As someone that is relatively new to the poker theory forums, one thing I find enjoyable and valuable is working out exactly where the profit comes from when our opponents make mistakes.

There was just a thread on micro-stakes in which the majority was in consensus that we should fold A-A facing a flop c/r because 'they are never bluffing here at 2nl'. Here's the thread if you're interested:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/69...-flop-1682516/

Now, this is really hard for me to believe. AA has so much equity against so many holdings that folding in position on a wet board getting 2:1 direct odds that I still have a hard time picturing finding a fold here. But hey, I don't play 2nl, so if people at that site say they have thousands of hands databased and the bluff rate on c/r hands is < 5% then I guess I'll have to defer to them.

Assuming this is the player pool, how do you best adjust your play to beat this level (besides folding to all raises)? I was told they don't fold any more than normal, so increasing your own personal bluff frequency doesn't increase your win rate. They simply don't bluff enough.

After thinking it through it feels like you wouldn't actually adjust any of your plays, you'd simply be allowed to win more than your fair share of pots by getting too many marginal hands to showdown cheaply. So other than folding to all raises there wouldn't be any other adjustments to make, they'd just automatically lose more pots than they should by not bluffing at the right frequency.

Am I understanding this right?

There are hands that you should be less likely to value-bet because you fear a bluff-raise. Against opponents who never bluff-raise, that means you can make thinner value bets if their range of hands that won't fold to a bet is polarized between bluff-catchers and hands they will check-raise for value with. The more likely they are to donk bet if they improve on a street, the more hands you can bet for value because their calling range is weaker.

Against a player who never bluffs, if that also means that they never semibluff with draws, that means that you can consider floating with weak hands because you might have five outs to hit trips or two pair if you have middle pair, but you also have bluff outs with the ability to represent a straight or a flush if the right card comes, since you know your opponent is more unlikely than usual to have those hands.

If the guy never raises unless he has two pair or better, the way to exploit him is to fold to all his raises unless we have (will have) a stronger hand than two pair or better. In this spot the exploitative fold saves us money. A GTO player would be destined to lose way more than a exploitative player here.

If the guy never folds either, you don't increase your bluff rate. To exploit him you shrink your bluffing range to save yourself money, and you expand your value range in those smaller pots for extra wins. (When this kind of player calls our bet rather than raising. It's nice to remember that he probably doesn't have two pair or better. This helps a lot when choosing whether to induce bluffs.)

I've never player 2nl either. But I can pretty much guarantee you that if anyone is playing in those games and is even considering GTO in any way then they are missing out on a ****e load of profit. Even balancing pre-flop is a terrible way to play down there. Especially balancing pre-flop!

+1 pretty good example

About half the micro stakes threads have at least one comment about balancing ranges. It's mind numbing.

Sound gents!!

Strappz I'm guessing you see how this sweeps the profit away from the higher games too?...

The lowest games are like the bottom row of a pyramid. The more people down there using GTO the more the potential for profit shrinks in those games, and it also means that less players move up. If more players were to move up, the pool of players in the next games up would contain weaker players and then more players could move up again. And so on... The more GTO is used the more players will drop out too...

Wait a sec. Dont the casinos do a lot of trade with TwoPlusTwo? If they do, I bet they dont realise that TwoPlusTwo is screwing them over! Ooooooo Mason, I wish I could see ur face when that s*** hit's the fan. I'd usually feel bad, he does seem like a gent, but those guys should have listened to me years ago and Sklansky even tried to mock my logic the other day! It didn't end well for him. He doesn't understand how Level One works... Hmmm, I do blatantly have an amazing shot at taking the market from these guys. The casinos will love me! I know how to give online Poker a second birth. Whos with me?? Poker revolt!!!

SAY NO TO GTO! SAY NO TO GTO!

Deviate from GTO by over-folding.

I always see players advising other micro players to make stupid calls based on the idea that those populations are somehow balanced.

Underbluffing means you should be overfolding, that said.... Folding AA there is a mistake from an exploitative perspective also.

I don't play 2nl, but always go there to set up huds and stuff, and it's pretty much a random cards fest. Yes, there are passive fish, there are nitty regs, there are also people who x/mr middle pair, donk jam a dry gutshot and open jam TJs.

Do people underbluff? Sure, but they also overvalue, and overthink.

And thinking about balance at 2nl is not a bad thing, it becomes a bad thing (as in most cases in the uNL forums) you're just copying the words balance and card X in Y spot needs to do Z. If you're actually working out ranges, you'd be able to go into your DB see how your avg opponent plays in certain spots, and build a strategy to beat that.

And the worst thing is, the more they do this the more balanced the lowest stakes players will be!... Ever wondered why they do it? They cant be making much money. So why do they relentlessly promote GTO to other low stakes players? If you watch closely, you'll also see that they argue against exploiting too...

This happens for the same reason that a smoker offers cigarettes to his mate who is quitting - Misery loves company.

Using Poker Theory we can actually see why the smokers do this - Subconsciously the smoker knows that smoking is bad for them and offers no benefits, but consciously they've built trust in logic that conflicts with this information. They feel like a cigarette will settle their cravings and make them feel calm, but this is not true and we all know it, the cigarette causes their cravings and makes them feel anxious. When the mind holds on to two conflicting pieces of information it begins to reject any further information which would lead to the questioning of the inevitably wrong logic. This is called cognitive dissonance. One of the methods that our own minds use to distract us from the truth is by seeking reassurance from others. If our mate smokes too, smoking can't be that bad...

Many a Poker player builds trust in GTO, they start thinking that GTO plays are the 'best' plays to make. If they're playing in a low stakes game this is obviously very wrong. And so, in the same way as with smoking, if that person is subconsciously capable of understanding that exploiting is better, they are sure to start hating exploitation and will relentlessly promote the benefits of GTO. They will start convincing all their friends to use GTO, and if you happen to be an exploitative theorist you are going to be despised.

Well, I realised that we human beings can all subconsciously exploit like masters. You might have heard them say "Level Four is only for a God like beings?" Well, I realised that anytime we defend against bluffs we are using Level Four. We all already have the ability to exploit already built into our minds! The method our mind usually uses to strategise is exploitation!! You might have heard of a strategic method that is "all based upon deception", well that is exploitation. Its not GTO. To calculate a GTO strategy you presume that the opponent already knows that hands that we are playing and so there is no deception involved.

In short. GTO is making everyone go mental... If you like that thing about smoking then watch the Alan Carr DVD. All he does is explain all the conflicting logic in regards to smoking and then 'magically' it is far easier to quit. In the same way, if you read my book, you should find exploiting easy. Everyone already knows how do it.

Well, at least it made you.

Totally shocked you are again acting like you know something but when you talk about you reveal you have no clue what you are talking about.

People can become physically addicted to smoking. It's not all purely psychological, though there are certainly psychological components.

In much the same way you have this misconception that the population of people that misapply theoretical concepts to poker encapsulates the entire population of people that apply theoretical concepts to poker. It's simply just not the case.

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Yeah, they take the idea that GTO is just simply better than exploitative play and misuse it. They haven't quite grasped the ideas associated with GTO play. There are some people that are simply trying to replicate the styles of advanced players without really understanding what they are doing or that it will not serve many of their purposes at lower tier games. Overcalling is one suggesting that they often make and they seem to not be aware of population reads or that poker is a game with an incredible amount of varying environs.

I also see the best professionals making the mistake of suggesting habits that benefit them at the nosebleeds, when they are relatively unaware what is even going on down at the lower limit games.

Spoken like a true casual smoker.
"I smoked 1 cig a month for years and quit no problem, all it takes is will power"

Very true. There are a lot of players that are inferior at the exploitative game, but have recently picked up the GTO game without fully committing to the idea of improving their exploitative game through the use of GTO models. Players have become worse at exploiting and better at playing along lines of equilibrium.

Some random thoughts on this...

An exploit grinder should notice when a reg opponent behaves "balanced".

GTO bluff and defense frequencies are wayyyy different than standard exploit poker.
It should be pretty obvious, after even a few hundred hands.

At that point, having tagged a player as "gto", what is the most profitable response from the exploit player?

I say play the hand differently, once you see it will be you vs gto reg heads up.

Stop and think about the effective stacks.
Watch the bet sizes on flop, and turn.
Usually these sizes will set up a potential pot sized bet on the river, for most of the stacks.
Position. Position. Position.
When making or calling a ~large bet, stop and think:

"Where am I located in my value range, or, where am I located in my bluff range?"

"Is there an obvious blocker effect"

"I should already know how to respond if my bet is raised/shoved"

Last thought; An action flop versus a gto player can be very profitable or very costly to an exploit player. If the exploit player chooses to tangle, the exploit player needs to understand that gto is designed for this and seeks to build a pot on the turn, and then bluff/call with balanced frequency on the river, simply to profit the size of the pot on the turn.

End of random musings....

Thanks.

Well, anyway, it is very true that many people just aren't playing very good exploitative poker these days because of GTO (when they should be even better at it.)

I think empirical evidence would indicate quite the opposite.

People on these forums consistently talk about games being tougher and that doesn't happen if players on average aren't better.

You see less "exploitive poker" because you see fewer and smaller opportunities for exploitation.

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So many of today's players are playing so face-up it's not even funny. There are tons of opportunities for exploitations in today's games.

There was a player the other day that refused to take a exploitative step to win money because he was afraid he wouldn't be able to balance it and this was in a game where no one would have ever noticed his lack of balance for one hand of poker. This type of thing is commonly happening and the influence of GTO is moving players away from thinking about many of the exploitative moves that players would've made in the past.

Yes, players are better, but that is because players have a better foundation on what to do on certain textures, etc. Years ago, good players were making more diverse exploitative moves and a great bulk of the mediocre and losing players were not fundamentally solid.

I have nothing against GTO poker. It is fundamental knowledge for any good player. I'm just saying that it has driven people away from some more creative thinking about exploitation. Players are much more fundamentally sound, but too many exploitative opportunities are missed for me to believe that they are really using their potential.

It used to be that everyone was all about exploitation. Now, some have found an unexploitable middle, but many players have forgotten a fair share about exploitation and are playing fundamentally sound but suboptimal poker in an exploitative sense because of the change in focus.

It is as today's player has forgotten to some degree that poker is also about psychology and not just mathematics.

Not sure how you're using face-up here. If you mean that people's full ranges including bluffs, semibluffs, and value bets are predictable with a high level of accuracy then I would say that being "face-up" doesn't matter.

If you are saying people's ranges are face-up because they aren't taking the same line with a variety of hands then I would say that is bad but people aren't doing this to the extremes they used to.

Sure. I have no argument against this. People commonly misapply theory in game. But even misapplication of the concept of balance still closes even larger problems that bad players more commonly had in games like leaking information with their betting patterns. This makes areas of exploitation slightly harder to identify making it harder to exploit in general.

I am not arguing against the use of exploitation. My main argument is that exploitation has a foundation in theory. There is no separation to me or no way to use exploitation without the theory. If you don't know how someone is deviating from a theoretical baseline, how do you know how to exploit them?

Right they were exploiting more because there were more obvious ways to exploit. As people began sharing knowledge those glaring mistakes began to vanish more and having some basis in theory became necessary.


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It isn't just that players are just more defensed. It is that GTO play really has diverted players' attention away from possibilities that still exist.

I think that's a fair point.

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Hrmmmm ur on the ball mate!

The Poker games have got tougher because people have gotten better, that is inevitable, but they have also got tougher because so many are shooting for GTO when its not needed.

Lots of people think that GTO is better, but that's not true. The best way to play is by staying just one step ahead of your opponent. If you try to balance in a low stakes game I think we can all agree that you suck at Poker. And your winrate will reflect that.

Thanks, man.