It's really hard to make sets or better so if you're folding those regularly you are probably over folding way too much.

I mean there are times where you are playing against bad competition or the board just smacks your opponent(s) ranges that you can make easy and correct folds, but vs decent competition who knows how to hand read and bluff appropriately you are going to have to call down and just expect to lose some of the time.

thank you just_grindin
Does it mean when we face a decent opponent it exist some hand we have to lose money in a horrible but right way to keep us unexploited?

You gotta recognize the difference between these statements:

sometimes you're going to invest lots of chips, but you end up losing the hand.

sometimes you're going to make unprofitable decisions.

The former is a necessary part of proper poker investing, but the latter is not.

Yeah just to expand on what Bob said there will be individual hands where you lose but your call overall vs what you expect to see villain showdown should be AT LEAST break even (adjusting for rake) if not +EV.

I was always aware of this. I just didn't know this is what you meant by "pre-adjusting". I never heard anyone call it "pre-adjusting" before.

I think that in some spots it can work quite nicely. One example that springs to mind is if facing an opponent who expects people to raise all their sets (or larger hands) on certain fairly coordinated flops and pretty much always overbet bombs blankish turns and rivers when people just call on those boards, then just calling on the flop with sets has merit and can be very profitable.

In some spots it just doesn't make sense ... like if it folds to the button who raises, the sb folds and I am the bb with AA. If I 3bet my perceived range obviously includes AA, so if I do that, then the hand that I actually have will be in my perceived range. But I need to 3bet anyway because 3betting AA there is too profitable.

And it is easier against weaker players than stronger players (I guess most things are though). The problem is that even if an opponent thinks you would never do something with a particular hand, once the opponent sees you do it, then he is going to re-evaluate his opinion and realize that you might do that with that hand, and can probably draw conclusions about some other hands also. Plus better players are probably harder to trick with this in the first place, unless one takes it to an extreme and basically flip-flops bad hands and good hands and that would be counter-productive.

Yeah I'm sure you're aware that if you 3bet AA on the BB your AA is already well disguised too. This would be a really bad pre-adjustment. However, in this same spot it would almost always be beneficial to pre-adjust with some part of your actual range. There is always some part of our range that we should pre-adjust with or we would not be able to hold an advantage over our opponent.

If our actual range is the same as our perceived range, on average, we can hold no advantage over the opponent.

It's good that you can see exactly how to make this kind of play. Pre-adjusting is something that we can all do naturally, but what makes you more impressive than most of these guys is that you are able to consciously clarify exactly how to pre-adjust. This enables you to constantly be capable of it and so you will be able to apply it any time it will be profitable.

You can do this. But look at Artys earlier posts...

In the first part of his answer he is clearly attempting to speak about his perceived range. He seems to think he has no control over the opponents perception of him, which is, kind of, debatable. But it doesn't really make sense. In the second section of his post you can see where his confusion comes from. He is clearly confusing his perceived range with his actual range. That first section makes a lot more sense when you swap the ranges around -

"I don't know whether the villain is aware of my actual range, as I'm not an omniscient god like you. He either assigns an accurate range for me, or he doesn't. In most cases, if he considers my actual range incorrectly, he will make mistakes and lose money against it."

Now that makes sense.

This guy has fully replaced his perceived range with his actual range in his mind. He is unable to comprehend his perceived range. I've explained it to him loooads of times and still he cant grasp it. Look at Heehaw, all of these guys. I explain pretty simple logic which, if they could apply, would give them an advantage over the opponents but even once they get the general gist they still do anything to discredit the profitability of such moves. They will not walk away from here and start pre-adjusting. And there is no logical reason why that is not the case. These guys aren't playing in med stakes games, they are playing the micros. They should be pre-adjusting. There is no reason for it, other than, cognitive dissonance.

In their minds they already know how to pre-adjust. This is built into all of our minds. But, if they could consciously recognise exactly how to pre-adjust like you and I can, they will realise that a huge amount of the plays that they trust in will no longer be trustworthy. Their mind stops them from accepting the importance of pre-adjusting so as to protect the imperfect strategies that they have come to trust in.

This is the real reason why I face so much contension on this site. They are all trying to discredit things like pre-adjusting to protect their imperfect strategies, like, GTO. We both know what happens when everyone starts using GTO. The profit in the game disappears. And so with everyone stopping themselves from realising how to exploit using pre-adjustments and the like, they are all using GTO way more than is needed. They use GTO when they themselves already know unconsciously that there is a better strategy to use and then the profit is sucked out of our games. In low stakes games, if the players apply GTO when it's not needed, there is a knock on effect on the higher games. Poker in general is stripped of its profit.

The poker world should be backing me in my efforts to remove this cogD and get everyone in the lower games heavily exploiting again. But instead, the people making these decisions are suffering from it too, and so everyone promotes GTO and I am left to struggle alone.

If you can come to accept that this is an issue in Poker, you start to realise that there is no reason it isn't going to be an issue in other fields too. I think this is huge. I read a section of an economy text book which said that those who use the equivalent of an exploitative strategy are all arrogant! In a text book meant for students! This problem appears to be everywhere. It has infected all sections of our society. Especially those sections related to finance. And you, yourself, are in a position where you can be materialistic in bringing this problem to a close. Think about this stuff Lego. Come to realise that these players are blocking their conscious ability to do things like pre-adjust. You can help me help the entire world by simply realising the truth of the matter, and backing me up from time to time.

Probably going to be the last reply to you directly Yadula for both our sakes.

1. Everyone who has ever played or studied poker can do what you are called pre-adjusting. It's not that difficult to do and everyone gets it so stop saying they don't.

2. There is no difference between hiding information in a range of hands (your actual range) than there is trying hide information by avoiding the range you are perceived to have. There are situations where your opponent can guess your range perfectly (impossible but whatever) and still can't change your positive expectation. There are also situations which there is a clear EV winner among your options and you should always play your hand that way. In fact a lot of hands are that way and only when you have reliable information should you plan on deviating from that line.

3. You are not a victim of some cover up conspiracy or attacks. This site and especially this particular sub forum are open to a free exchange between members and even members who disagree.

4. GTO is sucking the profit out of poker but not in the way you claim. The rigorous study of game theory and AI applied to poker make it easier for people to come in to poker brand new and play really well. There is a ton of information out there and a lot of the concepts apply across poker variants.

5. Good players use theory and exploit at the edges if or when they find a reason to. That's the best way to play poker. People just don't sit at a game with a plan to "pre-adjust" with 0 information about their opponents nor should they. As you have said/repeated be for GTO is a good strategy to protect against all other strategies so we should prefer to play that until we have information that will make us more money.

Yadoula8 does. He mentioned that he needs 0 hands on an opponent to perfectly exploit them.

Ohhh, I'm such a fool. You guys were right all along!... So, you do all agree with this statement now then -

If your actual range is the same as your perceived range, on average. you can hold no advantage over your opponent.

??????

That's true, right? Because if it is, you guys obviously pre-adjust all day long. I mean, your micro stakes players. You know how to do it and there is obviously a time to do it in those games. You obviously wouldn't give up an advantage which is so easily obtained. For every decision I'm sure that you pre-adjust with some part of your actual range. Right?

No I disagree. If you change range to hand then I would agree, but it is not even mostly true that if an opponent can guess the composition of your range that you hold no advantage over your opponent. Does it hurt your win rate? Sure I won't argue that.

Like I keep saying and you have not addressed: If a player could play GTO perfectly they could give you all their ranges in all the spots and the best you could do is break even by playing GTO.

So why should we hide information by playing an imperfect guessing game and potentially lose EV when we can hide information using our range and not miss any EV?

Ohhhh, if the opponent knows our hand we could hold no advantage!! Wow. I honestly didn't know that. Swear. Thanks a lot for your insight. We're all learning now!

Just one little question... Please do explain how you can hold an advantage over a rational opponent when he knows all the cards that you're playing??

Heres me thinking that this is the basic logic behind pre-adjusting, but I guess I must be wrong. You know all about this pre-adjusting lark and you know that this is not true. Please do explain it to me. How can you hold an advantage when he knows your actual range?

Cards have equity; if you have cards, then you own a share of the pot that is always equal to or greater than 0% of the pot. The sum of these profitable situations is equal to a poker players winrate. If both players play all of these situations in exactly the same manner, then there will be no advantage. In this sense, you are correct that there is no advantage to be had by either player.

However, you seem to ignore this fact:

Any deviation from gto will result in a loss of expectation equal to or greater than zero.

Thus there is no need to preadjust in a game of real poker among human players.

I'm not claiming to be a perfect poker player, in fact the number one reason that I believe in exploiting exclusively near the margins is that I recognize this imperfection.

This isn't 100% true. The profit gained by a gto strategy is dependent on the opponent's deviations. This profit is not as great as that earned by the max exploitive strategy, so in that sense there is an opportunity cost of not earning as much as we possibly could with the max exploitive strategy. However, to say that there is no advantage is basic hyperbole.

If your opponent knew your cards, he wouldn't deviate unless it was profitable...

Give it up already lads. I'm going to in a minute, this is getting monotonous. I think i'll just wait for Lego.

Yes he would because of the element of human error.

Ahhhh, Ok, so unless the opponent does something reeeal stupid. We can hold no advantage over him.

Ok mate! Well done. You win. Byyyeeee.

If he knows your exact cards, then he could beat you easily. But even if he knows your exact actual range (but not your actual cards) and you are playing the actual GTO strategy, then he cannot beat you. I think the latter is what just_grindin was saying.

My arguments are basically this:

1. Most hands have a preferred line to maximize their EV (even if that EV is 0) absent any information about your opponent.

2. Some hands share the same betting sequence as a result of 1. This inherently hides information about the hands in your betting sequence. You do not have to avoid this betting sequence even if the villain knew every hand in that betting sequence because you have a distribution of hands that maximize EV in different ways in that betting sequence (i.e. high equity made hands, draws with varying equity,

3. This preferred line should be used for all hands absent information about your opponent that would yield higher EV with a high enough probability to risk sacrificing the EV of the default play.

I think all of these ideas are confirmed with the work in Nash Equilibrium solutions being worked on in computer AI, which would be the "preferred line".

Also #2 is amplified by human error both by myself and my opponent (i.e. I can play a hand randomly or intentionally differently and opponent's vary in experience and ability which lead to range estimation errors).

So my objections to what Yadoula said was:

1. That avoiding our perceived range is the only way to hold an information or other advantage over our opponents. I concede it can be used when reliable information about your opponent indicates a high probability of success with a higher EV line than the default (history with opponent, population reads, current game flow, all meta going on, etc.).

2. People in this subforum don't know how to pre-adjust when most of them know it and use it trivially.

3. Coming up with a pre-adjusting scenario that Yadoula deems worthy isn't a real measure of how good someone is at poker.

I'm fully aware of what he is saying. And it doesn't mean that I'm wrong. He's just hooked on GTO.

And so that's the way it is eh. You're clearly incapable of saying these three words - "Yadi is right" - And so you are clearly not on my side. You're just one of the enemy, and I'm wasting my time with you.

I was deliberately avoiding spurring on your CogD with my recent statements. I wanted to see if you could come around. But, now it's clear that you wont, even when you know I'm right you dont say it, you're a lost cause... Ah well, I dont need you on my side anyway, it would have only helped a little. You're not yet capable of Level Four and I was at that stage of my development 5 years ago! That was before I locked myself away to study. You should have joined me for your own benefit, not mine. It really is annoying that you are all against me no matter what I say. I think I am done with all of you GTO friendlies.

This can't really happen online when you are playing 6+ tables. You make adjustments based on what info you get from your hud stats unless you see things like a player open limping or whatever.

Most other players that aren't fish are doing the same as you are. They don't have time to consider your silly mind tricks that you are trying to pull. They are just trying to play their hand/range well versus yours.

And the fish that are left over are basically just trying to win using level one thinking, only considering their own hand and not your own.

Lmao. Define your terms or gtfo

Omg, this made me laugh so hard. It's even funnier because I can really imagine him using a setup like this for the book lmao

Chapter 1 is called...

[mod note] you don't get to promote your book here

There really isn't any book.

Tuttut. That was a filthy move mod. I did nothing against site rules and you know it. I was just defending myself. If you're going dirty I'll go dirty too. You cant prevent the inevitable. Exploitation will take over and my book will be the foundations on which the new poker world is built.

It's obvious that the mods here are suffering from CogD and that's why this site is about to go down along with GTO. I'm currently overseeing the creation of another site, a site where exploitation dominates. The designs have already been approved. You GTO guys can keep 2+2... I have to say, I am really looking forward to the forum wars! You guys are gonna get obliterated and it's gonna be awesome!! I wish I could tell you all my plans, but I cant. Do know this much though, every time I make a move to take you down I'm going to be laughing my ass off.

Byeee!!! Good riddance to the lot of you. (Except KKong and Rob, you guys are sound! Come join the new site when it's up. You will hear about it)