The Max Exploit Tool

The "Max Exploit Tool" will help you to find the optimal play versus a villain in a heads-up tree at the push of a button. This tool can be activated with the button below. It will figure out the optimal play for a player in the last phase of the tree where the board cards are known (both player's strategies will be kept fixed in all other phases of the tree).



For example, please consider the tree in the screenshot below where it's SB vs BB. It's a 5-bet raise or fold tree and BB's strategy has already been entered. With the "Max Exploit Tool", we will be able to find the absolute best way for SB to counter BB's strategy.

You can download the savefile for this tree here.
To load it into the program, go to File->Open.

How to maximally exploit villain's strategy: Manually

Before we have a look at the tool itself, first let's see what approach would need to be taken in order to find this optimal counter-strategy manually.

To do so, we would first need to set SB's decisions as "all hands" at all three of his decisions (locations 1, 2 and 3). And then we would need to move backwards through the tree and apply optimal play at each of SB's decisions.

So, we would need to:

1) Set "all hands" at locations 1, 2 and 3
2) Compute (F7)
3) Mouse over location 1 and press Alt+D to remove the -EV hands
4) Compute (F7)
5) Mouse over location 2 and press Alt+D to remove the -EV hands
6) Compute (F7)
7) Mouse over location 3 and press Alt+D to remove the -EV hands
8) Compute (F7)

In this manner we'll figure out how to play each hand optimally for SB in each of his decisions in the tree.
No better way of playing versus villain will exist.

The Max Exploit Tool (automated)

The Max Exploit tool will perform the entire above described process for you at the push of a button.



To do so, just press the "Ex" button in the menu. You will be asked who hero is, after which the program will walk through the entire process on its own.

Advantages of using the automated tool

Other than being faster than performing the process manually, there's also another advantage in using the automated version. Namely, the manual method only works for raise or fold situations. However the Max Exploit Tool has the added benefit of being able to assign hands to the best action, in case there's three or more actions within a decision. It will simply move all starting hands to the action with the highest EV.

Max Exploit: Postflop

In case you use the Max Exploit Tool postflop, it's of course no longer possible to assign hands to a matrix. Instead, they will be assigned to an action by entering a string in the "Holecards" section such as AcKd,AcKh,AcKs,AcQd,AcQh,.....

The Max Exploit Tool for the preflop phase if postflop play is present

If there is postflop play on an unknown flop, then the Max Exploit Tool will be applied to the preflop phase (since thát is the last phase where the board cards were known). However, due to the Math Engine not being able to work in this setup, the calculations will be performed by the Monte Carlo engine. As a result, the results will be rather scattered. To reduce problems with this, increase the number of simulations by going to Engine->Edit number of simulations in the menu.