Nobody plays a perfect GTO strategy. Certainly not anyone playing 2/5 or lower. What Im saying is that the guys Ive seen playing 2/5 that are obviously trying to play GTO, and are actually fairly decent at it, arent winning nearly as the other good regs. Its just not a very profitable strategy at low stakes.

Maybe they cant be exploited easily but who cares? Why would you want to play a suboptimal way?

Im sure I get exploited at times. I know I fold the best hand at times. That doesnt bother me at all.

Yeah >1/6th of hands is too many 3 off the button. Even if it's not a three bet heavy game you are getting beaten when people call with stronger ranges (which they will because you're opening too wide and they were calling anyway) and realize their equity (which they will because they'll likely be in position).

on the flip side you should probably be opening on the button a lot wider to make up for it, it's just that the situation where everyone folds to the button preflop doesn't come up that often in llsnl

Hmm...fair points on first two paragraphs. For most people book learning is not going to be hugely effective without a coach. I imagine it's like taking said abstract algebra course and not going to class, just trying to learn everything from the book. I am capable of doing this and actually skipped most of my classes, but in retrospect I don't think anyone else who skipped had solid grades in these courses.

I do think poker is teachable though, just like abstract algebra is teachable. But handing the textbook to a student and saying "The final exam is in three months, good luck" is obviously not going to work for most people. Poker is not as complicated, but it is still too complicated for most to learn it just reading. If Ed Miller (or any decent teacher) organized a class and used his books as the textbooks, I think you could turn a lot of losing players into winning ones.

Books can and do teach how to read people. Zach Elwood's books on poker tells were hugely useful to me in exactly this. Some people intuit better than others and that can't be taught, but pattern recognition can.

Trial and error I don't think is going to work for most people either who didn't have the opportunity to play millions of hands online. It takes a lifetime of playing poker to really learn it (with a straight trial and error approach). If you start from scratch, knowing nothing but the rules of the game, and just try various strategies and then adjust based on results, it simply won't work because it takes 2k+ hours to figure out if an approach is working, possibly many more depending on one's standard deviation. And after 2k hours if you see you're break even or losing, how on earth do you know what to change about your play from a trial and error standpoint?

Unless you just happen to run good when trying good strategies and run bad when trying bad ones, I don't see how a straight empirical approach is possible. Mike, surely someone or something taught you about poker at some point. You didn't just wander into a cardroom and start trying random strategies until you were winning, surely?

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OP I would suggest Ed Miller's "The Course" "Playing the Player" and "How to Read Hands at NLHE" as being more instructive and applicable to LLSNL. "Poker's 1%" is an intro to GTO concepts that is meant to be a bridge before reading more difficult and mathematical GTO books like Will Tiptons heads up series.

Just curious. All of you guys that haven't heard of Ed Miller; never heard of David Sklansky or No Limit Hold'Em :Theory and Practice? While there is no substitute for playing (application), it sure helps a beginner to understand some of the basics by reading a little. Pot odd, implied odds, equity, opening range by position/table dynamics, etc. How many people sit down at the poker table and figure out for themselves what they should be thinking about? Even an older book like "Small Stakes Hold'em: Winning Big with Expert Play" (by Miller, Sklansky, & Malmuth) explaining how to count all of your outs, & redraws gets you to the next step from "fit or fold".

I recently read most of the book my self. It helped me at 1/2 and it didn't.
It made me aware that I was giving up to easily when facing aggression but I quickly had to adjust and start folding more again, since I ended up starting to call too much.
So the biggest benefit for me was to make me more aware of what my opponents are doing.
For the strategy to have any chance of being properly implemented, you have to stay disciplined and stick to a tight pre flop range.
Would not recommend this book to an inexperienced, let alone a bennining player.

A few observations:

What you read in ED’s book is better applied in HU pots.

Here when you Cbet into 4 other players the continuation range of the one player left is narrowed down more in value than if it was hu to start on the flop.

Also from his book the gto optimal Cbet freq is about 70%

A2s here unless u flopped a 3 flush isn’t even sniffing the bottom of your continuing range on flop to Cbet into 1 opponent let alone 4 and oop to add injury

You are mis- applying what you read

I see this time and time again with live players telling me at the table that gto is nonsense

Vs complete drooling fish yea it’s better to exploit with unbalanced ranges and get sizes

Why? Cause they are clueless .. anyone can beat fish ....you want to apply gto vs unknown regs or players you see as good before getting any reads

My 2 cents

This is a theoretical book. There's nothing wrong with that, despite theory generally playing a lesser role in LLSNL games.

Learning theory and understanding WHY it doesn't apply in certain contexts can really help someone zero in on how our villains are messing up and how to respond for maximum exploitation.

For example, theoretically, we should 3bet a wider range than AA. But if we're in an OMC game where villain open ranges are waaaaay tight and waaaaaaay imbalanced towards value, maybe we shouldn't.

My opinion, and I believe this is the point, is that knowing the precise theoretically correct play makes you a more precise exploiter. Lower stakes unknown players are likely all slanted a certain way, and once you see the exact combos they play, you can zero in on precisely how to win the most money. As you move up stakes, the players are less obvious and it takes more skill and precision.

If Ed Miller decides to play this way and write a book about it, it just has to be a good book, imo.

who the hell is ed miller

wth is a search engine

Ed Miller

He was also a former poster in this forum known as MajorKong.

Miller doesn't recommend raising A2s.

He doesn't recommend continuation betting into multiple people with air.

There is no 1% rule.

He actually does recommend raising A2s in "The Course."

Thanks guys. From your suggestions and some observations about how much I leak playing these types of hands (raise, c-bet sometimes, can't continue and burn ~4 PF+6 flop=10bb often), I've since realized that it is indeed too many hands and tightened up a bit preflop.

I've also been reading The Course and getting a huge amount of value out of it, it is so much more applicable to these $3/$5 games. Thanks for that suggestion @Shai Hulud