I'm interested in the theory of "optimal" play at these anonymous zoom poker tables. Specifically Zone Poker on Bodog/Bovada.

Striving to play GTO seems logical and illogical. You don't gain the "benefit" of balance; you don't get future value from your bluffs through "image".

Should all bluffs only be executed for +EV and not for balance? Are there any good books/articles about this concept?

These concepts are really screwing with my brain

You need to adjust your idea of what GTO means.

^ What I meant was that you don't really have to worry about "being exploited" because of the anonymity. Also the need to balance your value with bluffs is kind of skewed because there's no way for villains to know if you're only betting for value. Am I way off with these concepts?

Also I think that was the least useful post I've seen in a long time and you made me think I accidentally posted this in BBV.

What stakes are you playing? You are certainly not anonymous just because the tables change every hand. If you play the same time every day you will start to recognize regs and their tendencies.

^ on Bovada you are anonymous. There's no screen names.

oh nvm then. GTO would be the same is it is independent of player styles. I would say optimal play 6 handed you should have a 3bet around 7-10%.

When I said optimal, I should have optimal as in most profitable. What changes and adjustments need to be made at these types of games?

Playing GTO will never be the most profitable, except when you're playing against another GTO opponent. Although, in practical terms, GTO probably also does better if you're playing someone who exploits better than you also.

Everywhere below Highstakes you shouldn't play "GTO" because there are a lot of pool tendencies to exploit!

In these anonymous tables, is there any incentive to balance your range with an appropriate number of vbets and bluffs?

Yes and no.

Obviously, you don't need to worry about people exploiting your unbalance specifically, because they won't know which person is you.

But you need to avoid being exploited by actions that would exploit the population at large. Think about what your strategy is: you don't know who anyone else is either, so, you take actions that will exploit the population as a whole.

Anyone else who's paying attention will be doing the same thing. So if a particular line, in the population, means 'this guy never has the nuts', then astute observers will think it means that for you also. If you play in a way that makes their assumption true, then you're being exploited despite being anonymous.

So your job is to exploit the weaknesses of the community, without falling prey to the same weaknesses.

anonymous zoom is pointless and very dumb in an imperfect information game and Bovada should change the terms.

its like playing a videopoker game with some randomness.

maybe you can pick up player infos based on changing stacksizes (you see only one guy with around 500bb stack f.e.), but that just applies in very small fields and completely assymetric, which is bad for the game.