Hand (node) locking

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Intro

As a pro, you might have solid reads on your regular opposition. If you got fellow pros on your stakes (you do), you'll have to crush them to advance further. With Deepsolver you can lock your Villain range (as you know his personal tendencies) and prepare optimal counterstrategies for any opposition at any level. Poker is a game of thin margins and minimal edge - raise yours with Next-Generation Poker Solver.

What you'll do here:

Take a deeper look at the hand locking feature.
This part of our guide is aimed at users that are familiar with solvers, know their opponent, and want to use more advanced features.

What is hand locking?

If this term is unfamiliar to you, let me explain: hand locking is altering the strategic choices of one player, then re-solving to find the best response for the other player. For example, I could remove every river bluff from one player’s range, then re-calculate to find out how the other player should respond.

1. Let's start

Hand locking can be found in step 4 of a calculated hand


By default the hand lock is set to check, if you want to change this, click on check which will bring up a drop down menu with all the options you can use.


In addition to "check" and "lock as GTO", here are the betting options you indicated in step 2 to calculate a hand, Build tree and set ranges.
You will also find here the option to "unlock" a hand if you want to remove the hand locking from the range.

2.1 Applying hand locking

Example hand where the flop action was check/check:


We are on the button, and we like to indicate to Deepsolver that our opponent will probe on the Turn 80% of the pot with all the Top pairs.

To do this, click on B44 in your dropdown menu so it looks like this:


Then in the matrix, hover over all the Kx that are toppairs and click on it. You will see that the matrix has been given the colour of the bet size, and a lock is inserted.


If you want to hand lock a specific combo, click on the + and the possible combos will appear.




In this example, if you do not want to give the combo Ks9s (Toppair + Flushdraw) a handlock, just click on the combos you want to give a handlock.


Then click OK at the bottom right and you can continue with the next hand locking or have Deepsolver recalculate the hand for you by clicking calculate at the top right.

2.2. Applying hand locking

Without using the dropdown menu, you can also click + and manually enter the values into the fields.
Below is an example where 60% is checked and each bet size is used 10%.

3. Hand locking for complete range.

Do you have enough reads from your opponent, and know he is checking at a given board?

In your dropdown menu, click check and "click all", so that the entire range gets a hand lock of check.


After your hand locking, don't forget to recalculate the hand by clicking "calculate" in the upper right.


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Updated on: 07/10/2021