Title says it all. I've played casually for 10 years. Had moderate success when the games were super soft in 07-08. When online started getting tougher I started working harder and learning more about hand reading. I got myself a HUD and started paying close attention to player tendencies so I could play exploitative poker based on the information I could gather.

GTO always intimidated me. It seemed so complicated. Playing one hand a certain way so I could play other hands similarly down the road. Studying stats and ranges to figure out which hands should be included in various continuation spots. Heavy mathematics. And so on. I just didn't think I could get it.

But I want to try. If I'm going to keep playing I want to keep getting better. Only problem now is where to start. I listen to some podcasts which helps me understand how top players think about the game. And I ordered Janda's book "Applications" and read the first couple chapters online with a pen and paper, making sure I could keep up with the math and play with what he's talking about.

Taking any of this and building it into my game though? Wow, that's a big leap!

I hear about powerful software, online training courses, and other resources out there. I'm willing to put in the work, I just want to make sure I'm working in the right place. What is the right recommendation for a player such as myself?

Thank you for the feedback!

I did try a poker coach once. It was his first time coaching, and my first time being coached...

I would say that finding other players new to this sort of thing would be the easiest way to learn. So just talking on this forum, you should start to form an idea of how to play the way you like.

Remember, there is no right way to play poker. You can only learn by playing!

There is no right way to play poker?

OP. Game Theory Optimal poker does not exist as poker is not solved. If everybody played GTO eventually everybody would just break even until the time passed where the poker site/casino took everyones roll in rake.

What you want to learn is balanced unexploitable strategy mixed with an exploitative strategy..


edit: Doug Polk is a good place to start
https://www.upswingpoker.com/gto-vs-...imal-strategy/

I think you've overlooked the use of word "theory". A theory of anything does not have to be solved and does not have to be a fact. I could promulgate FTUB (Fatboy Theory of Unbalanced Bluffing) today and the validity of my theory would not be dependent on facts and solutions, but on the methodology I have used to test my theory.

tl/dr GTO (Game Theory Optimal) poker does exist because someone invented the theory and there is ton of evidence/methodology supporting its existence.

However, just because a theory exists, it does not follow that its application (in poker or anything else) is the correct way forwards. Theories are usually intended to explain stuff. Sometimes they are prescriptive; often they are not.

I think the second part of your post...

...is actually bang on the money, so apologies for the theory lesson, but I wanted to clear that up for Op, because so many peeps in BQ don't know the difference between a theory and an application.

Op, go ahead with your study of Janda, but it's a grind because he is not a very good writer which makes the book harder than it needs to be.

Well, you are way ahead of most people reading Janda's book. Most people had their eyes glaze over, and just started taking his solutions and using them instead of doing their own work on their game conditions.

As you move up in poker, you have to expend more effort for less and less return. Learning GTO is going to fit that description. The value I see in it is when you're at a tough table with 1 or 2 marks that are going to be the profit margin. You're just trying to break even against the tough players. They aren't going to make an exploitable mistakes and you aren't either.

If you're asking a question in the BQ forum, most likely you're not at that stage yet. You probably have some leaks and would be better to avoid tables that have that many tough players.

^ Quoting for emphasis. ^

Don't get too hung up on "intimidating theories". You don't need to do any heavy mathematics. You just need to learn some concepts that will make you a tougher opponent that makes money from your opponents' mistakes. If you play a solid game, but your opponents are way out of line, either by being too aggressive/bluffy or too passive/stationy, you'll automatically make money by being "average".

The main concepts of optimal play are actually fairly straightforward:
* Play a solid pre-flop range (not too loose, not too tight).
* Aim to balance your post-flop betting/raising ranges in a somewhat polarized manner (by choosing good combos to semi-bluff with in spots where you also have value combos), and by not bloating the pot when it doesn't benefit you.
* Understand showdown value and equity realization. Those terms might sound intimidating to a newbie, but basically mean "If you only have a medium strength hand, try and get it to showdown cheaply, by checking and calling [bluffcatching], not betting and raising". If you have a very bad hand that is unlikely to win at showdown or have a +EV (semi-)bluffing opportunity, look to cut your losses early on by check-folding.

To some degree those last two points are summed up in an old cliché that I think even Doyle Brunson used: "Big hand => big pot, small hand => small pot."
If you play your hands according to relative hand strength, you won't be too far out of line with whatever the GTO solution is in a particular post-flop spot.

Janda's first book is great for developing a range-based (instead of hand-based) strategy. You can gloss over most of the equations in it, and shouldn't take his pre-flop ranges literally. His brand new book might be even better. If you want a one-stop video course to a pseudo GTO strategy, then Upswing's Post-Flop Engine or something like Tadas Peckaitis' MyPokerCoaching videos are pretty good. RunItOnce is another option once you've found the trainers that suit your needs.
If you want to practice your play, a training bot like PokerSnowie is good. If you want to find near-optimal solutions to specific spots, then software like PioSolver or GTORangebuilder is the next step. (If you're playing shortstack tourneys instead, then pre-flop push/fold solutions can be found with ICMIzer, HRC or SitnGoWiz).
Good luck!

Very good post Arty

Indeed it is. There are a lot of very neat GTO concepts but for the most part a lot of what I've read are just complicated ways of explaining concepts that decent 10-year vets should probably be tuned into already.

I like this article but please hold my hand and unpack this a bit for me:

In this case, doesn't it mean that the Villain can't actually make a mistake here? If calling and folding have the same EV, would that just mean the only mistake the villain can make is misjudging which of their hands can beat a bluff?

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe in such a situation (theoretically), all of the villains' hands can beat a bluff. The hero's range is perfectly polarized, in that all his value hands are ahead of the villain's entire range. And all of his bluffs are behind the villain's entire range.

That doesn't really get to the heart of your main question though. I'm not sure how to answer that, as if the EV of both actions is 0, then the only mistake I can see them making is opening themselves up to being exploited. Which will never happen if the hero continues bluffing with the "correct" ratio.

Way too many GTO threads for a "Beginner's" forum.

So ridiculous to see you guys treat Brunson like an idiot when he was one of the foremost men that educated people on how to play poker.

Good question.

We know that if villain always calls or always bluffs that his EV =0. We also know that if villain uses any split of calling and folding, he is also indifferent to calling or folding but that has an underlying assumption that such a split is done randomly. If, for some reason, villain always calls when hero value bets and always folds when hero bluffs, those are mistakes. Then, clearly, his EV is negative. For pot size bets, it’’s

EV_v =( 2/3)(-Pot) +1/3*0 = -2/3*Pot

and hero’s EV is

EV_h = Pot - EV_v = 5/3* Pot

Villain EV will also be negative if the frequencies with which he calls value bets and folds bluffs are not compensated by right calls and folds – the mistakes are greater than the correct plays.

He can't make a mistake, but he also can't change his outcome. He's indifferent. Whether he calls with 100% of his bluffcatchers, 0% of them, 50%, or any arbitrary number, his EV is zero. Hero's EV is pot. Effectively, hero wins "pot" on average, whatever villain does, and villain wins nothing. As Trump might say, villain is a loser.

In real life, we rarely get into a spot where one player has a pure polarized range and the other has a pure bluffcatching range, but I think we all recognize the situation where we're faced with a river bet and our action is a sigh, because we're damned if we call and we're damned if we don't. The sigh-call or sigh-fold is associated with hands at the bottom of our range. They don't make money as calls or folds. They are "breakeven bluffcatchers" by definition.

little confused by this tbh. if this scenario is true, isn't villain not making mistakes but rather just getting unlucky? if they call all our bluffs but fold to our value bets aren't we losing our asses, GTO-style? wouldn't the 'mistake' be just inaccurately figuring out what beats a bluff? am I making way too much of a stupid hypothetical?

Not necessarily.

Suppose hero playing the GTO-like balance strategy, intentionally or unintentionally, has different tells when he value bets versus when he bluffs and suppose villain interprets them incorrectly. I admit this is somewhat far- fetched but is an example of how mistakes can be made. I would think Doug Polk can do better assuming he is right.

Incidentally, if hero tries reverse tells while balancing, would that be an example of simultaneous GTO-like and exploitive play ?

What does this software do? Eg, let's take a specific river and hero's hand, with unknown villain range. Does it take as input the amount of prior bets on that hand, stack sizes, and so forth, and then will give an estimated GTO play? And is it a specific move (raise 1320 chips), or will it give a percentage of time to check, to raise (and further range of bets), and fold? Because I imagine that it would not be optimal to always make the same play with that specific combination of factors?

This explains this situation perfectly IMO, and in BQ relatable terminology. Definitely clicked into place for me

Solvers require the entering of each player's range. They then crunch the numbers (by simulating hundreds of outcomes) to work out which proportion of the ranges should be bet/raised/called that leads to the highest possible expectation. When both players take the actions with the highest EV for their ranges, and cannot improve their EV by changing their strategies, equilibrium strategy has been reached.
As it turns out, mixed strategies often feature in the result, by which I mean that there will be many combos that sometimes bet, sometimes call, sometimes fold. The mixed strategies are what make the solutions essentially impossible for a human to remember, since there are usually dozens of combos in anyone's range, and there is an optimal strategy for each combo.

I don't usually come around BQ but that Arty McFly post should be stickied somewhere.

I am aware of and have read about optimal play. I looked at the charts for optimal bluffing frequencies. I read a lot of books to keep up with new developments in poker, but it's not something that I'm ready to study deeply yet. That's because I have a lot of work to do on exploiting other players and not being exploitable because I'm doing stupid stuff.

I have found that zeroing on a few simple ideas can make a big difference. There is a new book out that is entirely about bluffing. I just got a free download from one of the coaching sites, 20 Rules For Playing Flush Draws in 2017

Those flush draw rules are going to help me a lot. I didn't really understand that some flush draws should be checked and others should be raised or check-raised, and the reasons for that.

That might sound like a really small thing, but if I play 100 MTTs (I've already played that many this year) and flop just 3 flush draws each time, that's 300 chances to play better than I would have a month ago. That can add up to real money.

There are a lot of areas that I want to work on that don't require deep theoretical understanding. I might be bad at them, or I might think I'm OK or good but want to get better. Some of those areas include:

when to check-raise
denying opponents the correct odds to call
playing marginal hands from the button
limping with a bad hand but getting great odds
all-in situations--I'm pretty aggressive about going all in but I don't think that I call an all-in often enough

I could think of a lot more if I took some notes while I'm playing tonight, but you get the idea. Almost everything that I study is about one thing--fixing leaks. I want to understand the big ideas, but I first want to make sure I'm not making mistakes that a good player can easily take advantage of.

That's what I'm working on and how I view things. Other players will have other priorities, but my advice is to nail down the basics first and worry about the theoretical later.