Quote:
Originally Posted by ukChuck
is there some cases in which you cant play GTO because your opponent play is so out of line that it becomes impossible not to play exploitative or do I simply do not understand GTO play? Do you have to have your opponent range as input for playing GTO?
GTO effectively means building optimal ranges that cannot be exploited for every situation. This doesn't take into account any tendencies of a villain, and doesn't need to to be profitable. Therefore if you somehow managed to play perfectly GTO, you would play the same against any villain and be profitable against all of them, regardless of how they act. As you mention earlier in your post, this would require sorting through your flop c-bet range and forming a further range vs a reraise consisting of hands that fold, call or 3bet at certain frequencies to become truly unexploitable (ie. there is nothing the villain can do to profit vs you).
GTO is effectively a theoretically consistent profitable style of play however vs villains that make mistakes/have certain tendencies is not the MOST profitable style. In this case, given that you have observed villain has a high flop check raise frequency, it would be MORE profitable to call/3-bet his check raises wider as you have identified them as weaker than optimal (ie. play an exploitative style). Understanding GTO ranges helps serve as a foundation to which you should build ranges however to maximise profit you should deviate from this foundation depending on villain tendencies.
If you played GTO perfectly you would make a modest profit vs everyone. Unfortunately, no one plays truly GTO (we all make mistakes). So it's important to maximise the edges you can get from your opponent by exploiting and adjusting to their mistakes as they will be trying to exploit your mistakes too.