This is easy!! You just open-bet with a tighter range than GTO. You could open-bet just AA and I guarantee that you’ll obliterate the villain when he 3bets a GTO range.

Tightening up your opening range enables you to beat the GTO 3bet. The only problem is the potential loss of profit from the hands that you do not open. This will lead to a huge loss in profit if you only open AA and so that is certainly not advisable. It is advisable to take some of the weaker hands out of your open-betting range as a sure way to hold the advantage against a GTO reg when he 3bets against you.

Boom.

If we fold the hands like Q9s on the button, again, we would lose loads of profit. So, we don’t fold them. We limp. Technically speaking, if these regs have studied the GTO strategy for limp pots, creating a limping range MIGHT not do you much good. However, it is extremely unlikely in this day and age that a GTO heavy player will know how to use the strategy in limp pots. And even if they do, they’d also have to refrain from exploiting the limper, which is an extremely uncommon thing to do.

Swapping some of your opens with limps in LP is a great move that tears a gaping hole in todays GTO strategy. There are many arguments against having a limping range, but they are mostly nonsense. For example, the most common reason we are taught not to limp is to stop the villains getting in cheap with their weak hands. This is made nonsense thanks to implied odds: If we are limping a 10% range of mediocre hands on the button, and the villain doesn’t open over our limp, we almost always have his range destroyed. Our Q9s makes huge profit by the river against his hands like 29o, his 25s, maybe even Q2o. Limping is a move that is massively underrated, as many live players will tell you.

Limp-raising is probably the most powerful move in Poker. If you have position on the villain and are 100bbs deep this move is devastating for him. Eventually the villain will learn to 4 bet bluff over the limp raise, or to slow play some stronger hands, but even then he’s still screwed. Being IP gives us a massive advantage in limp pots. Mostly due to the fact that position gives us a great deal of control over the size of what is currently a very small pot. And as position is extremely important when limping or limp raising, I’d advise limping the button much more than in any other seat.

Limping adds a whole new dimension to the game. It is extremely easy to add a limp range, but it’s very hard for the solver-based GTO players to counter this move as it leads to so many potential lines. The effortlessness of the limp in comparison to the massive amount of effort required to solve the limp, shows us exactly how to exploit a player who studies using solvers. We can just keep throwing unfamiliar situations at them and it’ll literally take forever for them to learn the strategies to counter us. Whilst they are busy learning the GTO strategy for a limp-min-raise pot we’ll be laughing hard as we rinse every penny off them.

Realistically, in this day and age, you won’t need to get very creative with your limps. If you limp a small proportion of your range on the button, the vast majority of villains will just play for value or fold. This is great for us as it makes things REALLY simple. They usually just fold the flop to a min-bet. When they do continue in some way we can usually assign them some strong or nutsy hand of which we can easily avoid with a fold or abuse with our stronger range for value. Some players do try to play against the limp range in a more advanced way, against these guys it is invaluable to limp some stronger hands from time to time. If you limp raise your AA every now and again you will find it easy to take stacks from these brave bastards.

The biggest disadvantage working against these GTO players is the effects of cognitive dissonance caused by learning GTO. These players think it’s “correct” to open-bet the button and so when they see us limp they experience cognitive dissonance which stops them being able to recognise the effectiveness of the strategy we’re using. It also gives them an emotional response, like in Plato’s allegory of the cave, this emotional response makes the mods close my threads and it makes the trolls spew nonsense at me. People like me get banned and booed from forums for little more than teaching exploitative plays. Plays like the beautifully complicated and yet amazingly simple limp.

As my first attempt at this post was closed, I feel it’s safe to assume that I’m the first game theorist on the planet to realise that you can take profit from the GTO aspects of a players strategy provided they don’t know the full GTO strategy??? Another first to add to the list, I guess. I think my best achievement is still that I mapped out the development of a beings strategic ability from a rock to a God. Or maybe it was discovering the cause of all irrational behaviour. Hmmm, actually, the best thing I’ve concocted is blatantly my method to monetise charity. I would be hailed as a legendary theorist for describing logic like that which I’ve described to you today, but unfortunately for me, Malmuth has monopolised the poker publishing world and he uses his Gestapo to silence me.

Your post is nonsense, but you already knew I was going to say that. I have to, because of cognitive dissonance.

But please, if you feel you must post here, stay on topic. I do not want to hear about your ideas about charity or the cause of all irrational behavior. Peddle it somewhere else.

The ironic thing about this is that BTN limping ranges were actually discovered by solvers (for no rake games - not profitable for most raked games) a few years ago. It's a polarized range containing mostly bottom of range and a few traps.

This might have been an interesting topic if OP hasn't written 20 paragraphs furiously ranting about nonsense. Can we ban this dude plz?

I'm pretty sure this is that guy that got banned who used to go on and on about cognitive dissonance and playing exploitative poker, and was writing some book about it. The name started with a Y, but I can't remember it exactly.

Yeah, I remember that guy also.

Yadula? something like that?

Yep

I just went to report that first post for its mindless condemnation but then I realised it was written by the MOD! You didn’t point out where my mistake lies Rusty? I’m sorry you disagree with my theories, but I think everyone reading would like to here what I wrote that was wrong.

... you can explain it to them perfectly clearly and they still don’t understand. They just get angry. At the tables you’ll be able to destroy these GTO players with the limp forever.

Brokenstars, ignoring YOUR mindless rant, what you said was interesting. I suspected that limping would be GTO and so I chose my words accordingly. The fact is, the majority of players think that GTO won’t contain limps, so my OP still makes perfect sense. It is interesting that your bots are catching up with me though!

Sorry it was tombos, not brokenstars...

Instead of trying to ban me for speaking nothing but the truth, why don’t you share that button limping GTO range. It seems to match mine for the most part. I’ll probably be able to tell you where your bots are still mistaken, but I’m getting a strong urge to leave here and never return.

This ain't it chief

So, what’s your problem?

There was nothing wrong with my first attempt at this thread but it was trolled over and then quickly closed. This time I explained the whole strategy that you can use at the tables to beat players who know the GTO 3bet numbers. Nobody has ever explained that before, none of you even thought it was possible. And what do you say? Ban him. For mentioning charity.

Honestly Y.J if you just approached this forum with some humility you might get some traction.

It's **** like this that makes you sound like an arrogant nutbag with delusions of grandeur:

If you want to engage in real discussions about theory or exploitative play, drop your unearned sense of entitlement and stop ranting about nonsense. Phrase your post as a question, rather than trying to come across as the ultimate authority on a topic.

My first attempt at this thread was very clean, I tried to start a discussion whereby we all discuss our methods for beating the GTO 3bet. To that you wrote:

You all generally made out that I was a crazy guy. It was extremely degrading and you tried to get me banned just for trying to start a discussion about this topic.

And so I thought to myself: How am I going to defend myself against this degrading onslaught??? I decided to big myself up. To write some of my achievements in the thread.

Then I thought to myself: How do I stop myself getting banned? I was going have to explain the entire strategy I use, starting with proof that it is undeniably possible to beat the GTO 3bets. I’ll also need to show Rusty that he’s being as harsh as the hitler youth. And I’ll have to explain why he’s randomly being so harsh.

If i put ALL this in the thread it will be a long read, but I will retain at least some small amount of credibility so that we can finally have a discussion about this theory.

And then your response:

I’m not the problem here. Something dark is happening in your mind. Guys. I’ve tried to post about this twice and all you’ve done is attack me really harshly. All I want to do is talk theory with some of the best theorists in the world. Please stop giving me ****.

Compose yourselves, and then answer this question: What is the problem with my poker theory: How to exploit a GTO 3bet”. ?

By definition, any GTO play is unexploitable.

If it can be exploited, then it´s not GTO.

^^ But guys that's just a definition. Yadula the Great can redefine reality via the powers of his singular mind such that an unexploitable strategy can be exploited! A can equal non-A if he so wills it to be true.

So you’re saying that if I only open AA, the GTO 3bet range will still make profit against me?

No. They are saying that you won't be able to expoit an optimal 3bet range by opening so tight. Think about why that's true, and how it's a completely different statement than yours.

A GTO player facing an opponent who only plays aces, will reap large profits by collecting his opponent blinds (and/or antes) some 99.5% of the time.

What if there were no blinds or antes? Then the ace-playing opponent will win most of the time when he does play unless the GTO strategy can somehow counter. And, it seems to me, that the GTO strategy in a blind/ante free game would be to also only play aces so it ends up with EV=0 for both players assuming no rake.

You didn’t say anything here mate, you just repeated what they said and told me to think about it... please do elaborate, but my reply to the next post should clear up your confusion.

This is of course true, but I didn’t name this thread “how to beat the GTO steal”. I’m speaking specifically about making profit off the GTO player WHEN HE 3BETS.

Tightening up your opening range enables you to take profit from the GTO 3bet. Do you agree?

Dude you are literally fighting definitions here. The propositions you make are poker equivalents to flat-earth theories.

You could as well be arguing that 2 + 2 = 5.

GTO is a poker related term that refers to the strategies that arise at the nash equilibrium of the game.

This strategy is a pre-defined plan given any situation in the game.

Or in other words: GTO strategies cannot be exploited. Since there is no additional payoff (or EV) left to capture by changing this strategy.

Sure you will win chips when you do get dealt AA and the GTO player gets dealt a hand in his 3betting range. However the EV of the GTO player's entire strategy rises.

Since poker is a zero-sum game (In cash games it's not due to the rake, but my point stands) the EV that you give up by deviating from the equilibrium strategy will be gained by the players that stick to their nash strategy.

No, but you won´t 3bet enough of my opens so my opening range will get more EV than it would if you played more optimal ranges. We still win, even if we´ll get stacked by AA a few times.

Edit: the way you phrase this, you´re obviously right. You´ll win every time you have AA and 3bet me. Still miss the bigger picture tho.

Edit 2: Nits are usually unaware and can be safely exploited bc they rarely adjust (micros at least?), obviously. The point is, GTO also wins, less than exploitative in this situation but still wins.