I've been a full time pro for 7-8 years now (mtts), but I posted here because I assume much more cash gamers than mtters use CREV. Unlike many of us I'd be eager to study, but I just suck at crev and I don't know how to get better. I've been toying around with it quite a bit, but I always have the same problems: it takes me what feels like 5-10x the time it should take for simple simulations just because I'm so slow, and I never trust the outcomes of my simulations because I'm so unsure of if I'm doing this and that wrong. I know there are tutorial videos, but they are all "what this and that means" types, and I haven't found proper videos where someone who's good at using it would show how they actually use it to analyze spots. I'm RIO elite and I know there are some vids where CREV is being used, but those on the other hand are a bit over my head. Basically I'd love there to be a step-by-step video where someone shows how they actually use it post-session to analyze hands, making it a beginners version type of thing, because currently it takes me like an hour to analyze one spot and doesn't seem worth it :(

So I'm using the above hand as an example of how exactly I suck at this. Please don't care about the hand itself, I'm just trying to solve it for the sake of example, and don't care at all about what the correct play is.

So anyway that's from the stone bubble of a tourney vs laggy reg, he shouldn't be able to raise/call wide at all (should just shove AK because of ICM imo), and because of this and blockers I jammed, and now I'm trying to figure out how often he must be bluffing for us to be able to 4b shove here, if we assume his raise/call range is QQ+. I'm just trying to calculate cEV, so I clicked "this is not a tournament" from CREV (it's an ICM issue for him not me, and I'm not trying to calculate what's the worst hand for him to profitably raise/call with, but how often he must be bluffing for me to make a cEV profit).

Since he has to call an SB shove I assume his entire bluffing range (if it exists) would have to be Axs/Kxs type hands, and I'm giving him here QQ+ for value and A2s-A5s for bluffs. I come up with this:

And immediately I have a bunch of questions:

1) Why is the EV of my open -2013? Is it because the program "knows" that villain's range is QQ-AA, A2s-A5s like I set? It doesn't make sense to me for the program to know his range before the villain has made an action..?

2) Why is the EV of villain's 3bet 4137? Is it because the program "knows" I have KQo precisely and that I'll always jam it? Or is it because in reality villain had KK so is the program using his hand from the HH to calculate it?

3) The part where I 4bet shove and my EV -13 chips (basically breakeven), is this what I was trying to calculate, the EV of 4bet shoving KQ against a 3b range of QQ-AA, A2s-A5s, of which he'll fold everything but QQ+?

4) In the rightmost past with villain's fold/call tree branches, why is the EV 8586, where is this counted from?

So as you can see this is a supersimple spot, we are not even postflop, and I'm already puzzled. Now, let's make this a bit more complex and give ourselves an opening range, not just our hand. I gave myself a range of 55+ A2s+ A7o+ K6s+ Q8s+ J9s+ T9s, all broadway combos = 24% hands, same ranges for villain:

So is everything correctly done here?

5) Again how does it calculate the ev of my open, this time -1724? And villain's 3b ev?

6) I gave myself a 4b jamming range of 88+ KQo KJs+ AQo+ ATs+ aka roughly 30% of my opening range, his 3b/c range still being QQ+. Is the ev of my shove (275) now correct vs his range, aka did I manage to calculate what I wanted to?

Again sorry this is in the "wrong" section, like I said I'm not trying to get an answer from this thread to the hand, but how to use the program and only used this as an example of how hard it is for me, if we went past postflop this post would be 10 times longer.

Does anyone have any insight to how to get better? Are there any articles, blogs, videos, websites, etc that could help me out? Kind of like an in-between step between tutorial videos and Elite pros analyzing complex spots where all focus is on range crunching and not how to use the program.

Thanks!