Hello wizards,

Can you please tell me the difference between balanced play and GTO play?

Thanks

they're different

why tho

Basically, a GTO strategy is fully balanced in every possible line.

When talking about "balanced play" people usually refer to simply balancing a line/situation, not the whole game and without considering all the possibilities.

For example on the river in position you may adopt a balanced line with the options of checking behind or pushing.
Even if your strategy is "balanced", a GTO strategy may adopt different lines (for example betting smallish sometimes, pushing other times etc...).

hmm, so balance applies only in isolation, but GTO is just one complete strategy?

A simple way to show the difference:

If you only valuebet the absolute nuts + a balanced amount of air on the river, your river betting strategy is balanced. But this strategy can't be the GTO river betting strategy, because you can make more money by widening your ranges. There are certain spots where valuebetting only the nuts makes sense, but generally it doesn't.

Okay, so in short, balance is for isolated situations and GTO is uber complex, complete optimal maximum strategy kind of thing?

and also, balance is based on assumptions about players ranges, where as GTO isn't?

Balance is based on making your opponent indifferent. When you pot the river with 2/3 nuts and 1/3 air in your range, he is indifferent to folding or calling with a bluffcatcher. He's getting 2 : 1, and your range is 2 : 1 in nuts : air.

When we're talking about the GTO strategy for the game, we mean the whole strategy, starting with choosing preflop ranges, then playing them optimally postflop. For every situation you can find yourself in, you would know the best way to play against an opponent that would exploit any leaks you could have. That's what GTO is about.

We don't know what the GTO strategy looks like for NLHE, but we can look at isolated spots and think about how close our strategy in that spot is to the GTO strategy. We can often conclude that certain lines can not be part of the GTO strategy, even if we don't know what it looks like.

I think, balanced is referring the ranges such way that opponent cannot easily exploiting us. One example of this is making opponent indifferent. But I think often ppl use it more generally, e.g. that our raising range is such that we are able to play back enough if opponent reraises?

bumping this as i dont wanna create another thread asking the same question basically...I´ve read these comments but im still confused about the differences between balanced and based on GTO, i always thought playing in a GTO oriested approach we were by default playing in a balanced matter reducing villains EV to cero...thoughts?

The idea of driving an opponents EV to zero is minimum defense related concept and is only very losely related to GTO as a way to get very rough GTO approximations by generalizing results from extremely simplified toy games. In almost any real world poker situation both players will be able to on average acquire some non-zero share of the pot with all or almost all of their range, especially on early streets.

At a high level the difference between balance and GTO is that GTO most be balanced AND ev maximizing. I have an article on the difference between unexploitable and GTO on my blog on that, if your interested PM me and I'll send it to you.

I don't need to use the word balance to describe my strategy and neither do you. If I bluff, it's not because of balance, it's because I think bluffing is the most profitable way to play the hand. If I check a strong hand, it's not for balance, it's because I think slowplaying is the most profitable way to play the hand. If I use a mixed strategy by checking or betting at frequencies, it's not for balance, it's because I think both plays will show the same profit.

Not true about the mixed strategies, they are essential for GTO play (e.g. RPS)

nm got that wrong

What does rps have to do with poker? Someone please explain why what I said is false.

I agree that rps is irrelevant.

I was under the impression that in an actual GTO strategy (i.e. a strategy a computer would sim and a human could never play unassisted) poker strategy the mixing frequencies actually matter and effect the overall EV of the strategy, so you can't arbitrarily decide the frequency to bet and check because changing the frequencies actually does effect EV.

Fwiw, in practice I don't think there is anything wrong with what you said.

Edit: cleared up ambiguous terminology and imprecise phrasing.

I don't think it would matter if you were playing a perfect gto bot. I think it would matter vs humans that could recognize that you either hit too many draws in such a spot or have too many busted draws in such a spot or you don't have enough draws in such a spot. Then you could be exploited. Vs a bot, it wouldn't matter if you just guessed at frequencies because the bot wouldn't exploit you.

I wasn't talking about playing a bot I was talking about the GTO strategy that is actually GTO, which would only be able to be played perfectly by a computer.

As an example let's say a GTO strategy says you bet a particular hand 13.5% of the time and check it the rest of the time.

My understanding is that betting the hand 14.7% or 12.2% of the time and and checking it the remainder would be less EV for your overall strategy than the GTO solution of betting 13.5% of the time.

I should note this is jus my understanding which could very well be wrong.

Your quote implied that playing pure strategy could be GTO as well. But many games don't have pure strategy GTOs (poker included). e.g. RPS has a mixed GTO strategy.

This is true

It's incorrect that it wouldn't matter vs. a bot. In AKQ poker, you should sometimes bluff with Q as second actor(33%). If you bluff none, you will only get value from A which is less EV than bluffing with Q 10% of the time, though I agree it's not obvious.

How so? Isn't the bluff with the Q 0ev? I don't know I've never studied the AKQ game.

I didn't mean to imply that. I meant that a non gto strategy can have the same ev as gto vs a non exploiting opponent.

This is the way I understand it, but I could be wrong.

I would say that GTO is the unexploitable strategy. Not the most profitable strategy, but the safest. The further you stray from GTO, the more you can exploit people, but the more you open the door to be exploited yourself. If you played GTO you could tell your opponent your exact strategy and there would be nothing he could do to exploit it.

I think balancing your play refers to the general practice of mixing things up so your hand can't be read as easily. You balance your play so that checking doesn't always mean you missed, and betting doesn't always mean you hit. A GTO strategy is perfectly balanced.