Hi. I'm new here.

Anybody feel like helping an old salt out with all this new-fangled theory? I learned small stakes limit by reading... well, Small Stakes Limit by Sklansky way back in the day (early 2000's-ish). I happened to live about 45 minutes away from Commerce Casino in LA at the time, so I went down there and killed it at 6/12 limit 3 nights a week for months. Then it got hard to find a 6/12 limit table at Commerce after a while, so I gave NL a try and hated it. The skillset I had that made me money at small stakes limit games did not translate well to the 1/2 nl games.

I never recovered. I just went about my life; my dreams of being a professional poker player dashed.

I want to revive those dreams now, but all this "GTO this", "solver that" stuff has me worried that my first investment should be a much more powerful computer and a membership to one o' those fancy poker strategy websites that promise to turn any Joe Shmo into the next God of Poker.

I just want to talk poker, bruh. Who's down? Or do I deserve a smack upside the head?

I have a $6k bankroll to start, and there's a very busy poker room filled with fairly well-to-do retirees about an hour from where I live. The 1/2 nl game there has a $300 max buy-in. They usually have 3/6 limit games going, but the rake is insurmountable.

I'd like to develop a game plan to attack that poker room. I've just finished No Limit Hold 'Em Theory and Practice by everybody's favorite author(s), Sklansky and Miller. I've been watching Brad Owens' YouTube, Alec Torelli's YT, and Doug Polk's YT. (Just a little 411 about where I'm starting from.)

Thanks for reading all that, and thanks in advance for any positive, relevant, and/or constructive responses.

If your goal is to win in live low stakes cash, do not study GTO solutions. Winning is a just a matter of getting the most out of your best hands.

However, if your goal is to get good at the game of poker then you'll end up studying GTO a fair amount.

So yeah - my goal is definitely to get better at playing poker. Hence why I just spent another $115 on more poker books (Brunson's Super System Vol. 1; The Theory of Poker as Applied to No Limit; Applications of No-Limit Hold 'em by Janda; and Essential Poker Math by Hardin).

I want to start at 1/2 NL because I have the bare minimum that is recommended for a starting bankroll for that level. If I have $20-30k to start, I'd definitely start at 2/5... but I don't. I have to work with what I have.

All that being said - I don't see why anybody here would want to pass up the opportunity to discuss basic GTO theory here, but I'm getting the impression from the extremely low ratio of responses in relation to the number of views that this forum isn't very welcoming to newcomers.

I think it's mainly that most people don't enjoy answering extremely broad and fundamental questions. My personal recomendation is that you delve into the topic yourself by watching videos and reading stuff, and once you have a concrete question, come back and ask it, i'm sure many people will be eager to answer

So this is the "Advanced Poker Theory & GTO" forum? There's no space for discussion about fundamentals? In many other disciplines, the fundamentals are constantly being studied by masters as part of a naturally-evolving, lifelong learning process. New experiences bring new insights into our understanding of the fundamentals, which naturally helps us perform better at our craft.

I was just hoping to spark a conversation about the basics that could be a resource for anyone who wants to take poker seriously. And I think even the experts will find that they will benefit from contributing to and participating in this discussion, if the spark spreads. I understand "I'm new here" and "who am I to suggest...". I just a) thoroughly enjoy discussing poker whenever I can; and b) would love to be able to start a thread that could be a great resource for the entire community.

I think aner0's response was fairly reasonably. Broad questions yield broad answers. You could subscribe to runitonce or upswing and sate your appetite for GTO with a plethora of videos. If you don't want to spend money, then you can sift through a lot of the threads in this subforum over the last several years. I am sure you would glean many insights, but you'd be picking through a lot of weeds to find the fruit.

If you have specific questions, then I agree with Aner0 that others (including myself) would likely be willing to respond. Otherwise, maybe you should re-read your OP as the only questions stated basically boil down to, "Who wants to talk poker with me?"

My specific question was: What are the basics of GTO?

If you re-read your OP, then you will find that you did not ask that question.

What Aner0 and I both stated remain the same, though. This is really too broad of a question. If you specifically want to dive into game theory, then there are a lot of resources freely available online. You could start with this playlist regarding Game Theory from MIT. I don't know how good it is, but I doubt it's particularly bad and it could provide a good baseline introduction for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTkq...IfpNhf0piao8oo

I understand that my question wasn't in the OP. It's basically in the name of the thread. I apologize if my writing style throws things off once in a while. Thank you for the resources - I'll definitely check them out.

Anyway, I have been tearing into a few of my new books, and was wondering if someone could explain why we don't count backdoor draws as outs when calculating our equity. In the Essential Poker Math book, Hardin tells us how to calculate our equity using the rule of 2 and 4 or whatever, but never mentions backdoor draws such as runner-runner straights and/or flushes.

I would think that those possibilities provide us with at least some amount of equity - perhaps even enough to skip the discounting of outs that we should normally do. I understand that the odds of hitting runner-runner anything is probably slim, but it isn't zero.

Go on to stackoverflow and post a question: What are the basics of coding?

See what kinda replies you get lol

You do try to account for it, if some book says you shouldn't then the book is wrong

You mentioned that you bought Janda's book. It's a good intro to GTO. GTO is something that you'll likely need to read a few hundred pages to understand the basics of game theory and toy games. It's not really something you can cover in a forum post. Some of the articles on upswing poker are pretty good about succinctly explaining just the pure basics though if Janda's book seems overwhelming. You'll likely still need to read a number of articles though.

Backdoor outs can add something like 3% equity, give or take. Hands with backdoor draws can make good low equity bluffs on the flop, because when the right turn cards hit your hand turns into a stronger draw that can continue bluffing or even call turn bets with.

The way that ~3% on the flop is distributed is more relevant than the 3% itself. Some turn cards will turn that 3% into 0 when the back door draw doesn't come in. However other turn cards will turn your hand into a strong flush or straight draw with something like ~18% equity.

Anyway, one tip for you. A lot changed in the poker world after the invention of GTO solvers, specifically PIO solver. That doesn't mean you need to go out and buy PIO, but books and videos created after the invention of PIO will generally be more up to date. That being said Janda did a pretty amazing job in the era before PIO.

If you're looking for some up-to-date poker strategy content, check out this blog: https://blog.gtowizard.com/articles/

We write plenty of poker strategy articles that can help you understand the "new fangled theory"

I would recommend starting with these:

• https://blog.gtowizard.com/the-art-of-learning-poker/
• https://blog.gtowizard.com/principles-of-gto/
• https://blog.gtowizard.com/how-to-become-a-gto-wizard/

As someone who is currently going to college for computer science/information technology, I can tell you that there are definitely "basics" of coding, such as object-oriented programming, formatting, etc. I mean - "coding" is an extremely general category with many sub-categories (i.e., "languages"), so one would have to be more specific when asking about "the basics of coding". Anyone who knows anything about coding who encounters this question on a forum would simply ask what coding language the OP was working with at the moment, and it would be extremely easy for them to answer the question fairly comprehensively with that small amount of information.

Looking at the books I have and the other responses to my question here so far, there are clearly "basics" to game theory as applied to NLHE. I honestly suspect that most people here are just hesitant to provide a comprehensive response to my question because it seems like a lot of work and they'd rather just refer me (and anyone else) to other sources of information that already exist. However, I think it would be a great idea to hash all this stuff out here so that everyone here can refer 2+2 forum members to an internal thread that explains the basics of game theory as they pertain to poker.

What specific books that were published after the invention of PIO would you recommend? I also have The Theory of Poker Applied to No-Limit by Sklansky which discusses GTO, and Essential Poker Math by Alton Hardin, which also touches on GTO.

I don't think I want to become a "GTO Bot". As Sklansky notes in his updated ToP book, it's probably optimal to use GTO as a baseline for unknown opponents, and then deviate from GTO based on known opponents' strengths/weaknesses (and/or capitalizing on their deviations from GTO). I feel like that's likely to be the most lucrative approach.

With that being said, I understand that I still need to actually study GTO theory in order to implement that strategy. For now, I'm struggling with calculating odds and equity during live play. I'm using the WSOP app to practice that (I currently live in FL where real-money online play isn't legal yet, and the closest live poker room is an hour drive away). I think - especially for online play - that it's virtually impossible to come up with an exact number for any of that stuff, so I've been doing my best to estimate and make decisions "on the fly" informed by both my estimations and the reality of the situations.

One thing that really gets me is how to justify a decision using pure math in strange situations like when you're playing for "fake maoney" and idiots who clearly aren't trying to learn how to play real poker well and just ship massive bets that way overshadow the pot. I'm getting ridiculously horrible pot odds in those situations, but incredible implied odds, right? I just hate having to fold every hand because some maniac is firing ridiculously huge barrels at relatively insignificant pots. (That being said - I tend to find excellent spots to stack them after tightening up and isolating them, so maybe I should stop focusing on numbers and just make sure I make proper adjustments for these kinds of players?)

I haven't read either of the books you mentioned, but I know essential poker math released an updated edition so that could be good/relevant. Sklansky's book was considered groundbreaking at the time, but a lot has changed since then as computers have made it possible to model optimal play, which wasn't the case when his book was written. Let me know what you think of those books if you read either of them.

I do most of my learning online/ with videos these days, but for books about GTO poker specifically Play Optimal Poker Volumes 1 and 2, Modern Poker Theory and books by Dara O'Kearney are some that I've read that helped me.

Play Optimal Poker volume 1 is mostly theory that is kind of necessary to lay the foundation to understand volume 2 that is more focused on actual poker.

Modern Poker Theory is good, potentially overwhelming, but there are tons of useful charts in it.

Dara O'kearney wrote a book called Beyond GTO: Poker Exploits Simplified. I haven't read it yet, but I thought his ICM tournament book was excellent.

All that being said, if you're just looking to get good at poker you might get more out of the time you put in studying by watching poker videos. There are a lot of good free ones on YouTube. Maybe you could try videos by Jonathan Little, Bart Hanson, etc.? Anyway good luck at the tables!

Yeah, I've been watching Negreanu, Brad Owen (whose commentary on his hands seems like a master class in strategy at times), Alec Torelli, and Jonathan Little on YouTube. Jonathan Little seems to have the market cornered on pure educational videos, but his style rubs me the wrong way. I can't explain why. I have watched Brad Owens' video from when he killed it at some Halloween-themed event where he dressed up as Woody from Toy Story. That game was epic, and I really feel like anyone could learn a lot from his commentary in that video.

Thanks for the book suggestions. I will definitely check them all out. I actually just decided to make GTO theory the basis of a research project for my rhetoric class. I came up with the research question of "Is game theory optimal the most effective strategy for long-term, sustained positive expectation play in No Limit Hold 'Em poker?" and got greenlit by the professor to go with it. So now I will definitely be getting modern books on GTO for my bibliography, and I will start with your suggestions!

Good news for you: a 1/2 NL room full of well-to-do retirees is probably the last place on earth where you need a solver. I ran similar games for two years before I moved to online MTTs and the guys who crushed it weren't the GTO guys, they were the ones who just folded when old men led into them on scary boards. Your Sklansky fundamentals on value betting and hand reading will carry you further in that environment than any GTO course. Start with $150 buy-ins, play tight, and just watch what the regulars are doing wrong before you invest a dollar in software.