How to Leverage GTO Wizard’s EV Comparison Tool

Do You Have to Defend Your BB?

Learning From the EV Comparison View

The default ‘Strategy’ view displayed in GTO Wizard is of limited utility in determining just how exploitable folding a specific hand would be. It just shows which hands are profitable calls and which are not, but it does not provide much insight into how profitable or unprofitable those calls are, in theory.

Perhaps you know that hands that mix call and fold have an equilibrium EV of 0, and that other hands toward the margins of your calling range are, well, marginal. But this kind of hierarchy is not apparent on the Strategy grid, where all your calling hands have the same color.

For example, take a look at this response to a raise from a big stack on the BTN when you are a 25bb stack in the BB with 25% of the field remaining:

All your calls are green, and it’s not immediately apparent which are more or less valuable or by how much. And more practically speaking, it’s not clear how to adapt this strategy to make it more useful to you.

There are several ways to view the profitability of decisions. One is to select ‘Strategy+EV’ from the Strategy dropdown menu. Another method is to select ‘EV’ from that same menu. However, in this article, we’ll display a much more powerful way to examine values – GTO Wizard’s EV comparison tool.

By changing the display to ‘Compare EV’ and comparing Fold to the Best Action, we get a clearer idea of what folding various hands would cost you:

The dark red boxes are the most costly, the hands where folding would be a significant mistake. The numbers in the bottom right-hand corner of each box indicate exactly how much of the prize pool the solver expects these hands to earn by taking the best action.

Some hands are so profitable in theory that you don’t have to play them anywhere near perfectly to make money with them.

Another way of thinking about this is that these (dark red) hands are so profitable in theory that you don’t have to play them anywhere near perfectly to make money with them. If you make mistakes after the flop, you may not profit as much as the solver predicts, but you’ll make more than $0, which is what folding would get you. As you move into the lighter shades of red, the value gets harder to realize. And if the expected value was already only marginally profitable then it can quickly turn into a losing defend. For example, if the raiser is a very good player or it isn’t clear to you how calling will make money, it may be correct to just fold these hands.

Ultimately, your goal should be to improve your postflop skills so that you can play these hands profitably.

Such folds are only “mistakes” in the theoretical sense. For you, an imperfect human player, folding may be the best option given your current skill level. Ultimately, your goal should be to improve your postflop skills so that you can play these hands profitably. But, you probably have many leaks–we all do–and the lighter the shade of red, the less you should be concerned with those particular hands.

Is There a Third Way?

There is another option besides calling and folding, which requires no postflop skill or decision-making whatsoever. By changing the EV comparison to All-in and Fold, we can see which hands you could profitably shove:

Shoving is not necessarily the most profitable way to play these hands; this chart only indicates whether it’s better than folding, and by how much. But if you don’t feel comfortable calling against a tough opponent, you can shove any hand that is even the slightest bit green and expect to do better than if you folded it.

For a more nuanced view, we can change the comparison to be between Allin and Best Action. The darker the red, the bigger a mistake it would be to shove rather than take the solver’s preferred action:

Shoving AA would be a bigger mistake than shoving 72o!

A “mistake” in this context does not necessarily mean that shoving is -EV, only that a more profitable option exists, in theory. That is why AA is actually one of the worst hands to shove. It’s better than folding, of course, but not nearly as good as a smaller three-bet. In fact, shoving AA would be a bigger mistake than shoving 72o!

Exploiting Tight Opponents

The above charts are best applied in cases where the reason you are reluctant to call is that the person raising your blind is a tough opponent. Such a player can be expected to have an appropriately aggressive opening range (and if they open too aggressively in an attempt to pick on your big blind, these shoves only go up in value).

A tighter opener is more likely to have strong hands that can call your shove.

If your reluctance to call is based on your opponent having an overly strong opening range, that’s a different story. The best exploit here will involve more folding, less calling, and less three-betting/shoving.

How Do I Make These Calls Profitable?

However, if you’re eager to tackle those types of close spots and become better at capturing value with more marginal hands, there are some articles here on the GTO Wizard blog that can aid you in these studies. Counterintuitive Calls and Flatting Ace-x Hands Shortstacked both address this subject.

Learn More

GTO Wizard offers an enormous, potentially overwhelming amount of information. Fortunately, it also offers a wide variety of tools for visualizing that information. Learning to use those tools well will help you make practical use of this valuable information.