In this video, I briefly summarize everything that we've discussed so far in Modules 1-5 before introducing the Construction Exercise.

The Construction Exercise is a practice that I developed from working with solvers in my own studies and from coaching others over the past few years. It is a methodology built on the scientific method that can greatly improve your ability to reason through various poker scenarios. I believe that this is the best way to utilize solvers for the study of an individual hand of poker. Mastering this method will improve the way in which you build your own strategies and train yourself to implement better at the table.

The Construction Exercise incorporates everything that we've learned throughout Modules 1-5 into a singular framework. It is an iterative process that shifts us away from a GTO vs GTO approach and moves us towards actually solving real-life problems we might face at the poker table. This will help us identify exploits that we can take against different types of opponents and surface areas in your own strategies that might be open to opponent counter-exploitation.

The Construction Exercise framework is detailed below. By executing the following steps, we can utilize solvers for a high-value study session that can greatly improve our understanding of how to construct ranges and drill specific heuristics that we can utilize for better implementation in-game:

1. Set a Baseline: Node lock both your own strategy and your perception of your opponent’s strategy. By doing so, we can set a baseline from which to compare the rest of the solves. It also represents the version of the world as we currently understand it, giving us a reference point from which we can compare subsequent solutions against.
2. Understand Equilibrium: Unlock both players’ strategies to find the equilibrium solution. Pay special attention to EV – if the EV of solution #1 is less than this solution, we likely have a leak in our understanding of how to construct in that scenario.
3. Find the Max Exploit of your Opponent: Unlock your own strategy while keeping your opponent’s strategy node locked. By looking at the maximum exploit against our perception of our opponent’s strategy, we can begin to identify hand classes and/or combinations that we can play more effectively.
4. Find the Max Exploit against your own strategy: Unlock your opponent’s strategy while keeping your own node locked. We can help identify weaknesses in our own strategy and identify ways in which our opponents can counter-exploit us.
5. Find additional max exploits: We can get into leveling wars here, but we want to understand the strengths and weaknesses of all our strategies. In order to do this, we should iteratively determine max exploits of our strategies and counters (think the equilibrium exercise from Module 1).
6. Update your baseline: Based on the iterations above, develop an updated baseline strategy using our findings. Incorporate any insights that you learn along the way in terms of how to play your range, hand classes, and/or individual combinations. Your goal should be to improve your EV you earn while reducing your opponent’s ability to exploit you.
7. Introduce additional testing as necessary: Introduce additional tests as necessary to gauge sensitivities and answer specific questions (e.g. How should my strategy change if my opponent c-bets too widely? How would that change if they c-bet too infrequently? ).