Exploit Lab

Tutorials

How the app works, screen by screen. Exploit Lab trains one habit: narrowing your opponent's range every time he acts. Here's how a hand goes and what each screen is telling you.

Your first hand

Pick a villain, pick a difficulty, tap Start.

You're the seat marked You; your opponent is marked Villain. The other seats post blinds or fold. The deal plays out on its own until it's your turn, then you choose your action.

Before any cards, the villain could be holding many different hands: that's his range. His starting ranges are under Ranges on the setup screen. Each time he acts, his range narrows to the hands that fit what he did.

When he acts, the button at the bottom says Make your read. That's your cue.

Think first. Before you tap, ask yourself: which hands in his range would do that? Keep those, drop the rest. Then make your read. At a real table there's no grid to paint, so this is the habit that counts.

The first time you play, a few short tips walk you through the hand. You can bring them back any time in Settings → Show the tutorial again.

The table on the flop: the villain has checked, and a Make your read button sits at the bottom.
The villain checks the flop. Time to read his range.

Reading his range

There are three ways to read, from quick to exact. Your difficulty decides which one you use, or pick one under Customize → Read with on the setup screen.

Buckets (Beginner)

Every hand he could hold falls into one of five kinds: value (strong made hands), medium pairs, weak pairs, draws and air. Pick the kinds that make up most of his range right now. If it's split, pick more than one.

Open His preflop range to look back at what he started with.

Estimate (Grinder)

Give a rough percentage for each of the five kinds, and about how many combos his whole range holds. It's closer to how you'd think it through at the table.

Grid (Pro)

Paint every hand you think he has on the 13×13 chart of starting hands: pairs on the diagonal, suited hands above it, offsuit below. Tap a cell, or drag to paint many.

  • Full / Half: Half marks hands he plays this way only some of the time.
  • The small number on a cell is how many combos of that hand are still possible once you count the cards you can see. A pair has 6 combos, a suited hand 4 and an offsuit hand 12.
  • Reset puts the grid back the way it started; Clear empties it.
A bucket read: Medium pairs and Air are ticked.
Buckets: what is his range mostly made of?
A grid read with pairs and big suited hands painted red.
Grid: paint every hand he could have.

The reveal

The villain follows known rules, so the app always knows his real range. The reveal shows it and scores your read against it.

On the grid

  • Green: in both. You read it and he has it.
  • Orange, marked −: he has it and you left it out.
  • Blue, marked +: you included it, but he can't have it.

Below the grid you get his range, your read and how many combos matched, missed or were extra. Your read score (0–100) is the overlap between the two: painting too much costs you as much as missing hands.

With buckets

You see his real range on the grid, what most of it was made of and whether your pick was right, partly right or off. The bar at the bottom splits his range into the five kinds.

Study the misses. The colors tell you what to fix: orange means you threw out hands he really plays that way, blue means you kept hands his action rules out.

By default the reveal comes after every street. On Pro it waits for the end of the hand, so you have to keep reading without feedback, like at a real table.

A flop reveal: green, orange and blue cells, a read score of 26, and a called bet marked Fine.
He flatted preflop, so AA–QQ (blue) aren't in his range; he'd have 3-bet them.

Your decisions

Your actions are scored too, against what he really holds, not just against your own cards.

When you call or fold a bet, the app works out your equity against his real range and the pot odds you were getting. The verdict is Fine, or a clear mistake when you called with less than half the equity you needed or folded with more than double it. Close spots are never called mistakes.

Bets, raises and checks show their numbers but don't get a verdict yet.

How much math you see depends on the Math setting:

  • Off: just the verdict.
  • Equity: adds how often your hand wins against his range, and what you needed to call.
  • Odds + EV: adds the expected value of each choice, your equity when he continues, and how his range would respond to your bet.
A bucket reveal: his real range on the grid, Partly right, and the decision panel.
A bucket reveal, with your decision underneath.

Difficulty

Three presets, or open Customize on the setup screen and set each one yourself. Every setting has a ? that explains it.

SettingBeginnerGrinderPro
Read withBucketsEstimateGrid
VillainSimplifiedMixedMixed
Board labelsOnChangesOff
Shot clockOff30s15s
MathOffEquityOdds + EV
RevealEach streetEach streetEnd of hand

Villains

Each villain is modeled on a real low-stakes player type: the Nit, the TAG Reg, the LAG Reg, the Calling Station, the Maniac and the Short Stacker. Tap Ranges next to any of them on the setup screen to see his preflop charts.

Simplified and Mixed

Bet sizes

On Mixed, a villain uses several bet sizes. His big bets lean toward strong hands and his small ones toward bluffs, but any size can hold anything. A size shifts the odds; it never gives his hand away.

Handy extras

Ready to try it?

Exploit Lab is in private beta. Join the waitlist and we'll send you an invite.

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