BreakingAces

Dace84 Have you tried PokerSnowie with the Live Advice always on during Training? The pro version may give you the ranges. The basic version (that I have) tells you the optimal action % and the EV based on the bet size. You can also set the starting number of players to 4 or 5 and reduce the starting bb to ~20 or wherever you think the average stacks would be on the bubble.

I wonder if getting lots of hands in and playing lots of games would start to develop the "feel" for you in those situations. PokerSnowie is good for that to a certain extent (you at least can get lots more hands lots faster than playing online).

Ultimately, you may need to learn from your mistakes on the felt. Then upload your games into ICIMIZER, Poker Tracker, PokerSnowie, GTO+, etc. and get and review the hands, looking for patterns etc.

Dace84, here's my take, but I'd love @AzorAhai (Ryan Martin's) opinion. I use Poker Snowie for 9man freezeout and adjust the blinds to reflect a SNG. I've also started using ICMIZER 3's push/fold trainer and GTO Wizard's post flop training.

Of the three, I find Poker Snowie's 9 man (not the mobile) to reflect real play. At low stakes, people don't seem to follow GTO. I've had more success trying to assess my hand versus the villain's range instead of trying to think through what a solver would do in that spot. I guess that's "exploitive"??? Consequently, I rely heavily on my basic HUD. For example, I have a marginal made hand and the 40/30 villain cbets 100%, then I'm going to call when he cbets. On the other hand, I have a marginal hand and 11/4 villain who cbets 33% bets into me, then I'm going to fold.

Becuase your stakes are so low, it's almost more price effective to just play lots of tables. Poker Snowie is $99/yr for basic; ICIMIZER is about the same (?) and GTO Wizard is expensive at $40/mo. You can play 200 tables before getting up to Snowie's price. It is nice to have those solvers tell you when you make a blunder. However, I use Snowie a third as much as I play online. I use ICIMIZER and GTO Wizard daily since the mobile is so convenient. But I don't think they have made me a better player for those hot spots. My hot spots are heads up, I just can't get first but man am I good at getting second!

The single best advice I read about low stake 9man SNGs (I play $1.50, $3, and only started $5): play tight while the first third go bonkers, play solid for the next third, and then play aggressive in the money. In my experience, the first three to bust are playing every hand, over betting, going all-in pre... etc (the "fun" players that Ryan describes). Knowing that they are maniacs, I play tight and IP. Ryan correctly says that getting their chips is important for the bubble but I still say away from playing too many hands against them since the variance caused by those maniacs can still bust you when you're a 75% favorite. In contrast, the $5 plays a lot differently. We'll be down to average stacks of 15bb without anyone having busted yet.

Hi Ryan, you say that limping is a good play for the SB but did you mean 84% limp? I checked out GTO Wizard and am surprised by the limping in its HU 13bb range for the SB. It's very heavy call (84%) and shoving 10% (basically weak Axo), and raising 1.5%. Seems crazy high to me.

What suggestions do you have for when you're HU and your limp from SB is raised 50% of the time? I've played ~50 SnG where I'm HU and my limps get raised 90%. Consequently, I limp ~20% and instead widen my raising range to reduce the raise frequency (in this case 3bets) from the BB. I play low/min stakes but have a hard time finishing first. Should I accept that I'll fold to the raise after I limp 40% and call 50% instead of widening my RFI at the expense of calling?

Ranges and percents from GTO Wizard mobile. I tried to upload the screenshots for reference.

I found it in the welcome email 🤷