No problem. But upon rereading the second part of that sentence you now get it, right?

hmm...do I detect perhaps some immodesty from Mr. Sklansky?

I read Theory Of Poker admittedly way, way back when I first started playing, so very probably my memory and indeed understanding of the concepts were miles out, but I have always carried with me a feeling of being underwhelmed by the seminal "Theory", which seemed to me to be a fairly obvious point, which in other words ran along the lines that "If you could see the other players' cards and you play accordingly, and they can't see your cards you will win, similarly if villain could see your cards and you couldn't see theirs, you'll lose."

I'm only having a little fun!

Hi,
that's precisely how a "tournament model" is set up in sports, organization pay structure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory

His statement makes more sense to me as the book is more "tournament" centric

I am still hesitant to buy the book because i am not sure how much the 20bb 40bb MTT based results he published translate to 100bb cash

In regards to the original post, you’re all wrong to assume the difference in win-rates is sure to be minimal. You misunderstand the statement itself:

“The ninth-best player in the world...”

If instead this read “The ninth best at applying GTO” your answers make sense and the potential winnings would be small. However, the statement clearly states a “better” player, not necessarily a GTO player.

Let’s imagine the perfect exploitative player were sat at a table with whoever is currently the world’s best GTO players. These GTO players will leave billions of tiny little flaws in their game and the exploitative player would rinse them all making massive profit. The perfect GTO player would miss all these opportunities to exploit our GTO champs, and so his profit would be far smaller.

You have all correctly realised that there are fewer opportunities to make profit from exploiting in the higher games, however, you haven’t accounted for the fact that each flaw is pounced upon and abused by the better players. If you sit in a $400 cash game online and you are simply afraid of big pots, it won’t be long before those guys absolutely obliterate you by building their whole strategy around your weakness: They will raise the **** out of every hand.

Different exploitative advantages lead to different win rates over the opponents depending on their flaws. If the villain never bluffs, your potential winnings are smaller than if the villain always bluffs massively. If the villain doesn’t accurately calculate his math your advantage would probably be minimal. If the villain doesn’t understand some piece of theory, you can destroy their soul.

The original statement was also ignorant of the fact that different players attributes play differently against other attributes. For example, if the best GTO player in the world came up against his mum who knew when he was lying, his mum could absolutely obliterate him. If the player leaves some small betsize tells he could be obliterated by the mathematical exploitative player.

We all have different strengths and weaknesses, and all of them will get exploited by somebody out there. Some of these weaknesses can be abused more, others less. Some players are better at exploiting them, others don’t even try.

You can’t accurately judge a player by how much profit they’ve made. With bigger samples you can negate the variance from unknown elements in the game, but there are still many questions left unanswered. Like; how well they play against different players/players pools, or, how adaptable they are to new elements that may arise.

You can’t judge a player by how close their strategy is to GTO either. As this doesn’t account for their exploitative prowess.

The natural way to judge a player is by considering how much information goes into their decisions. The more likely a piece of information is to lead to profit, the higher a score you assign to that piece of information. The higher the players score at the tables, the better a player he is and the more profit he can expect.

Physical attributes can be judged in this way too. The physical body, the brain, and all other physical things are representations of the information that went into their creation. Using our senses we read this information so that we can judge everything around us in our day to day lives. We judge a steak in the same way as we’d judge a poker player. “This is warm: it’s good to eat.” In our day to day lives we value the information in accordance with how likely it is to satisfy our desires rather than how likely it is to win profit.

If you use this method to find the top 10 poker players you’ll be taking all things into consideration. You’ll consider factors like; the players ability to concentrate. No matter how much information he’s learnt, if he can’t concentrate on this information during his decisions it will all be worthless and so we must adjust his score accordingly. This is where emotions come into it as they hinder your ability to concentrate. You would also consider how good he is at making rapid calculations, as this is important to profit. You’d consider how well he can read the specific players at the table. You’d consider how closely he plays to GTO. You’d take into consideration every single thing that will effect his winnings.

Judging by results isn’t the worst way to gage a players ability, the method is just corrupt. If your goal is to win profit then the most valuable thing to you is the information related to winning profit. Information itself is like the universes base currency. You use it to value all other things. Which is probably why Buddha said:

“The most valuable thing in the universe is knowledge”

When players learn information that is WRONG, all hell breaks loose. Whenever the wrong information is challenged, the player suffers from cognitive dissonance which hinders their ability to concentrate thus protecting the wrong information...

Malmuth, you are wrong to assume that the winrates between the top players are sure to be small. You can’t see past GTO. This is evident in all the titles of the books that you published over the last decade. You don’t fully understand how exploitative theory comes into things.

To a poker player this same flawed understanding of theory will see you miss out on a load of profit, but as Malmuth happens to have monopolised the poker publishing market it means that the entire market is stunted by his mistake. The amount of profit that we are all missing out on is monumental. Players are all learning GTO in the same way as Malmuth, and they make the same mistakes as Malmuth.

This isn’t only happening in the Poker world. Poker players aren’t alone in their understanding of game theory. Economists generally share Malmuths views and businesses shoot for GTO just like the pro poker players of today. This sucks all the potential for profit from our economy! It’s gotten so bad that the richest countries in world can’t even afford to give their nurses plastic face masks.

The problems that have stemmed from this flawed understanding of game theory have had a monumental effect on all fields. It has brought the world to the brink of destruction. And as bad as the planets desolation has been of late, is as good as our rewards will be once this problem is resolved. To that end, I have designed a new game:

A new type of exchange system whereby people are paid for giving things or doing things free of charge. This exchange system is far more efficient than trade, and the currency is as accessible as normal money. Overnight this thing is capable of adding trillions to global economies. Charity isn’t usually rewarded directly but it is a multi trillion dollar sector. My plan is to monetise this sector creating a valid alternative exchange system to trade. This alternative exchange system is incorruptible. I peeled it from religion. It’s a modern version of the exchange system Jesus promoted.

I think this new exchange system will lead to a financial revolution, but I’m just a single parent to an 8 year old girl. It would be good to get help from others in my field! Malmuth, if you understood exploitative theory correctly you would already be supporting me all the way. You’d be very excited right now! All the people who use your forum would soon be getting paid for offering their advice because they do it free of charge. Millions of authors around the world would get paid to give their books out free of charge. The app market would wet itself. Nurses and police would get double pay packets. You would be hailed as a legend forever for simply supporting what might be a some crazy game theorist.

What’s it to be? Twoplustwo could raise an army to help trial and develop this system. If you guys joined me I doubt we’d need any money at all. All it’ll take is a simple website/app and I nearly have a prototype ready already. You want to learn how it’ll work?

How rude... I kindly teach you a load of your poker theory mistakes, which is clearly important information to the guy who monopolised the poker publishing world, but instead of giving me thanks you completely ignore me.

Good luck with your GTO... When I kill it you’ll die with it.

Yadoula: please stop

Stop what, talking about theory? Pointing out your mistakes? I take the time to write these things out for you and your readers. If you don’t have something constructive to add, don’t say anything. Stop mindlessly slating my every post.