankroll come last because they don’t fix leaks, they only let you survive them. Keep enough buy-ins that a normal downswing doesn’t force you to drop down or play scared. You will hear rules of thumb for cash of a few dozen buy-ins. Treat them as heuristics: the real number depends on your win rate and the standard deviation of your game, and a small sample tells you little about either. If you also play tournaments, [the variance article](https://poker.academy/blog/post/variance-in-tournament-poker/) works through the maths for MTTs. [pa-cta id=”open_trainer_performance” to=”/open/trainer-performance” title=”Your own performance panel” body=”Accuracy, EV lost per decision and the skill profile, on your numbers rather than ours.” label=”Open the trainer”] ## A plan that moves you up - Opens: compare your open range with the chart for your site, seat by seat. Start with the lojack and the button. - Big blind: against a 2.5bb button open at 100bb with rake, the solver defends 40.8%. Know which hands are in and which are out. - Exploits: widen the button a little against blinds who over-fold. Stop bluffing players who don’t fold, and value bet them thinner. - Rake: count it in big blinds. At NL50 almost every pot pays the full 5%. - Your leaks: play graded sessions in Practice and let Performance pick the next spot to study. Pick one of these for a month, not all five. Once your big blind defence matches the chart, move on to the next one. [pa-cta id=”stakes_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Find your own leaks” body=”Play cash spots against the solver. Every decision gets a grade, and Performance shows which seat costs you the most.” label=”Start training”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # PKO strategy: how to turn bounties into chips and adjust your ranges Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/pko-fundamentals-how-to-play-with-bounties Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-08-01 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![PKO strategy: how to turn bounties into chips and adjust your ranges](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/pko-fundamentals-how-to-play-with-bounti-hero.jpg) Progressive knockout tournaments put a price on every head. That changes who calls an all-in, how wide the blinds defend, and even how wide the first raiser opens. At a final table it changes much less than people expect. An earlier version of this article quoted a bounty value without saying where it came from. Here the conversion is done step by step, and then a chipEV chart sits next to a PKO chart for the exact same eight stacks, so you can see what the bounty does to real ranges. ## Where your buy-in goes In a standard PKO your buy-in, after rake, is split in two. One part goes to the normal prize pool, paid out by finishing position. The other part becomes the bounty on your head. I’ll use a **constructed example** for the maths: a $20 PKO, rake ignored, $10 to the prize pool and $10 as your starting bounty, 20,000-chip starting stack. When you knock someone out, you get **half their bounty in cash** ($5) and the other half is **added to your own bounty** ($10 becomes $15). That 50/50 split is a common setting, but not the only one. Check the lobby of your tournament before you use these numbers. ## Turning a bounty into chips To compare a bounty with a pot you need both in the same unit. Early in a tournament, far from the money, a simple assumption does the job: chips are worth the prize-pool money they stand for. Your 20,000 chips stand for the $10 you put into the prize pool, so $1 is worth 2,000 chips. Cash half of a starting bounty, in chips chip value=cash×starting stackprize-pool part of buy-in=$5×20,000$10=10,000 chips\text{chip value} = \text{cash} \times \frac{\text{starting stack}}{\text{prize-pool part of buy-in}} = \$5 \times \frac{20{,}000}{\$10} = 10{,}000 \text{ chips} At 500/1,000 blinds 10,000 chips1,000 chips per bb=10bb\frac{10{,}000 \text{ chips}}{1{,}000 \text{ chips per bb}} = 10\text{bb} So in this example knocking out a player with a starting bounty is worth **half a starting stack**, or 10bb at 500/1,000. Three assumptions sit under that number, and you should know them: - Chips are linear. This is chipEV thinking. Near the money and at the final table, ICM makes chips you win worth less than chips you lose, and the conversion breaks down. - Only the cash half counts. The half added to your own bounty is usually paid when someone knocks you out later, or when you win the tournament. It is worth something, less than its face value. Leaving it out is a conservative heuristic rather than a solver result. - The bounty is the starting one. A player who has already busted two people carries a bigger bounty. At $20 the cash half is $10, which is 20,000 chips or 20bb in this example. A fixed rule like “a bounty is worth X% of a stack” therefore doesn’t work. The answer depends on the split, the size of that player’s bounty, how you value the half that goes on your head, and the blind level you convert to. ## You only win a bounty you cover A bounty is paid when you take **all** of a player’s chips. So you need at least as many chips as they have, and you have to win the pot. Chopping the pot doesn’t bust anyone. - You cover them: their bounty is extra money on your side of the pot odds. - They cover you: you can’t win their bounty. Your own bounty is what’s on the line, and it goes to them if you lose. - A third player is still to act: the bounty goes to whoever wins the pot, and that may not be you. Be careful counting it before the action is closed. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_sb_vs_jam_chipev” to=”/open/mtt-sb-vs-jam-chipev” title=”SB 38bb facing a 12bb jam, chipEV” body=”The calling range before bounties are priced in: the baseline half of the comparison.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Pot odds with the bounty in the pot Same constructed example. Blinds 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big-blind ante, so in big blinds: 0.5 + 1 + 1. A player with a starting bounty moves all-in for 10bb, everyone folds to you in the big blind, and you cover. The pot before your call is 10 + 0.5 + 1 + 1 = 12.5bb, and calling costs 9bb more. Required equity, chips only 912.5+9=921.5=41.9%\frac{9}{12.5 + 9} = \frac{9}{21.5} = 41.9\% Required equity, with the 10bb bounty 912.5+9+10=931.5=28.6%\frac{9}{12.5 + 9 + 10} = \frac{9}{31.5} = 28.6\% The bounty is paid only when you win, so it belongs on the winning side of the equation. You can check that with the EV of the call, where e is your equity: Break-even equity EV(call)=e×(12.5+9+10)−9=0 ⇒ e=28.6%\text{EV(call)} = e \times (12.5 + 9 + 10) – 9 = 0 \;\Rightarrow\; e = 28.6\% From 41.9% down to 28.6%. That is a big difference, and it gets bigger the shorter the all-in stack is, because the bounty stays the same while the chips at risk get smaller. ![Chart: equity needed to call a shove from the big blind with and without a 10bb bounty, for 5, 10, 20 and 40bb shoves](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/pko-fundamentals-how-to-play-with-bounti-req-equity.png) *Maths, not solver output. A 5bb shove drops from 34.8% to 18.6%, a 40bb shove only from 47.9% to 42.6%.* That is the honest version of “bounty power”: the bounty measured against the chips you have to put in. A 10bb bounty on a 10bb stack changes your call a lot. The same bounty on a 40bb stack moves it by about 5 points. ## What the solver does with the same stacks Pot odds tell you the price. They say nothing about how everybody else’s ranges change when they chase bounties too. For that I use two preflop simulations in Poker Academy with **identical stacks**: an 8-handed MTT table with 54, 12, 18, 42, 22, 32, 38 and 6bb (EP to BB), a 0.12bb ante per player, 0.96bb in total. One is **chipEV**. The other is a **PKO** model with a $500 bounty on every player, with the whole field still in the tournament. One caveat. The PKO simulation also uses ICM, so the difference between the two comes from more than bounties. I can’t separate the two effects from this data, so read the gaps below as “PKO model vs chipEV” rather than as a pure bounty effect. The spot: MP has 12bb and moves all-in. Everyone who acts after MP except the big blind covers that stack. Here is the small blind with 38bb in chipEV: ![Poker Academy preflop chart, chipEV 8-handed, SB 38bb vs MP 12bb all-in: call 11.0%, fold 89.0%, pot odds 44.2%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/pko-fundamentals-how-to-play-with-bounti-ce-sb-vs-mp-fig.jpg) *chipEV, SB 38bb against a 12bb MP all-in: call 11.0%, fold 89%.* The small blind calls 11.0% of hands: 55 and better, A9s and better, KJs and KQs, ATo and better, and KQo 79% of the time. The price is on the table. You call 11.5bb into a pot of 14.46bb (12 + 0.5 + 1 + 0.96), and the chipEV screen rounds the pot to 26bb and shows 44.2%. Pot odds for the small blind 11.514.46+11.5=11.525.96=44.3%\frac{11.5}{14.46 + 11.5} = \frac{11.5}{25.96} = 44.3\% Now the same spot in the PKO simulation: ![Poker Academy preflop chart, PKO 8-handed, SB 38bb vs MP 12bb all-in: call 38.8%, fold 61.2%, bubble factor 0.63](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/pko-fundamentals-how-to-play-with-bounti-pko-sb-vs-mp-fig.jpg) *PKO, same stacks and action: call 38.8%. Every seat carries a $500 bounty tag.* The call range is **38.8%**: every pair, every suited ace and suited king, every offsuit ace, K9o and better, suited connectors down to 54s. The pot odds tile still says 44.3%, since it counts chips only. The bounty shows up in the ICM strip above the chart, which gives a **bubble factor of 0.63** for this all-in. Below 1, that means losing chips costs you less than winning them earns you. For an even-money all-in that is the break-even: Break-even for an even-money all-in BF1+BF=0.6281.628=38.6%\frac{\text{BF}}{1 + \text{BF}} = \frac{0.628}{1.628} = 38.6\% ![Chart: share of hands each seat continues with against a 12bb MP all-in, chipEV vs PKO](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/pko-fundamentals-how-to-play-with-bounti-vs-jam.png) *Every covering seat at least doubles its range. The big blind, who is covered, tightens.* Look at the last row. The big blind has 6bb and **can’t** win MP’s bounty, because MP covers him. In chipEV he calls 33.6% of hands; in the PKO model he calls 21.9%. Covering decides whether the bounty is on your side at all. ## Openers get wider too Bounties change the opens as well. If players behind you call wider, you’d expect the first raiser to play tighter. The solver does the opposite from six of the seven seats that open. My reading, which the chart doesn’t prove: a covering stack collects bounties when those wider calls lose. ![Chart: first-in ranges by position, chipEV vs PKO, 8-handed with stacks 54 12 18 42 22 32 38 6bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/pko-fundamentals-how-to-play-with-bounti-opens.png) *EP with 54bb goes from 16.4% to 30.3%. MP with 12bb, covered by six players, stays at 17 to 18%.* The clearest case is the small blind against a 6bb big blind. In chipEV the small blind jams 72.3% of hands and limps 4.3%: ![Poker Academy preflop chart, chipEV, SB 38bb first in vs BB 6bb: all-in 72.3%, call 4.3%, fold 23.4%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/pko-fundamentals-how-to-play-with-bounti-ce-sb-first-fig.jpg) *chipEV, SB 38bb first in against a 6bb big blind: jam 72.3%.* ![Poker Academy preflop chart, PKO, SB 38bb first in vs BB 6bb: all-in 100%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/pko-fundamentals-how-to-play-with-bounti-pko-sb-first-fig.jpg) *PKO, same spot: jam 100% of hands. The 6bb big blind carries a $500 bounty.* With a bounty on a 6bb stack, the small blind jams **every** hand. MP with 12bb, covered by almost everyone, doesn’t widen at all. It jams 17.3%, and that range includes 44 to 99. So the old tip “don’t jam small pairs as a short stack in a PKO” is too broad: in this spot the solver jams them (it folds 33 and 22). ## At the final table, pay jumps weigh more An earlier version of this article told you not to compare a bounty with the next pay jump. That was wrong. At a final table that comparison is the decision: how much is the bounty worth, and how much ICM does calling cost you? Poker Academy has a PKO final-table simulation with the same eight stacks. The bounties there differ from player to player (MP has $3,750, the small blind $9,375) and the payouts are a final-table structure, so it isn’t a controlled test. The direction is clear enough anyway. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, PKO final table, SB 38bb vs MP 12bb all-in: call 8.4%, bubble factor 0.92](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/pko-fundamentals-how-to-play-with-bounti-pkoft-sb-vs-mp-fig.jpg) *PKO final table, SB 38bb against the 12bb MP all-in: call 8.4%, bubble factor 0.92.* The small blind calls **8.4%**, close to the ICM final table without bounties (5.3%) and far from the 38.8% early in the PKO. The bubble factor is 0.92, so the break-even for an even-money all-in is 48.0%. The bounty still helps, and the pay jumps matter more. [pa-cta id=”open_pko_sb_vs_jam” to=”/open/pko-sb-vs-jam” title=”SB facing a 12bb jam in a PKO” body=”Bubble factor 0.63: the bounty makes this a different call from the chipEV one.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## A short checklist - Read the structure: how much of the buy-in is bounty, and how much of a won bounty is paid in cash. - Convert the cash part of the bounty into chips, then into big blinds at the current level. - Check who covers whom. No cover, no bounty. - Add the bounty to the pot odds only when you cover and the action is closed. - The shorter the all-in, the more the bounty matters. Against deep stacks it moves your call much less. - Near the money and at the final table, compare the bounty with the ICM cost of the all-in. In the final-table spot above, the pay jumps won. Then look at real PKO charts for stacks like yours, next to the chipEV version, and play the spots in the trainer until the wider calls stop feeling wrong. [pa-cta id=”pko_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Practise PKO spots” body=”The trainer deals the hands and grades every call and jam against the solver.” label=”Start training”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # Biggest poker tournaments: How much you could win? Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/biggest-poker-tournaments-how-much-you-could-win Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-07-25 · Updated: 2024-09-12 Category: Live Game ![Biggest poker tournaments: How much you could win?](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/06/Biggest-poker-tournaments-1.png) Go big or go home? The greatest tournaments with the largest prize pools and the best players alive are the dream of almost every beginning card enthusiast. Friendly reminder: you will have to walk through many levels before you can compete on the biggest stages. Let’s start here and now with [Poker Academy’s Preflop Charts](https://poker.academy/preflop-charts). Make every day a part of a beautiful journey that could lead you to the World Series of Poker, Triton Super High Roller Series, or other great tournaments around the world. ## **World Series of Poker and EPT: Biggest stages around the world** The most popular series is, without a doubt, the World Series of Poker, which gathers thousands of players every year in Las Vegas. These events are the epitome of live poker, attracting thousands of participants and offering significant prize pools. The Main Event winner of this poker event gets millions of dollars, a bracelet, and the title of world champion. Each WSOP event is a highlight in the poker calendar, drawing in players from around the globe. If you want to learn some more interesting facts about WSOP, [click here](https://poker.academy/blog/) and look at our latest blog regarding this subject. What do you know about the European Poker Tour? It was created in 2004 by John Duthie. Events are held in different cities across Europe. In 2024, we have EPT Paris and EPT Monte Carlo already finished, and EPT Barcelona, EPT Cyprus, and EPT Prague yet to come. There is a lot more going on around the poker world, including the World Poker Tour, WPT World Championship, and Triton Super High Roller Series, which some day you can be a part of. To become a better player every day, purchase [Poker Academy’s Postflop Tool](https://poker.academy/postflop-solver), which can help you master your basic and advanced poker tactics. ## **Massive buy-ins and wins in the poker world** How much would you pay to play poker? There are plenty of people around the world who play high rollers with buy-ins from $1,000 to $10,000. These high-stakes games offer substantial cash prizes, making them highly attractive to serious players. The EPT Main Event entry fee for example costs you around $5,000, while the most important tournament’s price at WSOP is set at 10 grand. But you can play bigger… In the Triton Super High Roller Series, you can enter tournaments even for $250,000, while the Main Event entry is set at $125,000. If you are still not impressed, we have something else. What would you say about 1,000,000 dollars, euros, or pounds? The Big One for One Drop, for example, was a $1 million tournament hosted first in 2012 during WSOP. From every entry, $111,111 was taken and donated to the One Drop Foundation. Despite this ‘charity tax,’ winner Antonio Esfandiari took home an **$18,346,673** first-place prize. Another notable event is the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), a prestigious annual tournament held in the Caribbean. The PCA is known for its luxurious setting and significant cash prizes, attracting both professional and amateur players. Similarly, the PokerStars Players Championship (PSPC) is a major event with a $25,000 entry fee, drawing top talent from around the world. History had many other poker tournaments with million-dollar buy-ins, including the **£1,050,000 Triton Million for Charity** in 2019. This one would be the record-breaking event in terms of first-place winnings if it weren’t for the fact that Aaron Zhang and Bryn Kenney decided to make a deal playing heads-up. Zhang got £13,779,491, and Bryn Kenney got **£16,890,509** (worth more than $20,000,000 at that time), but it was the former who ultimately won the entire tournament in London. ## Largest Poker Tournaments in History The largest poker tournaments in history have been a testament to the growing popularity of the game. These events have attracted thousands of players from around the world, all vying for a share of the massive prize pools. The sheer scale of these tournaments is a reflection of the global appeal of poker, drawing in both amateur enthusiasts and seasoned professionals. ### Record-Breaking Events One of the most remarkable record-breaking events in poker history is the 2019 WSOP Big 50 event. This tournament set the record for the largest field size ever, with an astonishing 28,371 entries. With a $500 buy-in, the event boasted a $5,000,000 prize pool guarantee and a $1,000,000 first-prize guarantee. Femi Fashakin emerged victorious, taking home the top prize of $1,147,499. Another notable event is the 2023 WSOP Gladiators of Poker, which saw a field size of 23,088 entries. Similarly, the 2015 WSOP Colossus attracted 22,374 entries, making it one of the largest poker tournaments ever held. These events highlight the immense popularity and competitive spirit that define the world of poker. ## Prize Pools for Top Poker Tournaments The prize pools for top poker tournaments have been increasing steadily over the years, offering life-changing winnings to the winners. These substantial prize pools are a major draw for poker players, providing the opportunity to win significant amounts of money and achieve poker glory. ### Life-Changing Winnings The WSOP Main Event is one of the most prestigious poker tournaments in the world, with a prize pool that often exceeds $10 million. In 2023, the WSOP Main Event had a prize pool of over $10 million, with the winner taking home a staggering $12 million. This event is a pinnacle for many poker players, offering not just a massive payday but also the coveted title of world champion. Other top poker tournaments also offer significant prize pools. The World Poker Tour (WPT) World Championship, for example, has a prize pool of over $1 million, attracting some of the best players in the world. Similarly, the European Poker Tour (EPT) Main Event boasts a prize pool of over €1 million, making it a highly sought-after tournament for poker enthusiasts. ## Tips for Playing in Big Poker Tournaments Playing in big poker tournaments requires a combination of skill, strategy, and luck. Here are some tips for success: ### Advice for Success 1. **Start with smaller tournaments**: Before diving into big poker tournaments, it’s essential to gain experience in smaller events. This will help you develop your skills and build your confidence. 2. **Choose the right tournament**: Select a tournament that suits your bankroll and playing style. Make sure you understand the tournament structure and the rules before entering. 3. **Manage your bankroll**: Big poker tournaments can be expensive, so it’s crucial to manage your bankroll effectively. Set a budget and stick to it to avoid going broke. 4. **Stay focused**: Big poker tournaments can be mentally demanding, so it’s essential to stay focused and avoid distractions. Take regular breaks to recharge and maintain your concentration. 5. **Be prepared for variance**: Big poker tournaments can be unpredictable, and variance can play a significant role. Be prepared for ups and downs, and don’t get discouraged by bad beats or downswings. By following these tips and staying focused, you can increase your chances of success in big poker tournaments and take home life-changing winnings. --- # 40bb 3-bet all-in from the small blind: chipEV vs ICM ranges Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/40bb-is-it-too-big-to-3bet-all-in Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-07-17 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![40bb 3-bet all-in from the small blind: chipEV vs ICM ranges](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/40bb-is-it-too-big-to-3bet-all-in-hero.jpg) 40 big blinds feels like a lot of room. You can open, 3-bet small, flat and still play poker after the flop. So moving all-in with 40bb over a single open sounds reckless. The solver disagrees, a little. It does jam 40bb from the small blind, with a thin slice of hands, and which slice depends on who opened and on how the tournament pays. I pulled the spots straight from the Poker Academy preflop solutions. **ChipEV:** CE-Symmetric, 9-handed MTT, everyone 40bb, 1bb big-blind ante, 2.3bb opens. **ICM:** three 9-handed 40bb sims with a classic ante (0.12bb per player, 1.08bb in total) and 2.25bb opens, at 100, 50 and 20 players left. Percentages are shares of all 1,326 starting hands unless I say otherwise. ## The maths of a 40bb jam The CO opens to 2.3bb and the button folds. The pot is 2.3 + 0.5 + 1 + 1 = 4.8bb. If you jam from the small blind, you put in 39.5bb more to win those 4.8bb when everyone folds. A jam with no equity when called fold needed=39.539.5+4.8=39.544.3=89.2%\text{fold needed} = \frac{39.5}{39.5 + 4.8} = \frac{39.5}{44.3} = 89.2\% In the chipEV sim the big blind folds 93.4% of hands to that jam and the CO folds 78.3% of its opening range. Together that’s 0.934 × 0.783 = 73.1% (ignoring card removal), well short of 89.2%. So a 40bb jam is never a pure bluff. It needs hands that do fine when they get called, and it has to take equity away from hands that would otherwise see a flop. ## SB vs CO: 1.8% jams Against a CO open the small blind folds 72.6%, calls 14.4%, 3-bets to 8bb with 11.3% and jams 1.8% of hands. The jam is not the top of the range: AA, KK and QQ 3-bet small. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 40bb CE-Symmetric chipEV 9-handed, SB vs 2.3bb CO open: fold 72.6%, call 14.4%, raise 8bb 11.3%, all-in 1.8%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/40bb-is-it-too-big-to-3bet-all-in-ce-sb-vs-co-fig.jpg) *40bb chipEV, SB vs a CO open. Dark red = all-in 40bb, orange = 3-bet to 8bb, teal = call.* The hands that jam, with their all-in frequency: - Always: JTs (100%). - Most of the time: AQo (71%). - Part of the time: 88 (44%), KTs (42%), KJs (32%). - A little: QJs 14%, AJo 13%, KQo 12%, QTs 11%, AKo 8%, 99 6%. My reading, as a heuristic: these hands have decent equity against a calling range but are awkward after a small 3-bet, facing a 4-bet shove or a big pot out of position. JTs is the only pure jam here. ## How the CO answers the jam The CO is getting a price: 37.7bb to call into a 44.3bb pot. CO calls the 40bb jam 37.737.7+44.3=37.782=46.0%\frac{37.7}{37.7 + 44.3} = \frac{37.7}{82} = 46.0\% It still folds most of its opening range. The CO opens 36.8% of hands at 40bb and calls the jam with 21.7% of that range: AA–77 (66 half the time), AKs–ATs, AKo, AQo, KQs, KJs, AJo about half the time and KTs a little. Everything else folds. The app shows it on the node itself, including the pot odds. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 40bb chipEV, CO facing a small blind 3-bet all-in: fold 78.3%, call 21.7% of its opening range](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/40bb-is-it-too-big-to-3bet-all-in-ce-co-vs-jam-fig.jpg) *40bb chipEV, CO opened 2.3bb and faces a 40bb SB jam. Teal = call, grey = fold, hatched = not in the CO’s opening range.* [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_40bb_sb_vs_btn” to=”/open/mtt-40bb-sb-vs-btn” title=”SB facing a button open, 40bb, chipEV” body=”The chipEV half of the comparison: the same node the ICM link prices differently.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## SB vs BTN: 4.1% jams Against a button open the small blind jams more than twice as often: 4.1% of hands, with 13.0% 3-bets to 8bb, 11.6% calls and 71.4% folds. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 40bb chipEV, SB vs 2.3bb BTN open: fold 71.4%, call 11.6%, raise 8bb 13.0%, all-in 4.1%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/40bb-is-it-too-big-to-3bet-all-in-ce-sb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *40bb chipEV, SB vs a BTN open.* - Always: AQo, QTs, JTs (100%), 77 (96%). - Most of the time: KTs, AJo (74%), KQo (55%), 88 (52%). - Part of the time: 44 (42%), A5s (35%), 55 and QJs (24%). The opener is what widens it, not the stack: that is 40bb in both spots. The button opens 50.6% of hands and the CO 36.8%, so the button’s range is wider and weaker. It folds a similar share of it to the jam (79.0% against 78.3%) and calls with 21.0% of it. My reading: the button’s calls come out of a weaker opening range, so more medium pairs and broadways have enough to jam. ## What ICM does to the same spot ChipEV counts chips. ICM counts prize money, and in a tournament the chips you lose are worth more than the chips you win. The ICM sims here use a 30-place payout: 1st gets 19.2% of the prize pool, 2nd 13.8%, 3rd 10.38%, down to 1.85% for 10th to 13th and 1.12% for 24th to 30th. Each has the whole table at 40bb; the rest of the field has other stacks, and the average across all players left is 35bb. The app labels them by field size left: 50% (100 players, 70 from the money), 25% (50 players, 20 from the money) and 10% (20 players, already in the money). ![Chart: small blind strategy at 40bb against CO and BTN opens in chipEV and in ICM with 100, 50 and 20 players left](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/40bb-is-it-too-big-to-3bet-all-in-sb-mix.png) *Share of all 1,326 hands. The ICM sims open 2.25bb and use a classic ante, so the comparison is close but not identical.* | 40bb SB, all-in / 3-bet small / call / fold | vs CO open | vs BTN open | | --- | --- | --- | | ChipEV | 1.8 / 11.3 / 14.4 / 72.6 | 4.1 / 13.0 / 11.6 / 71.4 | | ICM, 100 left | 0.2 / 11.0 / 13.6 / 75.3 | 1.2 / 12.9 / 15.2 / 70.7 | | ICM, 50 left | 1.3 / 10.0 / 9.1 / 79.5 | 3.0 / 12.2 / 9.6 / 75.2 | | ICM, 20 left | – / 9.5 / 14.0 / 76.5 | – / 11.6 / 17.2 / 71.1 | Percent of all hands. A dash means the tree has no all-in option in that sim. In both ICM sims that offer the jam it comes out smaller than in chipEV, and it doesn’t shrink in a straight line: with 50 left it’s bigger than with 100 left. ## 20 left: the chipEV jams become calls In the money, with 20 players left, the solution has no small blind all-in at all. One honest note: this sim’s tree only gives the small blind fold, call and a 3-bet to 7.6bb, so the solver never tested the jam and turned it down. What you can read from it is what happens to the hands that jammed in chipEV: ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 40bb ICM 10% field left, SB vs 2.25bb CO open: fold 76.5%, call 14.0%, raise 7.6bb 9.5%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/40bb-is-it-too-big-to-3bet-all-in-icm20-sb-vs-co-fig.jpg) *40bb ICM, 20 players left (in the money), SB vs a CO open. No all-in option in this tree.* - JTs, KJs and KTs call 100%. - 88 calls 93% and 3-bets 7%. - AQo calls 75% and 3-bets 25%. Against the button it’s the same picture: JTs, QTs, KTs, 88, 77 and 44 call every time, while AQo, AJo and KQo split between a call and a 3-bet to 7.6bb. An earlier version of this post said the all-ins “switch to almost pure calls”. For the CO spot that holds, in the same sim. It just wasn’t the solver turning the jam down. ## 50 left: the callers tighten more than the jammer With 50 players left, 20 from the money, the jam is back: 1.3% against the CO and 3.0% against the button. That’s more than at 100 left. The reason sits on the other side of the table. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 40bb ICM 25% field left, CO facing a 40bb SB jam: fold 87.0%, call 13.0% of its opening range](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/40bb-is-it-too-big-to-3bet-all-in-icm50-co-vs-jam-fig.jpg) *40bb ICM, 50 players left, CO opened 2.25bb and faces the SB jam: call 13.0% of the opening range.* Near the bubble the CO calls the jam with only 13.0% of its opening range, against 21.7% in chipEV: AA–TT, AKs, AQs, AKo and AQo most of the time. The big blind folds 96.2%. With both players folding, the jam wins the pot right away 83.7% of the time, against 73.1% in chipEV. ![Chart: how often a 40bb small blind jam wins the pot uncontested in chipEV and ICM with 100 and 50 players left](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/40bb-is-it-too-big-to-3bet-all-in-folds.png) *Big blind fold share × opener fold share of its opening range, from the solver’s response nodes. Card removal ignored.* In ICM the small blind loses more prize equity when it gets called, but it gets called much less. Against the button that trade is good enough for a clear jam range: ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 40bb ICM 25% field left, SB vs 2.25bb BTN open: fold 75.2%, call 9.6%, raise 7.6bb 12.2%, all-in 3.0%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/40bb-is-it-too-big-to-3bet-all-in-icm50-sb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *40bb ICM, 50 players left, SB vs a BTN open: all-in 3.0%.* - Always: A4s, A2s, KJs, KTs, AQo (100%), A3s (95%), QJs (92%), A5s (86%). - Mostly gone: the pairs (44 jams 14%). 77 and 88 now call, and JTs and QTs call too. The jam range moves from pairs and connected broadways towards suited aces. My reading, as a heuristic: an ace blocks the calling range (AA, AK, AQ), and a hand like A4s still has some equity when it does get called. A small pair would rather see a cheap flop than put its tournament life on a flip. With 100 left the jam is small: 0.2% against the CO (KJs 33%, AQo 10%) and 1.2% against the button (KJs 78%, KTs 67%, AQo 50%, QTs 47%). The CO calls 17.3% of its opening range there, so the fold equity sits between chipEV and the bubble. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_40bb_sb_vs_btn_icm” to=”/open/mtt-40bb-sb-vs-btn-icm” title=”SB facing a button open, 40bb, ICM” body=”The same node as the chipEV version, priced with 100 players left. This is the article’s thesis in one screen.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## So, is 40bb too big to 3-bet all-in? - No, but it’s a small play. 1.8% of hands against a CO open and 4.1% against a button open in chipEV. - It’s not your best hands. AA, KK and QQ 3-bet small. Jams are hands like JTs, AQo, KTs and medium pairs. - The opener matters, the stack is the same. The button opens 50.6% and gets jammed more. - ICM shrinks the jam at 100 and 50 left, and the 20-left sim doesn’t offer it at all. - Near the bubble, watch the caller. When openers call a jam much tighter, the jam comes back with suited aces. None of this is a rule to memorise hand by hand. The mix changes with the ante, the open size and the payouts, so look up the spot that matches your tournament. [pa-cta id=”jam40_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Practise the 40bb small blind” body=”Pick 40bb and the small blind vs RFI spots. The trainer deals the hands and grades each decision against the solver.” label=”Start training”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # Poker variance in tournaments: downswings, breakeven stretches and the bankroll you actually need Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/variance-in-tournament-poker Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2024-07-17 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Poker variance in tournaments: downswings, breakeven stretches and the bankroll you actually need](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/variance-in-tournament-poker-hero.jpg) A tournament player with a 20% ROI can play 1,000 tournaments and still be losing. In my model that happens to one player in five, and those players are winners with a real edge who didn’t hit the right final tables. That is variance in MTTs. This article puts numbers on it: how deep downswings go, how long you can run breakeven while winning, and how big a bankroll has to be before those swings stop being dangerous. Then the harder part, getting through a long flat stretch without breaking your game. ## The model, and what it assumes Everything below comes from a simulation I wrote for this article. It is a model, not real players’ results, and it only knows what I told it: - Payouts: the payout tables our variance calculator uses, 15% of the field paid, for fields of 100, 500 and 2,000 runners. - Cost: $10+$1, so one buy-in is $11 and about 9% of it is rake. ROI is measured on the full $11. - Skill: a player with ROI r finishes in *each* paid place 1.1 × (1 + r) times more often than a random entrant. Otherwise he busts and loses the buy-in. - Sample: 1,000 tournaments per career, 5,000 simulated careers per row, one fixed random seed (20260915), so anyone can rerun it. Real life is noisier. Your ROI changes over time, you mix field sizes, and a player whose edge shows up as deep runs rather than min-cashes swings even harder. Treat the numbers as a floor for how rough it gets, not a ceiling. Start with one tournament. In a 500-runner field, 75 places are paid and first place pays 111 buy-ins ($1,225 of a $5,000 prize pool). The 20% ROI player cashes this often: Chance to cash, 500 runners, ROI 20% ITM=75×1.1×1.2500=19.8%\text{ITM} = 75 \times \frac{1.1 \times 1.2}{500} = 19.8\% So he loses his buy-in in 80.2% of tournaments, and most of his profit sits in a handful of deep runs. Lots of small losses and rare big wins is why MTT variance is so much bigger than in cash games. One number measures it, the standard deviation of a single tournament result: Standard deviation of one tournament σ2=∑ipi (xi−1)2+(1−ITM)⋅12−ROI2 ⇒ σ=7.23 buy-ins\sigma^2 = \sum_i p_i\,(x_i – 1)^2 + (1 – \text{ITM}) \cdot 1^2 – \text{ROI}^2 \;\Rightarrow\; \sigma = 7.23\ \text{buy-ins} Here pi is the chance of finishing in place i and xi is what that place pays, in buy-ins. The expected profit per tournament is 0.2 buy-ins. The typical swing around it is 7.2 buy-ins, 36 times the edge. ## What 1,000 tournaments look like ![Variance model: twenty simulated careers of 1,000 tournaments for a player with 20% ROI in 500-runner fields, profit in buy-ins](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/variance-in-tournament-poker-twenty-careers.png) *Model, not real results: 20 players with identical skill, 500 runners, $10+$1, 15% paid.* Every line on that chart is the same player. The expected result after 1,000 tournaments is +200 buy-ins. Across all 5,000 simulated careers the middle 90% ended between -161 and +593 buy-ins, and 20% were still losing. Look at the shape of the lines too: long slow slides down, then a vertical jump. A slide of 100 or 200 buy-ins is the normal distance between two deep runs. [pa-cta id=”open_trainer_performance” to=”/open/trainer-performance” title=”Your own performance panel” body=”Accuracy, EV lost per decision and the skill profile. Your numbers, not ours.” label=”Open the trainer”] ## How deep the downswings go ![Variance model table: standard deviation, worst downswing, chance of still losing after 1,000 tournaments and bankroll for 5% risk of ruin by field size 100, 500, 2000 and ROI 10, 20, 40 percent](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/variance-in-tournament-poker-downswing-table.png) *Model, not real results. 1,000 tournaments, 15% paid, $10+$1, 5,000 careers per row.* For the 20% ROI player in 500-runner fields, the worst downswing inside 1,000 tournaments was 145 buy-ins for the median career. One career in twenty saw 275 buy-ins or worse. Three things stand out in the table: - Field size matters more than skill. A 40% ROI player in 2,000-runner fields (163 buy-ins median downswing) swings harder than a 10% ROI player in 100-runner fields (86). - The standard deviation barely depends on ROI. It grows with the field: 3.7, 7.2 and 11.9 buy-ins at 100, 500 and 2,000 runners. - 1,000 tournaments is a short run in big fields. At 2,000 runners and 20% ROI, 33% of winners are still down. ## 30 buy-ins is not a tournament bankroll An older version of this article said a bankroll of 20 to 30 buy-ins was enough. That is a cash-game number, where a buy-in is 100 big blinds and the swings are far smaller next to it. For tournaments it is wrong, and the model shows by how much. Risk of ruin here means starting with a bankroll, never moving down, and hitting a point in the 1,000 tournaments where you can’t pay the next buy-in. With 30 buy-ins, that happened to 73% of the 20% ROI players in 500-runner fields. With 100 buy-ins, still 32%. To bring it down to 5% they needed 238 buy-ins, and 317 for 1%. In small fields it’s gentler: 83 buy-ins for the same 5% at 100 runners. In 2,000-runner fields, 365. So a rough rule, straight from this model: **100 buy-ins is a floor for small fields, and big-field players need several hundred** unless they have a way to move down. Moving down is that way out. The model never lets anyone drop stakes, which is why its numbers are harsh. A clear rule like “below 150 buy-ins I play the next level down” cuts real risk of ruin a lot, though this model can’t tell you by how much. Smaller fields help too, and so does selling action or swapping, which gives up part of your upside for smaller swings. What doesn’t help: playing tighter because you’re running bad. That changes your strategy because of luck, and it lowers your ROI without touching the variance. [pa-cta id=”variance_calc” to=”/variance-calculator” title=”Run your own numbers” body=”Enter your field size, places paid, buy-in, rake and ROI. The calculator simulates your swings and risk of ruin for the bankroll you have.” label=”Open the variance calculator”] ## You don’t know your ROI yet The table assumes the player knows his true ROI. Nobody does. Your results are one sample, and with a standard deviation of 7.2 buy-ins that sample is very wide: 95% range of your measured ROI after n tournaments ROI±1.96×σn = 20%±1.96×7.23500 = 20%±63 points\text{ROI} \pm 1.96 \times \frac{\sigma}{\sqrt{n}} \;=\; 20\% \pm 1.96 \times \frac{7.23}{\sqrt{500}} \;=\; 20\% \pm 63\ \text{points} ![Variance model: 95 percent range of measured ROI for a true 20 percent ROI player after 100, 500, 1000, 3000 and 10000 tournaments in 500-runner fields](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/variance-in-tournament-poker-roi-sample.png) *Normal approximation, 500 runners, σ = 7.2 buy-ins per tournament.* After 500 tournaments a true 20% player shows anything from −43% to +83%. After 1,000, still ±45 points. To be 95% sure the result is above zero, he needs about this many: Tournaments until a 20% ROI shows as profit (one-sided 95%) n=(1.645×σROI)2=(1.645×7.230.20)2≈3,536n = \left(\frac{1.645 \times \sigma}{\text{ROI}}\right)^2 = \left(\frac{1.645 \times 7.23}{0.20}\right)^2 \approx 3{,}536 At 20 tournaments a week that’s over three years. It cuts the other way too: a player who is actually breakeven can show a 40% ROI over 500 tournaments and believe he’s crushing. ## Breakeven stretches happen to winners A breakeven stretch is a run of play that ends no higher than it started. For the 20% ROI player in 500-runner fields, the longest such stretch inside 1,000 tournaments was 721 tournaments for the median career, most of the sample. There is a selection effect on top of that: 49% of these winners lose over their *first* 100 tournaments, while every one of the 5,000 simulated careers had *some* losing 100-tournament window somewhere in the 1,000. A calculator question like “what are the odds I lose over the next 100?” has a comfortable answer. “What are the odds I go through a bad 100 somewhere?” is almost certain, and that is the question worth asking. Cash players get the same thing in hands. I ran the same kind of model for a cash winner at 5 bb/100 with a standard deviation of 100 bb/100 (an assumption, yours may be higher) over 1,000,000 hands. The median longest breakeven stretch was 165,000 hands, and 92% of these players went through at least 100,000 hands of zero profit. The numbers are easy to misread. A long flat stretch is *consistent* with being a winner, and it does not prove that you are one: a breakeven player draws exactly the same graph. The graph can’t tell you which one you are, so stop asking it. ## Judge the decisions, not the graph If results are this noisy, the only fast feedback you get is on decision quality, which doesn’t swing with the cards. In Practice, every decision is graded against the solver, so the Performance tab shows accuracy and EV loss per decision instead of money won. ![Poker Academy Practice Performance screen: accuracy 55.3 percent and EV loss 0.43bb per decision over 30 days, with accuracy and EV loss trend charts](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/variance-in-tournament-poker-performance-trend-fig.jpg) *Practice → Performance, 30 days (a test account): accuracy and EV loss per decision, graded against the solver.* Practice grades your training decisions, not your real sessions, but it’s the cleanest read on how you decide. EV loss per decision is the number to watch during a downswing. If it stays flat while your bankroll drops, you’re running bad. If it climbs, you’re playing worse, and that part is yours to fix. ![Poker Academy Practice Performance: accuracy by street and decision quality breakdown into perfect, good, mistake and blunder](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/variance-in-tournament-poker-decision-quality-fig.jpg) *Practice → Performance: accuracy by street and how many decisions were perfect, good, mistakes or blunders.* Session by session, the History tab does the same. Each session gets an accuracy grade and a bb-per-decision loss, whether you won the hand or not. ![Poker Academy Practice session history table with format MTT or cash, hands, decisions, accuracy grade and bb per decision for each session](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/variance-in-tournament-poker-session-history-fig.jpg) *Practice → History: every session graded by accuracy and bb lost per decision, not by the result.* ## Getting through a long flat stretch The maths is the easy part. The hard part is that a long breakeven stretch changes how you play, and that’s what turns variance into a real loss. Jared Tendler’s *The Mental Game of Poker* describes it with the A-game and C-game: your best and your worst version at the table. The swings don’t touch your A-game. They drag out the C-game: forcing spots, calling to “get unstuck”, playing longer sessions than you should, moving up to win it back. What I’d do, in order: - Plan for it before it starts. Pick your bankroll and your move-down line now, while you’re calm. Then dropping below that line is a rule you follow, not a decision you make on tilt. - Keep the strategy, change the stakes or the volume. Tightening up because of bad luck is a results-based mistake; moving down or playing shorter sessions is not. - Write down your worst decision of each session. A downswing is the one time you reliably see your C-game, and those notes show the leaks better than another week of results. - Compare your worst to your old worst. Progress often shows as a higher floor, fewer blunders on bad days, long before it shows as a higher ROI. - Drill the spots, don’t pay for them. Practice the decisions you keep getting wrong away from the tables, where a mistake costs nothing. [pa-cta id=”variance_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Train while the graph is flat” body=”Pick the spots you struggle with. The trainer deals them and grades every decision against the solver, so you can see progress that results hide.” label=”Start training”] The variance is real, and the model says it is bigger than most players plan for. Mostly it decides who quits. Players who bankroll for it, keep their game steady and measure decisions instead of results are still around when the deep run comes. Cheers! 🙂 --- # Timing tells in poker: what they really tell you, and how to stop giving your own Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-hidden-power-of-timing-tells Author: Kamil Brzozowski Published: 2024-07-05 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Online Game ![Timing tells in poker: what they really tell you, and how to stop giving your own](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/the-hidden-power-of-timing-tells-hero.jpg) For years I believed a snap bet meant a strong hand. Then I watched the same players snap-bet with nothing, and tank for a minute with the nuts. Timing is information, and some of the noisiest information at the table. The old version of this post quoted fold-to-3-bet numbers split by how fast players opened. I can’t find the sample, the stakes or the date behind those numbers, so they are gone. The post also drew the wrong conclusion from them, which I fix below. What is left is what I can show you: the maths of how much a read has to be worth, the solver numbers for one real spot, and how to stop leaking your own timing. ## What a timing tell is A timing tell is the time between the action reaching a player and the player acting. Online that is the gap before a bet appears; live it is the pause before the chips move, plus everything the player does in that pause. The idea behind every timing tell is the same: an easy decision is fast, a hard decision is slow. So timing tells you something about how **difficult** the spot was for that player. It does not tell you directly how strong the hand is. A snap fold and a snap raise with the nuts are both easy decisions. ## Why it is weak evidence Before you read anything into a speed, count the things that change speed without changing the hand: - Auto-actions. Online clients let you pre-select check, fold or call before the action reaches you. A snap check is often just a pre-clicked button. - Multi-tabling. A player on six tables acts slowly when another table needs attention and fast when it doesn’t. The delay belongs to a different hand. - Time bank and connection. Lag and time-bank habits add seconds that have nothing to do with the cards. - Deliberate speed. Good players know people read timing. Some take the same time on every decision. Some mix it on purpose. - Live theatre. Live, the pause comes with a performance. Mike Caro’s *Book of Poker Tells* describes the classic pattern: players who are acting often act the opposite of their hand. That is a tendency, not a law. So treat every timing pattern below as a **heuristic**. None of it comes from a solver, and I have no measured frequencies to give you. Use it only for a player you have watched for a while, and weigh it against the rest of what you know. [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_btn_vs_3bet” to=”/open/cash-100bb-btn-vs-3bet” title=”Button facing an 11bb 3-bet, cash 100bb” body=”Pot odds 37.8% and the continuing range: the price the article is about.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Population tendencies worth watching These are patterns many players report. They are starting points for your own notes, not facts: - Change from the player’s own baseline matters more than absolute speed. A player who always takes four seconds and suddenly takes twenty is telling you more than a player who always takes twenty. - Snap checks online often come from a pre-selected check. The player had decided to check before seeing your action, which usually means the hand was not strong enough to bet. - A long pause, then a call, often means a hand at the bottom of the calling range: a real decision between call and fold. - A long pause, then a big raise, is the hardest to read. It can be a player building a bluff or a player acting weak with a strong hand. I don’t lean on this one. - Speed on the river after a scare card mixes everything above. On the river I trust timing least. ## A read is a tiebreaker, not a strategy The old article said to widen your 3-bet range when opponents opened quickly and tighten it when they opened slowly. Even taken on its own terms, that was backwards. Its data said fast openers folded to 3-bets *less* often. Against a player who folds less, you bluff less and 3-bet a value-heavier range. You bluff more against the player who folds more. The bigger point is how much a read would have to be worth. Take a real spot: cash, 6-max, 100bb deep. The button opens to 2.5bb, the small blind folds and the big blind 3-bets to 11bb. The pot before the 3-bet is 0.5 + 1 + 2.5 = 4bb. A pure bluff with no equity risks the 10bb the big blind adds: Pure 3-bet bluff to 11bb: button must fold 11−1(11−1)+(0.5+1+2.5)=1014=71.4%\frac{11-1}{(11-1)+(0.5+1+2.5)}=\frac{10}{14}=71.4\% Now look at what the solver’s button does with its whole opening range when it faces that 3-bet. It folds 54.4%, calls 34.4% and 4-bets to 24bb 11.2%. ![Poker Academy Browse, cash 6-max 100bb (2.5x open, 5% rake capped at 0.6bb), BTN vs BB 3-bet to 11bb: pot 14.0, pot odds 37.8%, fold 54.4%, call 34.4%, raise to 24bb 11.2%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/the-hidden-power-of-timing-tells-btn-vs-3bet-fig.jpg) *Cash 6-max 100bb. Button opened 2.5bb, big blind 3-bet to 11bb. Button: fold 54.4%, call 34.4%, 4-bet 11.2%.* 54.4% is 17 points short of 71.4%. Suppose a timing read convinced you this particular player folds 5 or even 10 points more than the solver’s button. You’d be at 59.4% or 64.4%, still short of the bar. ![Bar chart: a pure bluff 3-bet to 11bb needs 71.4% folds, the solver button folds 54.4%, hypothetical timing reads of +5 and +10 points give 59.4% and 64.4%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/the-hidden-power-of-timing-tells-bluff-gap.png) *Chip maths, rake ignored. The two grey bars are made-up reads, not measured data.* This is a simplified model: a pure bluff never wins after a call or a 4-bet. Real 3-bets have equity when called, which is why the solver’s big blind 3-bets suited aces and suited connectors rather than random hands. But the gap shows what a timing read can do. It can move a close decision, and it can’t turn a hand with no equity into a profitable bluff. So I use timing at range level, for hands that are already close. If a hand sits between call and 3-bet, or between check and bet, a read can tip it. If the maths says fold by a mile, a fast or slow click from the other side of the table does not change that. ## Stop giving your own Your own timing is the one tell you control completely, and fixing it costs nothing. Your speed should not depend on your hand. - Don’t use auto-actions for check, fold or call. A pre-clicked button shows up as a snap action, and people notice. - Take a short, similar pause on every decision, including the easy ones. A snap fold and a snap raise both leak. - If you tank in hard spots, tank sometimes in easy ones. Otherwise a long pause simply means “I have a marginal hand”. - Play fewer tables if you keep running into your time bank. Delays from other tables still get read as information. - Live, keep one routine: look at your cards once, same pause, same motion with the chips, whatever you hold. The trick is that consistent timing needs fast decisions. If a spot takes you 40 seconds to work out, you can’t play it in the same rhythm as a fold. The fix is to make more spots easy, and that is a training problem. [pa-cta id=”open_trainer” to=”/open/trainer” title=”The trainer, from the cockpit” body=”Pick the spots, the format and the timer, then play hands against the solver’s own strategy.” label=”Open the trainer”] ## Train fast, consistent decisions The Practice trainer in Poker Academy has a decision timer. You set it on the cockpit before a session, in the **Timer** row: Off, 8 s, 12 s or 25 s per decision. The difficulty presets set it for you: Beginner plays without a timer, Intermediate uses 12 s and Advanced uses 8 s. Changes apply to the next session. ![Poker Academy Practice cockpit: MTT 25-60bb setup, difficulty presets Beginner Intermediate Advanced Custom, How it plays card with the Timer row Off, 8 s, 12 s, 25 s](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/the-hidden-power-of-timing-tells-practice-cockpit-fig.jpg) *Practice cockpit. The Timer row sits under Hands and Feedback; Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced seed it.* When the clock runs out, the trainer acts for you. If checking is free, it checks. If you owe chips, it folds. Either way the decision is graded as a Timeout, and in your Performance stats timeouts count as blunders. That is harsh on purpose: at a real table the clock doesn’t care how close the spot was. The Study feedback mode turns the timer off, so you can think without pressure when you want to. ![Poker Academy Practice Performance, Decision quality card: Perfect, Good, Mistake, Blunder and Timeout rows, note that timeouts are graded as blunders](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/the-hidden-power-of-timing-tells-decision-quality-fig.jpg) *Performance → Decision quality on a test account. The Timeout row counts decisions the clock made for you.* How I’d use it: - Start at 25 s on the spots you play most, so the clock only catches real tanks. - Drop to 12 s once timeouts are rare. Then 8 s. If your blunders go up, you moved too early. - Go back to Study mode, without a timer, for spots you keep getting wrong. Learn them slowly, then drill them on the clock. - Watch the Timeout row. If it keeps growing, the spot is not automatic yet, and at a real table it is exactly the spot where your pause would leak. I don’t know of any study that measures how much this improves results, so I won’t give you a number. The logic is enough for me: a decision you’ve made many times is fast, and fast decisions are the easiest to keep at the same speed. [pa-cta id=”timing_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Put your decisions on the clock” body=”Pick 25 s, 12 s or 8 s per decision. The trainer grades every action against the solver, timeouts included.” label=”Start training”] ## Short version - Timing measures how hard a decision was for a player, not how strong the hand is. - Auto-actions, multi-tabling and deliberate speed make it weak evidence. Treat every pattern as a heuristic. - Compare a player with their own baseline, not with everyone else. - A read can tip a close decision. It can’t pay for a bluff that needs 71.4% folds when the solver’s button folds 54.4%. - Your own timing should not depend on your cards. Train decisions until they are fast, then keep the same rhythm on all of them. Cheers! 🙂 --- # Big blind defence in poker: pot odds, blind vs blind and limped pots Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-for-poker-players Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-06-28 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Big blind defence in poker: pot odds, blind vs blind and limped pots](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-f-hero.jpg) You play more hands from the big blind than from any other seat. You already have 1bb in the pot, you close the action, and almost every open you face gives you a discount. That makes it the seat where a small leak costs the most, in both directions: fold too much and you bleed blinds, call too much and you bleed chips after the flop. This guide shows how wide the big blind defends, using solver charts from Poker Academy. Two games, so you can hold them side by side: a 40bb tournament (CE-Symmetric, 9-handed, 1bb big-blind ante, chipEV, no ICM) and a 100bb cash game (6-max NL50 on GG, no ante, with rake). Every screenshot is the Browse screen of the app, so you can open the same spots yourself. ## Start with the price The big blind is the only seat that gets a price on every open. You already paid 1bb, so you only add the difference. The app prints this under the table as **pot odds**: what you call, divided by the pot after your call. In the 40bb tournament everyone from EP to the button opens to 2.3bb. If the button opens, you call 1.3bb into a pot of 4.8bb (2.3 from the button, 0.5 small blind, your 1bb blind and the 1bb ante): BB vs a 2.3bb button open · 40bb MTT 1.32.3+0.5+1+1+1.3=1.36.1=21.3%\frac{1.3}{2.3+0.5+1+1+1.3}=\frac{1.3}{6.1}=21.3\% ![Poker Academy Browse, 40bb CE-Symmetric MTT 9-handed with 1bb big blind ante: BB vs a 2.3bb button open, pot odds 21.3%, fold 20.8%, call 61.4%, raise 13.3%, all-in 4.6%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-f-mtt-bb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *40bb MTT, 1bb BB ante. BB against a 2.3bb button open. Pot 4.8, pot odds 21.3%. Teal = call, orange = raise to 9.1bb, dark red = all-in, grey = fold.* You need 21.3% equity to break even on the call if the hand went straight to showdown. It never does: you play the flop out of position and you won’t realise all of your equity, so treat the price as a floor. It still explains the chart: the solver folds only **20.8%** of hands, calls 61.4%, raises to 9.1bb with 13.3% and jams 4.6%. What folds is the offsuit trash: 23 hand classes such as T5o, 95o, J4o, 84o, 73o and 32o. Every suited hand continues. The raises are mostly AA to 99, AKs to ATs, KQs and AKo. The all-ins are mostly small pairs (88, 77 and 55 down to 22) plus AQo and AJo, often mixed with a call. ## Same price, different range: EP vs button The price is only half the question. When EP opens to the same 2.3bb, your pot odds are the same 21.3%, and the solver folds **49.3%** of hands, more than twice as many. ![Poker Academy Browse, 40bb CE-Symmetric MTT: BB vs a 2.3bb EP open, pot odds 21.3%, fold 49.3%, call 45.1%, raise 5.6%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-f-mtt-bb-vs-ep-fig.jpg) *40bb MTT, 1bb BB ante. BB against a 2.3bb EP open. Same pot odds, 21.3%, but fold 49.3%, call 45.1%, raise 5.6%, no all-ins.* The difference is the range you are up against. EP opens with eight players still behind it at a 9-handed table, so that range is much stronger than a button open. Weak offsuit aces like A7o to A2o (except A5o), K8o and Q8o now fold. Your equity drops and the price stays the same. That is why a pot-odds number on its own never tells you what to fold. Ask *who* opened. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_40bb_bb_vs_btn” to=”/open/mtt-40bb-bb-vs-btn” title=”BB facing a 2.3bb button open, 40bb” body=”What the big blind defends with when the price is this good.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Bigger open, worse price: the small blind raise Blind vs blind is the spot where most big-blind mistakes happen. In this simulation the small blind plays a lot of hands and raises to 3.5bb when it raises. Now you call 2.5bb into a pot of 5.5bb: BB vs a 3.5bb small blind raise · 40bb MTT 2.53.5+1+1+2.5=2.58=31.3%\frac{2.5}{3.5+1+1+2.5}=\frac{2.5}{8}=31.3\% ![Poker Academy Browse, 40bb CE-Symmetric MTT: BB vs a 3.5bb small blind raise, pot odds 31.3%, fold 34.6%, call 52.3%, raise 11.1%, all-in 1.9%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-f-mtt-bb-vs-sb-fig.jpg) *40bb MTT, blind vs blind. BB against a 3.5bb small blind raise. Pot 5.5, pot odds 31.3%. Fold 34.6%, call 52.3%, raise to 8.5bb 11.1%, all-in 1.9%.* You need 31.3% instead of 21.3%, and the chart tightens with it: the solver folds **34.6%** of hands. Calls are still the main play at 52.3%. The raise to 8.5bb takes 11.1% (mostly AA to TT, AKs to ATs, AKo and AQo) and a few hands jam. The folds are offsuit again: J6o, T6o, 96o, 86o and weaker hands like T5o, 85o, Q4o, K3o and 32o. Suited hands continue, with one exception in this chart: **72s folds**. I checked the same spot at 25bb and 30bb in the same format and the result is the same, every suited hand defends except 72s. So “defend all your suited hands against the small blind” is close, but it isn’t a rule, and it breaks in the cash game below. ## The ante changes the price Everything above includes a 1bb big-blind ante. That ante is dead money in the middle, and it makes every call cheaper. Without it, the same 3.5bb small blind raise at 40bb would cost you: Same raise without the ante, arithmetic only 2.53.5+1+2.5=2.57=35.7%\frac{2.5}{3.5+1+2.5}=\frac{2.5}{7}=35.7\% The app also has the same 30bb tournament with and without the ante, which shows what that does to a real range. The button opens to 2bb in both: BB vs 2bb button open · 30bb with 1bb BB ante 12+0.5+1+1+1=15.5=18.2%\frac{1}{2+0.5+1+1+1}=\frac{1}{5.5}=18.2\% BB vs 2bb button open · 30bb, no ante 12+0.5+1+1=14.5=22.2%\frac{1}{2+0.5+1+1}=\frac{1}{4.5}=22.2\% ![Poker Academy Browse, 30bb CE-Symmetric MTT, BB vs a 2bb button open: with a 1bb big blind ante pot odds 18.2% and fold 12.3%; without ante pot odds 22.2% and fold 28.7%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-f-ante-compare-fig.jpg) *30bb MTT, BB against a 2bb button open. Left: 1bb BB ante, pot 4.5, pot odds 18.2%, fold 12.3%. Right: no ante, pot 3.5, pot odds 22.2%, fold 28.7%.* With the ante the big blind folds 12.3%. Without it, 28.7%. Two things happen at once: the price gets worse (22.2% instead of 18.2%), and the button opens fewer hands (38.8% of hands instead of 48.3%), so its range is stronger. When you study a chart, check the ante first. A no-ante chart used in a big-blind-ante tournament will make you fold far too much. ## When the big blind jams At 40bb the all-in is a small part of the strategy, and it grows as stacks get shorter. Against the small blind’s raise at 30bb (same format, 1bb ante), the solver jams 5.3% of hands: AQo, AJo, ATo, the small pairs 55 to 22 and A2o, while it calls 55.9% and folds 32.0%. This all-in is a **3-bet jam**, a re-shove over a raise. It is not an isolation raise; you isolate over a limp. My reading of why these hands jam (not solver output): they have decent equity when called but play badly out of position for 30bb deep, and an all-in wins the pot outright when the small blind folds. ## When the small blind limps A limp changes the big blind’s job completely. Checking is free, so there is nothing to fold and no pot odds to count. In the 40bb tournament the small blind completes more than half of its hands (54.8%), raises 27.7% and folds 17.4%. Facing that limp, the big blind raises to 3.5bb with **44.1%** of hands and checks 55.9%. ![Poker Academy Browse, 40bb CE-Symmetric MTT: BB vs a small blind limp, check 55.9%, raise to 3.5bb 44.1%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-f-mtt-bb-vs-limp-fig.jpg) *40bb MTT, blind vs blind. BB against a small blind limp, pot 3.0. Teal = check 55.9%, orange = raise to 3.5bb 44.1%. Many hands mix both.* Look at the offsuit hands. The strong ones raise (AKo down to A7o, KQo, KJo, QJo). The middle ones check: KTo, QTo, JTo, T9o and most weak offsuit aces from A6o down. And then a lot of the worst hands raise again: Q2o, J2o, T2o, 92o, 72o, 62o and 32o. That is a **polarised** raise: the best hands for value, the worst hands as bluffs, and the hands with some showdown value check. The bluffs make sense once you picture the alternative. 72o checked back rarely wins at showdown. As a raise it can win the pot right away against the part of the limping range that folds. Many hands are mixed in this chart, so read the percentages as well as the colour of each square. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_40bb_bb_vs_limp” to=”/open/mtt-40bb-bb-vs-limp” title=”BB facing an SB limp, 40bb” body=”The limped pot from the big blind: what raises, what checks, and how often.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## The cash game: 100bb, no ante Now the same three spots in a 100bb cash game (6-max, NL50 GG): no ante, deep stacks, and rake in the simulation. The button opens to 2.5bb, so you call 1.5bb into a 4bb pot: BB vs a 2.5bb button open · 100bb cash 1.52.5+0.5+1+1.5=1.55.5=27.3%\frac{1.5}{2.5+0.5+1+1.5}=\frac{1.5}{5.5}=27.3\% ![Poker Academy Browse, 100bb cash game NL50 GG 6-max: BB vs a 2.5bb button open, pot odds 27.3%, fold 59.2%, call 30.2%, raise 10.6%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-f-cash-bb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *100bb cash, 6-max NL50 GG, no ante. BB against a 2.5bb button open. Pot 4.0, pot odds 27.3%. Fold 59.2%, call 30.2%, raise to 11bb 10.6%.* The big blind folds **59.2%** of hands here, against 20.8% in the 40bb tournament. The price is worse (27.3% instead of 21.3%), there is no dead ante, and 100bb deep you play three more streets out of position. The folds now include plenty of suited hands: T5s to T2s, 95s to 92s, 84s to 82s, 73s, 72s, 62s, 42s and 32s. The raise to 11bb takes 10.6%, and there are no all-ins at this depth. Blind vs blind in the cash game, the small blind raises to 3bb and almost never limps (3.1% of hands). You call 2bb into a 4bb pot: BB vs a 3bb small blind raise · 100bb cash 23+1+2=26=33.3%\frac{2}{3+1+2}=\frac{2}{6}=33.3\% ![Poker Academy Browse, 100bb cash game NL50 GG: BB vs a 3bb small blind raise, pot odds 33.3%, fold 56.7%, call 26.9%, raise 16.4%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-f-cash-bb-vs-sb-fig.jpg) *100bb cash, blind vs blind. BB against a 3bb small blind raise. Pot 4.0, pot odds 33.3%. Fold 56.7%, call 26.9%, raise to 7.9bb 16.4%.* Fold 56.7%, call 26.9%, raise 16.4%. The 3-bet is bigger here than against the button (16.4% against 10.6%), and it includes low suited hands like J6s to J2s, Q3s and Q2s next to the value hands AA to TT, AKs to AJs and AKo, AQo. Against a limp the cash big blind raises to 3bb with 41.7% and checks 58.3%, close to the tournament split. The suited raises reach far down: A5s, A4s, A2s, K5s, K4s, K2s, Q7s to Q2s and T8s to T2s mostly raise, while hands like A8s, A7s, K9s and J9s mostly check. The offsuit part is less cleanly polarised than at 40bb: 72o and 32o check here. ![Poker Academy Browse, 100bb cash game NL50 GG: BB vs a small blind limp, check 58.3%, raise to 3bb 41.7%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-f-cash-bb-vs-limp-fig.jpg) *100bb cash, blind vs blind. BB against a small blind limp, pot 2.0. Check 58.3%, raise to 3bb 41.7%.* ## Five things to take away - Read the price first. The app shows pot odds for every open: 21.3% against a 2.3bb button open at 40bb, 31.3% against a 3.5bb small blind raise. - Then read the range. The same 21.3% price means fold 20.8% against the button and 49.3% against EP. - Check the ante. At 30bb the big blind folds 12.3% against a button open with a 1bb BB ante and 28.7% without one. - Cash is tighter. 100bb deep with no ante, the big blind folds 59.2% against a button open, weak suited hands included. - A limp is a raise-or-check spot. About 42% to 44% raises in both games, and the tournament raise is polarised in its offsuit hands. None of these numbers transfers blindly to your game. They depend on stack depth, the ante, the table size and the open size. Open the spot you actually play in the charts, then drill it until you stop thinking about it. [pa-cta id=”bb_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Train your big blind defence” body=”Pick the big blind and the stack you play. The trainer deals the spots and grades every decision against the solver.” label=”Start training”] [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_30bb_bb_vs_btn_ante” to=”/open/mtt-30bb-bb-vs-btn-ante” title=”BB defending at 30bb with a 1bb ante” body=”The ante half of the pair: same seats, same stack, more dead money in the middle.” label=”Open the matrix”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # The WSOP is here. Interesting facts about legendary series Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-wsop-is-here-interesting-facts-about-legendary-series Author: Filip Pedzich Published: 2024-06-20 · Updated: 2024-07-01 Category: Live Game ![The WSOP is here. Interesting facts about legendary series](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/06/WSOP-blog-post-2.png) The World Series of Poker® in Las Vegas is the biggest and most well-known series around the world. The 2024 Main Event begins on July 3, so if you want to be part of it, better hurry! But if you are not into spending thousands of dollars this year, you might as well read some interesting WSOP facts, get inspired and learn the best poker strategies with [Poker Academy’s Postflop Tool.](https://poker.academy/postflop-solver) ## **The WSOP money is huge! The American dream straight from Las Vegas** The WSOP 2023 Main Event was absolutely record-breaking. Daniel Weinman, who scooped as much as $12,100,000 for first place, battled through a field of over 10,000 entrants! In comparison, the first-ever WSOP champion Johnny Moss had to face only six other players back in 1970. What’s more important, he didn’t win but was rather chosen by his fellow opponents in a secret ballot. He proved his greatness by winning a real WSOP tournament one year later. ![](https://vegaspublicity.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Daniel-Weinman-Wins-2023-WSOP-Main-EventMB4A6A7552-1.jpg) *Daniel Weinman after winning over $12M* ## **Youngsters in action: they were born to win the WSOP** The World Series of Poker is a dream of every poker player, but the pleasure of winning a bracelet will happen only to a handful of them. Not to mention becoming a champion of the Main Event. However, there are a couple of lucky guys who managed to ‘finish the game’ in a very early stage of their poker journey. One of them is obviously Phil Hellmuth, who became a champion at 24. His record was unbeaten for over 25 years. In 2008, almost 23-year-old Peter Eastgate from Denmark dethroned The Poker Brat. Only one year later, Joe Cada won over 8.5 million dollars just a few days before his 22nd birthday. It is he who holds the record to this day. Cada started his poker career very early and improved his skills rapidly, but you can begin at any age and develop your knowledge even faster. Learn about basic and advanced poker tactics here by using [Poker Academy’s Tournament Charts.](https://poker.academy/preflop-charts) ## **Phil Hellmuth is the greatest. But he probably told you that already…** Let’s explore some interesting facts about the World Series of Poker! If you win a WSOP event, you get money and, most importantly, the bracelet – the most coveted trophy in the poker world. Phil Hellmuth has won a jaw-dropping seventeen bracelets, which he loves bragging about, but who wouldn’t? Second place belongs to Phil Ivey, who won his 11th trophy this very year! What’s interesting is that Ivey has never won any of the Texas Hold’em events! His successes at the WSOP come specifically from Pot Limit Omaha and other less popular variations of the game. ## **Bad beats all the way. You have to be lucky and good** Learning and practicing are two very important things, but sometimes, it’s not advanced poker tactics but the poker gods that are needed! Imagine a situation where an opponent opens from Under The Gun, the Cut Off calls, and you defend your pocket 4s from the Big Blind. You see a set on the flop (9h, 7d, 4d) and later on quads on the river. You eventually put your opponent all in and… you get called by a full house, 7s over 4s! Imagine that your name is Espen Jorstad, and you actually won the WSOP Main Event in 2022 after playing this exact spot on Day 3 and hitting quads! Unreal? Yes, but this is why the World Series of Poker events are so exciting! ![](https://gray-kvvu-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/QL4KvjO2TXPTYyeIpWLqxzQEsXA=/1200x675/smart/filters:quality(85)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/QGQ65URNF5HBBDSH6QKS6ZQZ4E.jpg) --- # What is GTO in poker? Equilibrium, mixing and balance with real solver numbers Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/what-is-gto-in-poker Author: Maciej Dziadyk Published: 2024-05-16 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![What is GTO in poker? Equilibrium, mixing and balance with real solver numbers](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-gto-in-poker-hero.jpg) GTO is the most used word in poker training and one of the least explained. Most articles give you a definition that is slightly wrong and then a few frequencies that nobody actually solved. Here you get one correct definition and real solver output you can open in the app yourself. Every number below comes from one Poker Academy preflop solution: **NL200 cash on GGPoker, 100bb deep, 6-max**, 2.5bb opens and 11bb 3-bets from the big blind. EVs are in big blinds, measured against folding (a fold is worth 0). If a sentence is my reasoning and not solver output, I say so. ## What GTO actually means GTO stands for game theory optimal. In practice it means playing a **Nash equilibrium** strategy, and the definition of one is short: **A set of strategies is a Nash equilibrium when no player can increase their EV by changing only their own strategy, while everyone else’s strategy stays fixed.** Two things follow from that. First, an equilibrium is about every player at once. Your strategy is only “optimal” together with the strategies it is played against. Second, nothing in the definition says your opponent punishes you when you deviate. At equilibrium a deviation just doesn’t earn more, while against a real opponent who never adjusts it can earn a lot more. That is exploitation, and I come back to it at the end. In a two-player zero-sum game, an equilibrium strategy also comes with a guarantee: no opponent strategy can make it do worse than it does against the equilibrium itself. That is what “unexploitable” means. With six players that guarantee doesn’t strictly hold, so read a 6-max chart as the equilibrium of a simplified game: fixed bet sizes, fixed stacks, fixed players. It is still the best reference we have for how a range should be built. GTO against GTO is also not break-even in a single seat. The button has position and the big blind doesn’t, so the button earns more. It only evens out because every player sits in every seat once per orbit. ## GTO plays ranges, not hands The solver never asks “what do I do with KQs?” on its own. It asks what to do with *every* hand it can hold in that spot, given every hand the opponents can hold. That full set is a range, and a chart is a picture of one. Here is the button when it folds to him. The solver raises to 2.5bb with 46.5% of hands and folds 53.5%. Out of 1,326 starting combos that is 617 raises and 709 folds. Button open range in combos 0.4653×1326=617 combos raised0.4653 \times 1326 = 617 \text{ combos raised} ![Poker Academy Browse, 100bb 6-max NL200 GG cash, button first in: raise 2.5bb 46.5% (617 combos), fold 53.5% (709 combos), J3s selected with raise 51.7% and fold 48.3%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-gto-in-poker-btn-j3s-fig.jpg) *100bb cash, button first in. Orange = raise 2.5bb. J3s is pinned on the right: 51.7% raise, 48.3% fold, EV 0.00 for both.* From the lojack, the first seat to act at a 6-max table, the same solution raises only 18.5% of hands (245 combos). Same stacks, same sizes. Five players still act behind the lojack and only the two blinds act behind the button, so the two ranges are built for completely different situations. ![Poker Academy Browse, 100bb 6-max NL200 GG cash, lojack first in: raise 2.5bb 18.5% (245 combos), fold 81.5%, QJo selected with raise 58.4% and fold 41.6%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-gto-in-poker-lj-qjo-fig.jpg) *100bb cash, lojack first in: raise 18.5%, fold 81.5%. QJo is pinned: 58.4% raise, 41.6% fold, EV 0.00 for both.* ## Mixed strategies: the same hand, two actions Look at the hands pinned in those two screenshots. On the button, J3s raises 51.7% of the time and folds 48.3%. From the lojack, QJo raises 58.4% and folds 41.6%. That is a **mixed strategy**: the solver splits one hand between two actions on purpose. The clearest example is the big blind against that 2.5bb button open. KQs 3-bets to 11bb 66.1% of the time and calls 33.9%. ![Poker Academy Browse combo panel, 100bb cash, big blind vs button 2.5bb open: KQs raise to 11bb 66.1% EV 1.19bb, call 33.9% EV 1.19bb, fold 0% EV 0.00](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-gto-in-poker-bb-kqs-panel.jpg) *BB vs a 2.5bb button open, KQs. Every suit combo: 3-bet 66.1% for 1.19bb, call 33.9% for 1.19bb.* Now read the EV column. Both actions are worth 1.19bb. Unrounded, the solution has 1.187bb for the 3-bet and 1.188bb for the call: KQs in the big blind: 3-bet vs call EV3-bet−EVcall=1.187−1.188=−0.001 bb\mathrm{EV}_{3\text{-bet}} – \mathrm{EV}_{\text{call}} = 1.187 – 1.188 = -0.001\,\text{bb} That is the rule behind every mixed hand: **a hand is only mixed when the actions it mixes have (almost) the same EV.** If one action were clearly better, the solver would take it 100% of the time. The name for this is indifference. ![Table of big blind vs button open hands from the Poker Academy solver: AA 3-bets 100% because 3-bet EV 10.47bb beats call 6.19bb; AQo, TT, KQs, JTs, A5s, K2s, 87s and 54s mix 3-bet and call at equal EVs; A2s calls 100% with call EV 0.46bb vs 3-bet 0.43bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-gto-in-poker-mixed-evs.png) *BB vs a 2.5bb button open, 100bb cash. Mixed hands have a 0.00 EV gap. AA and A2s don’t mix because one action is worth more.* The two pure hands in that table show the other side. AA 3-bets every time: 10.47bb against 6.19bb for a call, a gap of 4.28bb. A2s always calls: 0.46bb against 0.43bb for a 3-bet. Small gap, but a gap, so no mixing. Mixing is common here, too. In this big blind spot I counted 51 of the 169 hand classes that use two or more actions at least 10% of the time each. That is 350 combos, 26.4% of all 1,326. Among those, the largest EV difference between two actions a hand actually mixes is 0.005bb. [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_btn_rfi” to=”/open/cash-100bb-btn-rfi” title=”Button first in, NL200 100bb” body=”46.5% of hands, 617 combos, the widest opening range at the table next to LJ’s 18.5%.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## Why mix at all, if the EVs are equal? For one hand on its own, it doesn’t matter. If KQs is worth 1.19bb either way, you can 3-bet it or call it and lose nothing *this hand*. The frequencies matter for the range. This part is my reasoning, not solver output. The frequencies are what keep the button’s options indifferent. If the big blind 3-bet KQs, AQo, TT and every other mixed hand 100% of the time, its calling range would lose those hands and get weaker, and its 3-betting range would get stronger. The button would then fold more to 3-bets and attack the calls more after the flop. Its EV goes up, so the big blind’s goes down. The exact split, 66.1% for KQs, is the one that leaves the button no profitable adjustment. That is also why equal EV holds only while the opponent plays the equilibrium too. The moment the button does something else, one of your actions becomes better than the other. ## Balance: what a 3-bet range contains “Balanced” gets used as a vague word for “unpredictable”. It means something more concrete: each action you take holds the right mix of hands, so the opponent’s responses to it stay indifferent too. ![Poker Academy Browse, 100bb 6-max NL200 GG cash, big blind vs button 2.5bb open: call 29.0% (384 combos), 3-bet to 11bb 11.5% (153 combos), fold 59.5% (789 combos), pot odds 27.3%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/what-is-gto-in-poker-bb-kqs-fig.jpg) *100bb cash, big blind vs a 2.5bb button open. Teal = call, orange = 3-bet to 11bb, grey = fold.* In this spot the big blind 3-bets 11.5% of hands, 153 combos. Only 44 of them come from hands that 3-bet every time: AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AKs, AQs and AKo. Pure 3-bet hands 4×6+4+4+12=44 combos44153=28.8%4 \times 6 + 4 + 4 + 12 = 44 \text{ combos} \qquad \tfrac{44}{153} = 28.8\% The other 109 combos come from hands that split their frequency. Some are strong but not strong enough to 3-bet always, like TT and AQo. Others are hands like A4o (45.7% 3-bet), J9o (41.7%), K2s (70.1%) and 54s (39.8%) that the solver likes to put in the pot for 11bb part of the time. So the 3-betting range holds more than the best hands, and the calling range more than the medium ones. Calling is priced by pot odds. The app shows it right above the action tiles: Pot odds: big blind vs a 2.5bb button open callpot after call=1.52.5+0.5+1+1.5=1.55.5=27.3%\frac{\text{call}}{\text{pot after call}} = \frac{1.5}{2.5 + 0.5 + 1 + 1.5} = \frac{1.5}{5.5} = 27.3\% Yet the big blind folds 59.5% here. Pot odds tell you what equity you need at showdown, not what a hand realises out of position against a range that has the initiative. That gap is what a solver measures and a rule of thumb can’t. ## Minimum defence frequency is maths, not GTO An older version of this article named this concept without explaining it. Minimum defence frequency (MDF) is how often you must continue against a bet so that a bluff with any two cards can’t profit immediately: MDF against a bet of B into a pot of P MDF=PP+Bhalf-pot: 11+0.5=66.7%\mathrm{MDF} = \frac{P}{P + B} \qquad \text{half-pot: } \frac{1}{1 + 0.5} = 66.7\% - 33% pot bet: 1 / 1.33 = 75% defence - 50% pot bet: 1 / 1.5 = 66.7% - 75% pot bet: 1 / 1.75 = 57.1% - 100% pot bet: 1 / 2 = 50% Treat MDF as a benchmark, not a solver answer. It assumes the bettor profits from any bluff, and it ignores rake and position. Real solutions defend less when the bettor’s range is strong and more when it is weak. As a sanity check on the preflop spot above: the button risks 2.5bb to win the 1.5bb of blinds, so MDF says the two blinds together should continue 1.5 / (1.5 + 2.5) = 37.5% of the time. The big blind alone continues 40.5% (29.0% call + 11.5% 3-bet), and the small blind adds its own defence on top. [pa-cta id=”open_cash_100bb_bb_vs_btn” to=”/open/cash-100bb-bb-vs-btn” title=”Big blind facing a button open, NL200″ body=”Every defending hand with its EV per action, the screen the KQs example is read off.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## GTO or exploitative? They are not rivals. GTO is the strategy nobody can beat by adjusting to it. Exploitative play is a deliberate deviation against a specific leak. The mixed hands show where to start. J3s on the button is worth exactly 0bb whether it raises or folds, against blinds that defend at equilibrium. If your blinds fold too often, a raise with J3s wins the pot more often and becomes worth more than a fold. So you raise it every time. That is my reasoning, and it is a correct exploit only while the leak exists. Exploiting a real leak pays over the long run, not only in the next few hands. The cost is that you move away from equilibrium, so an opponent who notices can adjust and take that EV back. GTO is the baseline you return to when you don’t know, or when the other player adapts. ## How I’d study it - Open one spot you play a lot and read the range, not a hand: how many combos raise, call and fold. - Pin the mixed hands and check their EVs. If two actions are worth the same, stop worrying about which one you picked in a single hand. - Look at the pure hands at the edges of each action, such as A2s calling and AQs 3-betting. Those are the decisions that cost EV when you get them wrong. - Then play the spot and let the trainer grade your decisions against the solver. [pa-cta id=”gto_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Practise the spots from this article” body=”Play the big blind against a button open and get every decision graded against the solver.” label=”Start training”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # poker.academy Now Accepts PayPal for Subscription Payments Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/poker-academy-now-accepts-paypal-for-subscription-payments Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2024-05-07 · Updated: 2024-05-16 Category: General ![poker.academy Now Accepts PayPal for Subscription Payments](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/05/Copy-of-Strategy-Brakdown-1.png) Starting from this month, **poker.academy** new subscribers can now use PayPal to handle their monthly and annual subscription fees. “**poker.academy** is committed to enhancing user experience and simplifying access to our extensive learning resources,” said the co-founder of poker.academy **Pawel Brzeski**. “By integrating PayPal, we provide our users with more diverse payment options tailored to their needs.” This update comes as **poker.academy** continues to expand its offerings, providing members with advanced tools and resources to improve their poker skills. The platform’s decision to accept PayPal also reflects its ongoing efforts to adapt to the preferences and needs of its global user base. --- # Mastering the Game: 5 Steps to Cultivating Winning Poker Habits Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/mastering-the-game-5-steps-to-cultivating-winning-poker-habits Author: Gio Published: 2024-04-12 · Updated: 2024-09-12 Category: Performance ![Mastering the Game: 5 Steps to Cultivating Winning Poker Habits](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/04/Copy-of-Strategy-Brakdown.jpg) The journey to becoming a better player is a continuous process akin to the formation of new habits, a transformation that requires intention, visualization, emotion, action, and realization. Let’s explore how you can apply these five steps to develop winning poker habits. #### **1. Verbalize It** Start by clearly stating your goal. For a poker player, this might be improving your probe turn percentage or folding from the Big Blind against late position steal. **Verbalizing your objective** not only clarifies your aim but also enhances your decision making in the game, committing you to it. #### **2. Visualize It** Visualization is a powerful tool in a player’s arsenal. Visualizing yourself maintaining a cool head during a losing streak can help you stay disciplined and focused. Picture yourself executing **the perfect action** when discipline calls for it. Visualization helps in solidifying your goals and preparing your mind for the actions needed to achieve them. #### **3. Emotionalize the Creation of the Habit** Connect emotionally with the habit you’re trying to form. For instance, imagine the satisfaction and confidence boost you’ll feel after mastering a new skill. Managing mood swings is essential for maintaining emotional stability and forming positive habits. This emotional connection can significantly reinforce your commitment. Practice to get into the feeling of when you probe turn with the bottom of the range, opponent folds and you win a pot which for the most part in your previous session you never managed to win! How does it feels now? Try keeping this feeling as long as possible and make it as strong as possible. *Here is a video featuring Jason Su, in which he touches on the topic.* #### **4. Actualize It** Act as if you’ve already incorporated the habit into your gameplay. This step involves three key points: - **Preparation:** Equip yourself with the knowledge and skills necessary for your new habit. This could involve studying hand ranges or analyzing hand histories. (Make sure to check our [Postflop Solver](https://poker.academy/postflop-solver) and explore different strategies with it) - **Practice:** Implement your new habit in real game scenarios. Start small and gradually increase the complexity as you become more comfortable. Take notes on your own play during or after a game session to reflect and improve. (We often overdo it the first time we grasp a new concept, so be careful about that, but remain open-minded.) - **Persistence:** Stay committed to your new habit, even when setbacks occur. Remember, consistency is key. (When it doesn’t work out and you face negative feedback, don’t let it deter you; keep pursuing your goals.) #### **5. Realize It** The final step is acknowledging and solidifying good habits within your **poker strategy**. Reflect on how this new habit has impacted your game and what improvements can still be made. Developing winning poker habits requires dedication and practice over long periods. This realization will help in further refining and evolving your gameplay. Incorporating a new habit isn’t just about the initial implementation; it’s about transforming your approach to the game. By **verbalizing**, **visualizing**, **emotionalizing**, **actualizing**, and **realizing** your goals, you can elevate your poker play and achieve new heights. Remember, poker is not just a game of cards but a continuous journey of self-improvement. Embrace these steps, and watch as your game transforms, one habit at a time. --- # Playing Cards History: A Brief Overview Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/a-brief-history-of-playing-cards Author: Gio Published: 2024-03-24 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: General ![Playing Cards History: A Brief Overview](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/03/the-history-of-playing-cards-1.jpg) From the opulent courts of medieval Europe to the bustling saloons of the Wild West, playing cards have left an indelible mark on society, captivating hearts and minds with their timeless allure. In this captivating exploration, we embark on a journey through the ages, uncovering the fascinating history of playing cards-from their enigmatic origins to their enduring legacy in the modern era. Card decks have evolved over time, showcasing their significance in games, military applications, and educational tools, while also emphasizing the diverse types of card decks that exist globally, including French-suited decks, Mamluk cards, and traditional Asian variants. **Origins of Playing Cards:** The story of playing cards begins in the misty realms of ancient China, during the vibrant *Tang Dynasty* (618-907 AD). Various cultures contributed to the invention of playing cards, making it a collaborative effort across different societies. It is here that historians trace the earliest evidence of playing cards, known as “**domino cards**,” used for entertainment and possibly gambling. Playing cards began to emerge in Europe during the 1370s, likely imported from the East through merchants and crusaders. These primitive predecessors to modern playing cards were crafted from paper or bamboo, adorned with simple designs and symbols. As trade routes flourished, these early cards found their way to Persia, where they underwent a transformation, evolving into the intricate playing cards we recognize today. Mamluk cards, with their elaborate designs, further influenced the development of European playing cards, which were initially luxury items, hand-painted and highly prized. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/03/domino-cards.jpg) *Domino Playing Cards* **Evolution in Europe:** The winds of change blew across Europe, carrying with them the seeds of a cultural revolution. By the 14th century, playing cards had become a ubiquitous presence across the continent, with each region putting its own unique spin on the timeless game. The French introduced the iconic suits-**hearts**, **diamonds**, **clubs**, and **spades**-while the Germans favored suits like acorns and leaves. As playing cards spread like wildfire, they became more than just a pastime; they were a reflection of the era’s artistry and craftsmanship. **Playing Cards in the Renaissance:** Enter the dazzling world of the Renaissance, where playing cards transcended their humble origins to become objects of beauty and desire. From the lavish courts of kings and queens to the bustling markets of bustling cities, playing cards captured the imagination of all who beheld them. Intricate designs, elaborate illustrations, and ornate details adorned decks, each card a masterpiece in its own right. It was an era of opulence and extravagance, and playing cards were no exception. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/03/Mandarins_Family_at_Cards.jpg) *Ladies Playing Cards* **Playing Cards in North America:**As European explorers set sail for the New World, they carried with them more than just dreams of conquest and discovery-they brought playing cards. With the colonization of North America, playing cards found a new home across the Atlantic. From the log cabins of early settlers to the bustling streets of colonial cities, playing cards became a fixture of everyday life. As the continent grew and prospered, so too did the popularity of card games, including the quintessentially American game of poker. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/03/Albert-Beck-Wenzell-A-Showdown-1985.jpg) **Poker: A Game of Strategy and Skill:**In the smoke-filled saloons of the Wild West, a new card game emerged-one that would come to define American gambling culture: **poker**. Born from the crucible of frontier life, poker quickly gained popularity, spreading like wildfire across the country and beyond. It was a game of skill, strategy, and nerve, where players sought to outwit their opponents with cunning bluffs and calculated risks. As poker fever swept the nation, it became more than just a game; *it was a way of life*. **The Rise of Poker Solvers:** In the digital age, poker underwent a revolution with the advent of poker solvers-sophisticated software programs that analyze complex game scenarios to help players make optimal decisions. These powerful tools have transformed the way players approach the game, offering insights and strategies previously unimaginable. With poker solvers at their disposal, players can unlock new levels of mastery, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the world of poker. **Learning Poker: A Journey of Discovery:** Whether you’re a novice or seasoned player, learning poker is a journey of discovery-a quest for knowledge, skill, and mastery. From mastering the basics of hand rankings to delving into advanced strategy concepts, there’s always something new to learn. Online resources, books, and courses abound, offering aspiring players the tools they need to hone their skills and elevate their game. And with each hand played and each lesson learned, players inch closer to the elusive goal of poker greatness. As we reflect on the rich tapestry of playing cards, from their ancient origins to their modern-day incarnations, one thing becomes clear: **playing cards are more than just a game-they are a window into the soul of humanity**. From the royal courts of medieval Europe to the bustling saloons of the Wild West, playing cards have captured the imagination of people from all walks of life, transcending time and culture. As we gaze upon the intricate designs and vibrant colors of a deck of cards, we are reminded of the enduring legacy of this timeless tradition-a legacy that continues to captivate and inspire us to this day. So the next time you shuffle a deck of cards or sit down at the poker table, take a moment to appreciate the rich history and heritage that lies within each card. For in the world of playing cards, the journey is just as captivating as the destination. ## Origins and Spread of Playing Cards The origins of playing cards are shrouded in mystery, with various theories about their beginnings. One theory suggests that playing cards originated in Asia, possibly in China or Persia, during the 9th century. The earliest known reference to playing cards is a Chinese game called yezi ge, which dates back to the 800s. However, it is unclear if this game actually used playing cards. The first unambiguous record of playing cards is a 1294 police record from Shandong, China, which mentions gamblers and their cards and printing blocks. Playing cards spread rapidly throughout the world, with various regions developing their own unique decks and games. The Crusades may have played a role in the introduction of playing cards to Europe, with soldiers bringing back cards from their travels. The Mamluk cards, located in the Topkapı Palace Museum in Istanbul, are a famous example of an early deck and are similar to modern Spanish cards. ## Development of Modern Suits and Court Cards The modern suits and court cards that we use today have a fascinating history. The earliest European decks, such as the Italian and Spanish decks, used suits such as cups, coins, swords, and polo sticks. The French deck, which is the most popular playing card deck in the world, introduced the suits of hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades. The French deck’s popularity is due to its simplicity and ease of printing, as well as its use in popular games such as bridge and poker. The court cards, which include the king, queen, and jack, have also undergone significant changes over the centuries. The earliest court cards were hand-painted and featured elaborate designs. Later, the French deck introduced the use of standardized court cards, which featured the king, queen, and jack in each suit. The modern court cards that we use today are a result of the evolution of these early designs. ## Unique Designs and Artwork Playing cards have been used as a canvas for artistic expression throughout history. From the intricate designs of the early hand-painted decks to the modern-day custom designs, playing cards have been a popular medium for artists. The French deck, in particular, has been known for its beautiful artwork, with many famous artists contributing to its design. In addition to the traditional designs, playing cards have also been used for unique and creative purposes. For example, some decks feature custom artwork, while others are designed for specific games or themes. The use of playing cards as a medium for artistic expression continues to evolve, with new and innovative designs being created all the time. ## The Impact of Playing Cards on Society Playing cards have had a significant impact on society throughout history. From their use in games and entertainment to their role in social and cultural events, playing cards have played a major part in shaping human culture. In addition to their recreational use, playing cards have also been used for educational purposes, such as teaching children about numbers and strategy. Playing cards have also been used as a tool for social commentary and satire. For example, during the French Revolution, playing cards were used to mock the aristocracy and the monarchy. In modern times, playing cards have been used to raise awareness about social issues, such as poverty and inequality. ## Conclusion: The Enduring Legacy of Playing Cards Playing cards have been a part of human culture for centuries, and their impact on society continues to be felt today. From their origins in Asia to their spread throughout the world, playing cards have evolved over time, reflecting the cultural and social changes of the societies that use them. Despite the rise of digital technology, playing cards remain a popular form of entertainment and social interaction. Whether used for games, art, or social commentary, playing cards continue to play a significant role in human culture. As we look to the future, it is clear that playing cards will continue to be an important part of our shared cultural heritage. --- # Introducing Cash Games Plan Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introducing-cash-games-plan Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2024-03-16 Category: General ![Introducing Cash Games Plan](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/03/Strategy-Brakdown-1.jpg) This subscription is your gateway to mastering Game Theory Optimal (GTO) play, a fundamental aspect for anyone looking to excel in the competitive world of poker. Through our platform, you gain exclusive access to cutting-edge strategies 🚀 and the quantitative insights necessary to make data-driven decisions at the table. 📈 The Cash Games subscription at Poker Academy now offers an unparalleled resource that stands out in the realm of poker education: the ability to thoroughly analyze and solve hands from beginning to end, empowered by access to a state-of-the-art postflop solver. 🧠 This innovative tool leverages the latest advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), including deep learning and reinforcement learning technologies, to provide solutions and strategies rooted in Game Theory Optimal (GTO) principles. ♟️ Now, cash games members can explore complex postflop scenarios with precision, gaining insights into the optimal moves tailored to the vast array of possible situations on the table. At Poker Academy, we’re committed to providing you with comprehensive resources to elevate your game, and the postflop solver is a prime example of our dedication to your poker education. 🔍📚 Join Poker Academy’s Cash Games subscription now for just **€29** **monthly**, or enjoy an **annual** membership at **€228**, diving deep into the realm of GTO strategies, AI-driven insights, and beyond. 🚀 For our newcomers, we’re thrilled to offer a 7-day free trial, allowing you to experience the wealth of resources and community support at no initial cost. 🎉 And there’s more! To celebrate the launch of our new subscription plan, we’re offering a special promotion: enjoy a 20% discount for the first three months. 🌟 Whether you’re paying in dollars or euros, this is your golden ticket to elevating your poker game with the latest strategies and technologies. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to be part of a community that’s as passionate about poker as you are. 💡🃏 Discount code: **CASH2024** Valid only until March 31 2024 Cash games plan is available for free for premium users. Find out more [here](https://poker.academy/pricing/CASH). --- # Old man says goodbye Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/old-man-says-goodbye Author: Jason Su Published: 2024-02-01 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Mindset ![Old man says goodbye](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/01/Leonardo_Kino_XL_a_man_around_40_years_old_says_goodbye_Sailin_3.jpg) Proud to say I’ve never had a losing year. Battled against the likes of **Negreanu**, **Hellmuth**, **Doug**, **Jungle**, and many, many others over the years for large sums of money in all types of formats. I’ve seen it all, and I know this: There’s no amount of money or success that will change how you feel about yourself. It is important to work hard on your game. (You can start for free with the [7-day-trial at Poker Academy](https://poker.academy/pricing)) But if you don’t combine that with a healthy relationship inside yourself, you’ll end up with a life where winning is just a temporary relief from the pain of losing, and that’s not a life that you can sustain. So yeah, do the work. Study, learn it all, but don’t forget to do the same inside yourself, so that you can be in the super rare category of people in the game who have great success and actually enjoy it too. === I hope you’ve enjoyed the insights from this series of posts. In case you missed it, I did my [“How to Eliminate Regret”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fiaM0K97eQ) webinar for **Poker Academy** members where I broke down all the ways in which conventional mindset coaching has failed to help you let go of regrets and how I’ve successfully trained all my clients to move forward and perform your best no matter how hard things get. People pay me large sums of money to take them through a version of what I did on this webinar. And I’m not exaggerating when I say: If you apply this with commitment, it will change everything-your results, your performance, and your life. That’s all from me for now. If you like my stuff and want to keep your growth going, come join my crew: [www.pokerwithpresence.com](http://www.pokerwithpresence.com) See you there. **Jason Su**, *Poker With Presence* --- # If you want to break free? Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/if-you-want-to-break-free Author: Jason Su Published: 2024-01-29 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Mindset ![If you want to break free?](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/12/Absolute_Reality_v16_A_person_sits_in_a_lotus_pose_their_mind_1.jpg) Hey, Jason Su back at it again here. Here’s one thing I know about tournament poker. Above all, it rewards one thing: The ability to stay present, think clearly, and trust your instincts when playing in a spot that you’ve never seen before and will never see again, all for an amount of money that you may never be playing for ever again. In other words, it’s a lot of pressure. If you can’t do this? You can’t go to the top. You can still be a good player, someone who others respect, who is good to have in a group chat because you always seem to know the answer and understand the theory well. But you can’t be “that player.” The one who people fear, who people hate playing against because they know that nothing will take you off your game no matter how crazy the circumstances get. How do I know this? Because I’ve coached some people who play at the highest of stakes out there, and there’s very little difference in poker knowledge between say, the number one player and the number thirty player in the world-in fact, those two are probably friends and study together. The difference comes down to staying present, and trusting your instincts. One skill that you’ll need in order to do this: The ability to let go. To truly let the past be in the past, rather than get stuck thinking about it, worrying that it’s going to repeat itself, and allow it to change the way that you make your decisions. The thing is, if you suffer from this inability to let go, it’s not random. > By the way here is the latest webinar on the topic off “[How To Eliminate Regret](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fiaM0K97eQ)“ You’ve been conditioned to be this way. By people around you your entire life, because that’s how they live. And if you want to break free? You’ve gotta be different, which means you need: 1. Better ideas 2. Relentless consistency in applying these ideas throughout your life If you want the better ideas, come to the webinar tomorrow. If you want a built in level of consistency in applying those ideas? Join my newsletter, where each day I will make sure that your mind is engaging with ideas and practices that are a cut above what everyone else is doing when it comes to things like being able to let go of the past and make the best possible decision each moment as it comes. It’s free to join here: [www.pokerwithpresence.com](http://www.pokerwithpresence.com) **Jason Su** --- # The best warmup possible Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-best-warmup-possible Author: Jason Su Published: 2024-01-24 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Mindset ![The best warmup possible](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/12/Leonardo_Diffusion_XL_Mindset_coaching_The_hurdle_not_the_solu_1.jpg) Hello Friend, It’s Jason Su of Poker With Presence again. Today I’m gonna talk about how to build out a perfect pregame routine. I played poker for a living for over 15 years. Never had a losing year. Made it to high stakes mixed games and have a crazy high ROI in MTTs for my lifetime in the ones I played in. More importantly: I’ve helped hundreds of clients over the past few years maximize both their earnings and their enjoyment of the game of poker. One way to do this? Making sure you feel great at the start of every session. === Consider this: if the average player feels about a 5 on a scale of 1-10 in terms of readiness and flow when they start their session, how much money in the long run would it be worth to always start at a 9 or a 10? For me? At the stakes I played, if I had started at a 9 or 10 every session for the last 18 years, I’d probably have an extra million dollars or more. That’s the bad news. The good news: Over the years I’ve learned how to make sure I enter each session feeling better than most-and now all that work has translated into millions of dollars for my clients. So the big question: How do you make sure you’re feeling great at the start of each session? There are a million different ways, but all good routines have one thing in common: they help you feel connected inside and out. When you feel it, you know you’re ready to play your best. And remember: It doesn’t matter “what” you do. Only that you feel that feeling. Go after it relentlessly, and your bankroll will thank you. Hopefully this gets you moving in the right direction. In the meantime, if you’d like to try a ready-made method of warming up that has already helped thousands of people feel that special feeling of being relaxed, confident, and motivated before their sessions, you can try my guided audio download, “The Ultimate Warmup” is available for free on my site. I once showed it to a client. This guy pays me a lot of money every year, and has made 3 WSOP final tables in his last four events. He said: “Wait, you give this away for free?” It’s that good. So good that even years after getting it, my clients still use it regularly. To get instant access to my warmup so you can feel completely in the zone from hand number one of each session, go here: [www.pokerwithpresence.com](http://www.pokerwithpresence.com) Talk soon, Jason Su, Poker With Presence --- # Mindset coaching is the problem Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/mindset-coaching-is-the-problem Author: Jason Su Published: 2024-01-16 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Mindset ![Mindset coaching is the problem](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/12/Leonardo_Vision_XL_A_man_with_chains_made_of_steel_wrapped_tig_1.jpg) It’s Jason Su of Poker With Presence. In my[latest webinar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fiaM0K97eQ) at Poker Academy I presented things that, if you apply them in your game and in your life, will completely change the way you relate to painful experiences from the past, so that they no longer affect your ability to stay present and make decisions you’re happy with going forward. Now that we’ve got that out of the way: Today I want to rant, for a couple reasons. One, I enjoy it. But more importantly, I think there’s a lot of important things that you need to know about a certain group of people who are completely screwing you over when it comes to being able to stop tilting, stay focused, and play your best poker under stress. It’s the “mindset” coaches. You may have thought I am one. I can assure you it’s the opposite. Don’t get me wrong, they’re nice people who are trying to help-I certainly don’t think they’re out to scam anyone. My objection is simply that their ideas are terrible. And that they not only don’t work, they make things worse for you. If it worked? I would have no business, and you would never tilt. But here we are. Here’s what I’m talking about: A “mindset” coach will do everything they can to distract you from the actual source of your pain, discomfort, and anxiety, which is your inability to be present with your emotions. They’ll say things like: “Be logical” “You want them to play that way” “There’s no reason to feel bad” Or if not that, they’ll go the habits route: “Eat healthy” “Exercise” “Get back on that study routine” None of those things are bad. But when used as a substitute for being present with the emotions that are causing you pain? You’re drawing dead. I know because I did it. I was one of the first people to hire a mindset coach 15+ years ago, and I went from a total crusher making $400+ an hour and enjoying the game to feeling completely burned out and questioning my entire existence using their methods. Here’s the issue: These brilliant bits of “advice” are all intellectual, logical solutions being offered as a way to solve emotional problems-the wrong tool for the job. Logic and words, no matter how true, won’t change how you feel. There’s only one tool for the job. It involves you no longer trying to talk yourself out of feeling how you feel, and instead staying present and finding total acceptance in the discomfort. Not the easiest thing if you’ve never done it. But I promise, it’s the only way to end the madness. If you want to learn more how it’s done: 1. Sign up for my email newsletter at [pokerwithpresence.com](http://www.pokerwithpresence.com) (it’s free to join) 1. Find the confirmation email that goes into your inbox (or sometimes spam/junk/promotions folder), and confirm your subscription Talk soon, Jason Su --- # Roadmap – Explore Our Plans, Vote on Features, Share Your Ideas, Join the Conversation Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/road-map Author: Jan Przysucha Published: 2024-01-09 · Updated: 2024-07-19 Category: General ![Roadmap – Explore Our Plans, Vote on Features, Share Your Ideas, Join the Conversation](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2024/01/road-map.png) 🌟 We are thrilled to share with you our freshly published Poker Academy roadmap, now available on [Trello](https://poker.academy/road-map)! Your journey to mastering poker is about to get even more exciting, and **you** play a pivotal role in shaping it! This roadmap isn’t just a list of what we plan to do; it’s a collaborative space where your voice truly matters. 🔍 **Explore Our Plans:** Dive into our upcoming features and innovations designed to revolutionize your learning experience. From beginner tutorials to advanced concepts and poker skills, we’ve got a thrilling path laid out. Discover how dedicated study habits can lead to better poker and enhanced poker knowledge. 🗳️ **Vote on Features:** This is where the magic happens! Your votes directly influence our priorities. See a feature you can’t wait to use? Give it your thumbs up! Your input is vital in steering the direction of Poker Academy. Whether you prefer cash games or live poker, your preferences shape our focus. 💡 **Share Your Ideas:** Have a brilliant feature in mind? We’re all ears! Leave your suggestions for new functionalities and improvements. Your creativity could be the next big thing in our community! One of our ideas from the community was a Postflop range Breakdown. You can read about it [Postflop Strategy Breakdown | poker.academy](https://poker.academy/blog/post/postflop-strategy-breakdown/). 🤝 **Join the Conversation:** Engage with fellow poker enthusiasts and improve your decision making as a poker player. Share your thoughts, discuss strategies, and be a part of a vibrant community eager to learn and grow. Gain a deeper understanding of poker math and its application in the game. Together, we’re not just building a platform; we’re crafting the ultimate poker learning experience tailored by you, for you. Mastering flop strategies and preflop strategy will be key components of our curriculum. 🚀 Ready to make your mark? Dive in and let’s shape the future of poker learning together! Check out what the future holds at [https://poker.academy/road-map](https://poker.academy/road-map) and explore the differences between online poker and live poker, as well as various poker game strategies. --- # How to eliminate regret Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-eliminate-regret Author: Jason Su Published: 2023-12-19 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Mindset ![How to eliminate regret](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/12/how-to-eliminate-regret-blog-image.png) Hey, it’s **Jason Su** ([@jasonbsu](https://twitter.com/jasonbsu)) of *Poker With Presence*. I’ve now helped countless people master this skill. Whether you’re: - Deep in a tournament for huge money - On a big downswing and lacking confidence - Feeling emotionally drained from the grind The way to stay sharp and play well is the same: To become fully present in each moment. To not let the fear and thoughts from the past get to you-and instead to trust your instincts, play your best game, and walk away with no regrets. The results don’t lie. My tournament players alone who prioritize this skill hit high score after high score, ship **WSOP**bracelets, and have taken down millions of dollars of profit while reducing their stress levels. And you can master it too. But only if you’re ready to try something new. === On that topic: Regret is a truly expensive habit (yes, I said habit). One that, if you don’t understand how it works and how to get rid of it, will completely ruin your ROI. For instance: How many times have you fired an extra bullet in a tournament with no chance to win, or been too afraid to pull the trigger on a great spot, or not be able to get yourself to study and prepare in the way you know you want to, all because you can’t get a certain hand or memory out of your head? It’s like a virus in your mind. And if you don’t know how to deal with it? It’ll completely change the way you behave, both at and away from the table-all in ways that drain your winrate and add a whole ton of stress and misery to your life. On this topic, I’ve got you. I presented a webinar called **“[How to Eliminate Regret](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fiaM0K97eQ)”** so that you can stop letting the past affect you in the present moment. The stuff I shared is the same stuff I’ve given on this topic to my highest paying 1-on-1 clients. Nothing held back. It’s all been proven to work at the highest of stakes with the most on the line. And by the way: If you’re a serious poker player who wants to be able to stay completely confident and focused and play your best game when all the money is at stake, come read my newsletter and you can get started with this right away. Many people write me to tell me how the newsletter has changed their game. High stakes pro and coach **Kevin Rabichow** wrote: *“I always appreciate the perspective you bring to poker … been game changing for me.”* === The newsletter is free. You can get it here: [www.pokerwithpresence.com](http://www.pokerwithpresence.com) --- # The Greatest Poker Show… Ever? Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-greatest-poker-show-ever Author: Gio Published: 2023-12-16 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: General ![The Greatest Poker Show… Ever?](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/12/micros2.png) Hey, where are all the poker dinosaurs at? 🦕 We’ve been feeling the nostalgia vibes lately-winter’s got us cozy indoors, reminiscing about the good ol’ days… That show was an absolute blast! Every episode had us on the edge of our seats, eagerly waiting for the next one! It might be long gone, but it’s etched in our memories forever. If you missed out on it, now’s the perfect time to dive into the treasure trove of episodes. And for those who’ve already binged it, trust me, it’s worth another go! Revisiting it brings back incredible memories and some epic poker tales. Enough talk-let’s relive the magic: 🍿🌟 Here is the full playlist and at top right corner you get access to the other episodes. Shout out to **The Micros**squad: X[/themicros](https://twitter.com/themicros) X[/johnawray](https://twitter.com/johnawray) X[/jayrosenkrantz](https://twitter.com/jayrosenkrantz) --- # PKO Series Coaching Sessions Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/pko-series-coaching-sessions Author: Gio Published: 2023-11-17 · Updated: 2023-11-20 Category: Online Game ![PKO Series Coaching Sessions](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/11/image_2023-11-17_234941766.png) We’ve decided to make all parts of our **PKO Series** with Alex public! Feel free to share, and don’t forget to hit the **like and subscribe** buttons on Youtube to support us and inspire more content like this in the future! These sessions provide an invaluable opportunity to understand the intricacies of bounty structures, refine your game tactics, and gain the edge needed to maximize your earnings in PKOs, ultimately elevating your performance and success at the tables. Merely watching and checking off as “viewed” won’t cut it. Passive learning won’t lead to growth; active engagement is key. Take detailed notes and feel free to ask questions during coaching sessions. We’re here to assist you if something isn’t clear. Click on top right corner to select different episodes. --- # Postflop Solver Upgrades Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/postflop-solver-upgrades Author: Gio Published: 2023-11-13 Category: General ![Postflop Solver Upgrades](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/postflopupgrade.png) Since the release of our **Postflop Solver**, our dev team has been hard at work enhancing its features. Check out some of the latest upgrades we now offer! We’ve made some performance fixes and spruced up the colors to enhance your visual experience. You can now perform bulk actions in the Node-Lock section effortlessly ![](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/783609134796242944/1138564006500638792/image.png?width=596&height=649) *You will find this in the node-locking feature under Find Exploits* A new suit selector to make it easier for you to lock in specific combinations in node locks. Give it a try! ![](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/783609134796242944/1139563578458898463/Zrzut_ekranu_2023-08-11_o_16.17.18.png?width=543&height=495) *Suit Selector* We’ve made some performance updates, and thanks to your suggestions, we’ve added a button to change bet sizings directly in the main postflop window! Of course, you can still tweak them in the card selection modal (flop, turn, river). *Changing sizings is now even easier!* You can now save your sizings as presets and customize your defaults hassle-free. ![](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/783609134796242944/1127948998267912242/image.png?width=985&height=1008) *Add presets to your profile* We’ve recently added graph features with a handy bucket selection option! Now, visualize how ranges interact more easily. You can select Draws, Equity or Hands to compare both ranges. Give it a go! ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/11/image_2023-11-13_185418000-1024x676.png) *Click on the Graph just under the the action display* As always, we value your feedback! Don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Feel free to share your ideas and feature requests – we’re all ears! To get access to the Poker Academy’s Postflop Solver you need a Standard or Premium [subscription](https://poker.academy/pricing). --- # The New Standard For Excellence Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-new-standard-for-excellence Author: Gio Published: 2023-10-20 Category: Performance ![The New Standard For Excellence](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/10/blog-images-800-×-533px.png) It’s a difficult truth for many to accept, but no matter how instinctive, sharp, or naturally gifted you are at reading the poker table, if you’re not consistently honing your skills, you’re setting yourself up to be outplayed. Take a glance at the landscape. There’s a surge of dedicated poker study groups, forums, and [communities](https://preflop.lt.acemlnc.com/Prod/link-tracker?notrack=1¬rack=1&redirectUrl=aHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZkaXNjb3JkLmNvbSUyRmludml0ZSUyRnVQbjdEU05WTXclM0Z1dG1fc291cmNlJTNEQWN0aXZlQ2FtcGFpZ24lMjZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtJTNEZW1haWwlMjZ1dG1fY29udGVudCUzRFRoZSUyQk5ldyUyQlN0YW5kYXJkJTJCRm9yJTJCRXhjZWxsZW5jZSUyNnV0bV9jYW1wYWlnbiUzRFRoZSUyQkhhcmQlMkJQaWxsJTJCb2YlMkJDb25zaXN0ZW5jeQ==&sig=2ZMnAy9hsoMVmLf44SwBsHXVh9y1cTguyedfxWo1p4wW&iat=1697780158&a=%7C%7C477925487%7C%7C&account=preflop%2Eactivehosted%2Ecom&email=riYzHLZnXNwakSdTV%2B2t1dLKBFRFtrTuY%2BNPF9TjmHzWdxxFRQ%3D%3D%3AWE77%2BrYBShg3sRyKlAd8NkIyNQJfwVpI&s=bad97c655476f96a390a72c05a742011&i=143A151A1A1232). Players spend countless hours each week dissecting strategies and understanding probability nuances. These individuals have internalized a pivotal insight: in the high-stakes game of poker, consistent practice is the royal flush. ![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/535096639585517571/1162699113914171422/image.png?ex=653ce2ee&is=652a6dee&hm=aefbf6de5a936ff54bbee17fdb03461d690f7547ed202f081dfd5341bda7b678&) You might begin with a few lucky hands or an innate knack for reading opponents. But without continuous learning, that advantage starts to fade. While you bask in temporary victories, others are grinding away, hand after hand, game after game. They’re not just matching your skill;**they’re setting the new standard for excellence**. Engaging with diverse poker communities provides exposure to a variety of tactics and strategies. Those who immerse themselves in continuous learning **have a broader toolkit**, ensuring they’re always equipped for the ever-changing dynamics of the poker table. In contrast, those neglecting regular study risk becoming predictable, their strategies outdated. Recall the classic fable of the tortoise and the hare? It’s not just about the race’s pace; it’s about unwavering commitment. Today’s poker tortoises may not have started with the right people around them or the best strategies, but their dedication makes them formidable opponents in the long run. **The Hard Pill of Consistency** One more harsh truth is that if you delay your improvement, if you keep missing the analysis of your own play, then you must be aware that the best of the best you play against are not. While you relax, they study; while you watch Netflix, they watch poker replays; while you’re scrolling on Instagram, they do group coaching sessions (we might [have something for you](https://preflop.lt.acemlnc.com/Prod/link-tracker?notrack=1¬rack=1&redirectUrl=aHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZ3d3cueW91dHViZS5jb20lMkZ3YXRjaCUzRnYlM0Qyczl5Z2hpbU1CRSUyNnV0bV9zb3VyY2UlM0RBY3RpdmVDYW1wYWlnbiUyNnV0bV9tZWRpdW0lM0RlbWFpbCUyNnV0bV9jb250ZW50JTNEVGhlJTJCTmV3JTJCU3RhbmRhcmQlMkJGb3IlMkJFeGNlbGxlbmNlJTI2dXRtX2NhbXBhaWduJTNEVGhlJTJCSGFyZCUyQlBpbGwlMkJvZiUyQkNvbnNpc3RlbmN5&sig=2Q91dPFkYzpsaW7YdJGFjbPwjWG54i4JdjRBCcECszRY&iat=1697780158&a=%7C%7C477925487%7C%7C&account=preflop%2Eactivehosted%2Ecom&email=riYzHLZnXNwakSdTV%2B2t1dLKBFRFtrTuY%2BNPF9TjmHzWdxxFRQ%3D%3D%3AWE77%2BrYBShg3sRyKlAd8NkIyNQJfwVpI&s=bad97c655476f96a390a72c05a742011&i=143A151A1A1243)). **The decision is yours:** consistently up your game or prepare to fold to those who do. Another approach to studying is embracing the spotlight. If you believe you’re a seasoned player, don’t hesitate to share your statistics and hands. Don’t be ashamed if others spot mistakes; it’s an opportunity to learn and improve. *Do you have a hand from the series that you can’t solve and want a different, opinion? Join **[#askacademy](https://preflop.activehosted.com/discord.com/invite/FQ8zRac4pg)**! Share your poker hand for a chance to receive pro analysis and get an exclusive prize.* --- # 🎯 PKO Series – Poker Academy’s October’s Edge Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/pko-series-poker-academys-octobers-edge Author: Gio Published: 2023-10-11 Category: Online Game ![🎯 PKO Series – Poker Academy’s October’s Edge](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/10/pkoblog.png) **Spotlight on our New Coach**: We’re thrilled to introduce **Alex “grinder1992” Dimitrov** to Poker Academy’s elite coaching roster. With professional poker experience spanning since 2011, Alex boasts an impressive track record both online and in live tournaments. This October promises to be enlightening, as we have *three* special sessions scheduled with him, focusing on the **“PKO Series”** [![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/10/image_2023-10-11_152258266.png)](https://discord.com/channels/766659957318877185/783609134796242944/1151441676892643328) **Alex Dimitrov in His Own Words**: *My poker journey began modestly with a 1.5$ SNG table, eventually progressing to 1k$ MTTs. With a strict adherence to Bankroll Management (BRM), I’ve achieved a remarkable average buy-in (ABI) of around 350$. My accolades include over 10M in total online MTT winnings and securing the 2nd spot on the PocketFives leaderboard in 2016. Beyond its financial allure, poker remains my unwavering passion. Recently, I’ve dedicated my efforts towards mastering GTO, PKOs, and ICM.* **Mark Your Calendars**: - Session 1: 12th October - Session 2: 20th October - Session 3: 27th October **Why PKO?** As [Progressive Knockout (PKO)](https://poker.academy/blog/post/pa-preflop-sims-updates/) (get access to our Final Table sims as a subscriber) tournaments increasingly dominate the online scene, this series will be pivotal for those keen to elevate their game. **Where to Watch**: The recordings of the sessions will be exclusive to Poker Academy subscribers. Although we will be sharing snippets on our [YouTube channel](https://preflop.lt.acemlnc.com/Prod/link-tracker?notrack=1¬rack=1&redirectUrl=aHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZ3d3cueW91dHViZS5jb20lMkYlNDBSZWFsUG9rZXJBY2FkZW15JTNGdXRtX3NvdXJjZSUzREFjdGl2ZUNhbXBhaWduJTI2dXRtX21lZGl1bSUzRGVtYWlsJTI2dXRtX2NvbnRlbnQlM0REaXZlJTJCaW50byUyQkV4Y2x1c2l2ZSUyQlBLTyUyQlNlcmllcyUyQldlYmluYXJzJTI1MjElMkIlMjVGMCUyNTlGJTI1OEQlMjU4MiUyNUYwJTI1OUYlMjU4MyUyNThGJTI1RjAlMjU5RiUyNTk0JTI1QTUlMjZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ24lM0RXZWJpbmFycyUyQmFyZSUyQmJhY2s=&sig=3kaueDrfGu2wFaXFikHZq6u9qjUZARm6ru1NGs12BcXN&iat=1697026855&a=%7C%7C477925487%7C%7C&account=preflop%2Eactivehosted%2Ecom&email=xC6fTrkU3veJqCtZ702mbMEOxqHTay1ebb7DTkvmvbKTI%2F5%2BDA%3D%3D%3AJ42smsCIy4GRZ5aiqsQyRWwaNQ%2FmB612&s=bad97c655476f96a390a72c05a742011&i=133A144A1A1201), attending the live stream ensures you extract maximum value. The link will be posted in Discord, at the time of the event. Join **[#askacademy](https://preflop.activehosted.com/discord.com/invite/FQ8zRac4pg)**! 🃏 Share your poker hand for a chance to receive pro analysis and snag an exclusive prize. Elevate your game with us! 🌟🔍🏆 See you there! PA --- # 🔄 Reset, Reflect & Ready Up! 🌟 Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/reset-reflect-ready-up Author: Gio Published: 2023-10-11 Category: Mindset ![🔄 Reset, Reflect & Ready Up! 🌟](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/10/reflectnow.png) Whew! That was one exhilarating month of intense poker action! The grind was real, but so were the lessons, the moments of triumph, and those invaluable experiences that only such intense tournaments can offer. As the cards settle, this pause is golden. It’s not just a moment to catch our breath but an opportunity to look back, reflect, and glean insights from our plays. Were there hands we could’ve played differently? Bets we shouldn’t have made? Or perhaps moments of brilliance that deserve a pat on the back? ![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/535096639585517571/1154005876655525960/image.png?ex=6517fcb9&is=6516ab39&hm=0763028a447df20e764d9b8a9ffd3aa140c3f4456300cd5ebe0ec1c919bcb3b2&) *With reflection comes clarity.* And with clarity, the path to set our next goals emerges. Remember, a goal-less journey is like playing poker blind – you can’t hit a target you haven’t set. Now, here’s the twist: **THE NEXT SERIES STARTS TODAY**. Not on the felt, but in our minds, our strategies, and our preparation. The best players know that true success in poker isn’t just about the hands played during a tournament but the decisions made long before the first card is dealt. So, let’s make those choices NOW – the ones our future selves will look back on and say, “Thank you for the foresight, the discipline, and the grind.” Lastly, if you’re looking to fine-tune your strategies and step up your game, don’t forget the tools at [Poker Academy](https://poker.academy). The resources are designed to help players **evolve**, **learn**, and **conquer**. Because the game isn’t just about playing but constantly improving. Toward the next win and beyond. Let’s light up those tables!Exclusive Alert! 🚨 Join our [Discord](https://discord.com/invite/uPn7DSNVMw) this month for live **PKO Series webinars** with a high-stakes pro boasting nearly $2M in online winnings. Attend in real-time for free, but remember, only Poker Academy subscribers receive the valuable recordings. Don’t miss out! 🌟🃏🚀 [*Poker Academy Team*] *P.S. Do you have a hand from the series that you can’t solve and want a different, opinion? Join [#askacademy](https://preflop.activehosted.com/discord.com/invite/FQ8zRac4pg)! Share your poker hand for a chance to receive pro analysis and snag an exclusive prize.* --- # Be Here Now Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/be-here-now Author: Gio Published: 2023-10-01 · Updated: 2023-10-03 Category: Mindset ![Be Here Now](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/09/blog4.png) Let me share a tale of an avid poker player, Max. Max always envisioned a day when he’d be **at the pinnacle** of the poker world. Day in and day out, he refined his strategies, analyzing hands and meticulously planning each move, waiting for that defining moment. This ongoing series was his **dream stage**, his chance to make a statement. Yet, as poker often reminds us, the journey can be riddled with unpredictable turns. As days turned into weeks, Max encountered hurdles. There were moments of brilliance overshadowed by unexpected challenges. But throughout, his spirit never wavered. ![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/535096639585517571/1154006032633298964/image.png) ***Challenges are the arena where greatness is forged.*** **The very essence of poker tournaments**, as we all know, is their dynamic environment. One minute, you’re ruling the table, and the next, you’re fighting from behind, only to rise again in a few orbits. The rollercoaster of chip counts can be daunting. But stressing over it is akin to stressing every time you sit at a table. It’s not the turn of the cards that matters most but how you play them. It’s not what happens to you but how you react to it. Harness that energy, control your reactions, and channel your focus where it truly matters. One evening, amidst the chaos, a close friend whispered to Max, *“Remember, in poker, sometimes glory is a sudden spark in the vast darkness.”* That simple phrase was a revelation. It wasn’t about the numerous tournaments or the cumulative chips, but that one moment of sheer brilliance. Now, as we stand on the precipice of the series’ grand conclusion, **the Main Events** beckon. Max’s story resonates louder than ever. For you see, as the cards shuffle and bets are placed, there’s a voice that should echo in your mind: *“Be Here Now.”* The past is a trail left behind, and the future, an uncertain path that might not unfold as we envision. But the present? **The present is your battleground**, the very essence of your game. Embrace it. Each **decision**, each **hand**, each **bet**– be wholly present, for in that moment lies the opportunity to make history. But remember, poker is not just about one series or one game. The felt will await you again, the chips will shuffle, and new tales will be written. And for now, in these final days, channel your inner Max. Play with passion, strategy, and presence. Until you’ve got a chip in play, the game’s not over. [Poker Academy Team] 🌟🃏🔥 --- # Introducing the New Spin&Go with Solver Plan! Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introducing-the-new-spingo-with-solver-plan Author: Gio Published: 2023-09-27 Category: Online Game ![Introducing the New Spin&Go with Solver Plan!](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/09/spins.png) We’re thrilled to announce the launch of our latest offering: **[The Spin&Go with Solver Plan](https://preflop.lt.acemlnc.com/Prod/link-tracker?notrack=1¬rack=1&redirectUrl=aHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZwb2tlci5hY2FkZW15JTJGcHJpY2luZyUzRnV0bV9zb3VyY2UlM0RBY3RpdmVDYW1wYWlnbiUyNnV0bV9tZWRpdW0lM0RlbWFpbCUyNnV0bV9jb250ZW50JTNESW50cm9kdWNpbmclMkJ0aGUlMkJOZXclMkJTcGluJTI1MjZHbyUyQndpdGglMkJTb2x2ZXIlMkJQbGFuJTI1MjElMjZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ24lM0RJbnRyb2R1Y2luZyUyQnRoZSUyQk5ldyUyQlNwaW4lMkJHbyUyQndpdGglMkJTb2x2ZXIlMkJQbGFuJTI1MjE=&sig=9oZfA2igM9xUDqyiSfaUMKVzLEc2iAhEnjgRV2b3tbkY&iat=1695774697&a=%7C%7C477925487%7C%7C&account=preflop%2Eactivehosted%2Ecom&email=ATMx%2BLgBgQRkB98xrWX6436b4L2WStsJamI3eNuSD2vchwTNkA%3D%3D%3Awojo%2Beutz%2FH2PfBXp3t36lspm4JIKs4W&s=bad97c655476f96a390a72c05a742011&i=134A145A1A1152)**. Delving deeper into the realm of poker strategy, this plan is meticulously designed to provide you with an edge over the competition. **What’s Included**: - **Spin&Go Preflop Access**: Enhance your game right from the start! - **Preflop Trainer**: Perfect your moves with our interactive training tool. - **Custom Postflop Solver**: Explore up to 25bb effective stack. - **Seamless Integration**: Transfer ranges and settings effortlessly from preflop to postflop with just one click. **Pricing Options**: - Monthly: €29/$29 - Yearly Billing (Save More!): €19/$19 per month (totaling €228/$228 annually) ![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1037270109993050152/1156363051130425554/image.png?ex=6514b283&is=65136103&hm=d44d8751575556dcb39e0f8e5edcfcf8faa78bf9620e5540dae6f82a4f248e5e&) *Save more with Yearly plan* **Special Note for Premium Users**: Good news! All Spin&Go simulations and the trainer are now available for our Premium subscribers. Please note that this offering is exclusive to Premium users and will not be available for Standard or Essential subscribers. Stay ahead of the curve, refine your strategies, and let our new Spin&Go with Solver Plan be your secret weapon at the tables. If you have any queries or need further assistance, find us at [Discord](https://preflop.lt.acemlnc.com/Prod/link-tracker?notrack=1¬rack=1&redirectUrl=aHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZkaXNjb3JkLmNvbSUyRmludml0ZSUyRnVQbjdEU05WTXclM0Z1dG1fc291cmNlJTNEQWN0aXZlQ2FtcGFpZ24lMjZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtJTNEZW1haWwlMjZ1dG1fY29udGVudCUzREludHJvZHVjaW5nJTJCdGhlJTJCTmV3JTJCU3BpbiUyNTI2R28lMkJ3aXRoJTJCU29sdmVyJTJCUGxhbiUyNTIxJTI2dXRtX2NhbXBhaWduJTNESW50cm9kdWNpbmclMkJ0aGUlMkJOZXclMkJTcGluJTJCR28lMkJ3aXRoJTJCU29sdmVyJTJCUGxhbiUyNTIx&sig=Gxak6fUEEgad9us7faUa8uMfQFuqDQ2pdxSYfPszPCGW&iat=1695774697&a=%7C%7C477925487%7C%7C&account=preflop%2Eactivehosted%2Ecom&email=ATMx%2BLgBgQRkB98xrWX6436b4L2WStsJamI3eNuSD2vchwTNkA%3D%3D%3Awojo%2Beutz%2FH2PfBXp3t36lspm4JIKs4W&s=bad97c655476f96a390a72c05a742011&i=134A145A1A1158). ![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1037270109993050152/1156357439474638858/image.png?ex=6514ad49&is=65135bc9&hm=e7754970dfc980b3a6d905dc19a39120ef2b223df9b874e4510834b497bf389c&) *From 5 to 25 big blinds. Heads-up or 3-way.* ![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1037270109993050152/1156358743567642685/image.png?ex=6514ae80&is=65135d00&hm=47714164774ac7c425143cb1ab4eac708a1bc252bd8f1055870dc1129caa3a12&) *Practice 3-way or heads-up spots* ![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1037270109993050152/1156359334079496283/image.png?ex=6514af0d&is=65135d8d&hm=99d45cdd56ab5d4714ff1245bd6c4c36097fc45ef3db87a1589783151ccbc971&) And of course, you have the ability to explore the spots after the flop as well, using our **Postflop Solver**. ![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1037270109993050152/1156604100063010847/image.png?ex=65159302&is=65144182&hm=e022da35a483e87732180c2841f54b62c426e95959e3420c1f52b70da90f12be&) [UNLOCK](https://poker.academy/pricing) Elevate your game with us! *[Poker Academy Team] 🌟🃏🌊🍀* .. *P.S. Additionally, you can hone your **Heads-up** skills by utilizing the Preflop Trainer.* --- # I know what you are thinking… (Life Hack Inside) Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/i-know-what-you-are-thinking-life-hack-inside Author: Gio Published: 2023-09-20 · Updated: 2023-09-25 Category: Mindset ![I know what you are thinking… (Life Hack Inside)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/09/blogseriesweek3.png) I sense where your mind is, the whirlwind of thoughts brewing. *​”Is the grind worth it? Am I cut out for this? Should I step back or charge forward?”* It’s like you’re at a crossroads with a foggy path ahead. But remember, uncertainty is just part of the game, and**you’re not alone** in these feelings. Think back to the beginning of this series. You didn’t dive into this vast ocean of poker warriors to merely wade by the shore. **You’re in deep waters now**, and the currents may be challenging, but you’ve come too far to merely drift. **Channel your focus on what you can control**. Decide which tournaments align with your strengths. Be mindful of what fuels your body; the right nutrition can be as strategic as the best bluff. And speaking of strategy, plan your training sessions wisely. Like a finely-tuned instrument, **your body and mind need harmony**. Train in ways that invigorate, not deplete. Seek activities that boost your energy and mental sharpness, prepping you for those intense poker sessions. ![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/535096639585517571/1153990849303167016/image.png) ***Try this Life Hack to have higher endurance in your poker sessions.*** And as the cards shuffle and deals are made, **remember this**: They have their rhythm, their unpredictability. Your job? Play your best hand, let go, and trust that the cards will fall where they may.​ But a **word of caution** – while this series is a big stage, it’s not your final act. Don’t dig a trench so deep that climbing out feels insurmountable. Every decision you make today echoes into **your poker future**. The stakes are high, but your well-being is higher. Stay grounded, make choices that your future self will nod in gratitude for, and always, always remember why you started this journey. **The path to poker greatness** isn’t linear; it zigs and zags. But with focus, resilience, and smart decisions, you’ll navigate it like the champ you are. Here’s to playing with heart and strategy, [*Poker Academy Team*] 🌟🃏🔥 --- # Last week? History. This week? Opportunity. Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/last-week-history-this-week-opportunity Author: Gio Published: 2023-09-16 · Updated: 2023-09-11 Category: Mindset ![Last week? History. This week? Opportunity.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/09/lesson-blog.png) Three main tales always repeat, and they might resonate with many of you. In this email, our goal is to help you prepare for the upcoming second week of the online poker series. First, there’s **Lucas**. The golden boy of Week 1. Every card he drew seemed blessed by Lady Luck herself, and the chips just kept coming his way. With a grin that’s grown wider each day, he’s eagerly looking ahead, hungry for more. In the same arena, **Elise** treaded a different path. The winds of fortune blew strong around her, promising glories aplenty. Yet, for reasons only the Poker Gods know, the final push always eluded her. She held hands that hinted at triumphs, but fate had other stories to narrate. Then we witnessed **Phil**‘s journey. It felt like the universe conspired against him. Wrong cards, wrong calls, wrong time. A week where every dawn brought hope, but every dusk took it away. But knowing Chris, this isn’t a defeat; it’s a lesson. ![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1135887788244488242/1150804218156957746/image.png) Now,**let’s talk about you** and everyone else here. No matter which player’s tale resonates with you, remember this: in the vast timeline of your poker journey, this week is but a blink of an eye. A momentary speck in a sea of countless games, plays, and decisions. The highs and lows, the jubilation and heartbreaks – they’re all part of this magnificent dance. As we stand at the threshold of a new week, I urge you to let go. Release the weight of past glories or the shadows of setbacks. Embrace the present moment with a fresh mind and an untamed spirit. **The poker tables don’t remember last week**; every hand dealt is a new challenge, a new opportunity. It doesn’t care for yesterday’s hero or underdog. All it asks is: **What can you do now?** So, as you log in, take a deep breath. Remember why you started this journey. Recall the **passion**, the **strategy**, the **love**for the game. And let that guide you. Last week, whatever it was, is over. Now, it’s just you, the cards, and the countless possibilities they hold. Our destinies aren’t written in a single hand or even a week’s worth of games. They’re crafted over time, with patience, perseverance, and an **unwavering belief in oneself**. History has a way of echoing! There will be moments of triumph, times when effort seems fruitless, and periods of defeat. Don’t let it define you. Rise and give it another shot. [*Poker Academy Team*] 🌟🃏🔥 *P.S.* *Now is an excellent opportunity to visit our blog and read **[The Four Agreements](https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-four-agreements/)**post.​ Thank me later.* *​* --- # 🃏 The Legend of the Endless River and the Art of Poker 🃏 Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-legend-of-the-endless-river-and-the-art-of-poker Author: Gio Published: 2023-09-11 · Updated: 2023-09-12 Category: Mindset ![🃏 The Legend of the Endless River and the Art of Poker 🃏](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/09/river-blog-image.png) This river was unique because, unlike its counterparts, it never rushed. It moved with grace, winding and weaving with a quiet strength that commanded respect. A young traveler once asked an old sage about the secret of the river’s endurance. “Why doesn’t it sprint like the others?” The sage smiled and said, “The Endless knows that the destination isn’t a place, but a journey itself.” **Poker**, is much like the river Endless. It’s not about the quick victories or the short-lived highs. It’s the intricate dance of skill, patience, and strategy over time. It’s the knowledge that each hand you play, each move you make, is a part of a larger tapestry you’re weaving. As you stand on the brink of this month-long series, it’s essential to remember that while sprints might lead to momentary glory, marathons craft legends. It’s in the consistent grind, the steady analysis, and the unwavering faith in your abilities that true champions are born. Every **game**, every **hand**, every **call**, and every **fold**is a step. Some steps will be forward, and some might feel like they’re pulling you back. But like the Endless river, it’s the journey that counts. Embrace each moment, learn from every outcome, and know that the tables will turn, the cards will shuffle, and with each play, you’re crafting your legacy. So, as you gear up for this grand odyssey, carry the spirit of the Endless with you. Let your game flow with grace, strategy, and patience. Because, in the end, it’s not just about the cards you’re dealt, but how you play them. May the river’s calm be with you, and may your journey be legendary. Best of luck on your adventure, [Poker Academy Team] 🌟🃏🌊🍀 --- # PKO Final Tables are here! Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/pa-preflop-sims-updates Author: Gio Published: 2023-08-26 · Updated: 2023-09-05 Category: General ![PKO Final Tables are here!](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/download-7.png) ## Newest Update in Poker Academy’s Preflop Database These solutions cover an 8-max table with an average stack size ranging from 17bb to 52bb. With players holding as little as 6bb and as much as 94 big blinds, this brings the total number of practice scenarios in the Trainer to nearly 500,000. To access the solutions, simply navigate to the **Tournaments** tab and locate the **PKO Final Table**. From there, select your preferred scenario and delve into the ranges. Keep in mind that ranges interact with one another, so take a closer look to understand the reasons behind certain actions. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out in [**Discord**](https://discord.com/invite/KGcDMKhzMB). ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/24-1-1024x576.png) Payouts and structure are of course crucial information as well and you can find them from the drop-down menu over the range matrix. Allow me to provide you with a brief overview of the additions made from the past three months up until the present moment: - 10% asymmetric - 15% asymmetric - Satellites - Direct Bubble - BB Ante - PKO Final Table Poker Academy’s preflop solutions database is expanding, making it easier for you to practice various scenarios in a fast-paced, almost real-game environment. It is super easy to play 50 or even 100 hands in no time and then go back to studying what you did wrong (at least in GTO world). The trainer is a great way to improve your study conditions and enhance your skills at no extra cost. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/22-1024x576.png) *Enhance your skills without any extra charges!* ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/23-1-1024x576.png) *Huge Database with presolved preflop spots for you to study from.* If you haven’t yet subscribed to Poker Academy, consider it the next time you knock someone out. Why not even drop a quick message in the table chat: “Thanks for the bounty! Gonna use your money to get a Poker Academy plan now.” But seriously, avoiding a costly final table mistake could save you a lot of money and compensate for a subscription plan, depending on the stakes you play, even an annual plan, no matter which is the software of your choice. If you want to get access to our solutions I advise you to go with our best plan where you will be able to use the preflop ranges in the **postflop solver** as well, unlimited! [Go premium today](https://poker.academy/pricing) [![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/paplan.png)](https://poker.academy/pricing) *Premium plan includes presolved preflop solutions and the ability to Nodelock Postflop with many different sizings.* > For different payment methods open a ticket in Discord. --- # Discover Preflop Academy Mobile App Today Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/discover-preflop-academy-mobile-app-today Author: Doro Published: 2023-08-21 Category: General ![Discover Preflop Academy Mobile App Today](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/Prefop-Academy-Mobile-App-Main.jpg) **Explore the new mobile version of Preflop Academy! Gain instant access to over 400,000 preflop charts, allowing you to simulate nearly every poker situation you might encounter at the tables. Learn poker on the go, wherever you are.** We’ve recently launched the beta version of **Preflop Academy Mobile App**, available for both **Android** and **iOS devices**. You can download the app for free from [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.isolve.preflop.academy) and the [Apple Store](https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/preflop-academy/id1626050814). ## **What’s inside Preflop Academy mobile app?** Experience an incredibly intuitive tool that matches the capabilities of the web version. With just a swipe of a thumb, you can start configuring your simulations. From here you can quickly define key parameters like: **game type**, **scenario**, **category**, **Hero position**, and **Villain position**. Once you’ve selected desired settings, you can instantly move on to analyzing the results. Our goal is to make your experience with Preflop Academy as smooth as it can be. Just like in the web version, we not only present the specific chart you’re searching for but also **provide related charts**. Consider a situation where you’re examining the 3-betting range against a player on the BTN while seated at the SB. On the same screen, you’ll discover not only a comprehensive strategy tailored to that scenario but also a related strategies, in this case Villain’s RFI strategy. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/Preflop-Academy-Mobile-App-503x1024.jpg) Download today Preflop Academy for your mobile device effortlesly from [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.isolve.preflop.academy) or [Apple Store](https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/preflop-academy/id1626050814). Start making use of the top-notch training materials as we speak. --- # Dominik Pańka with another fine performace in the Northern Cyprus Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/dominik-panka-with-another-fine-performace-in-the-northern-cyprus Author: Doro Published: 2023-08-18 · Updated: 2023-08-21 Category: Live Game ![Dominik Pańka with another fine performace in the Northern Cyprus](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/Dominik-Panka-Merit-Poker-Series-Main-Event.jpg) **Dominik Pańka, one of the most successful Polish poker players, has added another impressive result to his resume. He finished 7th in the Main Event of the Merit Poker Retro Series, a festival that took place in the Northern Cyprus** Pańka is one of the most accomplished Polish poker players. He has won over $3.3 million in live tournaments, including the prestigious European Poker Tour title at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in 2014. He is also a proud ambassador of Poker Academy, the best online platform for developing poker skills. ## Cooler eliminates Dominik Pańka from the Main Event The Main Event of Merit Poker Retro Series had a buy-in of $3,300 and a guaranteed prize pool of $3,000,000. It attracted 1,223 entries which resulted in 143 players making it to the ITM stage. Dominik Pańka started the final day of the Main Event with a stack of 14,875,000, which put him in 4th place out of nine remaining players. He played solidly and patiently, waiting for good spots to make his moves. In the wake of two rapid eliminations, the Pole found himself in a cooler spot during a hand against **Nenad Dukic**. Pańka had K♦9♣ on the flop of 9♦8♦8♣. His opponent had A♦8♠. Both players checked. The 6♥ came on the turn. Dukic bet for 2,8 mln and Domink went all-in for 9,4 mln. Call. 4♣ arrived on the river and it was all over for the Pole. Dominik Pańka was eliminated in 7th place. He earned $95,900 for his impressive performance. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/Dominik-Panka-Merit-Poker-Series-Main-Event-1.jpg) *Dominik Pańka ©Merit Poker Series* ## Darko Svesko wins ME Merit Poker Retro Series In the end, **Darko Svesko** and **Oleg Nataliev** met in the heads-up of this tournament. In the last hand of the tournament Oleg Netaliev had A♥Q♠ and limped from the SB. Svesko held K♠K♥ and raised to 4,500,000. A Netaliev responded with an all-in for 31,800,000 and got a call. Svesko’s pocket KK held on the T-high board and he became the winner of the Main Event. He took home $567,000 and a trophy for his victory. Netaliev earned $417,900 for his runner-up finish. ![Darko Svesko after winning ME Merit Poker Series (Aug. 2023)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/Darko-Svesko-Merit-Poker-Retro-Series-2023-ME.jpg) *Darko Svesko ©Merit Poker Series* Here is the final table payout: | Position | Name | Country | Prize | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | Darko Svesko | Serbia | $567,000 | | 2 | Oleg Netaliev | Russia | $417,900 | | 3 | Michel Atallah | Lebanon | $257,900 | | 4 | Nenad Dukic | Serbia | $191,100 | | 5 | David Hu | Canada | $142,400 | | 6 | Ruslan Volkov | Russia | $115,100 | | 7 | Dominik Pańka | Poland | $95,900 | | 8 | Thomas Eychenne | France | $76,300 | | 9 | Ara Melkisetian | Armenia | $56,700 | ## Congratulations to Dominik Pańka We congratulate Dominik Pańka on his remarkable result. We are proud to have him as our ambassador. Register today and start learning winning poker strategies the the same way the best poker players do. We also encourage you to read the [PA’](https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-dominik-panka/)[s](https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-dominik-panka/)[profile of Dominik Panka](https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-dominik-panka/). --- # Equity realization (EQR) in poker: what it measures and how to read it Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-understand-equity-realisation-eqr Author: Doro Published: 2023-08-16 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![Equity realization (EQR) in poker: what it measures and how to read it](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-understand-equity-realisation-eqr-hero-1.jpg) You call a button open from the big blind. The flop comes and your range has 41% equity. How much of the pot do you actually win? In the report I show below, that 41% of equity turns into 33% of the pot. That gap has a name: **equity realization**, or EQR. Postflop it is one of the three numbers the app shows next to every hand, with EV and EQ. Here is what it measures, how to compute it, and what moves it: position, the board, and whether your cards are suited. ## Equity is what you’d win if nobody bet again **Equity (EQ)** is how often your hand wins at showdown if all the remaining cards are dealt and nobody bets or folds. Ties count as half a win. With 40.88% equity in a 5.5bb pot, your share of that pot is 0.4088 × 5.5 = 2.25bb. Real hands don’t go that way. Players bet, raise and fold. A hand that folds to a bet gets 0% of the pot, whatever its equity was. A hand that gets paid on the river wins more than the current pot. Equity ignores both. **EV** is what the hand is expected to win from here on, with every future bet and fold included. In the app it is the solver’s EV: both players play the solver strategy for the rest of the hand. ## What EQR measures EQR compares those two numbers. Take the share of the pot your hand actually wins (EV divided by the pot) and divide it by the share it would win at a check-down (EQ). Equity realization, as the app computes it EQR=EV / potEQ\text{EQR}=\frac{\text{EV}\,/\,\text{pot}}{\text{EQ}} - EQR = 1.00: the hand wins exactly its equity share of the pot. - EQR above 1: the hand over-realizes. It wins more than its equity, because it gets paid or makes better hands fold. - EQR below 1: the hand under-realizes. It folds too often, gets bet off its equity, or pays off when behind. Two things it is *not*. EQR is not the percentage of the pot you win, which is EV divided by the pot. And it is not a probability, so it can be above 100%: a hand with 93% equity that wins 253% of the pot has an EQR of 272%. ## A real spot: 20bb, button against the big blind Here is a flop report in Poker Academy. The spot: **MTT, 20bb, 9-handed, 1bb big-blind ante**. The button opens to 2bb, the big blind calls. Pot on the flop: 2 + 2 + 0.5 + 1 = **5.5bb**, effective stack 18bb. The report solved 25 flops with one flop bet menu (19%, 30%, 60% and 120% of pot) and weights each flop by how often it comes up. The bet menu matters here. EQR is a ratio of EV to equity, and EV depends on which bet sizes the solver was allowed to use, so averaging flops solved with different menus mixes two things at once. Every aggregate in this article comes from a report with a single menu. ![Poker Academy flop report BTNvBB 20bb, pot 5.5bb, 18bb eff, 25 flops: EV, EQ and EQR for the big blind and the button, bet menu 19, 30, 60 and 120 percent of pot](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-understand-equity-realisation-eqr-report-3514-bb-vs-btn-fig.jpg) *Report BTNvBB 20bb, pot 5.5bb, 18bb eff, 25 flops. BTN 2bb open, BB call, MTT 20bb 9-max, 1bb BB ante, pot 5.5bb. One flop bet menu (19% / 30% / 60% / 120%). Left: viewed as BB (out of position). Right: the same 25 flops viewed as BTN. Top row: all 25 flops, weighted.* Across all 25 flops the big blind has 40.88% equity and 1.79bb of EV. The button has 59.71% equity and 3.77bb. Put the big blind’s numbers in the formula: Big blind, all 25 flops 1.79 / 5.50.4088=0.3260.409=0.80\frac{1.79\,/\,5.5}{0.4088}=\frac{0.326}{0.409}=0.80 Button, all 25 flops 3.77 / 5.50.5971=0.6850.597=1.15\frac{3.77\,/\,5.5}{0.5971}=\frac{0.685}{0.597}=1.15 So the big blind wins 32.6% of the pot with 40.9% equity. The button wins 68.5% of it with 59.7% equity. At a check-down the big blind would get 2.25bb. With betting it gets 1.79bb, and the button takes the difference. One detail if you check the table yourself: the report’s EQR column averages the EQR of each flop, while my formula divides the averaged EV by the averaged equity. The two differ by a hundredth here (0.79 against 0.80) and on the cash report further down (0.86 against 0.87). Both are fair summaries of the same solves, they just weight things differently. [pa-cta id=”open_report_mtt_20bb_btn_vs_bb_25″ to=”/open/report-mtt-20bb-btn-vs-bb-25″ title=”Report: BTN vs BB, 20bb, 25 flops” body=”The report this whole section is read off: EV, equity and realisation for both players, flop by flop.” label=”Open the report”] [pa-cta id=”open_report_hu_30bb_limped” to=”/open/report-hu-30bb-limped” title=”Report: a limped pot heads-up, 30bb” body=”Equity realisation where the pot is small and the stacks are deep: 184 flops, in-position view.” label=”Open the report”] ## Position: the player who acts last realizes more This is the biggest single factor, and it showed up in every report I checked. The player in position sees the other player act first on every street. He can check behind with a medium hand and take a free card, bet when checked to, and fold cheaply when the other player shows strength. Out of position you commit first, with less information. ![Chart: EQR in position versus out of position in four solved flop reports, MTT 20bb, cash 100bb and heads-up MTT 30bb](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-understand-equity-realisation-eqr-eqr-ip-vs-oop-2.png) *EQR at the first flop decision in four Poker Academy flop reports, each solved with a single bet menu. Weighted average over each report’s flops.* - BTN vs BB, MTT 20bb, 25 flops: **1.15** in position, **0.80** out of position. - LJ opens, BB calls, 6-max cash 100bb, no ante, 25 flops: 1.14 against 0.87. - SB limps, BB checks, heads-up MTT 30bb, 184 flops: 1.14 against 0.85. - BTN opens, BB calls, MTT 20bb, 184 flops: 1.17 against 0.78. Those are four different formats, stack depths and pot sizes, and the player in position lands between 1.14 and 1.17 in all of them. It never comes near 1.00. The out-of-position number moves much more, 0.78 to 0.87, because it depends on how badly that range is outgunned. These are averages over the flops each report solved, so they say how the whole range does, not how every hand does. ## The board decides how much position costs Take the 184-flop heads-up report (MTT 30bb, the small blind limps and the big blind checks) and split it by the highest card on the flop. [pa-cta id=”open_report_mtt_20bb_bb_vs_btn” to=”/open/report-mtt-20bb-bb-vs-btn” title=”Report: BB vs button, 20bb, 184 flops” body=”EV, equity and equity realisation per flop across 184 boards: the report the high-card split on this page is read off.” label=”Open the report”] ![Chart: big blind and small blind EQR by flop high card in a heads-up limped pot, ace-high 0.77 versus 1.21, king to ten high 0.88 versus 1.12, nine-high or lower 0.87 versus 1.14](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-understand-equity-realisation-eqr-eqr-by-high-card-2.png) *Report 3634, HU MTT 30bb. SB limps, BB checks, pot 2.3bb, 184 flops, flop bet menu 45/50/100/200% of pot. Flops grouped by their highest card.* On ace-high flops the big blind realizes **0.77** of its equity. On everything else it sits at 0.87 to 0.88, and its raw equity barely moves (46.9% against 48.5% and 48.8%). The reason sits preflop, in the same simulation. Facing a limp at 30bb the big blind raises or jams every AKs–ATs and every AKo–A9o, so its checking range (845.5 combos) holds **zero** AK–AT and only 5.5% ace-containing combos. The limper’s range (781.7 combos) keeps 12.7%. An ace on the flop hits one player and misses the other. Single flops spread wider than the groups. In the 25-flop report at the top of this article, the big blind realizes 0.62 on A♣︎5♦︎3♥︎ (39.82% equity, 1.35bb of EV), 0.83 on 9♣︎7♦︎5♥︎ (43.88%, 2.00bb) and 0.86 on 7♣︎4♦︎2♥︎ (45.25%, 2.14bb). On 8♣︎8♦︎8♥︎ it gets 0.48 (35.26%, 0.92bb), because almost nothing in its range can be ahead there. ## Inside the range: suited hands and draws Averages hide a wide spread between hands. Browse has an **EQR view** of the matrix, where every tile shows that class’s EQR at the current node. Here is the big blind’s first decision on 9♣︎7♦︎5♥︎, one of the 25 solved boards of the report above, opened straight from the solution. ![Poker Academy Browse, EQR view of the big blind's range on 9c7d5h after BTN opens 2bb and BB calls, MTT 20bb 9-max: straights and two pair above 200 percent, offsuit broadway hands 14 to 19 percent](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-understand-equity-realisation-eqr-eqr-lens-bb-975-fig-1.jpg) *Browse, EQR view. BTN raises 2bb, BB calls, flop 9♣7♦5♥, BB first to act. MTT 20bb 9-max, 1bb BB ante, pot 5.5bb, bet menu 19/30/60/120% of pot. Each tile: EQR of the hand class. Striped tiles are not in the big blind’s range here.* Made straights (86s at 276%, 86o at 275%) and two pair (97s at 217%, 75s at 207%) sit far above 100%, because they get paid. Offsuit broadway hands with no pair and no open-ended draw sit at the other end: QJo 14%, QTo 16%, KJo 19%, KTo 19%. KJo still has 36% equity, and it gives almost all of it up once the button bets. Now compare the suited and offsuit versions of the same hand. KJs shows 38%, KJo 19%. QTs 37%, QTo 16%. QJs 34%, QJo 14%. The combos list says why. ![Poker Academy Browse combos list with EV, EQ and EQR per combo: KJs on 9c7d5h, hearts, diamonds and clubs at 43 to 44 percent EQR, spades at 18 percent; KJo at 18 to 20 percent](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/how-to-understand-equity-realisation-eqr-kjs-vs-kjo-fig-2.jpg) *Browse, Hands tab, same node. Left: all four KJs combos. Right: KJo (6 of the 12 combos shown).* K♥︎J♥︎, K♦︎J♦︎ and K♣︎J♣︎ each have about 0.94bb of EV, 39% equity and an EQR of 43 to 44%. K♠︎J♠︎ has 0.36bb, 36% and 18%, in line with every offsuit combo (0.37 to 0.39bb, 18 to 20%). Count the cards. The flop is 9♣︎ 7♦︎ 5♥︎: one club, one diamond, one heart, no spade. K♥︎J♥︎ plus 5♥︎ is three hearts, a backdoor flush draw, and the same holds for diamonds and clubs. K♠︎J♠︎ can’t make a flush at all, because two spades in hand plus a turn and a river is four spades at most. Same hand, one backdoor flush draw apart K♡J♡: 0.94 / 5.50.39=0.1710.39=0.44K♠J♠: 0.36 / 5.50.36=0.0650.36=0.18K\heartsuit J\heartsuit:\ \frac{0.94\,/\,5.5}{0.39}=\frac{0.171}{0.39}=0.44\qquad K\spadesuit J\spadesuit:\ \frac{0.36\,/\,5.5}{0.36}=\frac{0.065}{0.36}=0.18 The app shows 18% for K♠︎J♠︎ because it divides unrounded EV and equity; with the rounded 0.36bb and 36% you get 0.18. Under three points of equity make a 0.58bb difference in EV. My reading of why (the solver gives the numbers, not the reason): the backdoor draw gives the hand more ways to continue, because a fourth heart on the turn turns it into a real flush draw. That is what “playability” looks like in numbers. Being suited does nothing on its own here; being suited with a live draw does. And at the top end, 8♥︎6♥︎ makes a straight (9, 8, 7, 6, 5) with 14.19bb of EV and 93% equity: Made straight on 9♥7♠5♣ 8♡6♡: 14.19 / 5.50.93=2.580.93=2.778\heartsuit 6\heartsuit:\ \frac{14.19\,/\,5.5}{0.93}=\frac{2.58}{0.93}=2.77 The app shows 276% for that combo; my 2.77 uses the equity rounded to 93%. ## Stack depth A heuristic, not something these reports prove: deeper stacks give the player in position more streets and bigger bets to use, so position is worth more when the stack-to-pot ratio (SPR) is high. At a low SPR more hands end all-in, and a hand that is all-in reaches showdown and realizes its equity exactly, EQR 1. So short stacks push EQR towards 1 for both players, and deep stacks spread it apart. These four reports don’t isolate it. The 20bb spot has an SPR of about 3.3 (18 / 5.5), the 184-flop 20bb report 2.3 (17 / 7.5), the limped heads-up pot 12.6 (29 / 2.3) and the cash spot 17.7 (97.5 / 5.5). They also differ in positions, ranges, ante and bet menu. To test it properly you would compare the same positions at two stack depths. ## Where EQR is not shown, and why On preflop nodes Browse shows EV for every hand, and the EQR column stays a dash. Preflop EV is measured against folding, and a preflop matrix has no pot for EV and equity to share. Dividing them would give a number that looks like EQR and means nothing, so the app leaves it blank. EQR also assumes both players play the solver strategy. As a rule of thumb, not solver output: against a player who folds too much your real EQR is higher than the solver’s, and against one who never folds, hands that rely on bluffing realize less. You make that adjustment yourself. The number in the app is the equilibrium one. One more thing worth knowing if you read these reports yourself. The two players’ equity columns should add up to 100% on every flop, and in the reports used here they do, within about a point (99.8% to 102.2% per flop in the 20bb report). Some reports don’t. I dropped a second library report from this article because its two equity columns add up to 104.4% on the median flop and up to 107.6% on the worst one. If the equities don’t add up, the EQR built on them isn’t worth quoting. ## How to use it - Don’t call on equity alone. Out of position with a hand that under-realizes, the equity you need to call is not the EV you’ll get. - Prefer hands that keep playing. Among hands with similar equity, the ones with draws and live cards realize more, and in the big blind that is often the suited version. - Expect position to cost you. In all four reports above the out-of-position range realized 0.78 to 0.88 of its equity, and the in-position range 1.12 to 1.17. - Check the board. The same range realized 0.48 on 8♣8♦8♥ and 0.86 on 7♣4♦2♥ in one report. Open a spot you play in Browse, switch the matrix to EQR and click through a few hands. The pattern shows up fast. [pa-cta id=”eqr_equity” to=”/equity-calculator” title=”Check the raw equity first” body=”Run hand vs range equity, then compare it with the EV the solver gives the same hand.” label=”Open the equity calculator”] Cheers! 🙂 --- # Nodelocking now available in Poker Academy simulations Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/node-locking-now-available-in-poker-academy-simulations Author: Doro Published: 2023-08-03 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: General ![Nodelocking now available in Poker Academy simulations](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/Node-locking.jpg) **Get ready for some exciting updates! Our developers team at Poker Academy has rolled out a brand new feature, the node locking. Node locking, also known as node lock, is a method where players adjust their strategy based on an opponent’s tendencies at decision points in a hand, allowing for strategic manipulation and improved win rates. Dive in to uncover what node locking is all about and how it can elevate your simulation experience!** In our previous update, we shared exciting news about the expansion of Poker Academy’s preflop module, introducing the first simulations that consider [the occurrence of BBA](https://poker.academy/blog/post/introducing-our-new-feature-big-blind-ante/). If you missed it, we encourage you to catch up. Today, we’re thrilled to share another significant enhancement: **the integration of a node locking feature into our ultra-fast postflop solver**. But before we dive into its utilization, let’s take a moment to understand what this concept truly entails. ## What is node locking? In essence, **node locking** is the process of adjusting the strategy within a specific node to consider deviations from the optimal strategy in an opponent’s gameplay and their tendencies. It is a technique employed to develop strategies that can exploit these deviations. ## The theoretical underpinnings of node locking The strategies produced by the solver are derived from a contest between two players who are playing optimally. Each player is fully aware of their own strategy and that of their adversary. Leveraging the computational prowess of contemporary computers, solvers determine strategies for both players that meet the conditions of **Nash Equilibrium**. This implies that neither player can independently alter their strategy to raise their Expected Value (EV). Any deviation from this optimal strategy makes the player susceptible to exploitation. However, it’s important to remember that in real-life scenarios, no one plays optimally. Node locking gives us the chance to adjust the simulation outputs to account for the behaviors of opponents who deviate from the “optimum”. By fixing their strategy through node locking, we can influence different branches of the game tree, ensuring that errors on one part of the game tree do not compromise our overall strategy. This equips the solver with the necessary tools to devise the most efficient counter-strategy, one that maximizes our EV. ## How node locking works in Poker Academy? Firstly, let’s guide you to the location where you can adjust your strategy. In the upper right corner of your screen, there is a button labeled **“Find Exploits”**. Clicking on this will open up a menu, providing you with the ability to modify your strategic approach by understanding opponent plays and making necessary adjustments using node locking. ![Node locking - Overview](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/Node-Locking-in-Poker-Academy-1024x554.jpg) Prior to implementing any alterations to the strategy devised by the solver, it is crucial to examine the **Expected Value (EV) of the overall range**. This value should be noted as it serves as a benchmark against which the EV of the range post-modification will be compared. The overarching goal should always be to maximize the EV. ### Node locking modes: Manual and GTO There are two modes to choose from: “Manual” and “GTO”. In the former, you have complete freedom to modify the strategy, i.e., you can change the type of action, bet sizes (within those predefined) and frequency (this is set with a slider). ![Node locking - Strategy modification menu](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/Node-locking-Poker-Academy-Edit-strategy.jpg) In the latter, you can block the frequency of the play according to the GTO solution. Understanding the GTO solution is crucial before making any adjustments in the GTO mode, as it provides the optimal strategy baseline. ![Node locking - GTO mode](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/Node-Locking-Poker-Academy-Edit-Strategy-GTO-freq..jpg) Each time you block a hand, a small padlock icon will manifest on the matrix. To remove this, navigate to the “Unlock” tab. ![Node locking - Hand matrix with altered strategy](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/Node-locking-locking-in-progress.jpg) Once you are satisfied with the modifications you’ve implemented, proceed by clicking on the **“Calculate Exploit”** button. The solver will swiftly implement the changes and display the results. You’ll observe that post-modification, the padlocks are no longer present in the matrix. Turning our attention to the most crucial aspect-an examination of how the Expected Value (EV) of our range has been influenced. It appears that our arbitrarily implemented changes have had a negative impact, as indicated by the decrease in the EV value (from 1.7 to 1.5). In light of this, it would be prudent to retract these modifications and either revert to the GTO benchmark or explore further alterations. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/08/Node-locking-EQ-EV-bar.jpg) It’s important to acknowledge the changes we’ve implemented in our strategy have had a direct impact on our competitor as well. This is evident when considering the principle of a **zero-sum game**, where one entity’s loss or gain is balanced by the losses or gains of the other entities involved. A comparison of the Expected Values (EVs) post-modifications validates this theorem, as our decrease in EV was mirrored by an equal increase in our competitor’s EV. | | **EV before** | **EV after** | | --- | --- | --- | | **Villain** | 4,2 | 4,4 | | **Hero** | 1,7 | 1,5 | ## Conclusion We appreciate your time and attention in reading this text through to its conclusion. If you have any thoughts or feedback regarding the introduction of node locking to the Poker Academy, we invite you to share them on [our community Discord](https://discord.gg/8uZJh2wAee). In the near future, we plan to further support your learning. It will be either by releasing a training video or hosting a webinar (still to be decided) that will provide practical guidance on how to leverage the new capabilities offered by the Poker Academy solver. See you next time. --- # Be the person who still tries Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/be-the-person-who-still-tries Author: Gio Published: 2023-07-21 Category: Mindset ![Be the person who still tries](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/betherperson.png) > *After failure, frustration, disappointment, exhaustion, and heartache, be the person who musters up the courage to believe that a new attempt can bring about a new outcome. Be the person who still tries.* > > **Michell C. Clark** And this is true on every level. What else could you do? Give up? And live with “what if…”? In my opinion there is no such thing as giving up; this is imaginary. Life continues, and you either create a habit of giving up or build up discipline. “Giving up” will only put you in a repeating cycle, and life will test you again at some point to see if you are still going to give up and repeat the cycle or finally level up. Of course, things change, you change with age and as a person, goals rearrange; things that we really wanted before, now we don’t — for whatever reasons. It’s normal and it’s fine to move on and actually quit something that doesn’t brings you value or joy. But if what you pursue is really important and vital to you, then you must be the one who still tries. If poker is that thing, then that’s good. It is a very, very, VERY challenging game on every level. Stop for a second, take a look around, explore your options and if this is what you want to pursue, no matter as a hobby or professionally,*be the person who still tries*! Be all-in. It is important to know when to slow down and when to speed up. Sometimes need to take breaks or make big moves, while other times you need to maintain a steady pace. Each situation requires a different approach and it’s **not always possible to do everything at once**. It’s common to feel like we need to give our all constantly, but that’s not always the best option. But also, I feel it is important to note that you should not compare yourself to others; this is your own path. Yes, ask for guidance and take advice from people who inspire you, but the decisions must align with you and you are the one making the final call, or fold. Some people suggest playing without emotions while others recommend acknowledging and expressing them. Or to feel them while they happen, but to stay calm and relaxed. The bottom line is that emotions are a factor to consider. You will experience all the emotions, so you need to find a way to handle them if you want to *be person who still tries*, even if it is something else, sometimes trying something else is the only path of progression. --- # The $12.1 million hand: the WSOP 2023 Main Event final hand, street by street Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-12-1-million-hand-unpacking-the-wsop-2023-main-event-finale Author: Doro Published: 2023-07-20 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Theory ![The $12.1 million hand: the WSOP 2023 Main Event final hand, street by street](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/the-12-1-million-hand-unpacking-the-wsop-hero.jpg) In July 2023 Daniel Weinman won the WSOP Main Event and $12,100,000, the biggest first prize the event has paid. Steven Jones finished second for $6,500,000. The field was 10,043 entries. The last hand was K♣︎J♦︎ against J♣︎8♦︎ on a jack-high board. Both players had top pair, and all the chips went in on the turn. Below I take it street by street, with the bet sizes, the pot and the stacks, the price each player got, and what the preflop charts say about the two starting hands. The postflop numbers here are maths: pot odds, SPR and the equity of one hand against the other, which I count card by card. None of them are solver frequencies. I did not run a postflop solve of this spot for the article, so where I talk about strategy on the flop and turn, it is my reasoning, and I say so each time. ## The facts of the hand PGT reports the blinds at the start of heads-up as 1.25M/2.5M with a 2.5M big-blind ante, and Weinman’s 443M against Jones’s 159.5M. Heads-up lasted 24 hands. I assume the level had not changed by the last hand, so 1bb = 2.5M chips. The action of the final hand, as reported by Poker News Daily and PGT: - **Preflop:** Jones on the button raises to 7M with J♣︎8♦︎. Weinman calls in the big blind with K♣︎J♦︎. - **Flop J♠︎5♠︎2♦︎:** Weinman checks, Jones bets 6M, Weinman check-raises to 18.5M, Jones calls. - **Turn 4♣︎:** Weinman bets 38M. Jones thinks for about four minutes and moves all-in for 146M. Weinman calls. - **River A♥︎:** no help for Jones. Weinman wins with a pair of jacks and a king kicker. ![WSOP 2023 Main Event final hand street by street: Jones J♣8♦ on the button raises to 7M, Weinman K♣J♦ calls; flop J♠5♠2♦ bet 6M, check-raise to 18.5M, call; turn 4♣ bet 38M, all-in 146M, call; river A♥. Pot 16.5M, 53.5M, 345.5M](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/the-12-1-million-hand-unpacking-the-wsop-timeline.png) *Pot and Jones’s stack after each street. 1bb = 2.5M.* The stacks at the start of the hand were not reported to the chip, so I derive them. Jones put in 7M preflop, 18.5M on the flop and 146M on the turn: 171.5M, or 68.6bb. That is the effective stack. Weinman had the rest of the 602.5M in play at the start of heads-up, about 431M. Take that one as an estimate. Heads-up leaves only two prizes, so a player’s prize equity is a straight line in chips (second place paid $6.5M, first $12.1M): Prize equity heads-up $EQ=$6.5M⏟2nd+$5.6M⏟1st−2nd⋅your chipsall chips\$\text{EQ}=\underbrace{\$6.5\text{M}}_{2\text{nd}}+\underbrace{\$5.6\text{M}}_{1\text{st}-2\text{nd}}\cdot\frac{\text{your chips}}{\text{all chips}} Each chip is worth the same slice of the $5.6M difference, whoever holds it. Ignoring skill and future blinds, chipEV and $EV lead to the same decisions here, which is why I use chipEV charts below. ## Preflop: both players did the normal thing Poker Academy has heads-up tournament charts at 70bb. They don’t copy this hand exactly: the sim has a 0.25bb total ante (the Main Event had 1bb) and the button opens to 2.5bb (Jones made it 2.8bb). It is still the closest spot in the app, and it is chipEV, the right model heads-up. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, heads-up MTT 70bb, button (SB) first in: raise 2.5bb 56.3%, limp 40.7%, fold 3.1%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/the-12-1-million-hand-unpacking-the-wsop-s70-btn-fig.jpg) *70bb heads-up, button first in (chipEV, 0.25bb ante). Orange = raise 2.5bb, teal = limp.* The button plays almost everything: it raises 56.3% of hands, limps 40.7% and folds 3.1%. J8o raises about 93% of the time and limps the rest. Jones’s open is standard. The ante changes the price for the big blind. In the hand Weinman called 4.5M more: Weinman’s price preflop 4.57⏟raise+2.5⏟BB+2.5⏟ante+4.5⏟call=4.516.5=27.3%\frac{4.5}{\underbrace{7}_{\text{raise}}+\underbrace{2.5}_{\text{BB}}+\underbrace{2.5}_{\text{ante}}+\underbrace{4.5}_{\text{call}}}=\frac{4.5}{16.5}=27.3\% ![Poker Academy preflop chart, heads-up MTT 70bb, big blind against a 2.5bb button raise: call 48.8%, 3-bet to 7.8bb 22.5%, all-in 0.8%, fold 27.9%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/the-12-1-million-hand-unpacking-the-wsop-s70-bb-vs-raise-fig.jpg) *70bb heads-up, big blind against a 2.5bb button raise: call 48.8%, 3-bet to 7.8bb 22.5%, all-in 0.8%, fold 27.9%.* Against a 2.5bb raise the big blind folds 27.9%, calls 48.8% and 3-bets to 7.8bb 22.5% of the time. KJo is a mix, roughly half 3-bet and half call, so Weinman’s call is one of the solver’s two actions with that hand. Both players played the preflop the way the chart plays it. The chart also says what the rest of his calling range looks like, which matters on the flop: AJo, AJs, KJs, QJs and JJ all 3-bet 100% here. [pa-cta id=”open_hu_70bb_btn_rfi” to=”/open/hu-70bb-btn-rfi” title=”Button first in, heads-up 70bb” body=”The opening range from the hand in the article, at the depth it was played.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## The flop: a small bet and a check-raise The pot is 7M + 7M + 2.5M ante = 16.5M, or 6.6bb. With 164.5M left for Jones, the stack-to-pot ratio is about 10: SPR on the flop SPR=171.5−716.5=164.516.5=9.97\text{SPR}=\frac{171.5-7}{16.5}=\frac{164.5}{16.5}=9.97 Weinman checks and Jones bets 6M: Jones’s c-bet 616.5=36.4% of the pot\frac{6}{16.5}=36.4\%\text{ of the pot} About a third of the pot, on a two-tone board. Weinman raises to 18.5M, which is 3.1 times the bet. Jones has to call 12.5M more: Jones’s price to call the check-raise 12.516.5+6+18.5+12.5=12.553.5=23.4%\frac{12.5}{16.5+6+18.5+12.5}=\frac{12.5}{53.5}=23.4\% Weinman has top pair with a king kicker. The original version of this article called it “the strongest possible hand containing a jack”, which was wrong, because AJ has a better kicker. In the 70bb chart, though, AJ, KJs and QJs all 3-bet preflop, so KJo is the best top pair that reaches this flop by calling. The calling range still holds better hands than that: 55 calls 73% and 22 calls 100%, so sets are there, and so are the two-pair hands J5s and J2s. Against Jones’s actual hand, I counted every turn and river. There are 45 unseen cards and 990 two-card runouts: - Jones wins 120 of them. He needs an eight, and there are three left: 8♣︎, 8♥︎ and 8♠︎. An eight wins for him with any other card except a king, which gives Weinman two pair too. - 36 runouts are a split. 5-5, 2-2, J-5 and J-2 give both players the same full house. A-5 and A-2 give both the same two pair with an ace kicker. - Weinman wins the other 834. K♣︎J♦︎ against J♣︎8♦︎ on the flop 834+362990=86.1%\frac{834+\tfrac{36}{2}}{990}=86.1\% Neither player has a spade, so neither has a flush draw. K♣︎J♦︎ blocks none of the spade flush draws in Jones’s range either, so all of them stay there and can keep calling a raise. That part is my reasoning, not a solver number. I have no solved tree of this exact spot, so I won’t give you a raise frequency. [pa-cta id=”open_hu_70bb_bb_vs_raise” to=”/open/hu-70bb-bb-vs-raise” title=”Big blind facing a 2.5bb raise, heads-up 70bb” body=”The other half of the hand: what the big blind does against that open.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## The turn: 38M and all-in After the flop call the pot is 16.5M + 18.5M + 18.5M = 53.5M, which is 21.4bb. Jones has 146M behind, 58.4bb. The turn 4♣︎ puts 2-4-5 on the board. A3 now has a straight, and 63 has one too. It is a club, so the spade draws are still draws. Weinman bets 38M: Turn bet and SPR 3853.5=71.0% of the potSPR=14653.5=2.73\frac{38}{53.5}=71.0\%\text{ of the pot}\qquad\text{SPR}=\frac{146}{53.5}=2.73 With an SPR under 3, a 71% bet commits a lot of the stack. If Jones just calls, the pot is 129.5M and 108M is left, less than the pot. So any continue is close to a decision for stacks. The price Jones was getting on the 38M bet: Jones’s price to call the turn bet 3853.5+38+38=38129.5=29.3%\frac{38}{53.5+38+38}=\frac{38}{129.5}=29.3\% Against K♣︎J♦︎ he had 3 outs, the same three eights, out of 44 unseen cards: K♣︎J♦︎ against J♣︎8♦︎ on the turn 44−344=4144=93.2%\frac{44-3}{44}=\frac{41}{44}=93.2\% A J♥︎ gives both players trips with the same board, and the king still plays. So only the eights help Jones: 6.8% for him. Jones could not see Weinman’s cards, so his problem was range against range. What follows is my heuristic, not solver output. A raise all-in with one pair and an eight kicker gets called by the hands that beat it: better jacks, sets, two pair and straights. The hands it beats, the spade draws and smaller pairs, mostly fold, and the draws that do call still have outs. A raise that folds out what you beat and gets called by what beats you earns little, which leaves calling and folding as the options worth weighing with J8. Which of those two is best depends on how often Weinman’s check-raise then bet line has a bluff in it, and that is the question a postflop solve would answer. ## The call Weinman had bet 38M and faced a total of 146M, so he called 108M more: Weinman’s price to call the jam 10853.5⏟pot+38⏟bet+146⏟jam+108⏟call=108345.5=31.3%\frac{108}{\underbrace{53.5}_{\text{pot}}+\underbrace{38}_{\text{bet}}+\underbrace{146}_{\text{jam}}+\underbrace{108}_{\text{call}}}=\frac{108}{345.5}=31.3\% He needed 31.3% equity against the range Jones jams with. Against the hand Jones had, he had 93.2%. The final pot was 345.5M, 138.2bb: Jones’s 171.5M plus Weinman’s 174M (2.5M ante, 7M, 18.5M and 146M). The river A♥︎ changed nothing. If you want to look at the flop and turn yourself, the postflop solver takes the same spot. Set the button against the big blind, a 16.5M pot as 6.6bb with 65.8bb behind, the board J♠︎5♠︎2♦︎, the 36% bet and 3.1x raise, and you get your own strategy for every hand in both ranges. [pa-cta id=”wsop_solver” to=”/gto-postflop-solver” title=”Solve the flop yourself” body=”Put in the board, the pot and the stacks from this hand and see how both ranges play the flop and turn.” label=”Open the postflop solver”] ## What I take from the hand - Track the pot in big blinds. 53.5M sounds huge, and it is 21.4bb, with 58.4bb behind and a turn SPR of 2.73. - Price every decision. Jones needed 23.4% to call the flop raise and 29.3% to call the turn bet. Weinman needed 31.3% to call the jam. - Count the outs. J♣︎8♦︎ against K♣︎J♦︎ was 86.1% for Weinman on the flop and 93.2% on the turn, three eights each time. - Raise with a purpose. A raise wants calls from worse hands or folds from better ones, and one pair jamming into a check-raise and a turn bet rarely gets either. Cheers! 🙂 --- # Daniel Weinman wins the record-breaking WSOP Main Event! ($12,1 mln) Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/daniel-weinman-wins-the-record-breaking-wsop-main-event-121-mln Author: Doro Published: 2023-07-18 · Updated: 2024-09-12 Category: Live Game ![Daniel Weinman wins the record-breaking WSOP Main Event! ($12,1 mln)](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Daniel-Weinman-nowy-mistrz-swiata.jpg) **After a surprisingly swift conclusion to the 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) $10,000 Main Event World Championship, Atlanta’s Daniel Weinman emerged victorious as the newly crowned world poker champion – taking home a staggering $12,100,000 in prize money.** Daniel Weinman also had a notable victory in April at the World Poker Tour Tournament of Champions. A total of 10,043 poker players from around the world competed in the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. After ten days of intense action, only one emerged victorious: American **Daniel Weinman**, who took home the championship bracelet and over 12 million dollars. ## Tournament Details The 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event was nothing short of historic. Held from June 30 to July 18, 2023, this year’s tournament shattered records with an astounding 10,043 entries, making it the largest WSOP Main Event in history. Hosted at the iconic Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, the event drew poker enthusiasts from around the globe, all vying for a piece of the action. With a buy-in of $10,000, the total prize pool soared to an incredible $93,051,000, setting the stage for an unforgettable showdown. ## Key hands from the final table of the Main Event The final day saw **Daniel Weinman**, **Steven Jones** and **Adam Walton** battle for the illustrious crown. While their stacks were deep, the decisive moment occurred rather quickly. Walton was eliminated after he chose to go all-in with a pair of 8s against Weinman’s squeeze. As it turned out, his opponent just happened to have a pair of AAs. The better hand held up and we had a heads-up. ![Adam Walton - the 3rd. place finisher in the ME WSOP 2023](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Adam-Walton.jpg) *Adam Walton, ©Spenser Sembrat* The heads-up match saw some conservative play before the tournament ended on just two hands. On the deciding hand, Jones played c-bet for 6 million and called Weinman’s raise to 18.5 million on the J-high flop (J52). On the turn Weinman bet 38 million into the pot and after several minutes Jones decided to go all-in. Weinman was way ahead with his KJ against Jones’ J8. Then an ace on the river sealed his victory. ![Adam Walton - the runner-up in the ME WSOP 2023](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Steven-Jones-runner-up-WSOP-ME-2023.jpg) *Steven Jones, ©Spenser Sembrat* ## The Coveted Prize At the heart of the 2023 WSOP Main Event was the coveted championship bracelet and a life-changing $12,100,000 first-place prize. Daniel Weinman’s win not only secured him this monumental sum but also etched his name in poker history. Remarkably, Weinman became the first player to clinch both the WSOP Main Event and a WPT Championship in the same year, a feat that underscores his exceptional skill and determination. The WSOP bracelet, one of the most prestigious awards in poker, now adorns Weinman’s wrist, symbolizing his place among the all-time greats of the game. ## Daniel Weinman is your new WSOP Main Event World Champion! The winner of this year’s Main Event is Daniel Weinman, who won a whopping $12.1 million in prize money for his efforts. As for the runner-up and third place finishers, Steven Jones won $6.5 million, while Adam Walton was rewarded with a generous $4 million prize. The six other players who made it to the final table also received hefty payouts – all in all, this year’s Main Event was an incredible success! 1. Daniel Weinman USA $12,100,0002 2. Steven Jones USA $6,500,000 3. Adam Walton USA $4,000,0004 4. Jan-Peter Jachtmann Germany $3,000,000 5. Ruslan Prydryk Ukraine $2,400,0006 6. Dean Hutchison Scotland $1,850,0007 7. Toby Lewis England $1,425,0008 8. Juan Maceiras Spain $1,125,000 9. Daniel Holzner Italy $900,000 The conclusion of the Main Event marks the end of the 54th World Series of Poker festival. The final event, Event 95 $1,000 Super Turbo NLHE, will take place on July 18th and is sure to be an exciting finale to a fantastic event! --- # Who will be the next WSOP Main Event champion? Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/who-will-be-the-next-wsop-main-event-champion Author: Doro Published: 2023-07-16 Category: Live Game ![Who will be the next WSOP Main Event champion?](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Final-Nine-Main-Event-WSOP-2023.jpg) **After eight days of thrilling poker action, the World Series of Poker 2023 Main Event has come to its highly-anticipated finale. Now, nine of the best players from this tournament will battle it out for the unofficial title of World Champion of Poker, an exquisite and heavily adorned championship bracelet, and a grand prize of $12.1 million.** 10,043 poker players have registered for the 2023 WSOP Main Event, and after eight days of intense competition, only nine have managed to make it through to the final table. On July 16th, these nine will be back in action to determine a new champion among them over the next two days. Who will come out on top? ## The current situation **Adam Walton** from the US is the chip leader, with a significant gap over his competitors. He will return to play the final table with 143.8 million chips. Following him are two fellow Americans, **Steven Jones** and **Daniel Weinman**. The former has 90.3 million, while Weinman holds 81.7 million. Blinds will be at 600K/1.2M+1.2M BBA when play resumes. | **#** | **Player** | **Nationality** | **Stack** | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1. | Adam Walton | USA | 143.800.000 | | 2. | Steven Jones | USA | 90.300.000 | | 3. | Daniel Weinman | USA | 81.700.000 | | 4. | Jan-Peter Jachtmann | Germany | 74.600.000 | | 5. | Juan Maceiras | Spain | 68.000.000 | | 6. | Ruslan Prydryk | Ukraine | 50.700.000 | | 7. | Dean Hutchison | UK | 41.700.000 | | 8. | Daniel Holzner | Italy | 31.900.000 | | 9. | Toby Lewis | UK | 19.800.000 | ## Meet the nine finalists for the 2023 WSOP Main Event The chip leader **Adam Walton** is a professional poker player with an impressive live tournament career and winnings of 989.037$. His biggest success to date was a 283.072$ payout for taking second place in the NLH tournament with a buy-in of 3.000$, which was part of the WPT World Championship 2022. A few years ago, Walton moved to Las Vegas from Seattle, where he began to focus on his career as a professional poker player. The next contestant is from Arizona. He has been playing poker seriously for 10-12 years. **Steven Jones** (USA) has total live winnings of $245,346. His highest achievement to date is finishing ninth at the 2018 WSOP Colossus tournament. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Steven-Jones-ME-WSOP-2023-finalist.jpg) *Steven Jones ©DannyMaxwell* **Daniel Weinman**, hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, is one of the most accomplished players in the WSOP Main Event. He boasts a WPT event win and a WSOP championship bracelet for his victory in the $1,000 PLO event last year. His skills at the poker table have earned him much success throughout his career. **Jan-Peter Jachtmann**, a renowned figure on the European poker scene, holds the 4th largest stack. His career has yielded him over $1.9 million in winnings and one WSOP bracelet for his victory in the 2012 $10k PLO championship event. He continues to compete at high stakes tournaments all over Europe and is a force to be reckoned with. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Jan-Peter-Jachtmann.jpg) *Jan-Peter Jachtmann ©PokerGO* **Juan Maceiras** is a passionate 39-year-old poker enthusiast. With a current stack of 68 big blinds in the game, he’s determined to make this tournament count and increase his career live tournament winnings beyond his current $1.12 million. His ambition is no surprise, given his success at the 2011 European Poker Tour (EPT) in Spain where he won an impressive $467,532 for fifth place. **Ruslan Prydryk** is a Ukrainian poker player with $461,758 in live tournament earnings. Little is known about his poker career. His last recorded live cash was from six years ago, and now he is in the limelight at poker’s biggest event. He has a total of four tournament wins to his name, including two in the Russian Poker Tour, one at the France Poker Series, and most recently a €1,100 NLH Turbo event win at EPT Deauville for $21,863. This victory marks his most recent triumph in tournaments. He recorded his largest payout to date: winning $104,637 for a fifth-place finish at EPT Warsaw in October 2009,. This was the only six-figure score of his career. **Dean Huctchison** (Scotland) can boast of winnings totaling 723,865$. In 2014 he won the Main Event at UKIPT Edinburgh, earning 93,900£. His biggest WSOP payout was 35,773$ for finishing ninth in the NLH Freezeout (1,500$; 2023). ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Dean-Hutchison.jpg) *Dean Hutchison ©Jamie Thomson* **Daniel Holzner**, an Italian in live tournaments, has gathered 13 payouts with a total prize money of $25,517. During the 2023 WSOP he placed 652nd in the Millionaire Maker (1,500$) for which he received $4,070. This is his only payout record in the history of WSOP performances. –*I am a farmer. I work with my dad, who is over there. And yeah, we have apple trees, we work there, and this is my work besides poker*– he told *PokerNews*. **Toby Lewis**, hailing from Eastleigh, United Kingdom, is one of the most dangerous players at this final table. Although he starts off with the smallest stack, if he manages to double up quickly, he will easily become a formidable contender for victory. With over $8 million in winnings from tournaments like Aussie Millions and EPT Vilamoura, he is no doubt a truly top-class poker player. All eyes will be on him as the game progresses. ## When will the 2023 WSOP Main Event champion be announced? Players will return to the tables on April 16th. The session will continue until only four players remain with chips left at the table. Those remaining players are guaranteed a payout of $900,000 each. Once the first elimination occurs, millionaires will start to form among the participants. At stake is a total of $12,100,000 for the one who takes all the chips at the end of the tournament. The winner will be announced on July 17th. Follow along with text coverage on PokerNews or watch exclusive live video footage from behind the paywall via PokerGO. --- # The most common tournament mistakes, and what the solver does instead Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/4-mistakes-to-avoid-in-poker-tournaments-part-1 Author: Doro Published: 2023-07-12 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: General ![The most common tournament mistakes, and what the solver does instead](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/4-mistakes-to-avoid-in-poker-tournaments-hero.jpg) Three years ago we published a three-part series about preflop mistakes in tournaments, built from a training session Vlada Stojanovic gave for Poker Academy. The ideas were good; the write-up was not. Stack depths went missing, the format was never stated, and a few sentences do not survive a look at the solver. So I have put the whole series back together in one piece, with every spot re-opened in the app. Everything below is **chipEV, not ICM**: standard tournament simulations, 9-handed with **1bb of total ante** in the middle (the 80bb spot is 8-handed). Percentages are shares of all 1,326 starting combinations, the way the app counts them. Each section names its node, so you can open the same chart yourself, and the last one shows what ICM does to the numbers. ## 1. Jamming the big blind too often against a small blind open Blind versus blind, 20bb effective. The small blind raises to 3bb. You are in the big blind with 1bb already posted and 1bb of ante beside it, so there is 5bb in the middle and it costs you 2bb to call. Pot odds: call 2bb into a 5bb pot 25+2=28.6%\frac{2}{5+2}=28.6\% The solver folds 32.0% of hands here, calls 54.5% and moves all in with **13.3%**. The jam is real, and it is the small part of the strategy. Most players use it as their main one. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 20bb big blind against a 3bb small blind open, 9-handed chipEV: fold 32.0%, call 54.5%, all-in 13.3%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/4-mistakes-to-avoid-in-poker-tournaments-bb-vs-sb-20-fig.jpg) *20bb, BB vs. RFI from SB. Teal = call, dark red = all in 20bb. The app shows the pot at 5.0 and the price at 28.6%.* The old article explained it like this: the small blind’s range is “highly polarized, indicating a strong inclination towards calling”. That chain does not connect. The question is *what the small blind continues with when you jam*, and the next node answers it. Facing the all-in it folds most of what it opened and calls with only **37% of its opening range**: AA down to 99, AK to A9 suited, A7s, A6s, KQs, KJs, KTs, JTs, J9s, T9s and KJo. A third of those combos hold an ace. Now look at your own hand. KJo, QTs and T9s are beaten by most of that list, so putting 20bb in against it is the worst use of them. In a blind battle you are also the one in position after the flop. Offsuit aces are the opposite: a third of that calling range holds an ace, so one in your hand removes a tenth of it, and the hand plays badly after the flop anyway. It would rather have the 5bb now. ![Solver EV of jamming versus calling for nine hands, 20bb big blind against a 3bb small blind open: small pairs and offsuit aces prefer the all-in, broadways and suited hands prefer the call](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/4-mistakes-to-avoid-in-poker-tournaments-jam-or-call-20bb.png) *The same node, hand by hand. 22 gains 0.45bb by jamming instead of calling; T9s loses 0.60bb.* - Jam: 22–66, most offsuit aces (AKo to A9o, A4o, A3o, A2o; A8o and A6o part of the time), AKs, AQs, AJs, A2s. - Call: everything with playability, so 77 and up, A5s to A3s, suited broadways, suited connectors, offsuit broadways. A7o and A5o call as well. - Fold: the bottom 32%, almost all of it offsuit. Short stacks get their own article: [short stack strategy from 10 to 20bb](https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-survive-with-a-short-stack-20bb-or-less). [pa-cta id=”mtt_charts” to=”/preflop-charts” title=”Open these nodes yourself” body=”Every position, every stack depth, with the exact action for all 169 hands.” label=”Browse the charts”] ## 2. Treating a limped blind battle like a normal pot Same blind battle, 17.5bb, but now the small blind limps. The pot is 3bb (1bb limp, your 1bb, 1bb ante) and it costs you nothing to see a flop. The app does not even draw a fold button at this node. The original article said the big blind can “check and fully realize their equity before the flop”. Equity gets realized after the flop, not before it, and how much you keep depends on position, stack depth and the board. The simpler version: checking is free, so weak hands keep their equity instead of throwing it away. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 17.5bb big blind facing a small blind limp: check 54.9%, raise to 2.5bb 32.8%, all-in 12.3%, no fold option](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/4-mistakes-to-avoid-in-poker-tournaments-bb-vs-limp-175-fig.jpg) *17.5bb, BB vs. Limp. There is no fold tile: the solver checks 54.9%, raises to 2.5bb 32.8% and jams 12.3%.* The next claim in the old article was that the small blind limps about 54% of its range, and that “a significant portion of their range will fold to a raise”. It does not. Against the 2.5bb raise, the limping range continues **81% of the time**: it calls with 37.2% of all hands and jams another 6.6%, out of the 53.9% it limped. You are not raising these people off their hands. You raise for value, for the dead money, and to charge the hands that flop badly. The rest of Vlada’s advice holds up: build the raising range so you are not ashamed of it when the limp-jam comes back. The solver’s raise is mostly offsuit (K8o, Q8o, J7o, T7o, 97o, 95o, 74o), sitting next to the strong part: AA through 99 and the suited broadways. Suited hands with playability, like J7s, 54s and 92s, just check. And the “diagonal rule” from the old post turns out to be measurable. Split the grid along the pairs: suited hands sit above it, offsuit hands below. Of the suited combos the big blind raises, **82% call** when the small blind jams over the top. Of the offsuit combos it raises, only **17%** do. More on the blinds: [big blind basics and blind-versus-blind play](https://poker.academy/blog/post/big-blind-basics-explained-useful-tips-for-poker-players). ## 3. Opening the wrong hands from the small blind Still 17.5bb, everyone folds to you in the small blind. The solver plays 84.3% of hands: limp 53.9%, raise to 3bb 15.4%, all in 15.0%, fold 15.7%. The mistake sits in *which* hands you raise. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 17.5bb small blind first in: limp 53.9%, raise to 3bb 15.4%, all-in 15.0%, fold 15.7%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/4-mistakes-to-avoid-in-poker-tournaments-sb-rfi-175-fig.jpg) *17.5bb, SB RFI. Teal = limp, orange = raise to 3bb, dark red = all in 17.5bb, grey = fold.* The raising range is not the top of the range. AA, AKs, AQs, KK, QQ, JJ and TT raise, and so do A9s to A6s, J9s, T9s, T8s, K8o, Q8o and Q7o. Meanwhile AJs, ATs, A5s to A2s, K9s, Q9s, AKo and AQo all limp, and 22–55, the offsuit aces from AJo down, 98s, 87s and 76s go all in. Vlada’s rule for finding them was to ask which hands make a bad limp-call. A8s limped is a hand that flops top pair with a weak kicker and very little else; raised, it wins the pot outright often enough to be worth the same. Two caveats. The solver is nearly indifferent for most of these hands: A8s is worth 1.62bb raising and 1.62bb limping. And it is the *shape* of the range that does the work here, not the individual hand. A raise made only of premiums is easy to play against; one with no premiums in it is worse. ## 4. Defending too wide four-way, and never jamming 35bb effective, 9-handed. The hijack opens to 2.3bb, the button calls, the small blind calls, and you are in the big blind. There is 8.9bb in the middle (2.3 × 3, your 1bb, 1bb ante) and it costs 1.3bb to call. Pot odds: call 1.3bb into an 8.9bb pot 1.38.9+1.3=12.7%\frac{1.3}{8.9+1.3}=12.7\% Wonderful odds, and still not enough for a lot of hands: the solver **folds 47.0%** here. Take the old article’s example, J8o. Calling is worth −1.13bb and folding −1.00bb, so folding wins by 0.13bb even at 12.7%. Three players are already in, all of them hold hands that dominate J8o, and you play the rest out of position. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 35bb big blind four-way against a hijack open with button and small blind calls: fold 47.0%, call 40.1%, raise to 12.8bb 2.3%, all-in 10.6%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/4-mistakes-to-avoid-in-poker-tournaments-bb-4way-35-fig.jpg) *35bb, BB multiway vs. HJ (BTN, SB). Pot 8.9bb, price 12.7%, and the solver still folds 47%.* The play almost nobody makes is the other one: the solver moves all in for 35bb with **10.6%** of hands. The lecture called them “J9s, QTs, all suited broadways”. J9s is a suited connector, not a broadway hand, but the range is right: suited broadways and suited connectors down to T9s, the suited aces, every pair from 77 to KK, and AKo, AQo, AJo, ATo. Aces always raise to 12.8bb instead, and QJs and AJs mostly do, which is the tell. The jam here is the second tier of the range, not the top of it. It works because the hijack opened 29.1% of hands and can call the jam with under **30% of that**: AA down to 77, AKs to ATs, AKo, AQo, AJo, KQs, KJs. Nine big blinds of dead money, folded to you seven times out of ten, beats playing a three-way pot out of position. ## 5. Missing the squeeze 80bb effective, 8-handed. The cutoff opens to 2.5bb with 35.5% of hands, the button calls, the small blind folds, and you look down at A♠︎T♠︎ in the big blind. There is 7.5bb in the middle and 1.5bb to call. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 80bb big blind against a cutoff open and a button call: fold 39.4%, call 48.9%, raise to 12.3bb 10.1%, all-in 1.5%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/4-mistakes-to-avoid-in-poker-tournaments-bb-sqz-80-fig.jpg) *80bb, BB multiway vs. CO (BTN). The squeeze is 12.3bb, five times the open.* The solver squeezes to 12.3bb with 10.1% of hands, and ATs is one of them, 100% of the time. The lecture said ATs “is ahead of the 35% CO opening range by a lot”, which is worth putting a number on. Against exactly the range the solver opens from the cutoff in this simulation, one suit combination of ATs has **58.6% equity** (Monte Carlo, 200,000 hands, so read that as 58.6% ± 0.1). So ATs is ahead of that range, and I would not call it by a lot. The edge is small. Raising ATs is worth 1.10bb, flatting 1.07bb: three hundredths of a big blind. One hand like that is no disaster, and it is worth fixing because the spot comes up fifty times a session. AJs is clearer: 1.77bb raising against 1.68bb calling. The other half of the reason is what the cutoff has to do next. Facing the squeeze it continues with **30% of its opening range** and no more: 14% calls, 12% moves all in, 4% 4-bets. Seven times out of ten the player who opened is done with the hand, and the button still has to survive the squeeze behind him. ## 6. Not 3-betting and not jamming over wide late-position opens 35bb, the button opens to 2.3bb with 48.2% of hands, call it half, and you are in the big blind for 1.3bb more into a 4.8bb pot, a price of 21.3%. The solver folds 21.8%, calls 59.4%, 3-bets to 8.6bb with 10.9% and moves all in for 35bb with a further **7.9%**. Part three of the old series quoted “13.7% raises” from a chart nobody could see; here the aggressive part of the range is 18.8%, split between two sizes. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, 35bb big blind against a 2.3bb button open: fold 21.8%, call 59.4%, 3-bet to 8.6bb 10.9%, all-in 7.9%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/4-mistakes-to-avoid-in-poker-tournaments-bb-vs-btn-35-fig.jpg) *35bb, BB vs. RFI from BTN. Orange = 3-bet to 8.6bb, dark red = all in for 35bb.* The two aggressive ranges do different jobs, and not the ones people expect. The 3-bet is the top: AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, AKs–ATs, AKo, KQs, JTs. The jam is the awkward middle: 22 through 99, A5o, AJo, ATo, AQo, KQo, K7s. Small pairs are the clearest case: 22 is worth +0.15bb jamming, −0.01bb calling and −0.15bb 3-betting. Why 22 or K7s can shove 35bb into a 4.8bb pot: the button folds **74.9% of its opening range** to it. That is the 73% from the lecture, and it holds up. Half the combos it does call with hold an ace, so one in your hand deletes an eighth of them. That is why A5o (76% of the time) and K7s (100%) jam, while J8s, T8s and 98s flat, in this simulation and against this size. One wording to correct: A5o and A2o at 35bb are not an “all-in open with BTN”, as the old part three put it. You are not opening; you are 3-bet jamming over the button. A5o does it 76% of the time, and A2o is genuinely indifferent: jam, 3-bet and call are all worth −0.26bb. The deeper version of this spot has its own article: [is 40bb too deep to 3-bet all in?](https://poker.academy/blog/post/40bb-is-it-too-big-to-3bet-all-in) [pa-cta id=”mtt_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Drill the six spots” body=”The trainer deals these nodes and grades every decision against the same solver output.” label=”Start training”] ## All of this is chipEV Vlada put his own caveat on all of it: “this is Chip EV and as soon as we introduce some ICM, there will be less jamming.” He is right. Chip EV assumes a chip won is worth what a chip lost costs. In a tournament it is not, and the app’s ICM simulations carry the gap as a bubble factor. At 35bb with 20 players left and everyone already in the money it is **1.358**; with 50 left and 30 paid it is **1.387**. A chip you lose costs you about 1.36 to 1.39 times what a chip you win gains. You can see it in the ranges. The same big-blind spot against a button open at 35bb jams 5.3% and 5.0% in those ICM sims, where the chipEV chart jams 7.9%. They are 8-handed with a 2bb open against 9-handed and 2.3bb, so read it as a direction, not an exact difference: under ICM the calls stay and the all-ins shrink. Bounties move the maths in the opposite direction, which is [PKO, and it has its own rules](https://poker.academy/blog/post/pko-fundamentals-how-to-play-with-bounties). ## What to take from this - Blind versus blind at 20bb: the jam is 13% of your range, not your default. - Limped pots: checking is free, so the big blind never folds. The raise is for value rather than folds, because the limper continues 81% of the time. - Small blind opens: the raising range is not the top of your range. It is the hands that make bad limp-calls, mixed with enough strong ones. - Four-way pots: 12.7% pot odds still folds 47% of hands, and the play you are missing is the all-in. - Squeezes: small edges, taken often. The player who opened folds 70% of the time. - Against a 50% button open: 3-bet your top, jam the awkward middle, stop calling with small pairs. None of these is a chart to memorize. Each one is the same question about the other player: what does he continue with, and how does my hand do against *that* rather than against the range he opened? Open the node, look at what he has to do next, and the right action usually names itself. Cheers! 🙂 --- # 2023 WSOP Main Event Record Attendance: Breaking Boundaries Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/wsop-main-event-attendance-record Author: Doro Published: 2023-07-09 · Updated: 2024-09-12 Category: Live Game ![2023 WSOP Main Event Record Attendance: Breaking Boundaries](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/ME-WSOP-2023-feature-table.jpg) **The 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event has made history, smashing all previous attendance records. This year’s tournament, organized by Caesars Entertainment, has seen an extraordinary number of participants, highlighting the escalating popularity and excitement of this iconic event. The new Horseshoe Las Vegas, the venue for the 2023 WSOP, played a significant role in attracting record attendance, showcasing the passion of the poker community and the venue’s capability to host such a monumental event. Stay tuned to discover the new record.** The previous record, set in 2006, saw 8,773 players register for the WSOP Main Event. That year, **Jamie Gold** emerged victorious, leaving Las Vegas a staggering $12,000,000 richer. Before the 2023 Main Event kicked off, there were widespread speculations that this year could surpass the record set 17 years ago. Yet, no one was likely ready for the bar to be raised quite this high! ## Overview of the WSOP The World Series of Poker (WSOP) stands as the pinnacle of poker tournaments, renowned for its grandeur and prestige. Since its inception in 1970, the WSOP has grown into the largest and richest gaming event globally, awarding over $4 billion in prize money. This iconic series has expanded its reach beyond Las Vegas, with international editions like WSOP Europe, WSOP Asia-Pacific, WSOP International Circuit Series, and the newly introduced WSOP Paradise. As part of Caesars Entertainment’s Caesars Digital operations, the WSOP offers a comprehensive slate of tournaments, catering to every major poker variation. The world series of poker continues to captivate players and fans alike, solidifying its status as the ultimate poker competition. ## How Many Players Competed in the Main Event WSOP 2023 and Set an Attendance Record? We had to wait until the end of late registration on Day 2D of the 2023 WSOP Main Event at Horseshoe Las Vegas for the final participant count to be confirmed. The fact that the record was shattered was known in advance. The question, however, was by how much. As confirmed by the organisers, a staggering number of **10,043 poker players competed in the 2023 WSOP Main Event**, surpassing the previous record by a whopping 1,270 buy-ins. The significance of Horseshoe Las Vegas as the venue played a pivotal role in attracting this record attendance. ![2023 WSOP Main Event bracelet](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/WSOP-2023-Main-Event-Champion-bracelet.jpg) *©PokerGO* ## Historical Context The WSOP boasts a storied history, with its first event dating back to 1968. Over the decades, the series has evolved, introducing new formats and innovations. One notable change was the introduction of the November Nine in 2008, where the Main Event final table was delayed until November to build anticipation. However, in May 2017, the WSOP reverted to its traditional format, crowning the Main Event winner in July. Television coverage has played a crucial role in the WSOP’s popularity, with the Main Event final table being broadcast since 2003. These milestones have contributed to the WSOP’s enduring legacy and its place in poker history. ### Previous Attendance Records The WSOP Main Event has seen several attendance records over the years, reflecting the growing popularity of poker. In 2006, the Main Event set a record with 8,773 entrants, a milestone that stood for 17 years. This record was shattered in 2023 when 10,043 players registered for the Main Event, marking a new era in WSOP history. The 2024 WSOP Main Event continued this trend, setting a new attendance record with 10,112 entrants. These consecutive record-breaking years underscore the increasing enthusiasm and participation in the world series of poker. ## Player Reaction The record-breaking attendance at the 2023 WSOP Main Event has sparked excitement and enthusiasm across the poker community. Players have taken to social media to share their congratulations and admiration for the event, celebrating this historic achievement. ### Response to Record Attendance WSOP Senior Vice President and Executive Director Ty Stewart described the 2023 WSOP as an “all-time summer” for the organization. Stewart emphasized that achieving a record-breaking field in the same year as the 50th anniversary of the WSOP is particularly fitting. He highlighted the historic nature of this milestone, attributing it to the growth and popularity of poker. The entire poker community has rallied around the event, contributing to its massive success. The record-breaking attendance has also resulted in a colossal prize pool of $94,041,600, with the Main Event winner set to receive the largest payout in Main Event history, exceeding $10 million. This monumental achievement is a testament to the enduring appeal and excitement of the WSOP. ## This Year’s World Series of Poker Payouts Will Be Record-Breaking Too With a record-breaking number of participants comes record-breaking payouts for those in the tournament. Let’s break it down. The top 1,507 poker players will make it in the money (ITM), with the minimum cash-out being $15,000. Reaching the final table assures a payout of at least $900,000. The first player to become a millionaire will be the one who finishes in 8th place. The runner-up will walk away with a hefty $6,500,000, while a staggering **$12,100,000 is reserved for the champion of the 2023 WSOP Main Event**. Isn’t that just mind blowing? | Place | Prize | | --- | --- | | 1st | $12,100,000 | | 2nd | $6,500,000 | | 3rd | $4,000,000 | | 4th | $3,000,000 | | 5th | $2,400,000 | | 6th | $1,850,000 | | 7th | $1,425,000 | | 8th | $1,250,000 | | 9th | $900,000 | Does the huge turnout at the 2023 WSOP Main Event mean we’re seeing a new poker boom around the world? --- # Introducing Our New Feature: Big Blind Ante! Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/introducing-our-new-feature-big-blind-ante Author: Doro Published: 2023-07-04 · Updated: 2024-09-11 Category: General ![Introducing Our New Feature: Big Blind Ante!](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Introducing-BBA.jpg) **We are proud to introduce Big Blind ante to our preflop simulations – the first of its kind in the market! This feature enables you to replicate live game conditions more accurately than ever before. Have a look and discover all the available scenarios.** ## What is BB Ante in poker terms? Big Blind Ante (BBA) is a relatively recent change to how antes are posted in tournament poker games. Traditionally, each player at the table would contribute an ante every hand. However, with the Big Blind Ante format, instead of each player posting an ante each hand, the responsibility falls on the player in the Big Blind position. This player posts an amount equal to the Big Blind, which serves as the ante for the entire table. The big blind pays the ante for all players at the table. The purpose of this change is primarily to speed up the game. It simplifies the process of collecting antes and ensures that the number of hands dealt per level increases, leading to a more efficient and enjoyable game. - The big blind pays the ante for the entire table. - The small blind is placed by the player to the immediate left of the dealer. - Forced bets like the big blind and antes are mandatory contributions required from players before the start of a hand. - Mandatory bets like the big blind and antes create a level playing field and enhance the excitement of the game. The popularity of the Big Blind Ante system has grown, particularly in poker tournaments and Texas Hold’em games, due to its impact on gameplay dynamics and efficiency. Understanding poker terms like the big blind and ante is essential for effectively participating in poker games. ## How the Big Blind Ante Works The Big Blind Ante is a game-changer in the world of poker, particularly in tournament settings. This innovative system shifts the responsibility of posting the ante from each individual player to the player in the big blind position, streamlining the game and minimizing disputes over ante bets. Here’s a breakdown of how it works: - The player in the big blind position pays the ante for the entire table, typically an amount equal to the big blind. - This ante is considered dead money, meaning it is not part of the player’s stack and cannot be reclaimed. - The big blind ante is paid before the cards are dealt and is non-refundable. - Regardless of whether the player in the big blind position chooses to play their hand or fold, they are responsible for paying the big blind ante. - In addition to the big blind ante, the player must also post the big blind, which is the minimum bet required to stay in the hand. The Big Blind Ante system is particularly popular in tournament poker, especially in Texas Hold’em games, and is also making its way into some high-stakes cash games. By consolidating the ante into a single, mandatory bet, this system simplifies the process and ensures a smoother, faster game. While some players might feel the pressure of paying a larger ante when in the big blind position, the benefits are clear. The game speeds up as less time is spent collecting antes, and the consistency of the system reduces the likelihood of missed ante payments, which can otherwise slow down the game. In essence, the Big Blind Ante system is a modern twist on traditional poker rules, designed to enhance the flow of the game and reduce disputes. Its growing popularity in poker rooms and tournaments is a testament to its effectiveness in creating a more efficient and enjoyable poker experience. ## **Where can I find BB ante simulations?** Once logged in, click the “Go to charts” button to view the preflop simulations. Then from the dropdown menu choose the: “BB ante NEW”. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/BBA-new.jpg) Currently, there are five simulations available, but the creator and co-founder of Poker Academy **Jan Przysucha** told us that more scenarios will be added in the future. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/BBA.jpg) > *At Poker Academy we strive to provide the best preflop simulations on the market and that’s why we are now beginning to include scenarios with BB ante – a format that is currently dominant in live games. We look forward to gradually increasing the number of available scenarios for our Users.* > > Jan Przysucha – Poker Academy co-founder ## We welcome Your feedback! We would love to hear your thoughts on our latest improvement and any new simulations you would like to see in the future. We are looking forward to receiving your feedback. --- # Hail to the king – Phil Hellmuth wins 17th bracelet! Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/hail-to-the-king-phil-hellmuth-wins-17th-bracelet Author: Doro Published: 2023-07-02 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Live Game ![Hail to the king – Phil Hellmuth wins 17th bracelet!](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Phill-Hellmuth-with-17th-bracelet.jpg) **The controversial poker player, Phil Hellmuth, is no stranger to dividing opinion in the poker community. Despite this, when it comes to his performances at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), he is the most efficient player around, **boasting an impressive record of career WSOP bracelets**. Every time criticism of Hellmuth arises, he sets out to prove his detractors wrong and once again demonstrates why he is one of the best at what he does.** Today, **Phil Hellmuth** has achieved the extraordinary. Having won his 17th WSOP event, he is now firmly ahead of his rivals in the “most wins” category. The significance of Las Vegas as the primary venue for the WSOP cannot be overstated, as it has been the stage for many of Hellmuth’s record-setting victories. It’s worth noting that no other poker player comes even close; **Phil Ivey**, **Johnny Chan** and recently deceased **Doyle Brunson** are all tied for second place with 10 wins each. Clearly, Hellmuth is the best player in the world when it comes to WSOP. He won his 17th bracelet in the Event #72: **$10,000 Super Turbo Bounty No-Limit Hold’em**. It was a one-day event, with 642 poker players taking part. Blinds changed every 20 minutes and a $3,000 bounty was awarded for every elimination. There was just over $4m to be distributed among 97 players. ## Phil Hellmuth’s Poker Career ### Early Success and Nickname “Poker Brat” Phil Hellmuth’s poker career spans over three decades, with his first major success coming in 1989 when he won the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event at just 24 years old. This victory not only earned him the title of World Champion but also the nickname “Poker Brat” due to his aggressive playing style and outspoken personality. Hellmuth’s early success was a testament to his skill and dedication to the game, and he quickly became a household name in the poker world. Hellmuth’s rise to fame was swift, and he continued to dominate the WSOP circuit, winning multiple bracelets and solidifying his position as one of the greatest poker players of all time. His reputation as a formidable opponent and his ability to perform under pressure earned him the respect of his peers and the admiration of fans. ## Two of the poker finest at the final table The final table of this event included another very well-known player. Considered by many to be the GOAT of poker, **Phli Ivey**. However, the American had to settle for a 6th place finish. He was eliminated from the tournament by Hellmuth, who isolated his all-in with a pair of AA. Ivey only had KdTd, and the board ran: 4s, Qh, 4h, Jh, 3c, so it was over for him. In heads-up Helmuth met with his fellow countryman **Justin Zaki**. At the begining of this duel stacks were almost even. Yet “Poker Brat” emerged victorious after just one hand, claiming his 17th World Series of Poker (WSOP) gold bracelet and the grand prize of $803,818. ![Phil Ivey at 54. WSOP](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Phil-Ivey.jpg) *Phil Ivey ©Omar Sader, PokerNews* You can follow text coverage of all WSOP event at [**Pokernews**](https://www.pokernews.com/tours/wsop/2023-wsop/event-71-50-000-plo-high-roller/). Both players saw the: 8s, Kc, and 4s after a limped action preflop. Phil led out with a bet of 1 million, and his opponent announced all-in and was quickly called. Hellmuth had two pairs (8c and 4h) whereas Zaki had a monster draw (6s and 7s). The turn paired board with a 4 of diamonds, which gave the chip leader a full house. All he had to do was to dodge 5 of spades on the river. The river dropped a K of spades, making Phil victorious once again! What an amazing performance! > Congrats to [@phil_hellmuth](https://twitter.com/phil_hellmuth?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) on winning bracelet #17 just now! [#WSOP](https://twitter.com/hashtag/WSOP?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) (video from [@StevejKraft](https://twitter.com/StevejKraft?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)) [pic.twitter.com/Yups91Jp98](https://t.co/Yups91Jp98) > > – Tim Totten (@N4GN) [July 2, 2023](https://twitter.com/N4GN/status/1675473693525569538?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) | **#** | **Player** | **Nationality** | **Winnings (USD)** | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | Phil Hellmuth | USA | $803,818 | | 2 | Justin Zaki | USA | $496,801 | | 3 | Tom Kunze | Germany | $349,737 | | 4 | Kelvin Kerber | Brazil | $249,876 | | 5 | Chris Savage | USA | $181,230 | | 6 | Phil Ivey | USA | $133,461 | | 7 | Brandon Steven | USA | $99,817 | | 8 | Marc Foggin | UK | $75,837 | | 9 | Abdella Ali | USA | $58,546 | | 10 | Lawrence Brandt | USA | $45,938 | There are no adequate words to capture the magnitude of Phil Hellmuth’s accomplishment this evening. It is an inspiring feat and a testament to his commitment to the game. Congratulations, Phil! We can’t wait to see what else you will achieve in your poker career. ## Phil Hellmuth’s Impact on Poker ### Legacy and Influence on the Game Phil Hellmuth’s impact on poker extends far beyond his impressive list of accolades. He has been a driving force in popularizing the game and bringing it into the mainstream. Hellmuth’s charismatic personality and ability to connect with fans have made him a beloved figure in the poker community. Hellmuth’s influence on the game can be seen in the many young players who have followed in his footsteps. His aggressive playing style and ability to read opponents have inspired a generation of poker players to adopt a more assertive approach to the game. Additionally, Hellmuth’s commitment to promoting poker as a legitimate sport has helped to raise the profile of the game and attract new players. Hellmuth’s legacy extends beyond the poker table as well. He has been involved in various charity initiatives and has used his platform to raise awareness for important causes. His dedication to giving back to the community has earned him the respect and admiration of his peers and fans alike. ## Beyond the WSOP: Other Poker Ventures ### World Poker Tour (WPT) and Other Activities While Phil Hellmuth is perhaps best known for his dominance at the World Series of Poker, he has also had success on the World Poker Tour (WPT). Although he has not won a WPT title, he has consistently performed well in WPT events and has been a regular fixture on the tour. In addition to his tournament play, Hellmuth has been involved in various other poker-related ventures. He has written several books on poker strategy and theory, including “Play Poker Like the Pros” and “Deal Me In.” He has also been a commentator for the World Series of Poker and other major poker tournaments, providing expert analysis and insights to fans. Hellmuth has also been involved in various business ventures, including a poker training website and a line of poker-themed merchandise. His commitment to promoting poker and providing resources for players has made him a respected figure in the poker community. Overall, Phil Hellmuth’s impact on poker extends far beyond his impressive list of accolades. He has been a driving force in popularizing the game, inspiring a generation of players, and promoting poker as a legitimate sport. His legacy continues to be felt in the poker world, and he remains one of the most beloved and respected figures in the game. --- # $50,000 PLO High Roller – A once in a lifetime opportunity for PA friend Paweł Chmiel Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/50000-plo-high-roller-a-once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity-for-pa-friend-pawel-chmiel Author: Doro Published: 2023-07-02 · Updated: 2024-08-15 Category: Live Game ![$50,000 PLO High Roller – A once in a lifetime opportunity for PA friend Paweł Chmiel](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Pawel-Chmiel.jpg) ****Paweł Chmiel, an experienced professional poker player and a long time friend of Poker Academy, faced a rare challenge when he entered event #71 of the tournament with a $50,000 entry fee. How did he fare in this Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller? Let’s find out!** Elias Harala, another prominent figure in competitive poker, also participated in high-stakes events like the 2023 World Series of Poker, showcasing his skills and competitiveness.** Chmiel, a highly experienced poker player from Poland, triumphed in the satellite and earned his spot at one of WSOP’s most expensive events this year: the $50,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller. His victory enabled him to participate in this high-profile tournament with the potential to profit immensely. For optimal viewing of the event details, ensure your browser is updated to the latest version. ## Swimming with sharks At the end of the first day of Event #71, a three-day tournament involving 200 poker players, 70 players had advanced. Among them was **Pawel Chmiel** who held the 50th largest stack with 421,000 chips. The chip leader at Day 1’s close was **Alex Foxen** with 2,868,000, demonstrating the strategic importance of the button position in poker. The information booklet indicated that play on day two would have continued until the best five of the tournament were determined. Unfortunately, this did not come to fruition as players dropped out too slowly and the clock was stopped at 11 players in total. Unfortunately, there is no Pole among these remaining participants; **Paweł Chmiel had done his best but dropped out around two hours after play resumed on Day 2 of the tournament.** ![Mikołaj Zawadzki, Paweł Brzeski, Paweł Chmiel](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Mikolaj-Zawadzki-Pawel-Brzeski-Pawel-Chmiel.jpg) *Mikołaj Zawadzki, Paweł Brzeski, Paweł Chmiel ©Rafał Gładysz* During critical moments, players often took their full allotted time, weighing their options and feeling the pressure of the high-stakes competition. The top 30 players advanced to the ITM stage, guaranteeing a minimum prize of $82,474 for each of them. The eventual winner will receive an impressive total payout of $2,303,017 – no doubt a life-changing amount of money! ## Who will win one of the most prestigious bracelets? Elias Harala Here are the 11 players vying for a chance at the championship bracelet and huge money today. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Tyler-Smith-Omar-Sader-Pokernews.jpg) *Tyler Smith ©Omar Sader, Pokernews.com* | **#** | **Player** | **Stack** | | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | Tyler Smith | 14,000,000 | | 2 | Jesse Lonis | 8,650,000 | | 3 | Elias Harala | 6,575,000 | | 4 | Danny Hannawa | 6,125,000 | | 5 | Kabeelan Rajamurthy | 5,400,000 | | 6 | James Park | 4,325,000 | | 7 | Anthony Marsico | 3,525,000 | | 8 | Adam Hendrix | 3,500,000 | | 9 | Jonas Kronwitter | 3,225,000 | | 10 | Isaac Haxton | 2,500,000 | | 11 | Ian Matakis | 2,150,000 | You can follow text coverage of the event on [**Pokernews**](https://www.pokernews.com/tours/wsop/2023-wsop/event-71-50-000-plo-high-roller/). More recently, [**Marcin “Góral” Horecki demonstrated how to win gold bracelets at the WSOP**](https://www.preflop.academy/blog/post/a-legend-a-trail-blazer-marcin-horecki-becomes-the-first-pole-with-a-wsop-bracelet/). Inspired by the success of their fellow countryman, Chmiel and other Polish poker players continue their pursuit of additional victories. Good luck to all! --- # A legend, a trail-blazer, Marcin Horecki becomes the first Pole with a WSOP bracelet! Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/a-legend-a-trail-blazer-marcin-horecki-becomes-the-first-pole-with-a-wsop-bracelet Author: Doro Published: 2023-07-02 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Live Game ![A legend, a trail-blazer, Marcin Horecki becomes the first Pole with a WSOP bracelet!](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Marcin-Horecki-WSOP.jpg) I**n the world of professional poker, there are few achievements as prestigious as winning a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet. For Marcin Horecki, this dream recently became a reality, making him the first player from Poland to earn this coveted accolade.** **We at the Poker Academy are extremely proud and delighted with the victory achieved by our fellow countryman.** **Marcin Horecki**, once a member of the Polish national alpine skiing team, found his second passion in poker after a career-ending injury. His transition from the slopes to the poker table has been nothing short of remarkable, with Horecki quickly establishing himself as a formidable force on European poker scene. Horecki, a prominent figure in the professional poker game in Poland, has served as a trailblazer for younger players. He remains an inspiration, having earned over $1,599,093 in live tournaments, including noteworthy third-place finishes in the EPT Main Events held in London (2008) and Prague (2010). ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/Marcin_Goral_Horecki.jpg) *Marcin “Góral” Horecki © PokerStars* Although he has achieved numerous successes throughout his career, his long-awaited “magnum opus” came to fruition only during the 54th annual World Series of Poker. ## **A Groundbreaking Achievement** Horecki’s victory came in the #55 $1500 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo 8 or Better event, where he faced off against some of the world’s most esteemed poker players. Among them was **Mike Matusow**, a legendary figure in the poker world, and the runner-up of this event. Despite the stiff competition, Horecki triumphed, cementing his place in poker history. Horecki’s WSOP win is not just a personal achievement but a milestone for Polish poker. He is the first player from Poland to win a WSOP bracelet, thereby putting Poland firmly on the global poker map. His victory will undoubtedly inspire a new generation of Polish poker players to pursue their dreams. > Polski hymn w Las Vegas! Bransoletka [@WSOP](https://twitter.com/WSOP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) dla [@MarcinHorecki](https://twitter.com/MarcinHorecki?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)! 🇵🇱 [pic.twitter.com/pJ9eZBW9l0](https://t.co/pJ9eZBW9l0) > > – Rafał Gładysz ♠️♥️♣️♦️ (@JD_poker) [June 28, 2023](https://twitter.com/JD_poker/status/1674165004172693504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) The success of the Pole in popularizing the game in his country is not insignificant. Particularly important is raising awareness about modern poker and advocating for sensible legal regulation of the game. Unfortunately, the current law is highly flawed, if not terrible. ## **Looking Ahead** As we celebrate Marcin Horecki’s historic WSOP win, we can’t help but look forward to his future endeavors. With his determination, skill, and passion for the game, there’s no doubt that we’ll be seeing more of Horecki’s poker prowess in the years to come. In the meantime, we raise our cards to Marcin Horecki, a trailblazer in the world of Polish poker and a source of inspiration for players in his country. Here’s to many more victories! --- # If you think… Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/thinking-poker Author: Gio Published: 2023-07-01 · Updated: 2023-07-11 Category: Mindset ![If you think…](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/07/ifyouthink.jpg) > If you think you are beaten, you are; > If you think you dare not, you don’t. > If you’d like to win, but you think you can’t, > It is almost a cinch you won’t. > > If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost; > For out in this world we find > Success begins with a fellow’s will > It’s all in the state of mind. > > If you think you’re outclassed, you are; > You’ve got to think high to rise. > You’ve got to be sure of yourself before > You can ever win the prize. > > Life’s battles don’t always go > To the stronger or faster man; > But soon or late the man who wins > Is the one who thinks he can! > > Walter D. Wintle I don’t know who needs to read this, but this poem represents the ultimate truth not only in poker, but also in life. I would say it is more “visible” in the game we play because it pushes us to the edge all the time; in life, you can take a break here and there, but as a poker player, you experience miniature lives many times over throughout your poker career. Take note: read this great poem before or after your next session; print it and put it on the wall, if you will… And never forget that the main difference between all of us is what we think. I won’t spend the next 10 rows explaining exactly what you should and more importantly, what you shouldn’t think; I really hope that you get it, and this is **the-wake-up-call-to-action**. > Good luck in your thinking! “**Thinking**” is a poem written by [Walter D. Wintle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_D._Wintle), a poet who lived in the late 19th and early 20th century. Little to nothing is known about any details of his life. “Thinking” is also known as “**The Man Who Thinks He Can**“. --- # Best Live Poker Stops – Europe Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/best-live-poker-stops-europe Author: Gio Published: 2023-06-26 · Updated: 2024-09-12 Category: Live Game ![Best Live Poker Stops – Europe](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/5-best-live-poker-stops-in-europe.jpg) Here, I’m going to list five of the best places where you can play live poker, and they offer some big events as well. ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/EXTERIOR-DIA-e1686659668194.jpg) **Casino Barcelona** – Located in Spain, this casino offers great gaming tables with high stakes and excellent prizes. The atmosphere is exciting and vibrant, making it a great place for weekend getaways or a night out. And this is place where after you bust you have tons of options of what to do. I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing. Does it increase the expected value of busting and raise the likelihood of you being comfortable with losing? 🙂 *The biggest **EPT Main Event** held there was in 2022, where the field had 2294 entries with a prizepool reaching €11,125,900. The winner of the competition was **Giuliano Bendinelli** from Italy, who received a prize of €1,491,133. **Jimmy Guerrero** from France came in second place, earning €1,250,337, after agreeing on a deal during the heads-up battle. **Neville Costa** from Brazil came in third place and won €734,470.* ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/image_2023-06-13_153555554.png) **Casino de Monte Carlo** – This luxurious casino in Monaco has been attracting gamblers from across the world ever since its opening in 1863. Famous for its breathtaking views of the Mediterranean Sea, this casino offers a unique gaming experience with some of the highest stakes in the region, or even the world. This is the place where most of the players can practice window shopping. I’m telling you, you might even win a $100k buy-in High-Roller or a Main Event, and you can easily spend that money. *Casino de Monte Carlo is where one of the largest single poker prizes was won. The year was 2009! Pieter de Korver won the Pokerstars.com EPT Grand Final for €2,300,000, a prize which is still difficult to attain even with the larger poker player pools nowadays.* ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IMG_6842-1024x768-1.jpg) **King’s Casino** – Located in Rozvadov, Czech Republic, this casino is one of the most renowned live poker venues in Europe. With over 100 tables and a variety of tournaments, players can enjoy high-stakes gaming action with generous prizes. *Currently, King’s Casino is one of the most well-known places in the continent for playing live poker.* *You can find a wide range of buy-ins and events, such as EPT, WPT, WSOP, German Poker Days, EA Poker Tour, Dutch Classics, France Poker Festival, DACH Poker Open* and more. ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/07bf0447a1.jpg) **Dusk Till Dawn Poker Club** – This popular poker venue in Nottingham, England is known for its great atmosphere and high-stakes games. With a range of tournaments and cash games available, it’s a great place to hone your poker skills while enjoying some friendly competition. ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/486ebc1b2700d65767d06a7d901ddbe2-1024x683.jpg) **Holland Casino Amsterdam** – Amsterdam, Netherlands: is a popular destination for poker enthusiasts. The casino offers an extensive poker program with a range of tournaments and cash games suitable for players of all levels. One of the most famous poker events there is **The Master Classics of Poker (MCOP)**, a renowned annual series, attracting a diverse field of players competing for substantial prizes. What is your favorite place to play? Have you had the chance to play there yet? Or do you prefer playing at home? ## Introduction to Live Poker in Europe Live poker in Europe has experienced significant growth over the years, with the continent hosting some of the most prestigious poker tournaments and events. The European Poker Tour (EPT) is one of the most popular and highly anticipated poker tours, attracting top players from around the world. With its rich history, cultural landmarks, and vibrant cities, Europe offers a unique and exciting experience for poker enthusiasts. From the luxurious casinos of Monte Carlo to the historic poker rooms of London, Europe has something to offer for every type of poker player. ## Major Poker Tours in Europe Europe is home to several major poker tours, each offering a unique experience for players. The European Poker Tour (EPT) is one of the most popular and highly anticipated poker tours, with stops in major cities such as Barcelona, Monte Carlo, and Prague. The World Poker Tour (WPT) also has a strong presence in Europe, with events in cities such as London and Paris. Other notable poker tours in Europe include the France Poker Series and the UK and Ireland Poker Tour. ## Top Poker Rooms and Destinations Europe is home to some of the world’s most famous and luxurious poker rooms. Casino Barcelona is one of the most popular poker destinations in Europe, offering a range of cash games and tournaments. The King’s Casino in Rozvadov is another top destination, featuring high-stakes tournaments and cash games. Other notable poker rooms in Europe include the Dusk Till Dawn Poker Club in Nottingham and the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel in Monte Carlo. ## Online Poker and Live Poker Connection Online poker has played a significant role in the growth of live poker in Europe. Many online poker sites offer satellites to live events, allowing players to qualify for major tournaments from the comfort of their own homes. The connection between online and live poker has also led to the creation of hybrid events, such as the PokerStars Championship, which combines online and live play. ## Live Poker Events and Tournaments Europe hosts a wide range of live poker events and tournaments throughout the year. The European Poker Tour (EPT) is one of the most popular and highly anticipated poker tours, with events in major cities such as Barcelona and Monte Carlo. The World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) is another major event, with a range of tournaments and cash games. Other notable live poker events in Europe include the France Poker Series and the UK and Ireland Poker Tour. --- # So Close Yet So Far: Jon Van Fleet finishes fourth in the event #44 Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/so-close-yet-so-far-jon-van-fleet-finishes-fourth-in-the-event-44 Author: Doro Published: 2023-06-23 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Live Game ![So Close Yet So Far: Jon Van Fleet finishes fourth in the event #44](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Jon-Van-Fleet-cover-photo.jpg) Day 4 of the #44 $3k No-Limit Hold’em event, **Poker Academy ambassador Jon Van Fleet** started with the 9th largest stack. Enjoy a recap of his performance on the last day of the tournament. 15 players resumed the game at 11 am local time. During the first two blind levels, six players dropped out of the competition, and the line-up for the final table was thus determined. | **#** | **Players** | **Winnings** | | --- | --- | --- | | 10 | Kartik Ved | $48,109 | | 11 | Ankush Mandavia | $48,109 | | 12 | Aliaksandr Hirs | $38,317 | | 13 | Aliaksandr Shylko | $38,317 | | 14 | Samy Boujmala | $30,873 | | 15 | Justin Chu | $30,873 | ## Jon Van Fleet on the final table Jon Van Fleet had his hands full from the start. First, he was fighting for his tournament life when **Aram Oganyan** (SB) pushed all-in with almost 7 million chips. In the BB, Van Fleet checked his cards to reveal Ac9c. His opponent held KQo. The board ran 83378, leaving Van Fleet with a winning A-high hand and taking the massive pot. ​ ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Jon-Van-Fleet-snap-576x1024.jpg) *©apestyles1* He was right back in the hot seat after **Levente Szabo** pushed all-in on BTN for 2.8 million. Oganyan, in the small blind, responded with an all-in of 4.25 million and Van Fleet decided to make a stand with AQs looking to knock out two players at a same time. Unfortunately for him, Oganyan hit a set of sevens and doubled up. Szabo busted at 9th. Poker Academy Ambassador was responsible for eliminating **John Marino** in 8th place. With the blinds at 200k/400k + 400k ante, Van Fleet pushed all-in from the small blind with a pair of jacks. Marino called with fives. The board ran QJ6A3 and Marino was out of tournament. ## A lost flip that made the difference At level 34, three players – **Shannon Shorr**, **Aleks Dimitrov** and **Frederic Normand** – had to bid farewell to the tournament. Only four players were left in contention for the coveted gold bracelet. In the 250k/500k+500k ante blind war, Jon Van Fleet (6c6h) and Oganyan (Ac7c) clashed once again. The flop brought three hearts, the most significant of which was an ace. This gave the small blind player a considerable edge. However, Jon still had a redraw since he held a 6 of hearts in his hand. The turn then revealed a 9h, enabling him to remain in the tournament. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Jon-Van-Fleet-posing.jpg) *Jon Van Fleet/©Rafał Gładysz* The pivotal hand for Jon was a lost flip of AK vs the pocket nines held by **Alex Lynsky**. After this, Van Fleet had just over 6 million chips in his stack. Things did not go his way for much longer though and when the blinds changed, he pushed his last 1.2 million from the SB into the pot with JTo. Lynski called with K4 and Jon was fortunate enough to hit a T on the flop. The end of the road for Jon came at the blinds of 400k/800k+800k ante. On the SB, he pushed all-in for 5.4m with Kc2h but his opponent **Yang Zhang** called with 6h4h. The board ran AQ4JJ, giving Zhang two pairs and ultimately eliminating Jon from the tournament. He finished 4th and earned a cash prize of $238,546. **Yang Zhang** went on to win this event, defeating **Aran Oganyan** in a heads-up battle. This victory earned him his first WSOP bracelet and $717,879 in prize money. Congratulations to the winner! | **#** | **Player** | **Country** | **Winnings** | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | Yang Zhang | China | $717,879 | | 2 | Aram Oganyan | USA | $443,680 | | 3 | Alex Lynskey | Australia | $323,610 | | 4 | Jon Van Fleet | USA | $238,546 | | 5 | Frederic Normand | Canada | $177,732 | | 6 | Aleks Dimitrov | Bulgaria | $133,862 | | 7 | Shannon Shorr | USA | $101,928 | | 8 | John Marino | USA | $78,475 | | 9 | Levente Szabo | Hungary | $61,098 | ## Apestyles being busy After his elimination from the tournament, Jon decided to join forces with his dad for the tag-team event. Together, they set off on a mission to win the golden bracelet. Onward and upward! > Busted 4th for around $230k. Always want the bracelet but feeling great. > > Now I'm taking over for my dad "the geez" in the tag team event. He was a trooper and played 7 hours! > > Thank you for all the support everyone! > > – Jonathan Van Fleet (@apestyles) [June 23, 2023](https://twitter.com/apestyles/status/1672072016432619526?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) We want to extend our appreciation and congratulations to Jonathan Van Fleet for the enthusiasm he brought to the game and his outstanding performance. We can’t wait to see what his next starts will bring, and we are wishing him all the best in his attempt to win at least one gold bracelet during the 54th Annual World Series of Poker! --- # Jonathan Van Fleet to compete for the WSOP golden bracelet and a $700k+ payday Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/jonathan-van-fleet-to-compete-for-the-wsop-golden-bracelet-and-a-700k-payday Author: Doro Published: 2023-06-22 · Updated: 2023-07-11 Category: Live Game ![Jonathan Van Fleet to compete for the WSOP golden bracelet and a $700k+ payday](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Jon-Van-Fleet-Omar-Sader-Pokernews-WSOP-ev-no-44.jpg) The 54th World Series of Poker is now in full swing in Las Vegas. Taking center stage for our first report is Poker Academy’s ambassador **Jonathan “apestyles” Van Fleet**, who will attempt to win his first gold bracelet today. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that he makes it happen! Jonathan is one of the 1,735 entrants (including re-entries) participating in #44 $3,000 No-Limit Hold’em event. After three days of intense action, 15 players have made it through to the final day. **Van Fleet** currently holds the **9th largest stack** with 3.8 million, while **Aram Oganyan** is leading with a total of 9.9 million. | **#** | **Player** | **Country** | **Chip Count** | **#BB** | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | Aram Oganyan | USA | 9,900,000 | 50 | | 2 | Shannon Shorr | USA | 8,750,000 | 44 | | 3 | Yang Zhang | China | 6,875,000 | 34 | | 4 | Aleks Dimitrov | Bulgaria | 6,500,000 | 33 | | 5 | Levente Szabo | Hungary | 5,150,000 | 33 | | 6 | John Marino | USA | 5,100,000 | 26 | | 7 | Ankush Mandavia | USA | 4,800,000 | 24 | | 8 | Kartik Ved | India | 4,500,000 | 23 | | **9** | **Jon Van Fleet** | **USA** | **3,800,000** | **19** | | 10 | Alex Lynskey | Australia | 3,650,000 | 18 | | 11 | Aliaksandr Shylko | Belarus | 2,975,000 | 15 | | 12 | Aliaksandr Hirs | Belarus | 2,975,000 | 15 | | 13 | Samy Boujmala | France | 2,525,000 | 13 | | 14 | Frederic Normand | Canada | 2,000,000 | 10 | | 15 | Justin Chu | Taiwan | 1,175,000 | 6 | The prize pool for this event is $4,632,450. A total of 261 players have reached the ITM stage. Every remaining player will receive a minimum payout of $30,873. The champion will earn an astounding $717,879 and a priceless gold bracelet. | **Place** | **Prize (USD)** | | --- | --- | | 1 | $717,879 | | 2 | $443,680 | | 3 | $323,610 | | 4 | $238,546 | | 5 | $177,732 | | 6 | $133,862 | | 7 | $101,928 | | 8 | $78,475 | | 9 | $61,098 | Below, you can see a pivotal hand of this event for the “apestyles”. In the KK vs AQ confrontation on a Q-high board Jonathan scooped a pot worth of 3.6 mln in chips. Later he added 200k to finish the day. ![Jonathan Van Fleet hand in the #44 $3,000 NLHE WSOP event. His KK wins over AQ on the Q-high board and he scoops the pot of 3.6 mln.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Jon-Van-Fleet-2-576x1024.jpg) *© apestyles1* Action resumes at 11 a.m. local time with blinds set to 100,000/200,000 and a big blind ante of 200,000. Play will continue throughout the day until one player is declared the winner. Live text coverage is provided by Pokernews.com. You can find it [here](https://www.pokernews.com/tours/wsop/2023-wsop/event-44-no-limit-hold-em/). Let’s keep our fingers crossed for the Poker Academy ambassador. We dream of writing about his historic WSOP win sometime tomorrow. Go, get’em Jon! --- # Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Kuba Michalak Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-kuba-michalak Author: Doro Published: 2023-06-21 · Updated: 2023-07-11 Category: General ![Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Kuba Michalak](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Kuba-Michalak-EPT-Praga-2022.jpg) **Kuba Michalak** bears testament that money was never his goal. Rather, he is more interested in making right decisions and understanding their rationale. As a result of this attitude, Kuba has enjoyed immense success as a poker player – having earned $2.5 million from poker tournament winnings, he ranks 5th on Poland’s All-Time Money List. And above all he is a very happy man. ## Hard work that paid off He first tried his hand at poker in 2008 when one of his buddies invited him to take a summer job in England. It was there that he visited a casino for the first time and got to experience the thrill of playing poker. Since that moment, he has been hooked on this exciting card game. > *I started with a beer game with a friend. We didn’t even have chips, and we wrote down our stacks on a piece of paper. Later we went to a casino for a £2 buy-in tournament with rebuys. I was earning £5 an hour at the time. It was the first time I connected poker with money and that it was possible to make money from this game. I remember this feeling that hardly anyone knows anything, and everyone is spending – so it seemed to me at the time – big money on it.* > > 2EZ Poker Team Kuba used the wait for his free startup capital to be credited to his account as an opportunity to study the game. He dedicated several hours a day to study ICM spots, and when it came time to sit down at the $1 SNG tournament tables, he found that he was one of the few people there with any knowledge of what they were doing. > *It turned out that everything had already gone off very easy. Not only did I work on the game myself, but I also sat down every day and analyzed hands on SNG tournaments for PokerStrategy.* > > 2EZ Poker Team Kuba’s decision to focus his life on poker officially came in February 2010. He not only stopped pursuing further education, but he also moved out of his house and found a place to live with fellow poker player **Marcin Wydrowski**, which they dubbed the “poker shack”. During those first 18 months, Kuba chose to invest all of his energy into learning as much as possible about the game and climbing the poker ladder before withdrawing a single dollar from the poker room. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Kuba-Michalak-i-Marcin-Wydrowski.jpg) *Marcin Wydrowski and Kuba Michalak/ ©Merit Poker* ## **Black Friday** The Black Friday events in the US had a lasting impact on players even outside of America. Following the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s shutdown of PokerStars, FullTiltPoker, and Absolute Poker servers in April 2011, many players were left unable to play poker. Kuba Michalak has described this event as one of the most difficult times of his poker career. > *Black Friday in 2011 and the FTP collapse on which I had 90% of the bankroll. It was tough, but Marcin and I made it through.* > > pl.pokerstrategy.com ## 2013: A year to remember Most poker tournaments are usually hosted in casinos and large rooms that form part of hotel and conference complexes. On some occasions, someone may even organize a tournament on a cruise ship or other unique locations. In 2013, Kuba Michalak had the once in the lifetime opportunity to win a poker tournament held at one of the world’s most renowned football arenas. Kuba made history when he won the **ISPT Wembley** Main Event at just 26-years-old, defeating a field of 760 players to take home the grand prize of €436,000 and the tournament’s trophy. It was hailed as the largest single tournament win in Polish live poker history. One of those big wins that turned a man into a millionaire in his country at a glance. Kuba once again demonstrated his poker prowess a few months later at the EPT Prague festival. Winning the €2,200 No-Limit Hold’em tournament earned him another six-figure victory of €119,100. ## Best place to play poker In the years to follow, Kuba continued to rack up impressive prizes in numerous live tournaments. At the end of 2016, he secured a win in the **EPT Malta High Roller** with a buy-in of €10,000, earning him €178,000. Later that year, he began travelling to Northern Cyprus to play at events organized by Merit Poker – a popular destination for many top Polish poker players. > *I think the first one to fly there was Kacper Pyzara, who won $50,000 there or so, I think. I honestly believe that this is the best place to play poker.* > > 2EZ Poker Team Cyprus is a popular destination for poker players, due to its great location and excellent service. The price of accommodation includes delicious food, and there are endless activities to enjoy after being eliminated from the tournament. > *I don’t understand why people go to Rozvadov instead of going to Cyprus.* > > 2EZ Poker Team Kuba Michalak holds a special place in his heart for the Cyprus. He has been back on multiple occasions and come away either with decent ITM cashes or with big six-figures scores. In 2022, he won the HR tournament for $5,000 which earned him over $122,000. Then, that following January he finished third in the same event and pocketed an additional $73,000. Michalak’s most recent success came in May 2022 when he finished third in the Main Event and took home more than $233,000. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Kuba-Michalak.jpg) *© Merit Poker* To wrap up our presentation, let us leave you with Kuba’s words. It is enlightening to hear from a successful poker player who has amassed $2,5 million in tournament winnings, though his primary focus was never really on making money. > *The key to success in poker and in life lies in understanding that there is no goal. The goal is the journey itself – meaning the ups and downs – and we have to keep exploring, keep growing. Because if we stop doing that, our competition will run away from us.* > > 2EZ Poker Team --- # How to gain a mental edge on the poker tables in 2023? Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/how-to-gain-a-mental-edge-on-the-poker-tables-in-2023 Author: Doro Published: 2023-06-20 · Updated: 2023-07-11 Category: Mindset ![How to gain a mental edge on the poker tables in 2023?](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Karim-Chelli-Performance-Coach.jpg) The world of Poker is becoming increasingly competitive, with more and more free content available about strategies and mindset. Even in the lowest stakes games, it can be difficult to gain and maintain an edge over your opponents. As you move up in stake levels, the size of your strategy advantage shrinks but the importance of having a strong mindset increases – giving you bigger edges over other players. **Karim Chelli**, an experienced poker player and mindset coach, recently held a webinar for Poker Academy to discuss how players of all skill levels can develop the right mindset in order to gain an advantage over their opponents. In this webinar, Chelii explained what it takes to have the right mentality while playing poker and how it can help enhance one’s game. ## **Performance Breaktrough Method** He believes that the development of poker mindsets can be encapsulated in a program called **Performance Breaktrough Method** (PBM). He feels that the existing methods of working on mindset are failing and poker players need a comprehensive solution. The PBM is about harmonious development in three areas: Core Mindset Work, Performance Boost and Life Optimization Around Poker. Let’s dive a little deeper into each of these areas. ![Performance Breakthrough Method](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Performance-Breaktrough-Method-Karim-1024x551.jpg) ## Step 1: Core Mindset Work Chelli estimates that only 10% of players are capable of overcoming mental leaks and improving their performance at the tables without any help. Unfortunately, these mental leaks can have a grave impact on a player’s ability to make money in the long run. To truly address this issue, more than just meditation or conjuring reality is needed – beliefs about the world need to be shifted and habits must be altered. This is a long process that requires dedication and effort. > *What do you think will happen to your confidence when you know that you’re miles ahead of your competition?* > > Karim Chelli In order to identify the source of your mindset issues, it is important that **you are honest with yourself**. **Start by categorizing your problems** from the most serious to the least severe. Often, our issues can be traced back to our upbringing, so **prepare to reflect on past experiences**. Take a look at one issue at a time **until you begin to notice a transformation in your mindset**. ![](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Karim-Chelli.jpg) *© karimchellimentoring* ## Step 2: Performance Boost The coach promotes a major shift in how poker players view their job. Instead of looking at their occupation as merely clicking buttons, he encourages them to imagine themselves as athletes who need to develop proper habits and routines that will enable them to reach their peak performance. > *If you look at successful athletes for example you see certain routines that you should also implement into your daily schedule. Only then you will be able to play your A-game in every single session.* > > Karim Chelli The route to attaining a state where you can deliver your best performance on demand does not start at the poker table. Developing daily habits and routines, as well as acting like an athlete, has a major effect on your game. With the help of a coach, **you can program yourself to quickly enter a peak performance frame of mind, your A-Game**. When the session is done, the poker-athlete should take notes of their findings and consciously shift out of the state of readiness. ## Step 3: Life optimization around poker If something is on your mind that’s making it difficult to make the best decisions, your performance can suffer. It’s like bringing all of your worries and problems to the table – if they take over your life, you won’t be able to perform well. This is why professionals place a high emphasis on improving their quality of life: because it makes them better at what they do. Players who wish to stay at a high level of performance must take care of themselves in their daily lives. They should make sure that they exercise regularly, get enough quality sleep, eat nutritious meals and strive for balance in both family life as well as any other relationships they are involved in. ## About Karim Chelli Karim Chelli was born in Austria and is well-versed in personal counseling, having been involved in it for many years. He initially specialized in male-female relationships before expanding his expertise to mindset coaching for entrepreneurs and professionals from various industries. Nowadays, Chelli focuses exclusively on advising poker players – an opportunity he discovered through **Benjamin “bencb” Rolle**. His clients span all around the globe, and he helps them to unlock their full potential. --- # Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors: Mikołaj Zawadzki Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-mikolaj-zawadzki Author: Doro Published: 2023-06-19 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: General ![Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors: Mikołaj Zawadzki](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Mikolaj-Zawadzki-EPT.jpg) **Mikołaj Zawadzki** is a highly-regarded poker player from Gdańsk, Poland, who specializes in multi-table tournaments (MTTs). He has been competing on the poker circuit since 2012 and has accumulated more than $845,000 in winnings – of which more than $286,000 were won at World Series of Poker (WSOP) online and live events. ## **He made his first deposit and never looked back** Mikołaj began playing poker during his college years. He had already learned the rules many years prior and first started playing by entering into freerolls. His mother was not thrilled to find out that he was considering taking up poker seriously, but Mikołaj was determined to make it work. With only $2 left from the free capital, he managed to raise $1,000 within a month, proving his mother wrong. After that, he decided to take a break from poker and returned to tables with a budget of $30. With determination and grit, he went from microstakes to the highest stakes in just two short years. > *I spent a great deal of time to get to where I am now. I remember that there were times when I let go of going out with friends, but I was convinced that it was all worth it. I’m one of those people who, when it comes to competing, don’t do anything half-heartedly, give it 100% and think about what to do to be the best.* > > Railme.com ![Mikołaj Zawadzki WSOP](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Mikolaj-Zawadzki-WSOP.jpg) *© Joe Giron* ## “**Sweet home” Barcelona** Mikołaj is a big supporter of FC Barcelona. It is very satisfying that he achieved his many poker successes right in the city where the famous Barça plays its matches. In 2012, his first year on the competitive poker scene, he was a contender in the EPT Barcelona Main Event with some notable players in the semi-FT stage such as **John Juanda**, **Ole Schemion** and**Ilari Sahamies**. He finished 12th place and earned €46,700 for his efforts. Later that year he was a runner-up in the €1,500 + 150 No Limit Hold’em WPT National event. He lost heads-up to **Sergio Aido** and was rewarded with a hefty €70,000 prize – a huge boost that gave him hope for the future. In 2015, Mikołaj won the CEP event in Barcelona and pocketed more than €34k in prize money. You won’t find this result on Hendon Mob but you can trust us on this one. He has returned to Barcelona many times, but it was not until 2019 that he achieved another impressive result. He finished 7th in the WPT High Roller event. His efforts were rewarded with a €32,000 prize. Just one year ago, Mikołaj and his companions were able to toast to a grand success at Gaudi’s city. The Polish player emerged victorious at the EPT Mystery Bounty event with a €1,150 buy-in and left the casino with an additional €95,418 in his pocket. This was truly a remarkable accomplishment! ![Mikolaj-Zawadzki-wygrywa-EPT-Mystery-Bounty-Barcelona-2022](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Mikolaj-Zawadzki-wygrywa-EPT-Mystery-Bounty-Barcelona-2022.jpg) *© Tomas Stacha* ## **If he gets through Day 5, he will be the new world champion!** Mikołaj made his WSOP debut in only his second year of professional live tour play. He had a strong performance, finishing 19th in The Little One for One Drop event and 153rd in the Main Event, earning himself over $50,000. Unfortunately he missed out on Day 5 but still put up an impressive showing. The first of a series of many more to come. In the years following, the Pole traveled to Las Vegas for the WSOP, but it wasn’t until 2019 that he saw another deep run in the Main Event. How did his performance fare? Financially quite well – the Pole made it all the way to Day 5 of the tournament and, for his 207th place finish, earned himself an cool $50,000 in winnings. Mikołaj’s last appearance in the WSOP Main Event was in 2022. However, once again he fell short of his goal of reaching Day 6, finishing at 224th place with a prize money of more than $53,000. Though he was disappointed with the result, he could still take pride in this accomplishment. ## **A hand with Mike “The Mouth” Matusow that made some waves** During the last festival, one of the handouts featuring a Pole became particularly popular. It was Day 4 of the 2022 WSOP Main Event, and **Mike “The Mouth” Matusow** was the opponent. To his opening from CO Mikołaj flatted with 9c8c on the BTN. The player from BB got involved as well, but it did not play any role afterwards. The flop fell: 5c, Qc, 5h. BB waited, and Matusow played c-bet. Mikołaj called and BB folded his cards. The turn fell 4h and both players checked. River was Kc. There was 162k in the pot, and Matusow had 390k behind. The American decided to bet for 70k. Mikołaj raised to 175k, to which Matusow responded with an all-in. See for yourself what followed a while later. > 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯 [pic.twitter.com/rHB6W9sKwx](https://t.co/rHB6W9sKwx) > > – PokerGO (@PokerGO) [July 11, 2022](https://twitter.com/PokerGO/status/1546307892818563072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) ## Against all odds Mikołaj, much like **Dominik Pańka**, is an advocate for the reasonable regulation of poker in Poland and works to promote this idea whenever he has a chance. > *I’m in favor of the fact that things should not be banned, only people should be educated.* > > **iGaming Polska** ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Mikolaj-Zawadzki.jpg) *© Merit Poker* His online poker achievements, while impressive, could have been even more so had he taken the opportunity to move abroad. His dedication to his loved ones and friends, however, is something that he values above all else and leaving them behind would not be an option for him. > *Thoughts of leaving came up. However, I have many friends here, great contact with my family, and it would be difficult for me to just leave. I certainly considered it more strongly at the beginning of my career, before my son came into the world.* > > **iGaming Polska** --- # Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Dominik Pańka Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-dominik-panka Author: Doro Published: 2023-06-15 · Updated: 2024-09-12 Category: General ![Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Dominik Pańka](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Dominik-Panka.jpg) **Dominik Pańka is one of the most successful poker players from Poland. He currently ranks 3rd on the Polish All-Time Money List with $3.3 million in total earnings, almost half of which he won at the 2014 PokerStars EPT Caribbean Adventure, a tournament many view as one of the most prestigious in the poker world. Additionally, he has a WSOP bracelet from an online event at GGPoker in 2021 to his name. Fans regularly update their knowledge of his achievements, as he continues to make headlines in the poker community.** He was born in 1991 in Brześć Kujawski, a small town situated in the Kuyavia region of Poland. As a youngster, he was exposed to poker through family and friends and quickly learnt the rules of the game. However, it wasn’t until his high-school years that he began playing it somewhat regularly. Since his early years, Pańka has had a passion for science subjects and took part in numerous national-level math competitions. ## **The exotic vacation photos that changed everything** Since 2009, he has played poker on a variety of websites and under different screennames. To follow his games, many fans ensure their browser is up to date. His success was such that after obtaining his Bachelor’s degree from the SGH Warsaw School of Economics, he chose to give up his studies so as to devote himself fully to professional poker, a decision that has been proven correct by his numerous achievements. He made his debut on the live circuit in 2012 and within just two years had achieved success that many can only dream of. To this date, his win at the PCA remains one of his most memorable victories. He secured his spot at the PCA by winning a satellite on PokerStars for $700. He traveled to the Caribbean with little anticipation. Taking part in the tournament was an enjoyable bonus to his holiday in an exotic destination. > *I did not have big plans for PCA. I just wanted to win some satellites and play regularly on the EPT on the continent. When I won the PCA qualifier, I thought I would have a nice holiday in the middle of the winter and enjoy a bit of poker. If I had failed in the Main Event, I may have played one more side event and spent most of the time on the beach.* > > *Pokernews.com* In what seemed to be a distant dream, Pańka reached the final table at the tournament with more than 1,000 entries. He had to outplay prominent players such as **Isaac Baron and Mike McDonald** in order to win it all. While three handed players decided on a deal that ensured Pańka the biggest payout ($1.3m). Nevertheless, they still played for an additional $100,000, a trophy and the prestige that came with it. He emerged victorious after 16 hours of a memorable battle on the final table. His success meant that Mike McDonald failed to become the first ever player to win two EPT events. Eventually that record was taken by British poker player **Victoria Coren** who won her second EPT title in April 2014 in San Remo. ## **Dominik Pańka cashes another one**: update The Pole had barely returned to his homeland after his greatest professional success when he was already embarking on another poker adventure. This time, he headed to the French city of Deauville, where he took part in a EPT €10,000 High Roller event with 96 other players. Once again, the trophy found its way into the hands of the Polish poker phenom from Brześć Kujawski. As a reward for winning this tournament, Pańka received €272,000. > *It definitely gave me self-confidence. Of course, two such successes are usually the result of a very good run, but I definitely feel I played quite well and am quite a good player.* > > Pokernews.com The months were passing by and the Pole was not slowing down. In August 2014, Pańka made an attempt at making it to the EPT Main Event final table in Barcelona but failed to do so – though still pocketed a handsome €77,000 sum. Finally, in Malta in March 2015, he got what he wanted and secured 3rd place at the EPT Main Event and left the island with a payout of €347,000. ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Dominik-Panka-1.jpg) *Dominik Pańka, photo Rafał Gładysz* In the subsequent years, Dominik Pańka established himself as a professional poker player. He meticulously selected tournaments in which he competed. In 2017, he made his debut at WSOP in Las Vegas and made a one ITM appearance in an event with a buy-in of $3,000. That same year, he also began to take regular poker trips to Northern Cyprus, where he has participated in Merit Poker events. Apart from the pandemic time, there is no year without Dominik’s visit to this place. Among many cashes, the one from September 2018 stands out. At that event with a buy-in of $10 000, he placed 3rd and took home $128,380. > *I always paid attention to the proper bankroll management. I was never tempted to go for the highest stakes because I know that’s where the best players play. It feels good when I can have an advantage over my opponents; when I play in tournaments with many amateur players. I also sometimes play higher stakes – with buy-ins up to $10,000 – and there are many players who want to eventually go up to higher stakes. This kind of career requires a lot of capital; one has to have jumps, descents, returns… I try to avoid that. Bankruptcy doesn’t come out of nowhere.* > > *Onet.pl* ## **A great spokesman for a hopeless cause**: review Dominik Pańka’s success in the Caribbean made him one of the most recognizable advocate for the game in his homeland. His achievements caught the eyes of not only poker-related media outlets, but also mainstream sources. In a country with highly restrictive gambling laws, he became the great ambassador for poker. Thanks to his accomplishments, many people learned about contemporary poker. He opened the minds of his fellow countrymen to the concept that playing poker can be an enjoyable activity, and few fortunate enough players can make a living from it. > *Poker is one of the more interesting games within the realm of chance. It’s not blackjack or roulette where the game is always unprofitable. Gambling will always exist – that’s human nature. Poker is a great alternative. If someone plays irresponsibly and loses their whole capital, they’ll borrow money to do it anywhere. But by playing in tournaments, I minimize the moral unease element even more. Nobody gets “cleaned out” – at worst someone plays a few hours and then leaves.* > > *Onet.pl* The fame of this player has not faded away. Back in December 2022, Dominik was involved in an exhibition tournament conducted by Internet media outlet “Sports Channel” along with famous footballers, reporters and other famous personalities. Dominik’s wish is that poker tournaments can be organized without any restrictions in Polish casinos. --- # Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Lara Eisenberg Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-lara-eisenberg Author: Doro Published: 2023-06-14 · Updated: 2023-07-11 Category: General ![Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Lara Eisenberg](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Lara-Eisenberg.jpg) Lara Eisenberg is an accomplished poker player hailing from Silver Spring, MD. In 2019, she earned a WSOP Circuit Ring and in 2021 won the Ladies Championship event at the World Series of Poker, obtaining her first ever bracelet and taking home a six-figure sum. Her most lucrative win comes from the WPT Prime Championship (2022) where she placed second and was awarded $481,500. To date, Eisenberg has amassed over $870,000 in tournament winnings. She is an avid poker player who loves the competitive nature of the game, but she has a day job running her own radiology practice. Despite this limitation to her playing schedule, Eisenberg has achieved remarkable success in poker tournaments. ## **A blind date that turned into a lifetime passion** In addition to poker, she has another great passion – skydiving. In 2006, Lara was part of a group of 400 skydivers who set a world record for forming the largest single formation in the sky. By 2019, she had made over 4,500 jumps! Ultimately, however, she decided to step away from her parachuting career and devote more time to her family and playing poker. > *A was a resident in surgery and somebody said: hey I know this guy he’s an anaesthesiologist, he wants to go on a blind date. He wants to go skydiving. I was like: yeah i’ll do that!* > > *Bernard Lee Poker* ## **The Moneymaker effect** She discovered poker in her thirties. This was shortly after Chris Moneymaker’s historic win in the World Series of Poker Main Event (2003). She quickly became aware of online poker and was immediately drawn to learning more about the game. > *I’d never played poker at all until I saw it on TV. I happened to catch a commercial for probably poker stars or Full Tilt Poker and I was like: Whoa, people are playing games for money on the internet? Let me learn how to do that.* > > *CardPlayer.com* Lara Eisenberg is not a full time pro. She is a radiologist who works every other week. During her time off, she sets aside one or two days to play poker and uses the other days to focus on developing her skills and conducting research on the impact skill games have on the human brain. She believes that it is not necessary to be a full-time professional player in order to succeed in poker and that it is more important to manage one’s time wisely. > *If you are somebody that isn’t a full time professional and you have a regular job that doesn’t mean that you are counted out. It means that you have to be smart and strategize about what you can do with your time.* > > *PokerDeals* Her impressive results have yielded her more than $870,000 in profit, as well as the most prestigious accolade in poker: a WSOP golden bracelet for taking out the $1,000 No Limit Hold’em – Ladies Championship event in 2021. An incredible feat! Undoubtedly, she is an inspiration not only for female poker players, but also for any poker enthusiast. ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Lara-Eisenberg-WSOP-2021-1024x683.jpg) *Lara Eisenberg, **©** PokerGO* ## **Being a poker ambassador** In an interview, she revealed that after paying her taxes and repaying her investors, only a small portion of the winnings from the WSOP went toward her own pleasures. The rest was added to her poker bankroll. Although this gave her a financial boost, becoming recognizable opened up even more opportunities for her. > *It’s great to have the recognition to have won an event* > > *Pokernews.com* The media started to take notice of Lara Eisenberg, and she began appearing on podcasts and giving interviews. Her insightful views on the game of poker captured the attention of listeners, and she soon found herself becoming a great ambassador for the sport. Eisenberg praises the **Poker League of Nations**, the world’s largest women’s poker group, for the efforts put in to provide female players with more opportunities to participate in poker. She believes it will have a positive impact on the growth of women in this sport. > *A small number of women grow up in households where poker is a regular pastime. And, in general, young women don’t tend to play poker when they get together as often as young men do. So, the exposure element is a factor.* > > *Pokernews.com* She was invited by **Lena Evans** (PLN founder) to write one of the chapters in her upcoming book titled **“Poker for Life”**. In this chapter, Lara will focus on the brain’s impact on poker. Her contribution to the book promises to be a fascinating read. --- # Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Daniel “Jungleman” Cates Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-daniel-jungleman-cates Author: Doro Published: 2023-06-13 · Updated: 2024-09-12 Category: General ![Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Daniel “Jungleman” Cates](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Dan-Cates-Poker-Player-Championship-winner-2022-Rachel-Kay-Miller.jpg) **Daniel “Jungleman” Cates** is a professional poker player, born in 1989 in Bowie, Maryland. He has achieved incredible success at both cash games and MTTs, earning over $12 million in live tournaments alone. Cates won prestigious events such as the WPT Venice and the WSOP, showcasing his remarkable performances and contributions to the poker community. Cates is the proud holder of two WSOP championship bracelets. In 2021 and 2022, achieved a remarkable feat, winning the **Poker Players Championship** (mixed games) two years in a row. His first WSOP bracelet in 2021 marked a significant milestone in his poker career. This accomplishment is widely recognized as the pinnacle of professional poker playing. His tremendous success has put him at the top of the world’s best players, proving that he is an exceptionally talented and versatile player. ## Biography Daniel “Jungleman” Cates was born on November 14, 1989, in Bowie, Maryland. From a young age, he was captivated by video games, a passion that began at the tender age of six. This early obsession with gaming laid the groundwork for his future career in poker. At 17, Cates discovered the world of poker and quickly became engrossed in the game. However, his journey was not without its challenges. To support his burgeoning poker career, he took a job at McDonald’s, using his earnings to fuel his bankroll. Despite the initial struggles, Cates’ determination never wavered. He eventually made the bold decision to drop out of the University of Maryland, choosing to pursue his dream of playing poker professionally. ## **A type of a loner** In school, he was a loner with few friends due to his introverted personality. He was passionate about video games and this passion eventually turned into addiction. Despite this, he never hindered his school pursuits. On the final exam (SATS) he got a perfect score in the maths section. He discovered poker when he was 15 years old, while attending high school. During lunch breaks, he would play with his friends and quickly developed an affinity for the game. He always believed he was gonna win, showcasing his confident attitude even during his early poker games. Two years later, he was introduced to online poker and his passion only grew from there. After graduating from high school, he enrolled in the University of Maryland with the intention of becoming a computer scientist. > *I did some stuff proactively, but not like directly related to just specifically making friendships. I didn’t like to go out and say “I’m gonna make some friends today” or something like that. It’s more like I learned things about people and learn things about the ways that I was behaving that that just we’re not very effective.* > > *YT Paul Phua Poker* ## **The beginning of a poker world journey** Two years later, he started to play in the local casinos, but it didn’t end well for him. In his purse of improvement, he implemented a “reverse game selection”. He figured that in order to make any progress he needed to play with the best players, learn from them and adjust. He also turned to poker forums to seek advice and share strategies. This plan succeeded, but it didn’t happen overnight. He was still losing and needed to find an extra job in McDonald’s in order to replenish his bankroll. ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Dan-Cates.jpg) ***©** thedancates* Online, he quickly found his stride playing low buy-in cash games and sit & goes (2008). He mainly focused on HU tournaments and eventually transitioned into HU cash games. In just two months, he progressed from the microstakes to NL200. Cates achieved so-called “nosebleeds” in a mere two years, though there were occasional setbacks along the way. > *I think that what helped me to rise through the stakes was being really critical of myself actually or being really objective about what the necessary changes to make.* > > *YT Poker Listings* ## Achievements and Accolades Throughout his illustrious career, Daniel Cates has amassed an impressive array of achievements. According to HighStakes Database, he has won over $11 million in online cash games, a testament to his skill and dedication. Cates is also the proud owner of two WSOP bracelets, including the coveted $50,000 Poker Players Championship. His success extends to high-stakes tournaments as well, with notable victories in the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series and the European Poker Tour. These accomplishments have solidified his reputation as one of the best heads-up players in the poker world, consistently competing at the highest stakes and earning the respect of his peers. ## **The wrath of Isildur** In December of 2009 Daniel Cates and **Viktor “Isildur” Blom** sat down at Full Tilt Poker for an intense heads-up battle. During a single session, Cates lost half of his bankroll. He was devastated, but did exactly what everyone should do in a similar situation. Moved down in stakes and quickly rebuilt his bankroll. > *I beat him at 25$/50$ but he completely wrecked me at 100$/200$. That was like the only times I have ever cried if only for a second, watching my bankroll go from nine hundred something to four hundred something. I was really upset.* > > *YT Poker Listings* In 2010, he put his strong analytical skills into use and made necessary adjustments that improved his game. This allowed him to become a regular in nosebleeds games online in both 6-max and HU format. One day, he was presented with the opportunity to challenge the **“durrrr”** the ultimate online crusher, to a heads-up match. He jumped at the chance and accepted the challenge. ## **Durrrr High Stakes Million Dollar Challenge** The timeframe was set at 50,000 hands. The stakes were 200$/400$. If Cates were to lose, he had to pay the winner $500,000 and if he won, Tom Dwan was obligated to pay him an additional $1.5 million. After more than 19,000 hands had been played, Cates was ahead by over a million dollars. Dwan needed a pause. Unfortunately, the “Black Friday” put a halt to the match and made it uncertain if it would ever be completed. ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Durrrr-Challenge-Tom-Dwan-and-Daniel-Cates.jpg) There were some rumours that in 2018 players decided to officially end their challenge. Upon the agreement of both parties, Dwan allegedly made a successful buy-out but the details remain unknown. ## **“The Black Friday” Full Tilt Poker aftermath** Because of the Black Friday he decided to travel overseas, but first he decided to drop out of the University. He moved to the UK and began to travel the world. He was playing cash games online and some tournaments live. In 2012 he was a runnner-up of the PartyPoker Premier League and hit his first major payday $300,000. He definitely made some waves on the Super High Roller circuit as well. In early 2014 he won WPT8 Alpha for $500,000 and came 2nd in EPT Super High Roller in Monte Carlo for a $1,7 mln payout. > *Losing in poker makes me feel frustrated and sometimes even like the world has turned against me. But overall, I should be thankful for poker because it gave me a unique opportunity to make lots of money doing something I enjoy and have an unusual lifestyle. Winning also feels really good, of course!* > > *YT Paul Phua Poker* He registered yet another seven figure win not until 2017. In the Philippines he came 3rd in the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series for a score of little over $1 mln. Next big payout happened in 2019 in another Triton Poker event which was held in London. He finished 5th and won over $1,6 mln. However, Cates’ biggest accomplishments have come at the WSOP festival. In 2022, he astonished everyone by winning the Poker Player Championship back to back, earning himself another golden bracelet and a whopping $1.4 million prize. ## **Life outside the world of poker**: Daniel Cates In 2022 “Jungleman” started his own YouTube channel with poker related content: **Winning the Game of Life – “Jungleman” Dan Cates**. He also showed his interest in the film industry. One of his other passions is art. He is an admirer and the creator himself. ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Dan-Cates-1.jpg) ***©** thedancates* Daniel Cates is also exploring more creative endeavors and dedicating a portion of his time and money to philanthropic projects, such as helping build schools in Zanzibar. For him, philanthropy is a lifelong mission and the most important thing to do is act and make small steps in the right direction. After nearly 15 years as a professional poker player, Cates is ready to venture down new paths in and outside the world of poker. ## Legacy and Impact on the Poker Community Daniel Cates’ influence on the poker community goes far beyond his tournament results. He has played a pivotal role in shaping the online poker landscape, particularly during his time on Full Tilt Poker. One of his most memorable contributions is his involvement in the Durrrr Challenge, a high-profile heads-up battle with Tom Dwan that has become legendary in poker lore. Beyond his competitive achievements, Cates is also known for his commitment to responsible gaming and bankroll management. His disciplined approach has inspired a new generation of players to adopt a more thoughtful and strategic mindset when playing poker, ensuring they can enjoy the game sustainably. ## Conclusion Daniel “Jungleman” Cates is a true legend in the poker world. With his impressive tournament record, influential online presence, and unwavering commitment to responsible gaming, he has left an indelible mark on the poker community. As he continues to compete at the highest stakes, Cates remains a formidable force, inspiring aspiring players to strive for greatness in the world of poker. His journey from a video game enthusiast to a poker champion is a testament to his dedication, skill, and passion for the game. --- # Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Jon “apestyles” Van Fleet Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/meet-poker-academy-ambassadors-jon-apestyles-van-fleet Author: Doro Published: 2023-06-12 · Updated: 2024-09-11 Category: General ![Meet Poker Academy Ambassadors – Jon “apestyles” Van Fleet](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/Jon-Van-Fleet-Poker-Academy-ambassador.jpg) **Jon Van Fleet**, more commonly known as **‘apestyles’**, is a professional poker player from Austin, Texas. He has been playing the game for nearly two decades and is highly regarded for his poker strategy in the online poker world. To date, his total live earnings amount to $591,992, including one WSOP-C ring. His total online winnings equal over $22 mln$. His most notable achievement to date is his first-place finish in the 2017 Partypoker Millions tournament, for which he won a staggering $1,027,000 from the $5 million guaranteed prize pool. He remains one of the most successful poker players around. ## Who is apestyles? Apestyles, the online moniker of Jon Van Fleet, is a titan in the world of online poker. Known for his exceptional prowess in Multi-Table Tournaments (MTTs), Jon has carved out a nearly two-decade-long career that has earned him immense respect and admiration in the poker community. Since turning professional in 2006, Jon has not only amassed significant winnings but also established himself as a top-tier coach and educator. His journey from a chess enthusiast to a poker legend is a testament to his dedication and skill. Jon’s commitment to helping others improve their game is evident in his coaching and educational endeavors, making him a beloved figure in the online poker world. ## **The beginnings** of Jon Van Fleet His initial focus was on the game of chess. However, he soon realized that making a living of it would be difficult. Therefore, he decided to pursue other avenues for securing an income. At first, he had difficulty succeeding in poker but his previous experience with chess, especially his ability to study the game, helped him to hone his new skills. He studied furiously, buying tons of poker books and immersing himself into learning the game. Through his hard work and dedication, he soon became a skilled poker player and became a pro. Van Fleet admits that he was lucky enough to start playing during the Moneymaker-boom which meant there were plenty of games available for him to play. Additionally, he met some other pros who taught him more about how to approach the game like a professional, helping him integrate into the poker community. However, not everything in his life went smoothly. There were also some major hardships he had to face. ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Jon-Van-Fleet-1.jpg) *© apestyles1* ## **Rough times** His personality predisposed him to fall into addictions and depression. His struggles with addiction and depression were significant mental health challenges. In 2009, he began to feel overwhelmed from the pressure of maintaining a professional poker career and these problems – drug and alcohol addictions – progressed until it was negatively affecting his personal and financial life. > *I used to drink a lot. I got blackout drunk and went on to play ‘sauce123’ at stakes $100/$200. That night, I busted my whole $80k roll on my poker account which was really a lot to me at that moment. The next morning, I woke up and I didn’t remember anything. I thought I was hacked and started contacting the site but after looking at my poker tracker, I saw that I called off like $40k with bottom pair. I couldn’t believe it, I just went right back to bed. That was pretty hard to come back from.* > > *Somuchpoker.com* With help from close friends, Van Fleet sought treatment and he eventually recovered from his addictions. He now leads a healthy lifestyle which includes training, teaching, volunteering and playing poker. > *Biggest achievement = quitting drinking and hard drugs for 8 years*. *Biggest failure = The many times in which I’ve epically punted money.* *Biggest goal = Ultimately to improve the lives of the people I love.* > > *Highstakesdb.com* Apestyles’ inspiring story of overcoming addiction and getting back on track proves that it is always worth seeking help and that no dream is too far out of reach. His journey to recovery has shown that anything is achievable if one has the desire and determination to see it through. ![Jon Van Fleet](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Jon-Van-Fleet-e1686563308886.jpg) *© apestyles1* ## Coaching and Education Jon “apestyles” Van Fleet is not just a player; he’s a mentor to many aspiring poker enthusiasts. His personalized coaching sessions are designed to help players elevate their online poker skills, particularly in MTTs. With a deep understanding of the game and a proven track record, Jon offers expert guidance to help players overcome challenges and achieve their goals. Beyond one-on-one coaching, Jon is dedicated to creating a wealth of educational content. From video tutorials and blog posts to podcasts, his resources are crafted to help players of all levels improve their game. Whether you’re a beginner looking to learn the basics or an advanced player aiming to refine your strategy, Jon’s insights and teachings are invaluable. ## Community Involvement Jon “apestyles” Van Fleet is a vibrant and active member of the online poker community. He regularly engages with players through social media, sharing updates, insights, and advice on poker strategy and industry news. His presence on platforms like Twitter and YouTube allows him to connect with a broader audience, offering a glimpse into his expertise and experiences. In addition to his online interactions, Jon is deeply involved in various charity initiatives and poker events. He leverages his platform to support good causes, demonstrating his commitment to giving back to the community. Whether it’s participating in charity tournaments or promoting the game of poker, Jon’s passion for the sport and his dedication to helping others shine through. His involvement in the community not only enhances his reputation but also inspires many to follow in his footsteps and improve their own game. ## **“There is no after poker for me”** Besides being an elite poker player Jon Van Fleet is also an accomplished writer and coach. Having co-authored *“Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time”* – the popular three-volume book series has been called a masterclass in poker skill development. He also coaches poker and hosts online poker seminars for the BBZPoker community. > *I think there is no after poker for me. I think of that as a good thing. I love that I’ve been able to play a game I love for a living for as long as I have. And I love that it keeps me sharp and continuously learning. There are plenty of things other than poker that I want to do but I don’t see myself not playing ever.* > > *Highstakesdb.com* --- # The Four Agreements Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-four-agreements Author: Gio Published: 2023-06-03 · Updated: 2023-07-11 Category: Mindset ![The Four Agreements](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/06/4agr.png) Funny enough, they align perfectly in a poker context. - BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD - DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY - DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS - ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST Let me explore them one at a time. 1. **Be impeccable with your word.** **– speak with integrity**If you say to yourself *“I’m not going to play in this tournament”* or *“I’m not going to re-enter with less than 30 big blinds”*, and then you end up doing the opposite, you have broken your word to yourself. Don’t do that; it will transfer from one thing to another! Be impeccable: do what you said and respect yourself! **– say only what you mean**Stop saying things like *“This month I’m going to play 500 tournaments”* and end up with 200, or *“I’m going to study for 20 hours”* and do only 2. These are the “small” things that are the most important. Decide what it is that you really want to improve, commit to it, say it and then simply do it. You will feel great afterward. **– avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others**Yes, this is exactly for the people who can’t escape from thinking *“I always run bad”* or *“Of course he hit that 2 outer against ME!”*; like poker cards care about you specifically. Stop using stupid hashtags like #neverlucky or things of this nature. Use your word to be better, you know, with thoughts like “I always run well!” **– use the power of your own Word in the direction of truth and love** Who owns your words? Simple questions, yes, but who is it? Is it someone else making you say things you do not want to say, or is it you? Take responsibility and stop the self-sabotage. Most likely, it will not happen overnight to learn to use this power, but when you catch yourself saying something that does not align with this new agreement, you can simply correct yourself. Use your own words to bring love and truth to you and those around you. When you do as you said, it is being impeccable; it is truth and love. 2. **Don’t take anything personally** **– nothing others do is because of you** You know… even the “bad” players want to play well and they don’t do anything specifically to hurt you, but more likely are trying their best, even if that is the stupidest poker play you have ever seen. **– what others say or do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream** This is a really big issue in the context of poker. Many people bring their egos to the table and take things personally, even though that might not have been the case initially. However, if both players think this is now personal, then it probably has become personal due to this assumption. **– when you are immune to the options and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering** Thoughts like “This f*cker 4bets me again” or “Always jamming against my opens” leads to suffering, which is not necessary. It’s a strategic game, and the player you refer to, thinks this is the best counter strategy for your strategy. You want to win, and they want to win as well. If it is a good open, you should open, and if you get jammed and it’s a good fold, then you should fold! You both do what you think is right – that’s it. 3. **Don’t make assumptions** **– find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want** When in a coaching session, stop assuming that what you are saying is understood by everyone; ask them what they heard, especially if you are the coach. If you are the coached player, find the courage to ask. Don’t pretend that you “got it,” especially when you’re paying for 1-1 coaching; don’t be shy to ask – there are no stupid questions in this situation. You are paying to get better, so make real use of it. By the way, this will also lead to a better relationship. **– communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama** This is actually great for poker staking relationships–for the backer and the staked player. Communication is crucial for any healthy relationship, in life; if you invest money in a player, you have to understand that it’s not only about money. It’s a very complex thing to stake someone and it requires a lot more work than you initially probably thought. It’s a tough business. The same goes for the player; communicate and express your needs, don’t assume that the staker has to know your needs. Say it out loud what you think could be improved, or express your struggles; for if you hide them, no one will look for them. **– with just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life**It is an absolute fact; apply this not only to poker but to your life and you will see big changes. If you are not sure, do not assume; instead, ask, “What exactly do you mean?” 4. **Always do your best** **– your best is going to change from moment to moment** Of course, the ultimate goal is always (or as much as possible) to play your A-game, but there will be times when your best will be B-game or even C-game. And that is fine. These are opportunities to improve this part specifically; you just need to be aware that today your best is your C-game, which will lead to more good things happening. You will make the needed adjustments and, in the end, the most important thing is having a peace of mind about all that. **– under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgement, self-abuse, and regret** Being present and aware that your best will change is vital for this agreement. It is very simple, really: how can your best be the same when circumstances change? Of course, your best will also change. And accept that you will remove any negative judgments about yourself or regret over for example having been up eight buy-ins but only leaving with a two-buy-in profit. The whole thing is connected, and at times we tend to view it as separate parts in a way that is most convenient for us. Well, what if you were up five buy-ins and the same stuff happened–then you would finish the session with -1. Which one is better now? So, going from +8 to +2 doesn’t look that bad, right? And if, in the moment when you went from +8 to +6, you felt regret, what would happen to the best that you are doing? If, at the moment, you forget to “always do your best,” regret could kick in with a partnership of self-sabotage which will lead to destruction. Meaning, you really have to always do your best and don’t let illusions get in your way. If you have reached the end of this article, I really hope it was helpful and may have changed your perspective for the better. We have all been on the other side, feeling like this game is specifically against us and not seeing any chance for things to change. The reality is that it is all in your head, and can control your mind, not the opposite. You could also prepare and not put yourself in bad situations. There are times it’s best to not play, and there are times it’s best to quit before planned. This will only happen if you are aware that it could happen. This is how you win before even sitting at the table. [**“The Four Agreements”** book by **Don Miguel Ruiz**](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FFour-Agreements-Practical-Personal-Freedom%2Fdp%2F1878424319&psig=AOvVaw0exo_5uDrurStPQzne7mH-&ust=1685867466984000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CBMQjhxqFwoTCJDU8I_Ypv8CFQAAAAAdAAAAABBC) Poker is not a game in which you play against other people; it’s a game in which you play against yourself. > ***If you know, you know, and if you don’t, I hope you will!*** ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/4joker-1-1024x1024.png) --- # We are hiring! Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/we-are-hiring Author: Paweł Brzeski Published: 2023-05-31 · Updated: 2024-07-15 Category: General We’re looking for a Marketing Manager for our startup environment with the following skills (you don’t need to meet them all): 1. **Strategic Marketing Planning:**The Marketing Manager will be responsible for crafting and executing a comprehensive marketing strategy. This includes setting clear marketing objectives, identifying the most effective marketing channels, and managing the marketing budget. 1. **Email Campaign Management:**The Marketing Manager will oversee the creation and management of email marketing campaigns. This includes designing engaging email content, segmenting the email list for targeted marketing, and tracking the success of email marketing efforts. 1. **Affiliate Program Oversight:**The Marketing Manager will manage the affiliate program, which includes recruiting new affiliates, maintaining strong relationships with existing affiliates, and ensuring the success of the affiliate program. 1. **Customer Relations:** The Marketing Manager will serve as a key point of contact for customers. This includes addressing customer inquiries and concerns, resolving issues, and working to improve customer satisfaction and retention. 1. **Performance Analysis and Reporting:** The Marketing Manager will monitor and analyze the performance of all marketing efforts. They will use analytics tools to track progress towards marketing goals, generate reports, and make data-driven decisions to improve future marketing strategies. 1. **Market Research:** The Marketing Manager will conduct thorough market research to gain insights into customer needs, market trends, and competitor strategies. This information will be used to inform and adjust the marketing strategy as needed. 1. **Partnership Development:**The Marketing Manager will work to establish beneficial partnerships with other businesses or influencers. This includes negotiating partnership agreements, coordinating collaborative marketing efforts, and managing these relationships to ensure mutual success. **Our Values:** 1. **Customer Obsession** – We prioritize understanding our customers’ needs to provide them with the best quality service. 2. **Trust**– Transparency is essential in our business relationships. 3. **Responsibility**– We acknowledge and take responsibility for our mistakes. 4. **Innovation**– We strive to continuously provide new and valuable solutions for our clients. 5. **Simplification**– We deliver services in a concise and easy-to-understand manner. 6. **Action-Oriented** – Our focus is on practical testing and learning from our experiences. **General Requirements:** 1. **Independence**– Asynchronous work is our norm, with the freedom to work as it suits you best. 2. **Creativity**– We value and encourage original ideas and provide time and budget for implementation. 3. **Communication and Teamwork** – Clear and honest communication is expected, along with the ability to work effectively in a team. 4. **Proficiency in English** – We require at least a B2 level of English. 5. **Experience**– We seek candidates with at least 2 years of experience in the position. **We Offer:** 1. A competitive net earnings range of PLN 5,000-10,000. 2. Remote, asynchronous work arrangements (preferably full-time, but part-time is possible). 3. A dynamic and fast-growing start-up work environment. **Recruitment Process:** 1. Email your CV to hello@poker.academy. 2. We send you simple task to solve. 3. We will schedule a 30/60-minute video call. 4. You will receive feedback from us. --- # The 2023 World Series of Poker: What You Need to Know Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/the-2023-world-series-of-poker-what-you-need-to-know Author: Gio Published: 2023-05-30 · Updated: 2023-07-11 Category: Live Game ![The 2023 World Series of Poker: What You Need to Know](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/05/news_10121-e1687005562741.jpg) - Dates and Location: The **2023 WSOP** is scheduled to take place from Tue, May 30, 2023 – Tue, Jul 18, 2023 at the Las Vegas Strip at Horseshoe Las Vegas and Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino. This renowned poker festival offers a wide range of events, catering to players of all skill levels and bankrolls. - Event Schedule: The 54th annual WSOP features a comprehensive event schedule that includes various poker formats and buy-in levels. From No Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha to mixed games and specialty events, there’s something for everyone. The schedule also incorporates prestigious tournaments like the Main Event, High Roller events, and the Players Championship (Dan Cates [@junglemandan](https://twitter.com/junglemandan) won it back-to-back in a iconic fashion). The best place to find the whole schedule is [wsop.com](https://www.wsop.com/tournaments/) website itself, so go check it out. > To avoid queues and congestion, the WSOP encourages players to utilize the online mobile registration process to sign up for events, register, and pay online. Players who register online will need to visit the Champagne Ballroom located in the Le Centre Des Conventions in Paris Las Vegas one time before playing in their first event to verify their registration with valid identification upon arrival to the series. > > https://www.wsop.com/ - The Main Event: The highlight of the WSOP is undoubtedly the Main Event. This flagship tournament attracts players from everywhere, each vying for the coveted **WSOP bracelet** and a chance to etch their name in poker history. With a multimillion-dollar prize pool, the Main Event promises intense competition and life-changing opportunities for participants. > The 2022 World Series of Poker Main Event ended with **Espen Jorstad** from Norway winning the $10 million grand prize in a field of 8,663 players. Jorstad beat Australia’s Adrian Attenborough with a full house of deuces over queens on the final hand. ![Espen Jorstad](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/espen2022-1024x682.jpg) ###### Main Event for Life: If the Main Event record is broken, all entrants in the field will be placed into a drawing that awards a non-transferrable Main Event buy-in for the next 30 years. The drawing will utilize each player’s Caesars Rewards number and would be held on July 8. - Satellites and Qualifiers: For those looking to participate in the WSOP but seeking a more affordable entry, satellite tournaments and qualifiers are available. These satellite events offer the chance to win seats into higher buy-in tournaments or even secure a spot in the Main Event at a fraction of the cost. - Online Presence: In recent years, the WSOP has expanded its online presence, offering players the opportunity to compete in online bracelet events. Nowadays, almost everyone plays the online events as well, and one can see players doing that simultaneously while at a live poker table. > WSOP.COM Online Bracelet Events: Popular WSOP Online Bracelet events are back, including every Sunday during the summer, with three special “Double Up Bracelet Days” on June 4, June 25, and July 9. The schedule is highlighted by exciting events including the $500 Summer Saver, a $3,200 High Roller, and the signature $1,000 NLHE Online Championship. To follow the action with live updates, photos, prize structures, winners and everything else, as always the best places to do that would be [P](https://www.pokernews.com/tours/wsop/2023-wsop/)[o](https://www.pokernews.com/tours/wsop/2023-wsop/)[kernews.com](https://www.pokernews.com/tours/wsop/2023-wsop/) and [wsop.com](https://www.wsop.com/tournaments/updates/) - Buying and selling action: If you want to sell a piece of your action, or you want to have even more interesting rail time, there are several options from where you could do that. You can explore the offers at [PokerStake](https://www.pokerstake.com/staking/poker-staking) or [SharkScope](https://staking.sharkscope.com/marketplace?login=Success). The 2023 World Series of Poker is set to captivate the poker world once again, offering an exhilarating blend of high-stakes competition, thrilling events, and life-changing opportunities. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a poker enthusiast, the WSOP presents a unique and unparalleled experience. Mark your calendars, prepare your strategies, and get ready to be part of poker history at the 2023 World Series of Poker. Good luck to all participants, and may the cards be in your favor! To have better chances and stay sharp at the game, I recommend you getting a *Premium*plan at [Poker.Academy](https://poker.academy/pricing)which will give you access to: - Over 350k+ of preset preflop charts to explore - Option to solve custom postflop spots (soon with node lock) - Preflop Trainer on the website version where you can quickly warm up for the session - iOS and Android App with preflop charts and soon a trainer would be also introduced there as well And if you are playing live poker make sure to watch Poker Academy’s exclusive webinar with **Blake Eastman** from **Beyond Tells**. Important Information (from wsop.com website) - [**2023 Schedule**](https://www.wsop.com/2023/2023-WSOP-Full-Schedule.pdf) - [**Tournament Rules**](http://www.wsop.com/2022/2023-WSOP-Tournament-Rules.pdf) - [**Satellite Schedule**](http://www.wsop.com/2023/2023-WSOP-Satellite-Schedule.pdf) - [**Structure Sheets (All Events)**](http://www.wsop.com/2023/2023-WSOP-All-Structure-Sheets.pdf) - [**Live Action Rules**](http://www.wsop.com/2023/2023-WSOP-Live-Action-Rules.pdf) - [**Mega Satellites Structures**](https://www.wsop.com/2023/2023-Mega-Satellites.pdf) - [**WSOP Main Event Seat for 30 Years Official Rules**](http://www.wsop.com/2023/2003-Main-Event-30-Years-Promotion.pdf) - [**Deep Stacks Structures**](https://www.wsop.com/2023/2023-Deep-Stacks.pdf) - [**Wire Instructions**](https://www.wsop.com/2023/wsop-2023-wire-instructions.pdf) - [**Payout Calculator**](https://www.wsop.com/2023/payoutcalculator/) ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/2023wsopbracelet.jpg) *It’s going to be a great summer!* --- # There will never be another Doyle Brunson Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/there-will-never-be-another-doyle-brunson Author: Doro Published: 2023-05-19 · Updated: 2024-09-12 Category: Lifestyle ![There will never be another Doyle Brunson](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/05/Doyle-Brunson-foto-Drew-Amato.jpg) **Doyle Brunson** has been a pivotal figure in the world of poker for decades, and his influence on the game is unparalleled. With a career spanning over 50 years, “Texas Dolly” was one of the most successful players to ever play the game. During the poker boom of the early 2000s, Doyle Brunson’s prominence greatly enhanced the game’s popularity and visibility. A few days after the death of the ‘godfather of poker’, we are exploring his legacy and contribution to the game more deeply. We aim to portray him not only as a iconic poker player but also as an individual who revolutionised the game forever. Through looking at how he will be remembered by those who had the chance to play with him and meet him in person, we want to gain a more insightful understanding of the impact he had. ## **He was supposed to be a basketball player but became a professional poker player** Doyle Brunson was born in 1933 in Longworth, Texas. His father was a farmer and cotton gin manager, his mother a homemaker. He was the third child of **John** and **Mealia Brunson**. As a young man he was an avid basketball player and runner, but his career was cut short when he suffered a major accident at one of his summer jobs; his right knee was crushed by a metal sheet and the resulting injury meant that he could never return to full fitness. He then decided to focus more of his time on playing poker, and by the mid-50s he was making enough money at the tables to support himself. He pursued other day jobs too, but quickly realised that nothing compared to winning big in poker. His main speciality became No Limit Hold’em, and he began travelling Texas to play at first in saloons, and then in private games with lawyers, businessmen and other high-flyers. These poker games were often illegal and dangerous, with high stakes and risks, such as the time a robbery occurred during a poker game at a farmhouse. Sometimes he visited Oklahoma and Louisiana where he met **Thomas “Amarilo Slim” Preston** and **Bryan “Sailor” Roberts**. Together they formed a poker partnership which eventually led them to the “Sin City”. Unfortunately, things didn’t go so smoothly when they first visited Las Vegas – the trio lost their entire nearly 6-figure bankroll, effectively ending their partnership but not the friendship. ![Young Doyle Brunson with a basketball and clutches after the accident.](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Doyle-Brunson-basketball.jpg) *Young Doyle Brunson* ## **Miracles** Brunson’s personal life was in disarray. Soon after marrying very religious **Louise Carter**in 1962 he was diagnosed with cancer but astonishingly recovered. His wife then became sick with a different kind of the same disease, yet fortunately she also made it through. In addition to this, their twelve year old daughter **Doyla**had serious spine problems but managed to heal without having to have surgery, which was considered a miracle as well. Brunson flourished in his poker career and after winning 54 consequent sessions was able to financially provide for his family for years. He predominantly played in Texas, however gradually travelled to Nevada and eventually settled down in Las Vegas with his family in 1973. His early poker successes marked his transition to becoming a professional poker player. He became the first person who won 1.000.000$ in tournament poker. In the mid-seventies, Brunson won two WSOP Main Event tournaments (76 and 77) and consequently gained a lot of attention. Eventually he wrote his much acclaimed book **‘Super System’**, which in following decades inspired a few generations of poker players from all around the world. ## **Why Doyle Brunson is considered as one of the greatest players in history?** Doyle Brunson is widely considered to be one of the greatest poker players in history. His skill at the game has earned him respect from his peers, while his longevity in the industry – he competed for over 50 years in high stakes cash games and was an active player until his passing – has solidified his reputation as a poker legend. Brunson’s major tournament successes have made him an inspiration and role model for aspiring poker pros all over the world. He earned 10 WSOP titles and won a WPT championship, frequently making the final table at prestigious tournaments. Over his career, he amassed over $6,000,000 in official tournament winnings, becoming the first player to win $1 million in poker tournaments. | **Year** | **Event** | **Prize** | | --- | --- | --- | | 1976 | $10,000 World Championship | $220,000 | | 1976 | $5,000 No-Limit Deuce to Seven Draw | $80,250 | | 1977 | $10,000 World Championship | $340,000 | | 1977 | $1,000 Seven-Card Stud Split | $62,500 | | 1978 | $5,000 Seven-Card Stud | $68,000 | | 1979 | $600 Mixed Doubles | $4,500 | | 1991 | $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em | $208,000 | | 1998 | $1,500 Seven-Card Razz | $93,000 | | 2003 | $2,000 H.O.R.S.E. | $84,080 | | 2005 | $5,000 Short Handed No-Limit Hold’em | $367,800 | *Doyle Brunson’s WSOP titles* Doyle Brunson’s skill, courage, and dedication are what make him one of the greatest players in history. He was inducted into the **Poker Hall of Fame** in 1988. Not only has he achieved success in the world of poker, but his legacy will live on for years to come. ## Poker Achievements and Accolades Doyle Brunson’s impressive poker career is marked by numerous achievements and accolades. As a 10-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner, Brunson’s legacy in the poker world is unparalleled. His first bracelet came in 1976, and his last in 2005, showcasing his enduring skill and adaptability over three decades. Among his most notable accomplishments are his back-to-back WSOP Main Event victories in 1976 and 1977, a feat that solidified his status as a poker legend. Brunson’s success extended beyond the felt, earning him a place in the Poker Hall of Fame in 1988. His induction was a testament to his influence and contributions to the game, inspiring countless poker players around the world. Doyle Brunson’s name is synonymous with poker greatness, and his achievements continue to inspire new generations of players. ## World Poker Tour and Television Appearances In addition to his WSOP triumphs, Doyle Brunson also made a significant impact on the World Poker Tour (WPT). With over $2 million in WPT earnings, Brunson’s prowess was evident in events like the 2004 Legends of Poker tournament, where he claimed victory. His success on the WPT further cemented his reputation as one of the game’s all-time greats. Brunson’s charismatic personality and deep understanding of poker strategy made him a natural fit for television. He became a fan favorite through his appearances on popular poker shows such as Poker After Dark, High Stakes Poker, and The Big Game. These shows not only showcased his skill but also his ability to entertain and engage audiences, further enhancing his legendary status in the poker community. ## Career Earnings and Business Ventures Throughout his illustrious career, Doyle Brunson amassed over $6 million in live tournament earnings, a testament to his consistent performance at the highest levels of the game. His success wasn’t limited to tournaments; Brunson was a formidable force in high-stakes cash games, particularly at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, where he often played against the best in the world. Brunson’s influence extended beyond the poker table. He founded the online poker room Doyle’s Room, which he later sold in 2011, demonstrating his entrepreneurial spirit. Additionally, his contributions to poker literature, including the seminal works Super/System and Super System 2, have educated and inspired countless players. These books are considered classics in poker strategy, further solidifying Brunson’s legacy as a pioneer and educator in the game. With an estimated net worth of around $75 million, Doyle Brunson’s success in poker and business ventures has made him one of the wealthiest and most respected figures in the poker world. His life and career serve as a benchmark for aspiring poker players and entrepreneurs alike. ## **“We don’t have a word for what Texas Dolly is to poker”** Doyle Brunson’s greatness extends far beyond his impressive list of accomplishments; the character he showed throughout his five decades in the game can be seen through the remarks of those who interacted with him. Here are some people’s statements from the day of his death. **Phil Ivey**, another legendary figure in the poker world, often participated in prominent poker events and gatherings alongside Doyle Brunson, further cementing his status in the poker community. **Jennifer Harman**, one of the best female live cash game player in history, wrote: “*Doyle Brunson was the Legend of Poker. But to me, he was more of a father. I will miss him dearly”.* ![Doyle Brunson and Jennifer Harman](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Jennifer-Harman-Doyle-Brunson-1024x674.jpg) *Doyle Brunson and Jennifer Harman* **Jennifer Tilly**, an acclaimed actress and renowned celebrity who frequents high-stakes poker games, has expressed her admiration for Doyle Brunson. *“He had a wicked sense of humor and always put a smile on my face –*she wrote on the day of his passing.*Even when he bluffed me out of a hand he did it in such a genial way, I felt like it had somehow been an honor for him to take my chips”.*This sentiment of admiration and respect for Brunson has been shared by many poker players, both professional and recreational alike. ![Doyle Brunson and Jennifer Tilly on the set of High Stakes Poker](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Doyle-Brunson-Jennifer-Tilly-High-Stakes-Poker-1.jpg) *Doyle Brunson and Jennifer Tilly* While we’re on the subject of a sense of humour. Check out this Doyle Brunson entry from 2018. ![Doyle Brunson's Escalade](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Doyle-Brunson-Twitter.jpg) People who had the opportunity to meet Brunson at the table recall these events with great fondness. *“It was a dream come true for me to be play with him after watching him and rooting him on for 20 years. We will miss you Doyle. This is from one of my favorite moments when I cracked a joke and was able to make him smile”* – wrote **Brad Owen**, a poker professional. ![Doyle Brunson and Brad Owen during the WPT event at Wynn Las Vegas](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Brad-Owen-and-Doyle-Brunson-1024x572.jpg) *Doyle Brunson and Brad Owen* Brunson’s signature poker hand was T2. He won the first ME WSOP Championship with T2 of spades and the next one with T of spades and 2 of hearts.**Scott Seiver**wrote on Twitter what happened when he tried to bluff ‘the godfather of poker’ with this hand in a cash game during their first meeting. *“I bluffed $40,000 in a hopeless spot because I had T2o and wanted to show him I could beat him with it. As he raked the pot he just looked at me and smiled and said “do you know how many people have given me their $ trying to do that(?)”* – wrote Seiver. > R.I.P. [pic.twitter.com/qZvWvt8JUx](https://t.co/qZvWvt8JUx) > > — Dr.Hash“Wesley” (@CryptoApprenti1) [May 15, 2023](https://twitter.com/CryptoApprenti1/status/1657947237648039936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) In **Phil Galfond’s** words, to call Doyle Brunson a legend would be an immense understatement. “*I’m so lucky I had the opportunity to truly understand Doyle’s greatness by sitting across the table from him” –*wrote Galfond. “*‘Legend’ feels inadequate. We don’t have a word for what Doyle Brunson is to poker”.* ## **Leaving his mark on the poker world** Professional players generally agree that Doyle Brunson had a tremendous impact on the evolution of poker unlike any other individual. His influential books on strategy, often referred to as ‘poker wisdom,’ have shaped the understanding and strategies of many players. *“I definitely wouldn’t be where I’m at today, if not for him growing the game”* – wrote **Josh Arieh**. *“He did a ton to make poker what it is today”* – added **Jonathan Little**. The most successful poker player in WSOP history **Phil Hellmuth** wrote: *“He inspired 3 generations of poker players w his play, his award winning book “Super System,” and his fabulous style and grit. Doyle always played hard: the man absolutely hated losing!! Doyle ruled the high stakes cash games in Las Vegas for 50 years!!”* ![Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth staring at each other during a WSOP event](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Doyle-Brunson-and-Phil-Hellmuth.jpg) *Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth* Number one player on the **All-time Money List** **Justin Bonomo** bid farewell to Brunson with a memorable photo of the two of them together. *“This is my mom’s all time favorite photo of me. I was ~22 at the time, playing in the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship – too egotistical and overconfident to realize what a privilege and honor it was to play next to this legend RIP Doyle”* ![Doyle Brunson and Justin Bonomo](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Brunson-Bonomo.jpg) *Doyle Brunson and Justin Bonomo* Doyle’s legacy continues through his son, Todd Brunson, who has earned $4.5 million in tournament winnings and won a WSOP bracelet in 2005, making them the first father-son duo to both win WSOP gold. ## **The passing of Doyle Brunson, a World Series of Poker legend** Doyle Brunson passed away on May 15, 2023 at the ripe age of 89, leaving behind a legacy that will not soon be forgotten. His passing marks a sad day for all those who have ever had the pleasure of knowing him and playing against him. He will be greatly missed. --- # Active Breaks for Poker Crushers – Video Series Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/active-breaks-for-poker-crushers-video-series Author: Gio Published: 2023-05-12 · Updated: 2023-07-11 Category: Online Game ![Active Breaks for Poker Crushers – Video Series](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/05/image_2023-05-12_162235438.png) ##### Episode 1 – Basic Strength Activity for beginners Get your whole body moving with this simple active break, that includes 3 different exercises for different muscle groups. Bring your legs, back and your chest into movement in order to bring more oxygen to the brain. This break is for beginners who would like to get their heartrate up during their 5 minute break. ##### Episode 2 – Moderate Strength Activity (for advanced movers) 5 minutes of break and 4 minutes of movement? Say no more. This active break helps you bring your heartrate up while training the muscle groups you neglected while crushing your games. This training will help you move your whole body. It is especially useful when you lack energy and would like to reactivate your brain. ##### Episode 3 – High-intensity training for poker players HIIT is as cool as ever – but is it useful? Yes, especially for poker players who grind SCOOP or any other poker series. With this active break, you can bring oxygen and lactate to the brain which improves alertness and concentration. If you are new to training, you can shorten the time of moving and keep the breaks longer. If you repeat this break frequently, you will be able to go all the way at some point. ##### Episode 4 – Advanced High-intensity break for poker players Have you been moving a lot throughout your life? This break is for you if you would like to receive the awesome benefits of your metabolism being upregulated. If you do not manage to go all the way yet, you can take breaks from moving. Repeating this break 2-3 times a day will have an impact on your cardiovascular system and improve your health. ##### Episode 5 – Mobilize your spine Caught in a chair all day? Guess what, that is not what are bodies are designed for. This break helps you get your back into movement again. Some mobility will help your discs to be nourished and improve your range of motion. If you’d like to take an easy break from playing, this is exactly what you need. ##### Episode 6 – Open your hip This active break helps you mobilize your lower body, especially your hip. If you are caught in a chair all day and never activate your glutes through squatting or lunging, you might want to be aware of opening and moving your hip. If you’d like to take an easy break from playing and feel better, then this is what you need. ##### Episode 7 – Box-Breathing Are you playing an important final table? Are you feeling anxious and/ or overly excited? Breathing exercises have an enormous impact on our nervous system and can help us feel more calm and balanced. Use this breathing exercise if you would like to relax and manage your decisions as objectively as possible. ##### Episode 8 -Mindfulness in 5 minutes Are you distracted a lot while playing? Don’t feel like in the zone? Say no more. Being present in the moment is key when playing poker. No matter what stakes you play. This short mindfulness practice helps you stay calm and takes you exactly where you need to be: Here and now. Even if you’ve never practiced mindfulness before, this is a great place to start. If you like the content we produce, please be sure to like and subscribe to the poker.academy youtube channel. --- # Preflop Academy Goes Postlop – Welcome to Poker Academy! Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/preflop-academy-becomes-poker-academy Author: Gio Published: 2023-05-10 · Updated: 2024-09-05 Category: Performance ![Preflop Academy Goes Postlop – Welcome to Poker Academy!](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2023/05/Welcome-to-Preflop-Poker-Academy.png) Greetings everyone! We are excited to share with you that **Poker Academy Postflop Solver** is now available to the public after months of dedicated effort. One of the advantages of an actual solver instead of a precalculated library is that you can customize any situation. You can choose any scenario–ranges, bet size, stack size–and you are not restricted by a database provided by someone else. This flexibility helps players make the best possible decisions in various preflop scenarios. Additionally, our tool provides the most current information to assist players in making effective preflop decisions. #### And by the way, IT IS FAST! In this article I’m going to quickly show you how to improve your postflop strategies with [Poker.Academy](http://Poker.Academy). Poker Academy Postflop Solver is finally here! Since it is a cloud-based poker solver, you can easily access it on both desktop and mobile devices, and the ease of use for your postflop calculations is now available without needing a supercomputer. Let us give you a quick example of how it works. ![Poker Academy Postflop Solver](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/unnamed.png) *Poker Academy Postflop Solver is finally here!* --- You could take ranges from our Preflop charts as you see below. The spot you pick has to be with only 2 ranges at the end, so heads up or with 2 players involved. ![Preflop Poker Charts](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/unnamed-1024x623.jpg) *Start from Preflop Charts and use the ranges to solve a postflop spot* Once you click on the **“Solve Postflop”** button, you are taken to the next screen where you can quickly select a flop and analyze it with our preset sizings. ![Quick Analyse or Configure your spot!](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/unnamed-1.png) *64* When you select **“Change Configuration,”**the option to do your own sizings (which you can see below) will be available. One way to use this is to apply the bet sizings you faced in the game. You could also edit the ranges yourself as you wish them to be. ![Poker Range Editor](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/unnamed-2-715x1024.png) *Range Editor* There are few pre-set sizes, but we don’t want to limit you; the option to change them as you wish is right there. Be creative! ![Bet-sizing configurator](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/unnamed-3-835x1024.png) *Bet-sizings configuration* Then, you end up on the postflop streets, where you start exploring the action at a deeper level. Very important here is to mention that when you reach the Turn and River you can select the cards and change them as you wish, as well as sizings for the specific street within the postflop panel. We will be adding more features, with nodelocking being one of them, and making improvements in the coming months as well. ![](https://wp.poker.academy:443/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/image_2023-05-10_163404972-1024x1007.png) Then, you can proceed with your post-flop action. Select turns and rivers, and before that, you can edit the bet-sizings for the given street. This tool helps players make the right decisions preflop, which is crucial for their success in poker. **Join the community** For any questions, bug reporting, or suggestions, please join our **[Join our Discord »](https://discord.com/invite/6BVRA4MCgN)** and use the channels there. --- # ICM and uneven stacks: why tournament ranges change when the stacks do Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/this-why-you-lose-at-poker Author: Gio Published: 2023-04-19 · Updated: 2026-09-17 Category: Mindset ![ICM and uneven stacks: why tournament ranges change when the stacks do](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/this-why-you-lose-at-poker-hero.jpg) Three years ago I wrote that tournament ranges change once you stop looking at chips: uneven stacks change them, and so does how far the field is from the money. That was true and I gave you no numbers to prove it. Here are the numbers. Everything below comes from the Poker Academy preflop solutions. The centre of the article is one spot solved six times: an 8-handed MTT table with stacks **18 · 42 · 54 · 38 · 32 · 12 · 6 · 22** big blinds, a regular ante of 0.125bb from each of the eight seats (1bb in the pot, not a big-blind ante), the cutoff min-raising to 2bb, the button and small blind folding, and the big blind with 22bb deciding what to do. The stacks never move. Only the payout model does: once as pure chipEV, then as ICM with 100, 50, 35, 30 and 20 players left in a 200-runner field that pays 30 places. ## What ICM actually computes ChipEV counts chips, or cEV. It assumes a chip you win is worth exactly as much as a chip you lose. In a cash game that is true. In a tournament it is not, because you cannot cash out chips. You can only convert them into a finishing place, and the places pay a fixed ladder. What you actually win is money, $EV, and that is what ICM measures. The Independent Chip Model turns a stack into money with one assumption: your chance of finishing first equals your share of the chips, and after the winner is removed, the same rule decides second place among the rest. That is the Malmuth–Harville version, and it is what the app uses. Take a constructed three-handed example and work it out exactly. Three players are left of a €10,000 prize pool paying €1,920 / €1,380 / €1,038 (the top three rungs of the ladder these simulations actually use). Stacks are 50,000 (A), 30,000 (B) and 20,000 (C). A finishes first P1(A)=50100=50%P_1(A) = \frac{50}{100} = 50\% A finishes second, either B wins or C wins P2(A)=0.3⋅5070+0.2⋅5080=0.2143+0.1250=33.93%P_2(A) = 0.3 \cdot \frac{50}{70} + 0.2 \cdot \frac{50}{80} = 0.2143 + 0.1250 = 33.93\% Third is whatever is left: 100 − 50 − 33.93 = 16.07%. Multiply by the prizes: A’s equity in money 0.5⋅1920+0.3393⋅1380+0.1607⋅1038=€1,5950.5 \cdot 1920 + 0.3393 \cdot 1380 + 0.1607 \cdot 1038 = \text{€}1{,}595 Do the same for B and C and you get €1,431 and €1,312. The three add up to €4,338, which is exactly the money still on the table, a good check that the arithmetic is right. ![Chart: three-handed ICM, 50,000 / 30,000 / 20,000 chips against prizes of 19.2, 13.8 and 10.38 percent of the pool. The big stack holds 50% of the chips and 36.8% of the money.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/this-why-you-lose-at-poker-money.png) *Exact Malmuth–Harville ICM. The big stack owns half the chips and just over a third of the money left; the short stack owns a fifth of the chips and almost a third of the money.* Look at the gap between the two columns. A holds 50% of the chips and 36.8% of the money. C holds 20% of the chips and 30.2% of the money. Chips you have already won are worth less than their face value, and chips you might still win are worth less again. ## Bubble factor and risk premium Now make A and C play a flip for C’s 20,000. Run ICM on each outcome. - **A wins:** stacks 70/30, C takes third for €1,038. A’s equity becomes €1,758. - **A loses:** stacks 30/30/40. A’s equity becomes €1,415. - **A right now:** €1,595. So A gains €162.96 by winning and loses €180.06 by losing. Those two numbers are what a bubble factor is: Bubble factor BF=money riskedmoney gained=180.06162.96=1.105BF = \frac{\text{money risked}}{\text{money gained}} = \frac{180.06}{162.96} = 1.105 Equity needed to break even p=BF1+BF=1.1052.105=52.5%p = \frac{BF}{1 + BF} = \frac{1.105}{2.105} = 52.5\% In chips the flip is breakeven at 50%. A needs 52.5%, so A pays a **risk premium of 2.5 points**. Run the same three lines for C, who is risking its whole tournament life while A risks 40% of its stack. C’s bubble factor is 1.40 and it needs **58.3%**. Add those two: 52.5 + 58.3 = 110.8%. Only one of them can win the flip, so the numbers cannot both be met. An even-money all-in between these two players loses money for both of them. Neither is misplaying anything; the payout ladder takes 10.8 points out of the middle. That is what the old article was reaching for when it said “winning is not as important as losing part of our stack”, and it reads better with a number attached. The app does this arithmetic for whatever sim you have open. The ICM tab in the combos panel shows your seat’s share of the chips, its share of the prize pool, the bubble factor for the pairing you are looking at, and the whole payout ladder. ![Poker Academy Browse, ICM tab: 20bb is 12.5% of the chips and 2.3% of the prizepool, bubble factor 2.00, need 66.6% to jam, 31 players left of 200, 30 paid](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/this-why-you-lose-at-poker-icm-tab-fig.jpg) *Browse → combos panel → ICM. Everyone 20bb, 31 players left of a 200-runner field, 30 places paid. The whole table carries the same bubble factor because the stacks are identical.* On that bubble (one player from the money, everyone on 20bb) the bubble factor is 2.00 and you need 66.6% equity to put your stack in, not 50%. That is a 16.6-point risk premium. The final-table sim with the same stacks and eight players left carries 1.746, which asks for 63.6%. Both figures ship with the simulation; they are not my estimates. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_22bb_bb_vs_co_chipev” to=”/open/mtt-22bb-bb-vs-co-chipev” title=”BB 22bb facing a CO open, chipEV” body=”The baseline: the same decision with every chip worth the same.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## One spot, six payout models Back to the eight stacks. The cutoff opens to 2bb, the button and the small blind fold, and the big blind with 22bb has 1bb to call into a 4.5bb pot, pot odds of 1/5.5, or 18.2%. Those numbers are identical in all six solutions. This is what the big blind does with them. ![Chart: big blind 22bb against a 2bb cutoff open, the same eight stacks solved as chipEV and as ICM with 100, 50, 35, 30 and 20 players left. Defence falls from 80.7% to 44.0% and back to 62.2%.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/this-why-you-lose-at-poker-ladder.png) *Share of all 1,326 starting hands. Read the right-hand column: how much of the range does not fold.* | Payout model | All-in 22bb | Raise to 5bb | Call | Fold | Keeps playing | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | ChipEV, chips only | 8.6 | 5.8 | 66.3 | 19.3 | **80.7%** | | ICM · 100 left (70 off the money) | 8.7 | 5.9 | 59.1 | 26.4 | **73.6%** | | ICM · 50 left (20 off) | 10.5 | 5.5 | 42.3 | 41.8 | **58.2%** | | ICM · 35 left (5 off, the bubble) | 14.4 | 4.0 | 25.5 | 56.0 | **44.0%** | | ICM · 30 left (everyone is paid) | 8.9 | 5.7 | 52.6 | 32.9 | **67.1%** | | ICM · 20 left (pay jumps) | 10.1 | 5.4 | 46.8 | 37.8 | **62.2%** | Percent of all 1,326 starting hands. In combos: the big blind keeps playing 1,070 combos for chips and 583 combos five off the money. ![Poker Academy preflop chart, chipEV, 22bb big blind against a 2bb cutoff open with stacks 18/42/54/38/32/12/6/22: fold 19.3%, call 66.3%, raise to 5bb 5.8%, all-in 8.6%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/this-why-you-lose-at-poker-ce-bb-vs-co-fig.jpg) *ChipEV. Teal is a call, orange a raise to 5bb, dark red the 22bb jam, grey a fold. Almost nothing folds.* ![Poker Academy preflop chart, ICM with 35 players left and 30 paid, same eight stacks, 22bb big blind against a 2bb cutoff open: fold 56.1%, call 25.5%, raise 4.0%, all-in 14.4%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/this-why-you-lose-at-poker-icm175-bb-vs-co-fig.jpg) *The same eight stacks, five players from the money. Over half the grid goes grey and the calling region collapses.* **436 combos**, 47 hand classes, are a 90%-plus defence for chips and a fold five from the money. They are the hands you would expect: offsuit broadways that miss (K7o, Q6o, J5o), weak suited gappers (T4s, 94s, 83s), offsuit connectors (98o, 76o, 65o). At 18.2% pot odds you call almost anything with chips. My reading: with a prize ladder behind you, a marginal flop out of position is not worth what it costs when it goes wrong. The jam goes the other way. It gets *bigger* on the bubble, not smaller: 14.4% against 8.6%, 191 combos against 114. QQ, JJ, AKo, AQo, AJo, JTs, KTs, QJs and the small suited aces all move all-in rather than call or raise small. The reason sits on the other side of the table. I measured what the cutoff does when the big blind jams 22bb over its open, weighting by the hands it actually opened with. For chips, the cutoff folds **68.1%** of its opening range. Five off the money, it folds **79.0%**. The big blind is being paid more to take the pot away, and taking the pot away is the one line that never has to see a flop. ## Where the pressure peaks Read the table from the top and defence falls: 80.7, 73.6, 58.2, 44.0. Then it jumps back up to 67.1 with 30 players left, and settles at 62.2 with 20 left. ICM pressure peaks where busting costs the most, which is the last hand before everybody gets paid. Deeper in the tournament does not mean tighter. With 30 left the bubble has just burst, since 30 places pay and 30 players remain, so every one of them has already locked a cash. The money at stake stops being “cash or nothing” and becomes the gap between the rungs, which is much smaller. With 20 left, the pay jumps start to bite again and the range tightens a little. The symmetric sims say the same thing at 20bb apiece, 8-handed, same ladder: five off the money the big blind defends 45.9%, one off the money 49.0%, and at the final table with eight left and every place paying a real jump, 41.1%. The final table is the tightest of the three, and in my experience it is also where people are most willing to gamble. ## What the opener does The old article said the ranges “do not really change”, and looking only at first-in ranges that is almost defensible. The cutoff opens 31.1% of hands for chips and 30.1 to 30.8% in four of the five ICM runs. The width stays put and the shape changes. ![Poker Academy Browse action tiles: cutoff first in with 32bb, chipEV: fold 68.9%, raise to 2bb 23.4%, all-in 7.7%; five off the money: fold 64.6%, raise to 2bb 35.4%](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/this-why-you-lose-at-poker-co-rfi-fig.jpg) *Cutoff, 32bb, first in with the same eight stacks. One caveat: the bubble solution’s tree offers no all-in at this node, so this is not the solver turning a shove down.* For chips the cutoff mixes a 2bb open with a 7.7% shoving range. Under ICM the shove is smaller in every run that offers it (5.5% with 100 left, 2.4% with 50, 2.9% with 30 and 1.5% with 20), and the small open grows to take its place. That fits the maths: a shove risks 32bb to win 2.5bb, and risk is what a payout ladder taxes. The bubble run opens the widest of all six, 35.4%, and that is the piece I would not read too hard. Its tree has no all-in at this node at all, so the raise absorbs everything. What is safe to say is that it opens at least as wide as chipEV while the players behind it defend far tighter: stealing gets better exactly when calling gets worse. ## Uneven stacks, with no ICM anywhere ICM is only half of the story the old series told. The other half was that stacks around the table matter even in a pure chipEV solution, and that one is easier to show than to believe. Two chipEV sims, 8-handed, 1bb ante. The cutoff has 42bb and the big blind 54bb in both, so the effective stack is 42bb in both. The button has 18bb in both. The only differences are the small blind, 32bb in one and 12bb in the other, plus an early seat that has already folded. ![Poker Academy Browse action tiles: cutoff 42bb first in, opens 34.8% of hands with a 32bb small blind behind it and 30.0% with a 12bb small blind behind it](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/this-why-you-lose-at-poker-sb-behind-fig.jpg) *Two chipEV solutions of the same cutoff stack. The only live difference is how deep the small blind behind it is.* The cutoff opens **462 combos** against the deeper small blind and **398** against the 12bb one, a difference of 64 combos or 4.8 points of range. My reading, as a heuristic: a 12bb small blind is a cheaper and more willing re-shover than a 32bb one, and the cutoff answers by opening tighter. The knock-on effect reaches the big blind, even though by the time it acts both of the seats that differ have already folded. It still defends differently, 82.3% against the wider opening range and 79.3% against the tighter one, and the only thing that changed at its decision is *the range the cutoff arrives with*. That is the mechanism behind the old claim that the rest of the table matters. Your neighbours change the range you are up against, even though they never touch your cards. Three points of range is small enough that it is worth asking whether it is just solver noise. It is not: the catalogue happens to contain two independent runs of one identical configuration, and they agree to **0.1 of a point**: the cutoff opens 33.00% in one and 33.05% in the other, and the big blind defends 74.37% and 74.27%. Anything above a couple of tenths of a point in these comparisons is a real difference. [pa-cta id=”open_mtt_22bb_bb_vs_co_icm” to=”/open/mtt-22bb-bb-vs-co-icm” title=”BB 22bb facing a CO open, ICM” body=”The same node with 35 players left, where chips stop being worth what they say.” label=”Open the matrix”] ## What I would take to the table - Look up the stage of the field as well as the stack. The same 22bb big blind against the same 2bb open defends 80.7% of hands for chips and 44.0% five from the money, and no amount of chart memorising covers that. - The pressure peaks on the bubble and drops the moment it bursts: 44.0% with 35 left, 67.1% with 30 left. - Tight defence and a wider jam go together. When opponents fold 79% instead of 68% to your all-in, the fold equity comes back even as the calling range disappears. - A bubble factor is a number, so use it as one. 2.00 means you need 66.6% to put your stack in, not 50%. The ICM tab prints it for the spot you are looking at. - Stacks behind you matter before anyone acts. A 12bb small blind costs the cutoff 64 combos of opening range, and the big blind feels it second-hand. None of this is a rule to learn hand by hand. The ante, the open size and the payout ladder all move these numbers, so the useful habit is to open the solution that matches the tournament you are in and look at the same spot twice: once for chips, once for money. [pa-cta id=”icm_trainer” to=”/gto-trainer” title=”Practise the bubble, not the average spot” body=”Pick an ICM simulation and a stage of the field, and the trainer deals the hands and grades each decision against that solution.” label=”Start training”] Cheers! 🙂