Custom GTO Poker Trainer Guide

01 · Getting Started

The GTO poker trainer was developed to help you strengthen your nine-handed cash-game decisions at stack depths of 100 BB and 200 BB.

The online poker trainer provides four training modes: Preflop Decisions, Postflop Decisions, Custom Postflop, and Analyze Similar Hands. The first three are briefly described here so that you can get a quick start on your training. Details of each mode can be reviewed in other sections of this guide.

The poker trainer features standalone practice hands/scenarios for preflop action and postflop street action. Additionally, the Postflop Decisions and Custom Postflop Training modes provide full-hand simulation, allowing you to play continuously from the flop all the way through the river.

The poker trainer also features comprehensive preflop and postflop practice with highly customizable filters, such as: players positions, streets, pot types, hand types, and board types/textures. Every decision triggers instant feedback to help you improve your decisions.

Your poker training can start quickly by following these steps:

• Select your training mode: Preflop Decisions, Postflop Decisions, Custom Postflop, or Analyze Similar Hands
• Select your effective stack: 100BB or 200BB
• For Postflop training select your Training Format: Street Practice or Complete Hands
• Select your Hero and Villain Positions
• Then select the remaining filters you want to train for

All postflop single hand scenarios and the complete hand scenarios were solved by a GTO solver.

NOTE: It is highly recommended that you review section 07 Ranges.

02 · Preflop Decisions, Postflop Decisions, Custom Postflop Overview

You can choose from four training modes: Preflop Decisions, Postflop Decisions, Custom Postflop, and Analyze Similar Hands. The first three modes are described below, and Analyze Similar Hands is explained in the next section.

Preflop Decisions gives you a focused way to strengthen your preflop game across a wide variety of heads-up betting situations, including squeeze scenarios. Use filters for Hero position, Villain position, hand types, and betting situations to target the exact spots you want to practice. When First in is selected, the Villain-position filter is not applicable because no opponent has entered the pot. The trainer also displays the total number of preflop hands available based on the selected filters.

Postflop Decisions and Custom Postflop Training give you focused ways to strengthen your postflop game. Postflop Decisions is a streamlined mode with fewer filters than Custom Postflop Training, allowing you to get started quickly.

In Postflop Decisions, you must first select Flop, Turn, River, or Complete Hands from the “All Streets and Complete Hands” drop-down menu. Selecting a specific street allows you to focus your training on decisions for that street, while Complete Hands provides full-hand simulation, allowing you to play continuously from the flop through the river.

The Custom Postflop Training mode offers maximum flexibility for filtering postflop scenarios. You can use Street Practice or run complete, full-hand simulations from the flop to the river. Additionally, you can isolate uncompleted hands to focus your practice by clicking the box 'Not yet completed in Custom Postflop'.

As you configure the filters, the Filter Summary box displays the total number of hands or complete hands that match your selections. Because the available number of hands may be quite large, you can choose the length of your training session using the Session Length options: 5, 10, 25, or 50 hands. After you have completed selecting your filters and session length, you just need to click the Start button at the bottom of the page.

When playing a hand, the trainer displays a poker table showing the Hero position, hole cards, and the relevant opponent positions. In a first-in preflop decision, an opponent shown above the table is labeled as still to act rather than as the Villain. At the top of the table, you can review the action history and current pot calculations. This information provides the context you need to evaluate the hand before selecting your decision from the available actions at the bottom of the table.

For all four modes you can flag any hand for future review and attach custom comments for reference by clicking the 'Flag scenario' button at the top right of the page. You can then replay only those flagged hands by clicking the "Only show scenarios I’ve flagged" box in the Custom Postflop Training mode.

Once you have completed all of the hands in a session, the Session Results screen provides a summary of your decisions and overall performance. Based on your results, the trainer also identifies a Recommended Focus area to help guide your future training.

From the Session Results screen, you can select Continue Training to begin another session using the same settings, or select Change Session to return to the main training page and choose different training options.

03 · Analyze Similar Hands

Analyze Similar Hands is not an on-demand GTO solver and does not create a new solution for the exact cards you enter. Instead, it provides the next best thing: it searches our library of already-solved hands to find situations that closely resemble the hand you want to study.

Start by entering Hero’s two hole cards and at least the three flop cards. You may also add a turn card or both a turn and river card. The trainer uses the flop cards to identify the board type, even when you are studying a later street. You can improve the match by adding context such as the effective stack, Hero and Villain positions, pot type, and the decision Hero is facing.

The trainer then searches its library of solved hands and ranks the results in this order: Exact, Suit-equivalent, Close, and Concept. Matches are based on factors such as hand strength, draws, blockers, board structure, position, and prior action. A Close match preserves whether Hero is in position or out of position, although the exact Hero and Villain seats may differ. Concept matches are broader strategic alternatives that teach a similar lesson even though the cards, board, or position relationship are less closely matched. They are available only when the search finds fewer than 50 Close matches, are not included by default, and never replace an Exact, Suit-equivalent, or Close match. The displayed match information helps you understand how closely each training hand resembles the situation you entered and why it may be useful to study.

After reviewing the available matches, choose a session length and select Start session. These hands use the same decision screen, scoring, and immediate educational feedback as the other training modes. If the library does not contain a useful match, you can use Request this hand to suggest that the situation be added in the future.

04 · Understanding Your Feedback

After every decision, the trainer explains your choice and classifies it as:

• Preferred Play — The trainer’s primary recommendation based on the predefined preflop ranges or the postflop solver solution. It counts toward your preferred-decision score and corrects a hand in Review Missed Hands.
• Acceptable Alternative — A supported secondary action. It is not a mistake, but it does not count as a preferred decision.
• Usually Avoid — An action that is not sufficiently supported in that situation. The feedback explains why and identifies the preferred play.

Green indicates Preferred Play, yellow indicates an Acceptable Alternative, and red indicates Usually Avoid.

Preflop feedback uses the trainer’s pure-strategy ranges. It considers the hand, stack, positions, and previous action, then explains the hand’s place and purpose within the range. Because these ranges do not use mixed frequencies, one action is normally preferred.

Postflop feedback uses the solver strategy for the displayed ranges, board, pot, stacks, and action history. The solver may mix among several actions or bet sizes. The trainer normally labels the most frequently used individual action as Preferred Play. Other actions used at least 20% of the time—or otherwise supported by the strategy—may be Acceptable Alternatives.

For example, if the strategy checks 38.37%, bets half pot 37.10%, and bets one-third pot 24.49%, Check is preferred because it is the most frequent individual action. Both bets may still be acceptable. Mixed actions usually have similar expected values, so Preferred does not necessarily mean significantly more profitable.

In Complete Hands, each street is evaluated separately. The next street continues from the trainer’s stored preferred line so the pot, stacks, and action history remain consistent.

05 · Your Training Profile

Your Training Profile appears in the right sidebar of the web trainer and automatically tracks your performance across Preflop Decisions, Postflop Decisions, Custom Postflop, and missed-hand review sessions. The profile combines results from both 100 BB and 200 BB training.

The profile displays your lifetime accuracy based on the percentage of decisions where you selected the trainer’s preferred action. An acceptable alternative is not treated as a mistake, but it does not count as a preferred decision when calculating lifetime accuracy. In a complete hand, each flop, turn, and river decision is scored separately.

Your answered decisions are recorded immediately. Therefore, decisions completed before leaving an unfinished session still contribute to your lifetime accuracy, Focus Next results, missed-hand queue, and completed-scenario history. The completed-session total increases only after you finish every decision in a session.

The Focus Next list identifies up to five areas that deserve additional practice. It ranks areas primarily by the number of mistakes, followed by accuracy and the number of attempts. Preflop focus areas identify the Hero and Villain positions, preflop situation, and effective stack. Postflop focus areas can also identify the pot type, board family, street, and whether Hero faced aggression. The Session Results screen recommends the highest-priority focus area after a completed session.

When you make a mistake, that scenario is added to Review Missed Hands. Scenarios missed repeatedly receive higher priority, with more recent mistakes used to break ties. Selecting Review Missed Hands starts a focused review session using the highest-priority missed scenarios. Choosing the preferred action during review reduces that scenario’s missed count by one. A scenario is removed from the queue after all of its recorded misses have been corrected. Acceptable alternatives do not add another miss, but only the preferred action reduces the missed count.

The profile also records which scenarios you have answered. “Completed” means the decision was attempted; it does not mean the preferred action was selected. This history supports the Not yet completed options in Preflop Decisions, Postflop Decisions, and Custom Postflop, allowing you to concentrate on scenarios you have not previously attempted.

Your Training Profile is associated with the current browser. It remains available after refreshing the page or closing and reopening the browser, but it does not automatically sync with other browsers or devices. Clearing the browser’s site data can remove access to the saved profile.

Selecting Reset training profile clears your lifetime performance, Focus Next results, missed-hand queue, session history, and completed-scenario progress for that browser. Flagged scenarios and their notes are stored separately and are not removed when the training profile is reset.

06 · Filters Overview

Each of the three filtered training modes provides filters. The Preflop Decisions and Postflop Decisions modes have a limited number of filters for streamlined setup, while Custom Postflop provides all postflop filters for maximum flexibility.

In Custom Postflop, after selecting either Street Practice or Complete Hands, you can select combinations of the following filters from the perspective of Hero (which is you):

• Hero positions – LJ, HJ, CO, BTN, SB, BB
• Villain positions – LJ, HJ, CO, BTN, SB, BB
• Positions – In position, Out of position
• Streets – Flop, Turn, River
• Decisions – Hero initiates, Faces aggression, Facing a Villain bet, Hero bets → Villain raises, and Hero raises → Villain re-raises
• Pot Types – Single-raised, 3-bet pot, 4-bet pot
• Hand Types – High pocket pair, Medium pocket pair, Low pocket pair, Suited Broadway, High suited connector, Medium suited connector, Low suited connector, Suited one-gapper, Suited two-gapper, Suited Ace, Suited King, Offsuit Broadway
• Board Types – Dry rainbow, Semi-connected rainbow, Connected rainbow, Dry two-tone, Semi-connected two-tone, Connected two-tone, Disconnected monotone, Semi connected monotone, Connected monotone, Paired rainbow, Paired two-tone, Tripled board.

NOTE: for the Decisions filter the following three decisions are only available in the Street Practice alternative: Facing a Villain bet, Hero bets → Villain raises, and Hero raises → Villain re-raises

The Preflop Decisions mode has an additional filter specific to preflop play which contains additional preflop concepts, all of which are: First in, Call the open, 3-bet the opener, Squeeze, Facing a 3-bet, Making a 4-bet, and Facing a 4-bet.

Open the following file to get an overview of board types:

Note: The complete Cartesian product of all filter options contains 34,632 valid training combinations. The Poker Trainer includes at least one hand for each combination, with most represented in complete-hand scenarios.

07 · Ranges

The preflop ranges used in the Poker Trainer are simplified, pure-strategy GTO based ranges and do not incorporate GTO mixed frequencies. At the end of this section, you will find our interactive Preflop Range Viewer with the 100 BB and 200 BB RFI, VS RFI, VS 3-Bet, and VS 4-Bet ranges used by the trainer. Reviewing these ranges provides important context for understanding the strategic logic behind each decision.

Keep in mind that 200 BB ranges are generally wider than standard 100 BB ranges. Deeper stacks increase the implied odds of speculative hands, allowing players to profitably include more suited connectors, gapped connectors, and other hands with strong postflop potential.

It is also important to remember that players may use different opening ranges based on their own strategy and style of play. Some players will use wider ranges than those shown in the trainer, while others will use tighter ranges. As you train, consider how you might adjust the trainer opening ranges to better reflect your own playing style.

Open the interactive range viewer to choose a stack depth, preflop decision, and position matchup, then select any starting hand to see its recommended action.

08 · WHY LEARN WITH A GTO POKER TRAINER

GTO (Game Theory Optimal) poker is a balanced strategy designed to make your play difficult for opponents to exploit. Exploitative poker, by contrast, focuses on identifying and taking advantage of specific mistakes or tendencies in an opponent’s play.

GTO provides an important baseline for effective exploitative play. By understanding how a balanced player should act, you can more easily recognize when opponents deviate from that strategy—for example, by folding too often, calling too much, or bluffing too little—and adjust your play accordingly.

One of the best ways to improve at poker is to work through many different situations. A GTO trainer can accelerate that learning by repeatedly exposing you to:

• different hands and positions
• different preflop ranges
• different flop textures
• different opponent actions
• different betting decisions

With repetition, you begin to recognize common patterns and make better decisions more quickly.

Our trainer simplifies GTO by using pure ranges and decisions rather than mixed frequencies. Instead of requiring you to remember that a solver might bet a hand 60% of the time and check it 40%, the trainer teaches whether a hand generally belongs in the bet, check, call, raise, or fold portion of your strategy.

The goal is to build a solid GTO foundation and practical decision-making experience so that, at a live table, you can recognize the fundamentally sound play—and then adjust when an opponent gives you a good reason to do something different.

09 · Summary of Core Assumptions

Nine-max cash-game positions.

100 and 200 BB effective-stack options.

Every postflop hand is solved by a poker solver.

There is no rake in the solver solutions.

Opening Ranges for all positions are predefined for the solver solutions.

Training guidance does not guarantee poker winnings or financial results.

10 · FAQ