In the modern poker environment, solvers are the go-to study option for all top players and those who strive to join their ranks. However, as useful as they may be, poker solvers can be quite scary and confusing for those who have no experience using them.
Phil Galfond, the man behind Run It Once, one of the largest poker training sites out there, recognized this issue and decided to do something about it. His latest course, aptly named Simplifying Solvers: The 80/20 Poker Solver System, brings out the framework Galfond himself used to solve the mystery and completes the trilogy that started with This Is PLO and continued with his Foundations course.
As he explains himself, like so many other players, he used to feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of numbers, confusing frequencies, and heaps of information that he just struggled to turn into actionable steps. Eventually, though, he cracked the code, and his latest course shares that knowledge with the rest of the poker world.
Simplifying Solvers at a Glance
Most players who give poker solvers a chance and decide to give up face similar problems. It’s not just hard to interpret the information coming from the software; it’s also very difficult to try and memorize all the different outputs in seemingly similar spots.
Therefore, one of the main things that Galfond’s new course focuses on is teaching players how to study solver outputs in a way that will help them understand why the computer chooses particular lines. This makes the learning process much easier (and much more enjoyable) than attempting to memorize hundreds or thousands of various outputs.
Simplifying Solvers also shows the ways in which you can turn solver outputs into actionable lines that you can resort to at the tables. By translating stats, numbers, and percentages into real-life actions, you’ll be able to retain much more knowledge from your study sessions.
Finally, Galfond offers some useful tips on how to actually organize your study and create efficient learning habits to get the best possible value out of the time spent with solvers. These strategies apply equally to No Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha.
Poker Solvers Just Got a Bit Less Scary
To keep things completely honest and in perspective, poker solvers will never be simple. The whole idea behind them is to try and solve a very complex game with countless decisions every step of the way. For them to do what they’re meant to do properly, they have to be complicated.
At the same time, they’re not as scary as they may seem at first. Once you spend a bit of time playing with different options and testing different outputs, you’ll slowly begin to understand not just how they work, but the logic behind certain decisions.
Like with most other things relating to learning poker, you can try and do this on your own, which will take a lot of time (at least for most of us), or you can use a helping hand along the way. Galfond’s new course is meant to be that helping hand.
Simplifying Solvers provides tips and lessons from one of the best and most methodical players alive, who also has a great passion for teaching the game. There is hardly anyone better positioned to tackle this topic and dispel some myths that surround it.
Right now, the course is available at a discounted rate of $799 for lifetime access (down from $999), so this might be a good opportunity to get your copy. This one isn’t for total beginners, but if you’ve been climbing through the stakes and are eager to take your game to the next level, solvers will play a crucial role in this process — and Simplifying Solvers can really help flatten that learning curve.
